RAFO Messageboard: Re: Ok, I can answer also from a wider long term perspective. by Legolas

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Re: Ok, I can answer also from a wider long term perspective. Legolas Send a noteboard - 18/03/2025 07:25:45 PM

View original postWe’re on the same page here until you get to the part about the 2% of GDP goal. Since the US probably hits 6-8% of its GDP on defense spending, 2% never should’ve seemed so unreasonable. The DoD budget runs 3-4%, but the government hides some of its spending elsewhere. For example, the budgets of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs are directly and fully defense expenditures. The Department of Energy covers America’s expenses for nuclear weapons and the Department of the Treasury handles retirement pay for eligible vets. Those are what I can remember off the top of my head. The big one, however, is that around 1/3 of our debt service payment is due to defense. As to your last sentence, yes, but now out of necessity rather than being a choice. And don’t get me wrong, I think it would have been possible and infinitely preferable to come to such an arrangement in a civil manner. Trump wants to sell the idea of geopolitics as a reality show with him as the star, the only star save maybe for Putin in a supporting role.

I think you misunderstood me there - I wasn't complaining that the 2 percent is too much, but that it doesn't measure what's actually relevant, i.e. to what extent Europe is capable of defending itself. On the American side, obviously only a limited part of the total military spending has anything to do with defending Europe - as it should - so what relevance does its total military spending have? Or in the case of Greece and Turkey, rather a lot of their military spending is focused primarily on defending against an old ancestral enemy who just so happens to be a member of the same freaking alliance - or on repressing the Kurdish rebels inside Turkey's own borders. So this 2 percent of GDP target was a very hamfisted way of pushing the laggards in NATO to do more for their own defense, but some countries that spend more do so for entirely unrelated reasons and if other countries would in fact be perfectly capable of defending themselves while spending less, that should also be fine. I'm not sure if the latter applies to any NATO members really, but Switzerland comes to mind as a country that manages to have a strong military defense, while only spending less than a percent of GDP on it.

View original postNo? Then the frustration and anger were probably mine. I have a bad habit of coming here and posting on occasions when I’m not fully sober. My mistake. And it’s the proximity of Poland to Russia that causes my concern. Mookie explained this bit well. I don’t want Russian nukes in Cuba or Venezuela or on UAV vehicles on harbor floors. The window of time from launch detection warning to verifying that warning and then deciding how to best proceed is negligible, maybe no more than a few minutes. And then there’s the matter of spy satellites and information sharing. The combined number of spy satellites of all non-US NATO countries is but a fraction of America’s. Quality is a factor as well. It’s not just a matter of plopping a few nukes in silos or on TELS, or whatever the chosen method is to protect or conceal the weapons.

View original postETA: Come to think of it, I read nothing on the location/basing of the missiles. Is the intention to actually have them on German and Polish soil?

I don't think it is so much about the location, no, as about who they would be used to defend. And as mentioned before, nukes already are on German soil anyway. Poland would be significantly closer to Moscow than the +/- 2000 km between the current US nukes in Germany and Turkey and Moscow, true. Certainly the US is more capable of deploying nukes with precision than any other NATO members, but if the US just abandons Europe, or worse, basically implodes, the rest of us will have to manage with what we've got.

View original postETA II: Turns out America shares its B61 bomb, basing them in a select number of countries but with America retaining control over them. As to the bombs, they are gravity bombs dropped from jets, jets such as the F35 and some of European manufacture. They’re also tactical nukes with a variable blast yield ability ranging from under 1kt up to 400kt. By way of comparison, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of 15kt and 21kt respectively. I’m not sure what, exactly, Germany and Poland would like to have or what France and the UK would be willing to offer.

View original postFor this bit I didn’t mean countries I’d support or accept as nuclear powers, rather, the ones that are likely to do so out of security concerns. But agreed on Japan, which already has a massive amount of Plutonium that was purchased from France decades ago, ostensibly for use in the Monju fast breeder reactor. As to the national sentiment, yes, but the resistance is stronger the closer you get to Hiroshima and with the older generations who had loved ones that suffered the bombing. I assume the same is true of Nagasaki but I never went there or talked with anyone from the vicinity on this subject. I will add that Japanese history has a number of instances where the national mood changed pretty much overnight, just like that.

I've never been to Japan, but yeah, good point about the national mood being able to change quickly...

View original postThe scary about Pakistan when it comes to WMD is that they use a poor man’s version of submarines to conceal the nukes from India. They’re driven around the country in semi trailers. Balochs and Sindhis have a lot of issues with the Punjabis running the show. So domestic terrorism concerns in addition to international ones — and state-sponsored sometimes.

As if there weren't already enough scary things about Pakistan.

But yeah, there was a big Balochi terrorist attack just last week that got barely any attention and anyway even aside from the minorities, the country is just stumbling from one unstable government to another.

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Thoughts on NATO and nuclear proliferation Vodalus - 11/03/2025 02:05:20 AM 181 Views

Re: Thoughts on NATO and nuclear proliferation damookster - 11/03/2025 04:47:15 PM 47 Views

Re: Thoughts on NATO and nuclear proliferation Vodalus - 11/03/2025 09:48:32 PM 40 Views

Re: Thoughts on NATO and nuclear proliferation damookster - 18/03/2025 02:40:01 PM 32 Views

I agree with most of what you wrote here aerocontrols - 18/03/2025 02:55:08 PM 23 Views

Re: I agree with most of what you wrote here damookster - 18/03/2025 04:19:05 PM 23 Views

In both of those cases, though, at least you provided support to the defender in a war. Legolas - 18/03/2025 07:00:04 PM 20 Views

Re: Thoughts on NATO and nuclear proliferation Tom - 11/03/2025 06:19:01 PM 48 Views

Re: Thoughts on NATO and nuclear proliferation Vodalus - 11/03/2025 08:52:57 PM 35 Views

Some of this is fair enough - some, not so much. And the ending is... um. Novel? Legolas - 11/03/2025 10:57:41 PM 33 Views

This reads like a Jeremy Strong character running for minor office

*NM* TheCrownless - 14/03/2025 10:54:47 AM 8 Views

I guess I should reply also here. Legolas - 11/03/2025 11:21:16 PM 37 Views

Re: I guess I should reply also here. Vodalus - 12/03/2025 01:35:49 AM 32 Views

Ok, I can answer also from a wider long term perspective. Legolas - 14/03/2025 08:05:10 AM 29 Views

Re: Ok, I can answer also from a wider long term perspective. Vodalus - 18/03/2025 01:56:11 AM 30 Views

Re: Ok, I can answer also from a wider long term perspective. Legolas - 18/03/2025 07:25:45 PM 23 Views

The fact that this is a serious topic of conversation these days is frightening. Ghavrel - 12/03/2025 11:16:11 AM 40 Views

Re: The fact that this is a serious topic of conversation these days is frightening. Vodalus - 12/03/2025 11:15:56 PM 34 Views

I think it's largely irrelevant now TheCrownless - 14/03/2025 11:14:10 AM 37 Views

You’re probably right about that. Vodalus - 18/03/2025 04:50:24 AM 31 Views

Re: Thoughts on NATO and nuclear proliferation The Shrike - 14/03/2025 01:27:34 PM 34 Views

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<quote id="312538">
<quote id="312530">We’re on the same page here until you get to the part about the 2% of GDP goal. Since the US probably hits 6-8% of its GDP on defense spending, 2% never should’ve seemed so unreasonable. The DoD budget runs 3-4%, but the government hides some of its spending elsewhere. For example, the budgets of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs are directly and fully defense expenditures. The Department of Energy covers America’s expenses for nuclear weapons and the Department of the Treasury handles retirement pay for eligible vets. Those are what I can remember off the top of my head. The big one, however, is that around 1/3 of our debt service payment is due to defense. As to your last sentence, yes, but now out of necessity rather than being a choice. And don’t get me wrong, I think it would have been possible and infinitely preferable to come to such an arrangement in a civil manner. Trump wants to sell the idea of geopolitics as a reality show with him as the star, the only star save maybe for Putin in a supporting role.</quote>
I think you misunderstood me there - I wasn't complaining that the 2 percent is too much, but that it doesn't measure what's actually relevant, i.e. to what extent Europe is capable of defending itself. On the American side, obviously only a limited part of the total military spending has anything to do with defending Europe - as it should - so what relevance does its total military spending have? Or in the case of Greece and Turkey, rather a lot of their military spending is focused primarily on defending against an old ancestral enemy who just so happens to be a member of the same freaking alliance - or on repressing the Kurdish rebels inside Turkey's own borders. So this 2 percent of GDP target was a very hamfisted way of pushing the laggards in NATO to do more for their own defense, but some countries that spend more do so for entirely unrelated reasons and if other countries would in fact be perfectly capable of defending themselves while spending less, that should also be fine. I'm not sure if the latter applies to any NATO members really, but Switzerland comes to mind as a country that manages to have a strong military defense, while only spending less than a percent of GDP on it.

<quote id="312530">No? Then the frustration and anger were probably mine. I have a bad habit of coming here and posting on occasions when I’m not fully sober. My mistake. And it’s the proximity of Poland to Russia that causes my concern. Mookie explained this bit well. I don’t want Russian nukes in Cuba or Venezuela or on UAV vehicles on harbor floors. The window of time from launch detection warning to verifying that warning and then deciding how to best proceed is negligible, maybe no more than a few minutes. And then there’s the matter of spy satellites and information sharing. The combined number of spy satellites of all non-US NATO countries is but a fraction of America’s. Quality is a factor as well. It’s not just a matter of plopping a few nukes in silos or on TELS, or whatever the chosen method is to protect or conceal the weapons.</quote>
<quote id="312530">ETA: Come to think of it, I read nothing on the location/basing of the missiles. Is the intention to actually have them on German and Polish soil? </quote>
I don't think it is so much about the location, no, as about who they would be used to defend. And as mentioned before, nukes already are on German soil anyway. Poland would be significantly closer to Moscow than the +/- 2000 km between the current US nukes in Germany and Turkey and Moscow, true. Certainly the US is more capable of deploying nukes with precision than any other NATO members, but if the US just abandons Europe, or worse, basically implodes, the rest of us will have to manage with what we've got. 
<quote id="312530">ETA II: Turns out America shares its B61 bomb, basing them in a select number of countries but with America retaining control over them. As to the bombs, they are gravity bombs dropped from jets, jets such as the F35 and some of European manufacture. They’re also tactical nukes with a variable blast yield ability ranging from under 1kt up to 400kt. By way of comparison, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of 15kt and 21kt respectively. I’m not sure what, exactly, Germany and Poland would like to have or what France and the UK would be willing to offer.</quote>

<quote id="312530">For this bit I didn’t mean countries I’d support or accept as nuclear powers, rather, the ones that are likely to do so out of security concerns.  But agreed on Japan, which already has a massive amount of Plutonium that was purchased from France decades ago, ostensibly for use in the Monju fast breeder reactor. As to the national sentiment, yes, but the resistance is stronger the closer you get to Hiroshima and with the older generations who had loved ones that suffered the bombing. I assume the same is true of Nagasaki but I never went there or talked with anyone from the vicinity on this subject. I will add that Japanese history has a number of instances where the national mood changed pretty much overnight, just like that.</quote>
I've never been to Japan, but yeah, good point about the national mood being able to change quickly...

<quote id="312530">The scary about Pakistan when it comes to WMD is that they use a poor man’s version of submarines to conceal the nukes from India. They’re driven around the country in semi trailers. Balochs and Sindhis have a lot of issues with the Punjabis running the show. So domestic terrorism concerns in addition to international ones — and state-sponsored sometimes.</quote>
As if there weren't already enough scary things about Pakistan. :P But yeah, there was a big Balochi terrorist attack just last week that got barely any attention and anyway even aside from the minorities, the country is just stumbling from one unstable government to another. 
</quote>

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