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Sweden officially joins NATO (www.nato.int)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 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 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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 10 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 10 months ago

Fixed, good catch

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 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.