| LegitHyperbole said: Also, I wanted to discuss with someone, would the EU be able to keep our health public had NATO and our defence through it wasn''t there anymore? Do you think if we had to pay for defence in a Cold War like scenario would we still be able to exercise so much of our social policies like free health care? |
Oh this is an interesting discussion point, because it can be looked at in so many different ways.
The obvious one is that the EU is not really great at efficient spending. No government is really, but the EU takes the cake. There is a lot to be said with more efficient spending that we could have a independent NATO defense budget, while maintain social security policies that we have today. Is this likely to happen though? Probably not.
Another consideration is that the EU does not really have a defense budget. It's the separate countries and they all have separate priorities. Take France, it got a surprising amount of oversees territories and much of it's defense budget is focused on that.
The elephant in the room is....what for? Obviously the discussion is relevant because Russia invaded Ukraine. But is this because Biden blabbermouthed that Ukraine could become NATO, or that Putin want to create an even bigger Russia empire.
I don't know. Seems Russia is already pretty big and they don't want NATO at 500km from Moscow.
In other words, what is the Russian threat to let's say my home country of the Netherlands really? My opinion. Pretty low.
