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The innocence of this summer is now touched. In the distant past called 2024, when Britain elected the Labor government, optimists performed a bull case for the country. Emmanuel Macron had trouble budget in France and Germany and recessionThe United Kingdom hit them as a relative refuge. (As if there were three countries on Earth they could invest in Earth.) Instead of a permanent conservative paranoia on bond rebellion, people who were finally willing to borrow. (Soon there was a bond market rebellion.) “Britain is back and the world wants a piece” is one of the subtitles that aged like milk.
Really bull. We now know that the British ascent reduce in January. This is right before the government increase in tax and employers' regulations. Intelligent people, as always, left a well -justified reluctance for conservatives to take over the stunning naivety of their opponents. It would not matter, with the exception of Britain's problems, Europe is in miniature: not sufficient growth, so there is not enough fiscal income, so there is not enough defense spending, at least without victims, for which there is not enough public support.
Maybe we should withstand the idea that, as one official of preliminary overtaking during the Balkan crisis at the age of 90: “This is an hour of Europe.” The triumphant note creeped late, assuming that the betrayal of Donald Trump on the continent will show up as a creation. This is based on – what?
Germany is serious. Bundestag voted This week for theoretically unlimited loans for pretending. But defensive commitments elsewhere are dangerously funded. The Spanish Prime Minister does not say “Single Cent” Social expenditure. The work suffers from an internal dispute over reforms of benefits that will not save £ 5 billion a year by the end of the decade. The willingness of citizens to give up private consumption or well -being for defense is not tested at best. The historical point of turnover is only a historical image if the public agrees.
The financial question is not even the most difficult Europe. The consensus for further defense spending has only so much without consensus for the actual deployment of force. There is no such thing. Downing Street mentions OA “Significant Number” the country willing to send troops to Ukraine. Which country? How many troops do each? What rules of wiring? If Russia does not accept troops from NATO countries in Ukraine, whether in NATO capacity, will it take Europe? In addition to these questions, which the continent does not have for years to answer, the question of picnic financing is.
I wonder if they will not remember these months as a moment of Europe, but when its division into North -John has become the central reality of continental policy. Giorgia Meloni, which is Pro-Ukraine for Italian populists, permeate The idea of sending her nation's soldiers there. Spain wants defense expenses to include their investments in cyber and climate because Russia “barely” brings its troops over Pyrenees” commonwealth today and which are not.)
It is okay to speak of Europe as underestimating military power that is able to invite more people than 340 million America, but southern Europe is not a small share of this population. Bar Poland, the country on the continent that spends the most defense as a share of income, such as Latvia, is one of the smallest. Although Germany joins them in time, the potential European labor force will look less amazing without the Mediterranean. And this does not count on the prospect that Berlin will decide that the Fielding units in the east carry too much historical transport.
This month a graph of analysts at Global Rating S&P He came on my way and justified a cynic in me. The x -axis is the distance of the capital from Moscow in kilometers. The Y -axis is its defense expenditure as a share of national production. With some exceptions-Greek-there is an inverse relationship between them, with a well protected southern Europe with skimping and exposed expenses to the northeast significantly above the NATO brand 2 percent of GDP. This problem is the relevant populations. Portugal, one of the lowest spectators, has more people than all three Baltic states together. Spain is larger than Poland. If the perception of threats and defense and defensive contributions differs on both sides (roughly) 45. Parallel, it will matter.
It is not a pity to seek hope, even false hope. Optimism is such a vital feature for survival that all yards of literature exist about whether it has been selected evolutionary. However, there is optimism and then twisting into disgusting twisted to deny reality. The American version of this is a constant assignment of strategic thinking for Trump's every reflex and murmuring (“doing a Reverse nixon“).
European version? Premature talk about a unified and serious continent: all the better is that it is an unintentional creation of an American president who hates him. We do not know what European citizens are willing to give up. We know even less which of them will carry those weapons where. Until this changes, the metaphor of giant mixing after all too long sleep is imperfect. The continent is half up, with Rhe in his eyes, perhaps still hoping to ignore the alarm.
