>Even if it's "only" arms, spending it to maintain industry is way better than many alternatives. Manufacturing infrastructure and lots of skilled jobs and workers, sounds good to me to have.
As Eisenhower warned, every Euro spent turning steel into an artillery shell is one NOT spent turning steel into high-speed rail. Every worker in a factory building armored vehicles is a worker NOT being re-trained to be an elder caregiver for Europe's aging demographics. There are immense trade-offs that come with dumping capital, both human and material, into making Europe's war machine rise from the grave.
>"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".
Key phrase there is "if you are in a strong enough position"....and Europe isn't. Because it cut itself off from cheap Russian energy imports, the entire industrial sector is no longer cost-competitive. With the exception of highly-specialized difficult-to-copy stuff like ASML or maybe Carl Zeiss optics, etc... the European economy writ large is in a really weak position compared to the cost efficiency of China or compared to the still-large (but diminishing) political-military leverage of the US. Also, Europe looks like it is getting closer and closer to handing over the frozen Russian assets in Euroclear to Ukraine. You can expect a massive capital flight from Chinese, Mid-East, or Global South investors if that ever happens.
As Eisenhower warned, every Euro spent turning steel into an artillery shell is one NOT spent turning steel into high-speed rail. Every worker in a factory building armored vehicles is a worker NOT being re-trained to be an elder caregiver for Europe's aging demographics. There are immense trade-offs that come with dumping capital, both human and material, into making Europe's war machine rise from the grave.
>"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".
Key phrase there is "if you are in a strong enough position"....and Europe isn't. Because it cut itself off from cheap Russian energy imports, the entire industrial sector is no longer cost-competitive. With the exception of highly-specialized difficult-to-copy stuff like ASML or maybe Carl Zeiss optics, etc... the European economy writ large is in a really weak position compared to the cost efficiency of China or compared to the still-large (but diminishing) political-military leverage of the US. Also, Europe looks like it is getting closer and closer to handing over the frozen Russian assets in Euroclear to Ukraine. You can expect a massive capital flight from Chinese, Mid-East, or Global South investors if that ever happens.