2023-12-11 16:45:45
2023-12-12 00:45 Compiled by Mao Yi from United Daily News/Comprehensive Report Russia’s defense spending will increase to 6% of economic output next year, posing a potential threat to NATO countries. The picture shows a Russian building…
The Wall Street Journal reported on the 11th that since the end of the Cold War, the overall combat effectiveness of the European military has been weak, and NATO has relied on the US military to support the situation. Although Europe does not face an immediate military danger from Russia, military and political leaders in the Western world believe that if Russia wins the war, In the Ukraine War, the Russian army had the ability to completely rearm its arms within three to four years after the war and make waves elsewhere.
The United States accounted for nearly 70% of NATO’s defense budget last year. On the other hand, only 11 of the 31 NATO countries are expected to achieve the goal of defense spending accounting for 2% of economic output this year. The current situation is that the British army, the main ally of the US military, only has about 150 deployable tanks and 12 usable long-range artillery. Although the UK spends the most on defense in Europe, it once turned its brains to the museum last year and wanted to improve the multiple rocket launchers on display to support Kiev.
France, which has the second highest defense expenditure in Europe, has less than 90 heavy artillery pieces, which is about the same number that the Russian army loses on the battlefield in Ukraine every month; Denmark, which blocks the gateway to the Baltic Sea, has even fewer heavy artillery pieces. Once a war breaks out, the German army will only have enough ammunition to fight for two days; the Netherlands will disband its last tank unit in 2011.
Years of budget cuts have significantly reduced European countries’ ability to produce weapons, and most governments are opposed to slashing social welfare spending to divert it to defense in view of slow economic growth and aging populations. King, a professor at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, said that since there is no obvious threat to Europe and the US military has a dominant position in the world, Europe, which is unwilling to spend money on defense, has “defeated its martial arts.”
Former NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen said that even if the overall economic and industrial capabilities of NATO countries are better than Russia’s, “we are willing to let Russia surpass” in weapons production. Ukraine is now trapped in a war of attrition. If “we do not seriously produce arms,” the threat of war from Russia may “get closer to us.”
Although Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 prompted NATO countries to increase military expenditures, the growth rate was slow. The EU’s defense expenditures increased by 20% in the past decade, but the defense budgets of Russia and China increased by about % respectively. Three hundred and six hundred percent.
According to Estonian military intelligence, if the Russo-Ukrainian war ends now, it will take Russia three to five years to rebuild the ability to launch attacks on other countries.
Ukraine Russia Russia-Ukraine War
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