sapphi_snake said:
I never knew there is such a thing as an European army. However, that can change with the right financing. |
The "combined Europeon army" you were talking about above.
The US is so shockingly ahead of Europe in technology it's startling. In war games, apparently one of the newest US fighters can take out entire squads of the comprable Europeon models before they even get into operational distance.
I mean, look at the recent panic when the US pulled back from Libya... or, just why the US was the first to soften up Libya in the first place even though we wanted nothing to do with it.
Could that change with the right financing.... theoretically... though you would need to
A) Increase Military Funding in each country from between 2% and 4.6% of GDP. Which would cause massive tax raises or lead to the cutbacks of benefits provided by unniversal healthcare or other programs. This is just to MATCH the US, and not fall behing anymore.
B) GREATLY increase unniversity reform and research spending. As if is, despite the US's poor primary school numbers, the US still has the best university system, and spends way more on reasearch then Europe as a combined state.
The US is like 2nd overall GDP when it comes to government spending on research.
Again we're talking most countries raising things by a 2-3% of GDP. This is again.... just to keep up.
So we're taling an increase of 4%-7% spending vs GDP in countires that already have tongs of spending per GDP and high taxes.
Even if the US said "We don't wan to be a superpower... and began funding at Europeon levels it would be very expensive and timeconsuming for Europe just to reach the US.
