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> I think you are lacking some imagination here. There can be no doubt that after the events of the last couple of months (starting with the Hungarians opening
by Georgelemental 3y ago
> I think you are lacking some imagination here. There can be no doubt that after the events of the last couple of months (starting with the Hungarians opening their borders) there is no way back the the previous post-war state. With East and West loosing more and more reasons to be scared of each other, the military blocks will loose importance - they may be gone soon.
> Sure, all the politicians in east and west keep telling the opposite, but that's just because they would rather keep things the way they were. For those in power, the status quo was much more comfortable as it is now, where no one
really knows what's going to happen. How do they want to motivate further spending on arms when all those bad guys aren't bad any more? Sooner or later (and I believe sooner) the peoples of Europe will be fed up with this (if they aren't already), and what good are those military blocks then?????
> The East bloc obviously start disintegrating, politically and militarily. The West bloc won't survive that; if there is no East bloc, NATO will fall apart quickly. So, what's the problem? I certainly will feel more at ease with _less_ weapons. So will most people, I think. And besides, I think it's time Europe is being run by Europeans, not by Americans and Russians.
Oh, you sweet summer child…
- lizardking 3y agoThe west was drunk on the on The End of History kool-Aid before the phrase was even coined.
- mastax 3y agoWell it worked for twenty years or so.
- Georgelemental 3y agoNATO disarmament/disbanding never "worked" at all
- chickenimprint 3y agoThe western european armies all massively downsized. The West-German Bundeswehr had around 500K soldiers and almost 3000 tanks until the end of the cold war. Currently, the - notably united - German Bundeswehr employs around 180k soldiers and owns a measly 225 tanks.
- mcv 3y agoYeah, during the 1990s, it finally became acceptable for NATO countries to cut military spending, and they did. NATO expanded by accepting a lot of former Warsaw Pact countries that wanted to join, and there was even talk of Russia joining at some point (then Putin came to power and he only wanted to join if he got special treatment). Despite its growth, NATO had become increasingly irrelevant until the invasion of Ukraine. The only reason NATO has remained and still is relevant, is because Russia remained aggressive, so there remained a demand for security from Russian neighbours. But if you look at military spending, former Warsaw Pact members spend a much larger percentage of their GDP than western European countries, which, up to Russia's invasion, still believed in peace with Russia.
- realusername 3y agoIt did work, the military shrinked massively in every country and kept just enough defense to deter Russia from attacking.
- pyuser583 3y agoIt’s interesting nobody is predicting the wars of the 1990s - Bosnia, Serbia, etc.