I kinda wanna bookmark this post and link it every time Trump does something horrible and Lemmy suddenly rediscovers the nuanced difference between the people and their government.
There were no (or only very few) cold warriors in the EU
Glances at the Baltics…
The point is, the “new cold war” crowd is imagining it invariably between “the west” and “the east”, with them being inherently “the west”(it’s why they instantly fell back on the old ‘asiatic hordes’ language). In actuality, the only reason the original cold war was between the Yanks and the SU was that Europe kneecapped itself twice in a row, and the vacuum left was filled by “the west” (US) and “the east” (USSR), and Europe split between them.
Before the Wars, you had, for example, the absolutist, profoundly religious Russian Empire ally with the secular French Republic against the Germans, because for all their differences neither could allow Germany to dominate the other, because they would be next. Meanwhile, you had the Austrians join their direct rival Germany and their ancient enemy Ottomans in an effort to contain Russia, for the same reason. Consequently, if you, now, have a severely weakened Russia, and a united Europe that is now rebuilding it’s military and attempting to break away from US dominance, it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise for the US to try and bolster Russia to counter a resurgent Europe - much to the disappointment of NAFO mouthbreathers.
Incidentally, now that I think about it, it’s kind of a part of how WW1 started, IIRC: Kaiser Willy started a massive naval buildup, in his mind, against Japan, and was completely shocked when King Eddie took it entirely the wrong way…
Not even stronger, per se, just strong enough. What the overeager cold warriors in the EU miss is that Russia isn’t big enough to be the new Soviet Union… but the EU is.
Yup. The major problem with cyclists and various flavors of scooter, both regular and especially electric, is that they seem to think of themselves as pedestrians, when they’re in fact vehicles (incidentally, a major problem for cyclists is being considered pedestrians by car drivers).
It’s plainly visible when you’re standing at a red light and see a bike split lanes, get on the zebra, veer right, get onto the perpendicular zebra, make the crossing like a pedestrian, and get back onto the road and drive off. Or, for an example I’ve seen in Amsterdam, a woman with a baby in the back, going 20kmh, just plow straight into 20 people with no braking and expect them to part for her like she were pushing her way through a crowd with a stroller. From my experience, cyclists in pedestrian zones treat foot traffic as bad if not worse than drivers treat bike traffic.
I’d wager (heh) Tooze is familiar with armament production. Germany still built something like 4k Leo 2s. Add to that about 1k of Leclercs, half that of Challengers, some Ariettes, and a bunch of other crap, there’s room for an economy of scale, it’s just not being used. And frankly, EU armies buying M1s isn’t helping. In addition, you can put the proposition backwards, and say high unit costs are a sign of too few of them being built.
I’m wondering if he’s maybe comparing older models. An M1A2 can come from anywhere between early nineties and today - L2A8s are brand spanking new. But even then, the PzH 2000 being six times more expensive then the K9 is just insane.
If anything, an argument in favour of an EU army would be a reduction in total size, due to removal of redundancies.