Posted on 05/30/2023 4:28:52 AM PDT by FarCenter
The interchangeable terms "war economy" or "wartime economy" bring to mind dramatic measures from dark days gone by: Governments reconfiguring their entire economic systems and industrial output to prioritize production for the war effort.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton started invoking the concept regularly in early March as he sought — and continues to seek — a rapid ramp-up in EU government orders for and manufacturing of ammunition and weapons, both to supply Ukraine and refill their own stockpiles.
The commissioner has just toured more than a dozen weapons-manufacturing facilities throughout the bloc where he would have heard complaints about the lack of long-term contracts being signed. Despite multiple EU decisions to boost funding and lower barriers for joint procurement, the effort is moving far too slowly, he thinks.
"The delays are not in line with our immediate needs," Breton said in a May 3 press conference. "There is therefore — and I say this clearly — the necessity to push the industrial base and move it to a 'wartime economy', if you permit me to put it in those terms."
Permission not granted?
But it doesn't seem Breton consulted all member states — if any — as to whether they would actually "permit [him] to put it in those terms" if they had a choice.
Germany may be among the most sensitive to the concept. As Berlin's ambassador to Poland, Thomas Bagger knows a thing or two about being pressed for weapons supplies. He finds Breton's tactic unproductive. "You will not have a positive response to the term 'war economy' in Germany," Bagger said tersely at the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia earlier this month. "It is not the right way to mobilize the effort."
That reaction is wholly unsurprising, explains Edward Lucas with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), who tells DW he would completely ban the phrase. "It means very different things in different countries," he notes.
"A real 'war economy' is where men with guns come and take over your factory and make it produce more guns. I don't think anyone's actually suggesting that" in Europe, Lucas says, although he emphasizes that Russia has already taken such steps.
"In Germany it has echoes of the Nazi control of the economy with the colossal suffering and abuse of the slave laborers," Lucas told DW in Tallinn. "It's a bit like if you said, 'we need to get this up to a plantation tempo' in the United States. That would immediately not be a sign of productivity but be a sign of the darkest period in American history! I don't think you solve this with slogans. You solve this by actually getting round the table and taking difficult financial regulatory decisions that create the outcome you want."
No
Europe is not at war
The EU has the same problem we do.
That the UK does.
We are all now controlled by our Deep States.
This is an asymmetric war being waged by the unseen people hiding behind their installed stooges.
The only way we can win in it is by securing our elections.
When Ukraine wins, we will be winner as well.
Russia will then be irrelevant for a generation at least
Europe has a proven threat on its eastern frontier and they need to prepare to defend what’s theirs. Russia is at war and unless Europe is strong that war will come their way.
The Russians only respect strength.
Notice how all any of these western leaders think about now is war all over the globe. They are instigating it in their quest for their retarded Great Reset and enslavement of the world population.
Kill off a bunch of them, control the minds of the rest who will serve them.
Sounds like a wonderful life. /sarc
Oh, sure. The delusion I see posted regularly here on FR is unbelievable.
"It will be a great day for "our democracy"."
-- Barack Obama
We are past fixing any of this with elections. The elections are controlled by the bad guys. We can’t vote them out or secure anything. We are at this point because we have sat around always waiting for the next election. Oh yeah, that will fix it. Same thing is going to happen in 2024. Yet people are going to still sit and fight over a losing battle. How many times do we bash our heads against the wall until we realize the wall ain’t moving?
This is worldwide.
LOL. “Europe” has spent the last three decades pushing its eastern frontier further eastward. Calling the Russians a proven threat to this frontier is like sending settlers to the Great Plains and then calling the Cheyenne, Lakota and Sioux tribes proven threats to the United States.
Our problems have nothing to do with Russia. Ukraine means nothing to Americans. Our problems are made worse because of Ukraine.
Countries have joined the EU to obtain prosperity and they’ve joined NATO to obtain security against the obvious Russian threat. They all made their choices freely.
It’s Russia that has to use force to subjugate other countries.
I don’t think you can find more than 5% of Europeans who even know what freedom is. The EU is basically a multinational Chamber of Commerce, and these countries see NATO as a tool to protect their welfare states at minimal cost to themselves.
Pretty much every European lives in a city that was damaged or obliterated eighty years ago. They have nice lifestyles now and the spectre of Russian hooligans coming in to bust it up and plunder washing machines has gotten their attention.
Putin is doing a better job of creating a united Europe than a legion of Brussels bureaucrats. Soon there will be a united Europe with a combined military aimed right at Moscow.
All because of Putin.
Of course. Then you can explain to people that the sucky economy is Putin’s fault and not the globalist, and their covid, climate and expansionist lies.
I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of Americans spend an inordinate amount of focus on a conflict America really has no interest being involved with. If so many are gung-ho for war, then Congress should man up and make a declaration of war, instead of dishonorably using Ukraine as our proxies.
But this argument is increasingly meaningless.
The simple fact is that Russia (from its most docile lambs to its most ferocious hawks) made it clear since the early ‘90s that expanding NATO to its borders would mean war.
NATO did it anyway, and now they have the war with Russia they have long desired.
The stronger side will prevail; the weaker side will go home defeated.
NATO did not aggressively expand as you would paint it. No, Russia made threats at the former Soviet slave states and they CHOSE to join NATO.
But most of all they REJECTED Russian domination. And that’s what tools like yourself hate the most. These people suffered generations of Russian oppression and the first chance they had they chose freedom.
And freedom most definitely is a national interest of the American people. If you don’t like that then feel free to die angry.
What threats was Russia making towards the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999? What threats was Russia making towards Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 2004?
And freedom most definitely is a national interest of the American people.
Freedom in and of itself is meaningless (or outright deadly and cancerous) without virtue. We see this manifesting now with the Woke who demand freedom and liberation from all tradition and all restraints, even from the restrictions of biological and mathematical reality itself.
So with that in mind: why should we get involved in what amounts to yet another ethnic feud between two corrupt Slavic countries?
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