The article assumes that the greatest enemy of the countries of Europe is Russia. But in fact it is the US. Europe is currently being directly attacked by the US which is cutting off cheap energy supplies, decimating collective European armaments and substituting for these expensive own-brand replacements.Europe has been under some form of direct or indirect economic and political attack since 1945, when socialist and communist movements in Europe were destroyed by the CIA and 'Operation Gladio', and Germany has been an occupied country for the same period.
Europe needs to get rid of the paid-for US stooges currently in power and recognise that peaceful trade with Russia, China and the rest of the world is the only way forward to prosperity, and that co-operation between countries, and not deranged imperialistic US inspired war-mongering, is the only way to combat climate change.
Collective security presupposes that there is a collective security need, but is there one? The Poles, the Balts, the Finns, and the Swedes may feel the need for security against Russia, as, I suppose they have since Charles XII's time (so I guess nothing has changed there either.). But do France, Italy, and, even more so, Germany? At minimum, are their security needs same as their eastern neighbors'? If the answer is "no," there is no collective security need so no strategy for collective security is needed, at least between those groups of countries. Even for the Poles or Swedes, unless you could turn the clock back to 1612 (not that Poles haven't been trying for past century plus), trying to gain security by force of arms becomes untenable, except by swindling the vain idiots in Washington, and that may not be anywhere near enough given the way the world has been going. So the talk of "rearmament," then becomes at best a PR ploy playing on the currently popular sentiments and, more likely, the cover for all manner of boondoggle.
You are making the Western/NATO mistake of focus on platforms.
Yes, there is a shortage of platforms in Europe, but this is not true of the US.
However, both the US and Europe have structural shortfalls all along the logistics chain from transport to ammunition to fuel to spare parts.
Remedying this is a far greater problem than churning out one or two thousand more tanks or planes. It would require significant society-wide reductions in standards of living as energy and commodities are diverted towards explosives and metal.
Consider the artillery situation: roughly 8 million artillery rounds have been expended in Ukraine, by both sides, to date (27000 x 300 days). This is laughable in World War terms; 1 million shells were fired by the German side in just the first day of the Battle of Verdun, but let's just take 8 million artillery shells as a starting reference.
The US military industrial complex produces about 1 million shells a year. So we're already 7 years behind.
1-155mm shell has 10.8 kg of TNT. While the energy content of 1 kg of TNT is 1.16 kWh - the actual energy used to produce it is far, far higher.
TNT takes an oil refining output (toluene) and nitrates it repeatedly with sulfuric and nitric acid - hence Tri-Nitro-Toluene. Natural gas has to be converted to ammonia via Haber Bosch, then to nitric acid via Ostvald. Sulfuric acid requires cooking sulfur. Both nitric acid and sulfuric acid require additional refining.
For 1971, the US explosives industry consumed 198 bcm of natural gas, 547k short tons of coal, 267500 barrels of fuel oil and 630.3 GWh of electricity to produce a shade under 76 gigagrams of explosives of all types = 76 million kg of explosives. Total energy consumption was 8.4 TWh vs. the 88 GWh if all 76 million kg was TNT (which it is not, but using TNT for simplicity sake). So the manufacturing energy consumption of explosives around 95x of energy content.
Back to the above: 8 million artillery shells = 86.4 million kg of TNT --> 100 million KWh explosive power, x95 for manufacturing energy --> 95 terawatt-hours of electricity equivalent.
To put this in perspective: the entire US electricity consumption in a year is 3980 TWh. 95 Twh is "only" 2.4% of annual US electricity production, but it is an enormous number in and of itself. Now add in the cost of making and transporting just the metal casing and detonators for the shells and the final product as well as any fancy gewgaws like GPS and steering capability. This is just the artillery ammunition. Add in bullets, bombs, missiles, rockets. Add in the platform commodity costs. Jetfuel for planes, kerosene for tanks, fuel oil for ships.
Would Western societies accept a 10%-15% across the board reduction in standards of living?
That's what a full mobilization, at a minimum, would require.
And there's the answer as to what Russia is doing with all the natural gas it isn't exporting to Europe: it is using it to make the ammunition being used to execute Russian military actions in Ukraine...
One final observation on re-armament: you not only need stuff and workers, you need energy. How will that work out under Net Zero policies, especially in those heavy industries manufacturing tanks, airplanes, ammunition ...
That's a long litany of 'ifs'. Great article. If I had to guess I would say that the only rearming Europe will be doing will be of a type suited to clamp down on domestic upheaval. Perhaps the same for the US. There be dark times ahead.
Re conscription. Apart from the health issues you mentioned there is of course another issue. The amount of people from the middle east who settled in w europe is considerable and qurstions of loyalty might arise.
Let's look at the situation in Western Europe. At the risk of sounding racist, there are schools where the visitor will be forgiven to think that he could just as well have set foot in any analogous institution in Lagos, Nigeria or Baghdad, Iraq. The emerging demographic mix can only be described in such terms in most of Western Europe, certainly in Great Britain, France, the Benelux, Germany, and Scandinavia, to a somewhat lesser but still significant extent also in Iberia and Italy. Any rearmament will have to come from these countries with their still strong(ish) economies, but it will also have to be staffed by the younger generations. Not only are these generations the product of devisive ethnic diversity and catastrophically low birth rates overall, they are also the product of all kinds of deleterious influences not only making them obese, but also feminized, autistic, drug-addicted, low in self-esteem and basically every other malaise once can think of. There are countries, where the number of male kids and teenagers on anti-ADHD medication is in the double percent digits, for heaven's sake. Likewise, the phenomenon of Hikikomori has taken hold in Western Europe, forcing health systems to divert dedicated resources to this group of people who spend their lifes staying at home. All of these kids, the few of them as there are, have grown up in an environment that has not only told them that they are the scum of the Earth (especially if they are white and male), this environment has also done everything possible to make them as sick as possible. Now they shall suddenly become the motivated, well-paid, healthy and fit soldiers, engineers, technicicans, administrators, medical staff etc. that's necessary to support a rearmament drive? It's not going to happen.
Thanks. A really helpful article addressing reality, something that the public dialogue in the west rarely does these days.
I cannot figure out whether western politicians are serious about rearmament or whether this is just another money making and power grabbing scam. I am increasingly cynical about our so called “leaders” so lean to the latter.
Agree too that China and Russia are not existential military threats. The former will become the strongest world power over time though. That is inevitable and needs to be accepted. But the US empire refuses to do so. So it seeks conflict instead. How seriously it really means that though is unclear.
At the same time, Russia has now been provoked to expand her military way beyond any intent she had pre 2022. It’s an amazing own goal by the collective west. Unless of course our “leaders” just seek conflict for its own sake to justify the scam referred to above. So Russia expanding her military would therefore perversely be a good thing that justifies more spending and the recycling of cash and political donations that fill their pockets. As well as an excuse for jumped up non entities (think people such as Von der Leyen) to grab power.
No. Because it is unnecessary. Old saying: God is the guy who, when the cupboard is bare, suggests you look in that book on your shelf into which, decades ago, you folded some cash against a rainy day. In this case: Talk, Don't Shoot!
Thanks for this essay, an excellent description for situational awareness. Thing is, it's not a problem, it's an opportunity.
Why assume that Armed Force must be at the ready to move east to oppose Russia or west to oppose China?
How about sit down and talk with them blasted megalithic morons, them dirt floor-dwelling, barbaric Rooskies and then, low and behold, actually keep your word once given? How costly is keeping one's word? What number of high-cost budget conferences, ad hoc tiger teams, must occur for that to happen? How much in evening escort and other venal costs does it take to make agreements and keep them?
1- Modern weaponry, especially rocket artillery, changes everything, and that fact is NOT contemplated in this assessment for situational awareness.
2- An island nation -- USA, GB -- cannot now fight and win a war with a heavily industrialized country sitting on another continent. The logistics alone are impossible, in addition to the myriad of other factors itemized in this essay. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan proved that the logistics -- including moral and psychological logistics -- can't be done even against a light industrialized country sitting on another continent!
3- In modern conditions -- weaponry, comms, dumbed-down and incompetent officials -- there are only now two reasons for a nation to maintain Armed Force: 1- to protect the homeland from malicious entry by a heavy or a light industrial power, and (2) to administer sharp but limited-duration punitive force against a light industrial power serving harm to said nation's state property. Harm administered to private overseas interests of a nation's citizens by an overseas power -- whether heavy or light industrial -- is not a casus belli for deploying that nation's Armed Force.
The USA -- actual Americans -- will not and cannot self-defend now unless and until they school themselves and their children intensively in mathematics and engineering. And get rid of the GD dope and "trips to Vegas." Their industrial base and their skill in statecraft -- at root, keeping the word once given -- determine a nation's ability to self-defend.
Not mentioned in this essay is the political fallout attending D-R UniParty abuse, misuse, derision, prosecution, harassment, and condemnation of Americans on account of their multivariance.
Also not mentioned is artificial reasons generated by US domestic "security services" for deploying anywhere domestically or overseas Armed Force belonging to The USA.
Also not mentioned: horrendous lying, false flags to justify overseas deployment of Armed Force, and other unrelentingly self-aggrandizing actions by our so-called US Foreign Policy Establishment, CIA-USAID-State at their center, like a black widow, conducting the orchestra so to speak.
France has not been able to defend herself since her defeat by Russia. Germany and Italy have not been able to defend themselves since their defeat by Russia. Great Britain has not been able to defend herself since her besting by Russia.
Now a handful of reprobates and perverts -- Neocons, professors, entertainers, a veritable death cult -- essay to make America unable to defend herself by subjecting her to defeat by Russia.
Russia and America are, in fact, friends, very good and deeply historical friends, fellow Christians, which is what Euro-American reprobates and perverts -- fascists -- hate about us.
The USA and Russia always will be friends. Statesmen on both sides during the so-called Cold War knew that and in pursuit thereof kept their hands off the triggers. Americans' and Russians' intrinsic characters are like and complimentary both. Talk, Don’t Shoot!
(Apologies for writing at such length. I have not had time to be brief.)
Great job. At the beginning you touch on the deceptive nature of nominal actions such as raising defense budgets, particularly in inflationary environments. This is something that seems lost in the re-armament drive/debate. The collective West is operating beyond its capacities, hence the drive by central banks to destroy demand. The present stocks of weapons remain enormous, but utilizing them would require a prioritization and eventual culling “missions”. For instance does the US leave resources in Asia or direct them to Ukraine. Furthermore increasing our capacity with respect to re-armament would also require a change in priorities, the proverbial guns versus butter argument. For the three quarters of a century the West has lived in the world of guns AND butter. This no longer applies to the future. Western societies are at a fever pitch of jingoism towards the Russians, but as the tab grows and the Western PMC are fired from their “tech” jobs and can’t afford Kombucha, their bloodlust main temper.
I expect governments will announce rearmament budgets because we live in an environment where optics matter. If the polls go up they will keep announcing, no one on the gravy train is going to complain. I am pretty sure that the US, EU and UK power brokers know that the chance of an existential war with a significant enemy is about zero. The sabre rattling is for their voters, they much prefer expeditionary wars which are far more palatable to the average consumer.
One of the many odd outcomes of the Ukraine situation is that we've seen (quietly) European countries buying weapons from countries like South Korea. This would have been unthinkable this time last year (seems a long time ago). It may be that as politicians promise, but then realise that industry can't respond, all we will see is a boom for 'minor' weapons producing countries as they rush to fill the gaps. Even the Japanese may take the opportunity now that they are partnering up with Britain. This 'partnership' could result in a take-over.
The article assumes that the greatest enemy of the countries of Europe is Russia. But in fact it is the US. Europe is currently being directly attacked by the US which is cutting off cheap energy supplies, decimating collective European armaments and substituting for these expensive own-brand replacements.Europe has been under some form of direct or indirect economic and political attack since 1945, when socialist and communist movements in Europe were destroyed by the CIA and 'Operation Gladio', and Germany has been an occupied country for the same period.
Europe needs to get rid of the paid-for US stooges currently in power and recognise that peaceful trade with Russia, China and the rest of the world is the only way forward to prosperity, and that co-operation between countries, and not deranged imperialistic US inspired war-mongering, is the only way to combat climate change.
'
Collective security presupposes that there is a collective security need, but is there one? The Poles, the Balts, the Finns, and the Swedes may feel the need for security against Russia, as, I suppose they have since Charles XII's time (so I guess nothing has changed there either.). But do France, Italy, and, even more so, Germany? At minimum, are their security needs same as their eastern neighbors'? If the answer is "no," there is no collective security need so no strategy for collective security is needed, at least between those groups of countries. Even for the Poles or Swedes, unless you could turn the clock back to 1612 (not that Poles haven't been trying for past century plus), trying to gain security by force of arms becomes untenable, except by swindling the vain idiots in Washington, and that may not be anywhere near enough given the way the world has been going. So the talk of "rearmament," then becomes at best a PR ploy playing on the currently popular sentiments and, more likely, the cover for all manner of boondoggle.
Aurelian,
You are making the Western/NATO mistake of focus on platforms.
Yes, there is a shortage of platforms in Europe, but this is not true of the US.
However, both the US and Europe have structural shortfalls all along the logistics chain from transport to ammunition to fuel to spare parts.
Remedying this is a far greater problem than churning out one or two thousand more tanks or planes. It would require significant society-wide reductions in standards of living as energy and commodities are diverted towards explosives and metal.
Consider the artillery situation: roughly 8 million artillery rounds have been expended in Ukraine, by both sides, to date (27000 x 300 days). This is laughable in World War terms; 1 million shells were fired by the German side in just the first day of the Battle of Verdun, but let's just take 8 million artillery shells as a starting reference.
The US military industrial complex produces about 1 million shells a year. So we're already 7 years behind.
1-155mm shell has 10.8 kg of TNT. While the energy content of 1 kg of TNT is 1.16 kWh - the actual energy used to produce it is far, far higher.
TNT takes an oil refining output (toluene) and nitrates it repeatedly with sulfuric and nitric acid - hence Tri-Nitro-Toluene. Natural gas has to be converted to ammonia via Haber Bosch, then to nitric acid via Ostvald. Sulfuric acid requires cooking sulfur. Both nitric acid and sulfuric acid require additional refining.
For 1971, the US explosives industry consumed 198 bcm of natural gas, 547k short tons of coal, 267500 barrels of fuel oil and 630.3 GWh of electricity to produce a shade under 76 gigagrams of explosives of all types = 76 million kg of explosives. Total energy consumption was 8.4 TWh vs. the 88 GWh if all 76 million kg was TNT (which it is not, but using TNT for simplicity sake). So the manufacturing energy consumption of explosives around 95x of energy content.
Back to the above: 8 million artillery shells = 86.4 million kg of TNT --> 100 million KWh explosive power, x95 for manufacturing energy --> 95 terawatt-hours of electricity equivalent.
To put this in perspective: the entire US electricity consumption in a year is 3980 TWh. 95 Twh is "only" 2.4% of annual US electricity production, but it is an enormous number in and of itself. Now add in the cost of making and transporting just the metal casing and detonators for the shells and the final product as well as any fancy gewgaws like GPS and steering capability. This is just the artillery ammunition. Add in bullets, bombs, missiles, rockets. Add in the platform commodity costs. Jetfuel for planes, kerosene for tanks, fuel oil for ships.
Would Western societies accept a 10%-15% across the board reduction in standards of living?
That's what a full mobilization, at a minimum, would require.
And there's the answer as to what Russia is doing with all the natural gas it isn't exporting to Europe: it is using it to make the ammunition being used to execute Russian military actions in Ukraine...
One final observation on re-armament: you not only need stuff and workers, you need energy. How will that work out under Net Zero policies, especially in those heavy industries manufacturing tanks, airplanes, ammunition ...
That's a long litany of 'ifs'. Great article. If I had to guess I would say that the only rearming Europe will be doing will be of a type suited to clamp down on domestic upheaval. Perhaps the same for the US. There be dark times ahead.
Re conscription. Apart from the health issues you mentioned there is of course another issue. The amount of people from the middle east who settled in w europe is considerable and qurstions of loyalty might arise.
Let's look at the situation in Western Europe. At the risk of sounding racist, there are schools where the visitor will be forgiven to think that he could just as well have set foot in any analogous institution in Lagos, Nigeria or Baghdad, Iraq. The emerging demographic mix can only be described in such terms in most of Western Europe, certainly in Great Britain, France, the Benelux, Germany, and Scandinavia, to a somewhat lesser but still significant extent also in Iberia and Italy. Any rearmament will have to come from these countries with their still strong(ish) economies, but it will also have to be staffed by the younger generations. Not only are these generations the product of devisive ethnic diversity and catastrophically low birth rates overall, they are also the product of all kinds of deleterious influences not only making them obese, but also feminized, autistic, drug-addicted, low in self-esteem and basically every other malaise once can think of. There are countries, where the number of male kids and teenagers on anti-ADHD medication is in the double percent digits, for heaven's sake. Likewise, the phenomenon of Hikikomori has taken hold in Western Europe, forcing health systems to divert dedicated resources to this group of people who spend their lifes staying at home. All of these kids, the few of them as there are, have grown up in an environment that has not only told them that they are the scum of the Earth (especially if they are white and male), this environment has also done everything possible to make them as sick as possible. Now they shall suddenly become the motivated, well-paid, healthy and fit soldiers, engineers, technicicans, administrators, medical staff etc. that's necessary to support a rearmament drive? It's not going to happen.
Thanks. A really helpful article addressing reality, something that the public dialogue in the west rarely does these days.
I cannot figure out whether western politicians are serious about rearmament or whether this is just another money making and power grabbing scam. I am increasingly cynical about our so called “leaders” so lean to the latter.
Agree too that China and Russia are not existential military threats. The former will become the strongest world power over time though. That is inevitable and needs to be accepted. But the US empire refuses to do so. So it seeks conflict instead. How seriously it really means that though is unclear.
At the same time, Russia has now been provoked to expand her military way beyond any intent she had pre 2022. It’s an amazing own goal by the collective west. Unless of course our “leaders” just seek conflict for its own sake to justify the scam referred to above. So Russia expanding her military would therefore perversely be a good thing that justifies more spending and the recycling of cash and political donations that fill their pockets. As well as an excuse for jumped up non entities (think people such as Von der Leyen) to grab power.
" . . . even remotely feasible?"
No. Because it is unnecessary. Old saying: God is the guy who, when the cupboard is bare, suggests you look in that book on your shelf into which, decades ago, you folded some cash against a rainy day. In this case: Talk, Don't Shoot!
Thanks for this essay, an excellent description for situational awareness. Thing is, it's not a problem, it's an opportunity.
Why assume that Armed Force must be at the ready to move east to oppose Russia or west to oppose China?
How about sit down and talk with them blasted megalithic morons, them dirt floor-dwelling, barbaric Rooskies and then, low and behold, actually keep your word once given? How costly is keeping one's word? What number of high-cost budget conferences, ad hoc tiger teams, must occur for that to happen? How much in evening escort and other venal costs does it take to make agreements and keep them?
1- Modern weaponry, especially rocket artillery, changes everything, and that fact is NOT contemplated in this assessment for situational awareness.
2- An island nation -- USA, GB -- cannot now fight and win a war with a heavily industrialized country sitting on another continent. The logistics alone are impossible, in addition to the myriad of other factors itemized in this essay. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan proved that the logistics -- including moral and psychological logistics -- can't be done even against a light industrialized country sitting on another continent!
3- In modern conditions -- weaponry, comms, dumbed-down and incompetent officials -- there are only now two reasons for a nation to maintain Armed Force: 1- to protect the homeland from malicious entry by a heavy or a light industrial power, and (2) to administer sharp but limited-duration punitive force against a light industrial power serving harm to said nation's state property. Harm administered to private overseas interests of a nation's citizens by an overseas power -- whether heavy or light industrial -- is not a casus belli for deploying that nation's Armed Force.
The USA -- actual Americans -- will not and cannot self-defend now unless and until they school themselves and their children intensively in mathematics and engineering. And get rid of the GD dope and "trips to Vegas." Their industrial base and their skill in statecraft -- at root, keeping the word once given -- determine a nation's ability to self-defend.
Not mentioned in this essay is the political fallout attending D-R UniParty abuse, misuse, derision, prosecution, harassment, and condemnation of Americans on account of their multivariance.
Also not mentioned is artificial reasons generated by US domestic "security services" for deploying anywhere domestically or overseas Armed Force belonging to The USA.
Also not mentioned: horrendous lying, false flags to justify overseas deployment of Armed Force, and other unrelentingly self-aggrandizing actions by our so-called US Foreign Policy Establishment, CIA-USAID-State at their center, like a black widow, conducting the orchestra so to speak.
France has not been able to defend herself since her defeat by Russia. Germany and Italy have not been able to defend themselves since their defeat by Russia. Great Britain has not been able to defend herself since her besting by Russia.
Now a handful of reprobates and perverts -- Neocons, professors, entertainers, a veritable death cult -- essay to make America unable to defend herself by subjecting her to defeat by Russia.
Russia and America are, in fact, friends, very good and deeply historical friends, fellow Christians, which is what Euro-American reprobates and perverts -- fascists -- hate about us.
The USA and Russia always will be friends. Statesmen on both sides during the so-called Cold War knew that and in pursuit thereof kept their hands off the triggers. Americans' and Russians' intrinsic characters are like and complimentary both. Talk, Don’t Shoot!
(Apologies for writing at such length. I have not had time to be brief.)
Great job. At the beginning you touch on the deceptive nature of nominal actions such as raising defense budgets, particularly in inflationary environments. This is something that seems lost in the re-armament drive/debate. The collective West is operating beyond its capacities, hence the drive by central banks to destroy demand. The present stocks of weapons remain enormous, but utilizing them would require a prioritization and eventual culling “missions”. For instance does the US leave resources in Asia or direct them to Ukraine. Furthermore increasing our capacity with respect to re-armament would also require a change in priorities, the proverbial guns versus butter argument. For the three quarters of a century the West has lived in the world of guns AND butter. This no longer applies to the future. Western societies are at a fever pitch of jingoism towards the Russians, but as the tab grows and the Western PMC are fired from their “tech” jobs and can’t afford Kombucha, their bloodlust main temper.
I expect governments will announce rearmament budgets because we live in an environment where optics matter. If the polls go up they will keep announcing, no one on the gravy train is going to complain. I am pretty sure that the US, EU and UK power brokers know that the chance of an existential war with a significant enemy is about zero. The sabre rattling is for their voters, they much prefer expeditionary wars which are far more palatable to the average consumer.
Great article to bring me down to hard reality. The comments are also very interesting as to how much money and resources are needed to rearm.
One of the many odd outcomes of the Ukraine situation is that we've seen (quietly) European countries buying weapons from countries like South Korea. This would have been unthinkable this time last year (seems a long time ago). It may be that as politicians promise, but then realise that industry can't respond, all we will see is a boom for 'minor' weapons producing countries as they rush to fill the gaps. Even the Japanese may take the opportunity now that they are partnering up with Britain. This 'partnership' could result in a take-over.
You have described Russia's rearmament process