Comments by "Geoff Lepper" (@geofflepper3207) on "Is Germany Spending Enough on Defence?" video.
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Sad thing is that the need for European countries to spend vast amounts of money
on the miltary is virtually only due to a paranoid, belligerent, aggressive,
threatening Russia.
No aggressive, threatening Russia would mean no need to waste money on
huge, well equipped militaries.
I think that in developed countries people and givernments realise that spending money on the miltary is an incredibly expensive, unproductive and wasteful way to spend money
and that's why so many countries spend less on the military than the
United States would like them to spend.
Have just been reading about political fights in the United States after WW2
and at that time President Truman had a devil of a time convincing
American politicians to accept high military spending in peacetime
or to support the creation of NATO but of course American political support
for constant high levels of military spending did become the norm.
In other wealthy democracies this generally never happened.
Other than helping out in natural disasters the military is just a big drain that sucks money
out of society while producing nothing and of course even in helping in a natural disaster
the military doesn't need expensive guns, bombs, jet fighters, destroyers
or other weapons of war.
For many centuries European governments spent a lot of their budgets on the miltary
because they were regularly attacking each other to try to steal territory
but in recent decades it's clear that they thought it was better to live in peace with their European neighbours and that a much better use of government money
was to build roads, hospitals, schools and to provide financial support for the poor
rather than to spend exorbitant amounts of money on very expensive military tools
such as jet fighters.
Unfortunately though the Russian dictatorship does not take the same view.
Because Putin is a very weak, insecure, paranoid man
who thus has the delusion that every other country threatens Russia
and who wants to make up for his personal insecurities by expanding
the Russian empire every country in Europe faces the threat of
potential attack by Russia and so has little choice but to
waste a lot of financial resources on military spending.
The closer geographically countries are to Russia the more they appreciate the
threat posed by Russia and understandably the more money they decide they
have to waste on military spending to be prepared for potential attack by Russia.
Basically it's only Russia (in particular weak, insecure, paranoid Putin and his delusions)
that create the need for European countries to waste money on miltary spending
when that money could have done so many more productive things.
If there was no Russia or if Russia replaced Putin with a stronger, non-delusional leader
who wasn't constantly terrified of his own shadow and every other country
and thus was willing to live peacefully with other European countries instead of threatening them then the need for large militaries for European countries would disappear.
Russia and its weak, insecure, paranoid leaders are THE problem for Europe.
Nobody else is going to attack European countries
(with the possible exceptions of Russia's friend Serbia and demagogue run Hungary
which seem to have desire to steal territory from their immediate neighbours).
If Russia behaved as peacefully as did other European countries imagine
how many wonderful things could be done with all that money currently
used for strong militaries.
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