• Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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    3 hours ago

    The 2 percent of GDP target is imaginary.

    The target was set so that no country would be able to join NATO and then just let everyone else pay for everything. You contribute to the common defense or you GTFO.

    We can bicker about 2% being too high or too low and whether the target should have been adjusted Post Cold War but any argument that some target isn’t necessary is just silliness.

    No amount of NATO bombs or tanks would have stopped the invasion.

    Oh I’m fairly certain that NATO military power would have stopped the invasion in the first 24 hours. A single flight of F-35s would have made those original Russian convoy’s cease to exist à la the Highway of Death from 1991.

    Even now NATO military power could substantially end the ground war in Ukraine before the end of the month.

    It only would have fueled the flames and given legitimacy to Russia’s claimed insecurity.

    So what? NATO didn’t do it and there’s STILL an ongoing war with a casualty toll well over a million and millions more displaced.

    Economic power is much stronger than military sabre rattling.

    Then the EU should have flexed them in 2014. They didn’t and here we are.