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Our North - SSE Policy Update Megathread

Germany and Japan have had standing military's again since the 60s or 50s. Call the JSDF anything you want, its a military.
So is our military and anyone else’s. It does not change the fact that the US placed and positioned itself as their proxy military for decades. If the US abandons its allies those allies will find themselves aligned with someone else. And people won’t like the results.
Ugh I'm not getting into this.
That’s fine. It would mean accepting uncomfortable truths.
The USA ? What's your point ? NATO hasn't been a great partner to the USA. I don't fault the USA for wanting everyone to do their share.
Meaning that they are the only country that called on NATO for help. You stated that everyone should stop relying on the US for help when the only country that actually called for help was the US.

No issues with wanting partners to do their share (based on a subjective number) but you don’t do that by encouraging your enemies to do what they want and not have to worry about a response. This isn’t a protection racket or country club membership.

Your original premise and statement on this is that Europe is responsible for its own defense and that the US should not nor never should have been involved. That assumes no US in NATO.
 
So is our military and anyone else’s. It does not change the fact that the US placed and positioned itself as their proxy military for decades. If the US abandons its allies those allies will find themselves aligned with someone else. And people won’t like the results.

Which everyone was cool with, so the others gutted their own militaries while also shitting on the Americans for providing the security they failed to provide for themselves. You can only beat your guard dog so long before it will stop being your guard dog.

That’s fine. It would mean accepting uncomfortable truths.

Sure, if that helps you get by.

Meaning that they are the only country that called on NATO for help. You stated that everyone should stop relying on the US for help when the only country that actually called for help was the US.

I stated that everyone should be able to deal with their own problems. That doesn't mean others cant help. Its means ones first action on shouldn't be expecting someone else to come in and deal with it.

No issues with wanting partners to do their share (based on a subjective number) but you don’t do that by encouraging your enemies to do what they want and not have to worry about a response. This isn’t a protection racket or country club membership.

Your original premise and statement on this is that Europe is responsible for its own defense and that the US should not nor never should have been involved. That assumes no US in NATO.

That's not true at all, your either not understanding my position or putting words in my mouth. My premise is Europe shouldn't rely on the US for its defence. That doesnt mean we cant all be allies and help. What it means ones first action on shouldn't be expecting someone else to come in and deal with it.

I'm not going to go over and help my neighbor build a deck while he sits there and drinks beer and critiques my work without so much as picking up a board.

Being an ally or partner means all facets of the partnership do their fair share. And that hasn't been happening on the defence file in NATO.
 
Anyways.. After I watched that interview with the French PM I read that Macron is visiting in July. I suspect the French are courting us for Suffren SSNs or Orka Class that recently won the Dutch competition. Thoughts?
The chance of us getting any nuclear subs is virtually zero. They are almost certainly offering us the Shortfin Barracuda diesel-electric selected by The Netherlands and selected, but canceled, by Australia.
 
WW2 was supposed to be prevented by The League of Nations.

The US never joined that either despite imposing it on Europe.

Isolationists in Congress.
 
Noooooooo. They're trying to sell us the subs that Australia didn't want.

My primary point is that if the Feds want to keep a plant open for the purpose of continuously building armoured vehicles, the GDLS plant has produced vehicles such as MRAPs between LAV serials and sometimes even concurrently. The secondary is that it appears the army does require more than 1 type of vehicle in continuous production otherwise only LAV would be kept current and the rest of the “fleets” continue to exist in large, unconnected acquisitions that simply end (such as TAPV) until a replacement is required. It’s noteworthy that Oshkosh offered to have a continuously producing plant in London as part of their failed bid for TAPV (alongside the LMI plant).

I would note though that the LAV is simply a code word for jobs in London, where the Libs are in danger of losing all of their seats. They really don’t care if the army has an endless supply of any vehicles, they just want to hold onto the bastion in SWO.
Might not be only GDLS.

 
At this current point in time the Americans simply can not be trusted. They are so embroiled and consumed by their domestic politics.
That they are unable to view the world outside their borders except for how it fits into their current ideological infighting to the exclusion of anything else.
 
I think that there is a fallacy in the proposition that Europe is not looking after its own defence and is dependent on the US for military assistance.

A small look at some rough statistics:

Group - Population in millions -Defence expenditure in $ billions:

US - 330 - $860

West Europe (1) - 424 - $323

Russia - $144 - $84

China - 1,412 - $230 (1.7% GDP)

(1) I've left out Turkey and Greece

The point here is that W Europe is appx three time the size of its sole enemy territorial threat and expends four times what its enemy expends.

The US has no territorial threat. It sees its threat as economic/political vis a vis China and as a secondary economic/political threat vis a vis Russia and maintains a defence expenditure of almost three times that of its two enemies.

There are therefore two complicating factors:

1) Both European and American defence outputs - their soldiers and equipment - cost more per item than their enemies. It's an interesting analysis that needs doing as to whether one US/European soldier or tank or missile is worth three or four Russian or Chinese ones. If it isn't then all the extra spending has little value. Overmatch in cost must equal overmatch in combat power or its a fool's game to play. At what point do you realize that you've lost the economic side of the arms race and change your fundamental structure of a military based on expensive volunteers and an expensive private arms industry.

2) With no territorial enemy to deal with, why does the US expend more money on defence than the rest of the world combined? Before 1941 the US was primarily isolationist. It has spent the last 80 years being the world's policeman (that's a term from my era) and involved itself in numerous expeditionary conflicts. It didn't go into Afghanistan and Iraq because America's very existence was threatened by those countries. It isn't propping up Israel because the Iranian cartel threatens the American homeland. There's a proposition that if America backed off all these measures the threat from terrorists to the homeland would disappear. But one needs to ask the question of whether this type of support by the US is vital to its long term economic interest. I won't try to answer it as its a fair debateable point and varies very much by which enemy you look to. What's clear, however, is that US's exorbitant defence expenditures are needed solely for its own foreign policy and not the defence of its territorial integrity.

Getting back to Europe. It has no foreign policy interests that require an expeditionary force to employ throughout the world. It is merely concerned about its own defence. It's defence expenditures for that are adequate in light of the threat and would be very good if it changed its defence systems to maximize its defence outputs for each defence input dollar. The answer to increasing defence outputs isn't always to spend more.

This too explains the difference between the US and Canada. Like the US, we have no foreign territorial threat at this time. Unlike the US we have no foreign policy that mandates expeditionary forces for situations other than our defence alliances i.e NATO. What we commit and how we commit it is a decision based on intangibles which vary with our political leadership. Personally, I think we need to demonstrate resolve and a commitment here, if for no other reason than as part of an effort to reclaim our position as a consistent and serious nation in our allies eyes. For that we need a sizeable and equipped force with a presence in Europe and with continuous self sufficiency in both equipment and munitions.

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Bund societies were active here in North America as well.

As for Trump emboldening Putin, I am not so sure that is the case. I will argue that Obama's dithering and grasping at straws to have a good rep globally led to much of the problems we are dealing with now. Trump's first term showed that he was harder to predict and a risk taker in regards to foreign policy and was not afraid to use muscle when required. That put a damper on things. Biden is seen as a weak and old leader, which likley emboldened Putin. I don't think Trump's 2nd term would work well. his "unpredictability" is no longer new and would be checked and he has lost a lot of support from the military. I also think Biden get another term would be a disaster. In other words the US is screwed for a term one way or another.
who runs as a Republican in place of Trump should one of these seemingly dozens of trials end up throwing him in jail? All of the other candidates seem to have withdrawn
 
At this current point in time the Americans simply can not be trusted. They are so embroiled and consumed by their domestic politics.
That they are unable to view the world outside their borders except for how it fits into their current ideological infighting to the exclusion of anything else.
Could just as easily swap Canada for America in that one …
 
Honest question, how much of that is being spent on NATO commitments and participating in the defence of Europe ?

Difficult to answer, however the question has been asked and discussed elsewhere. An excerpt from a 2018 piece.



. . .

Guesstimating the Real Cost to the U.S. of Its Forces for NATO

Unfortunately, there is no official U.S. or NATO source that does estimate the actual portion of total U.S. defense spending that should be allocated to NATO. Such U.S. estimates were made in the past as a result of legislative action in the Senate Armed Services Committee by Senator Nunn and Senator Warner. The requirement for such reporting has long since lapsed, however, and there are no official U.S. estimates of what the U.S. currently actually spends on NATO.

Outside guesstimates of the costs of deploying U.S. forces outside the U.S. have uncertain credibility, but their size does show that they are only likely to be a fraction of 70%. For example, one recent low-end estimate puts the incremental cost of every U.S. overseas base and deployment at roughly $150 billion a year. This total would be only 24% of the low $706.1 billion total that Figure A1 shows NATO reports for total U.S. defense spending in current dollars in 2018, and only 16% of the total of $706.1 billion it reports for all of NATO. And once again, it should be stressed that this guesstimate of the burden, however, includes all U.S. forces in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and in the rest of the world.

An admittedly rough estimate by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) has far more credibility.[1] It only attempts to estimate the cost of U.S. forces in Europe and estimates that, "direct US expenses on defense in Europe (in current dollars) are estimated to range between US $30.7bn in 2017 and US $36.0bn in 2018, or between 5.1% and 5.5% of the total US defense budget, as measured by the IISS ($602.78 billion). These numbers, it could be argued, put the total defense spending of European NATO allies – US $239.1bn – in something of a different light." The $36.0 billion figure for 2018 would be only 5.1% of the $706.1 billion total reported by NATO – making the 70% some 64.9% higher.

As the IISS points out, however, simply costing the U.S. forces in Europe does not include the cost of any forces in the U.S. that are effectively dedicated – or earmarked or assigned to reinforcing NATO in a credible emergency or warfighting case. If one somewhat arbitrarily assumes that the total cost would be some three times higher than the cost of U.S. forces actually in Europe, a round number of $100 billion might be as good a guess as any. This would still, however, be a maximum of 14.1% of the U.S. total of $706.1 billion in current dollars that NATO reports for the U.S. in 2018. It would also be only 25% of the revised $ 407.3 billion total cost for NATO in 2018 – which would include $285.7 billion for NATO Europe and $21.6 billion for Canada.



So, possibly between 5% and 15% of the US defence budget. Of course, it could be much higher if troops were directly involved in a shooting war.
 
Honest question, how much of that is being spent on NATO commitments and participating in the defence of Europe ?
That is a very relevant question in this debate.

This particular chart is an older one from 2018 which shows the US share of European defence.

Altogether, the estimated direct US expenses on defence in Europe reached $35.8bn in 2018, or around 5.6% of total US ‘national defense function’ outlays that year. These numbers put the total defence spending by European NATO states – the $264bn mentioned above – in a different light.

I've looked at the US 2023 budget overview which is not helpful as it only mentions the $4 billion European Defence Initiative and the 10,000 folks that are in USEUCOM (considerably less money and people than committed to the Middle East through CENTCOM)

Obviously the next logical question is what, if any, share of the remaining US defence budget could be considered "indirect" expenses with respect to the undeployed US forces which remain in CONUS and elsewhere. Also there is the issue of US expenditures in direct support of Ukraine (some $60 billion as compared to EU's contribution of $77 billion - Europe's military aid roughly equals the US's). Ukraine Support Tracker

I think that one can safely say that the US has a lot more irons in the fire than just Europe and has for some time now played an economy of force role there. European spending on "defence of Europe" greatly exceeds that of the US. What the US brings to the table is a large reserve force in the US that can potentially be brought into the European theatre. And it's fair to give that a value but it is unfair to suggest that the US is doing more than the Europeans for the "defence of Europe" just because it has the largest defence budget in the world by far.

And just so that my detractors won't be disappointed I'll reiterate my view that Canada's role in Europe should be a) a small forward full-time contingent; b) at least a brigade level of prepositioned equipment; and c) a large reserve of full and part-time trained personnel on fly-over taskings drawn from at least 11 equipped brigades (3 heavy, 1 light, 2 mech, 2 arty, 1 combat, and 2 sustainment). The personnel for that are within our current manpower allocations; the equipment on the other hand ...

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However, a shadow of exit hung over the US commitment to Europe during the early Cold War. Throughout the 1950s, under Presidents Harry Truman (Democrat) and Dwight Eisenhower (Republican), the United States saw its leadership role on the continent as a temporary expedient. As soon as European integration had proceeded far enough for a "third force" to emerge capable of balancing Soviet power on its own, the United States would withdraw from its forward positions and recede into the background. Moreover, the United States was not above threatening its European allies with abandonment when they failed to embrace the integration project with sufficient zeal. Most famous in this regard is the "agonizing reappraisal" that John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under Eisenhower, warned about in December 1953. In fact, an enduring American commitment to Europe was not solidified until the early 1960s, under President John F Kennedy (Democrat). Even Kennedy, however threatened to withdraw all US troops from Europe unless West Germany dialed back on security co-operation with France, which jeopardized the preponderant position that the United States demanded in the NATO alliance as the price for it staying.



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