The Sum of All Fears: Trump will announce a U.S.arms embargo on Ukraine,

[Emrys]

62. I think we do in general, and yes, discussion's always good, and encourages me, at least, to stretch myself

Last edited Sat Mar 1, 2025, 10:58 PM - Edit history (1)

and try to clarify my thinking.

I think a few of us get touchy about some of the figures bandied about because there's so much misinformation, and the more it gets repeated in reputable outlets, the more credibility it gains.

Europe isn't by any means immune from overpricing armaments. I'd comfort myself by thinking at least the money'd be staying in European economies, but the tentacles of US multinationals spread far and wide, so that's not 100% true.

What I hope may happen is that as our populations come to terms with some of the economic pressures of the coming inevitable militarization and the effect of it hits home (e.g. the UK economy's struggling, and Starmer raided the overeas aid budget to bump up defence expenditure - too much to ask that he could have chased the unpaid billions in tax by some of the country's richest, obviously), there may be more scrutiny of who's making a packet out of the racket of war, and that might drive prices down. Some of the more effective armamants may not be as prohibitively expensive - like drones, for instance, much as the thought of mechanizing warfare is somewhat chilling.

Profiteering should be a dirty word anyway, but even more so when the chips are down. At the moment, our Trident "deterrent" is looking pretty useless, partly because we're doubting its functionality as the submarines malfunction with age, and anyway it doesn't seem to be deterring Putin's mouthpieces from fantasizing about nuking us. It's long been a bone of contention in our armed forces that the massive cost of our nuclear force has taken away investment in our conventional forces. Making the argument for doing away with Trident at the moment is no doubt a non-starter for obvious reasons, but given its dependence on US technology, it's an uneasy thought that it's now in the gift of Trump. We've also spent a lot of money on projects that are ill fitted for modern military challenges because deployment always lags far behind need - like our massive and ailing new aircraft carriers that front a severely depleted fleet that's having trouble with recruitment.

One sick benefit of the Ukraine conflict is that it's forced some of Europe's leaders to look outside the box when seeking arms to supply to Ukraine - e.g., neither the US nor any other single ally could provide enough shells of certain archaic calibres to the Ukrainians at one point, so the Czechs did some intelligent digging and managed to source large quantities of them from a variety of shady sources. It's also led to the opening up of production lines that had been mothballed during the myth of the peace dividend.