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Sweden officially joins NATO (www.nato.int)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think Europeans in general psychologically still feel themselves weak without NATO, unable to fill the needs of their own defense.

I've been reading about 1st Indochina war yesterday, so - emotionally biased.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

EU's population: 448 million

EU GDP: 19 trillion dollars

Russia's population: 143 million

Russia's GDP: 1,78 trillion dollars

Simplifying a bit here (I'm obviously taking Morocco and Belarus for granted, assuming that Turkey wouldn't attack Greece, and so on), but it's pretty much a "gotta get our shit together" situation, because there's no reason why we should depend on the US for defense, or anything else.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I assume you meant trillion and not million for those gdp figures? Even then, they're low.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Fixed, good catch

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

That's about architecture more than resources. "Gotta get our shit together" doesn't negate the fact that shit isn't together yet.

It's good to have resources, but such a situation is still weakness. Only I think NATO in some sense is a contributing factor, and EU frankly too, both not in the least because of all those veto and consensus rules.