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That makes an awful lot of sense from my point of view, and I would update my position wherever it differed before to what you've just said - that was a really good summary.
One thing we have discussed less in these threads is the economic pressure Russia is under - selling gold reserves, burning through its foreign currency, losses to its refining capacity and tightening sanctions all seem to be having a rising impact, though it's really hard to judge exactly how much. Putin seems willing to pay a very high cost to make this invasion seem a victory to the domestic population and pro Russians worldwide, possibly as the consequences of embarrassment are possibly deadly, but like you say the really important thing is if the costs are high enough to swing his calculus for another round.
I also find it really interesting how Russia's tank storage is basically empty, Uralvagonzavod is cutting employees by 10% despite the presumably desperate need for equipment, and there have been several strikes on Russia's airforce this year and even this week, hitting vital airframes that they no longer even produce (some of the industry was in Ukraine for a start).
Ukraine is definitely proving a tougher nut to crack than anyone thought, and it's already one of the strangest and most embarrassing wars for what claims to be a major power that I've ever known. 0.2% of NATO GDP spent annually in a proxy war to wreck pretty much the entire stockpile of Soviet equipment would be paid in a heartbeat by the Reagan era Republicans I assume, from my point of view the Ukrainians can keep the change if they want to keep fighting.
Well, if you like a contribution enough, you know what to do with it.
I will carry your point about NATO GDP a bit further, though. The economic implications for NATO go beyond even that. It isn't '0.2% on top of normal.' That 0.2% spent going to directly shape what the new-normal in the future is, since future defense spending will have to adjust to what is needed, not what used to be needed. Any critique of 'it's unreasonable to spend so much to help Ukraine fight Russia' can be fairly asked to state a position on 'how much spending is reasonably needed to fight Russia without Ukraine.'
A lot of the NATO defense spending discussion is framed in media in terms of 'Europe needs to spend more to catch up to Russia.' There is truth there, but it's not the entire truth, just as another refrain- 'we need to create capabilities the Americans may withdraw' is a part-but-not-whole of the truth. An additional element is that a lot of the NATO spending European states need to is to just dig themselves out of the hole of the post-Cold War defense cuts that lowered their various institutional, not just military, capabilities. Resolve deficit capabilities in things like administration, communication architecture, procurement agencies, legacy system commitments, and so on, and then you can better modernize the actual hardware in inventory and try to train new people to actually match the Russian threat once ignored / discounted.
But if part of spending requirements is 'resolve the deficit' and another part of 'match the adversary,' how much you need to spend to match the adversary depends on, well, the adversary's capabilities. Which, a half decade ago, included a Soviet Union's worth of stockpiles of ammo, reactivatable vehicles, and weapons. 'Reasonably sufficient' defense spending to reasonably counter such a threat had to be able to match / overcome both [ongoing Russian military industry from the current economy] and account for [the vast reserves of Russian reserve material]. And that was a huge amount of capacity, the sticker shock of which contributed to the European defense spending paralysis, since it's easy to be dwarfed by the magnitudes involved. Russia lost more tanks in the first year of the war than most of the major EU NATO members had total. To 'match' that, you'd be talking trippling or quadrupling tank orders.
But that's if you have to match the Soviet stockpiles. Now that much (though not all) of that Cold War inheritance is squandered, Russia is increasingly dependent on [modern economy funded production], as opposed to [inherited mountains]. And Russia's [modern economy funded production] is far, far, far more practical for the European states to match or keep up with. When you take away Soviet stockpile reactivations, which is how Russia gets 'more than 1000 tanks produced* a year' over the war, back in 2020 Russia was producing around 200 new tanks a year.
It takes a lot less NATO expenditures to overcome 200 tanks a year compared to 1000 tanks a year. Or to overcome 10,000 missiles that have been shot rather than still could be shot. Or suppress a black sea fleet that's already on the sea floor.
None of this means there isn't a great deal more spending to be done, or that the NATO countries can coast without spending. The Europeans have decades of investment deficit to make up for, everyone needs to modernize for drones, and that's without other competing priorities. The Russians may have a smaller economy than many European nations, but they have a significant head start in certain relevant sectors.
But it is magnitudes easier- and cheaper- to keep up with someone who can't out-spend you rather than to try and catch up with someone with a seemingly insurmountable lead who still continues to spend.
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