No. of Recommendations: 14
See my previous post. Europe's most industrialized country at present course and speed can't get back to its 2004 levels in artillery for nearly 100 years. Think about that.
At present course, sure. But if they really put their resources into it, they could do it much, much more quickly. You know this. They don't have many factories making artillery shells today, because they don't need to have many factories making artillery shells. Which makes sense.
They can't afford to arm up and conquer anything.
It's not like any nation that might invade Europe has similarly kept pace with the U.S. - so they could, if they wanted to, ramp up their defensive capabilities sufficient to repel an invading force from, say, Russia.
But again, the downside to that is that they then all have armies that are sufficient to conquer each other. So we've had eight decades of uninterrupted peace between the countries of Europe; something which had never heretofore existed. Ever. And a huge part of that is the Pax Americana, the restructuring of European defense forces to be pieces of a military defense against invasion from the East, rather than wholly self-sufficient armed forces that are powerful enough to flex beyond their borders.
We're too cheap to pay for that Pax Americana now, apparently. Basically having military control of Europe isn't something we're interested in much any more. I think we'll come to regret that, and that our military expenditures there will look cheap at twice the cost if we see intra-European military conflicts make a comeback. It's too much trouble to be the Boss of NATO, and once we force all the other countries of Europe to step up their defense funding, they might start to question why the US is the Boss of NATO anymore.
