US pressure on European member nations of NATO to massive increase their military spending is risky, warned Saab CEO Hakan Buskhe today, who cautioned that the European arms makers don’t have the spare capacity to support such a buildup.
Saab produces fighter jets and some other military vehicles. Bushke warned that since the Cold War, decreasing military spending across the alliance has had many such companies shedding their excess capacity, and they can just ramp up capacity at a moment’s notice.
That’s a fact likely not lost on the US, home to a number of massive, well-connected arms dealers, and dealers which the Obama Administration has pledged to grow the export markets for. If European arms makers can’t supply the new, US-mandated demand, the US companies surely will.
Whether European nations fall for that is another matter, as it’s hard to imagine that they’ll voluntarily break their budgets on higher defense spending only to see all that money going abroad to buy US-made weapons to fight US-made wars.
Thank you Jason Ditz! This nicely makes the case once again on Nato being the US and the US being Nato. It illustrates that Trump doesn’t understand that and why he’s just blowing his dog whistle when he tells the people that he going to make other countries pay their fair share. He’s not! They won’t! Therein lies possibilities because when they refuse it’s threatening to Nato’s existence. But that’s getting to be quite a stretch to consider at this poin in time. And that would be when the US congress finally put their foot down and told Trump to smarten up.
I expect that you know that very well. Could you have a talk with Raimondo?