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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2084 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 22, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Russia, by itself, is producing more artillery shells than all of NATO.

Slow and placid Western defense companies need a very long time to scale up production. They’ve been starting that process for 18 months, I don’t think extrapolating current production trends to 2027 is valuable because Western defense suppliers will be producing substantially more in a few years.

This has almost nothing to do with the defense companies and almost all to do with the slow and placid governments. To make the investments they need long term commitments, which they have been very slow to get.

Starting the process, but what scale goal do they have? I doubt the European governments, mine among them, are wise enough to seriously prepare for a war against Russia without any US support, which might happen.

Even with a materiel advantage, Russia doesn’t have the manpower to mount an invasion of Europe.

Not all of Europe, no. But a small country perhaps? If the USA pulls out, Putin might want to test Europe's commitment to Article 5 by taking parts of a small country like Estonia.

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