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Dammit, poll question is worded completely the opposite to the headline question - only saw that after I'd hit "yes"

I wonder if any others made the same mistake.

NATO is not outdated or unneeded - while it was born out of the Cold War, it is not a relic and it continues to serve a useful purpose by keeping a network of working military alliances in place.



Edit:
Actually, reading the comments, it seems like a lot of people got caught out by the poll question being opposite of the headline question. Perhaps it might be worth changing the headline so that it matches the question asked in the poll?

tneva82 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, well no one is asking them to. 2% is 2% no matter what your GDP is.

And that's the bad side of NATO. You are forced to spend 2% with zero quarantees of getting anything actually back ever. It's worst insurance in the history of insurances. Not only you have to pay for it but even if you then NEED that insurance you aren't even quaranteed to GET what you signed for in the first place.

The nations aren't forced to do anything. As has been pointed out repeatedly, the vast majority aren't even putting out that 2%.

Which means they are breaking deals right? How long that will continue then.

But then again maybe that's fair. Since it offers no protection in case attacked would be unfair to hold to keep to the terms of the sign deal either.

tneva82 wrote:
Which means they are breaking deals right? How long that will continue then.

But then again maybe that's fair. Since it offers no protection in case attacked would be unfair to hold to keep to the terms of the sign deal either.

Offers no protection? The whole point behind it is that if one is attacked, the other 27 come to the defense of that nation.

But just to make sure I'm getting you're point here, you are saying that having a requirement to spend money of your nations defense, means that it's pointless, because there is no guarantee of defense. Right? Strengthening your defense doesn't mean you will have a means of defense.

tneva82 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, well no one is asking them to. 2% is 2% no matter what your GDP is.

And that's the bad side of NATO. You are forced to spend 2% with zero quarantees of getting anything actually back ever. It's worst insurance in the history of insurances. Not only you have to pay for it but even if you then NEED that insurance you aren't even quaranteed to GET what you signed for in the first place.

Yeah, but you're forgetting that old saying about war being good for business.

All that defence spending creates jobs and employment opportunities, advances research and Development, and pays for itself.

My country, Britain, makes tons of money from making and selling guns and other military stuff to overseas markets.

Again, returning to the American example, 600 billion dollars a year is one hell of a sum of money,

but, it supports almost a 1 million + jobs, and the side benefits from military R and D, has given us things like microwaves and the internet.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Maddermax wrote:
Dammit, poll question is worded completely the opposite to the headline question - only saw that after I'd hit "yes"

I wonder if any others made the same mistake.

NATO is not outdated or unneeded - while it was born out of the Cold War, it is not a relic and it continues to serve a useful purpose by keeping a network of working military alliances in place.



Edit:
Actually, reading the comments, it seems like a lot of people got caught out by the poll question being opposite of the headline question. Perhaps it might be worth changing the headline so that it matches the question asked in the poll?

It's interesting that both Australian commentators have been caught out by this question. Now, I don't want to draw any conclusions about the Australian education system, but I'm beginning to think Crocodile Dundee was a documentary

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, well no one is asking them to. 2% is 2% no matter what your GDP is.

And that's the bad side of NATO. You are forced to spend 2% with zero quarantees of getting anything actually back ever. It's worst insurance in the history of insurances. Not only you have to pay for it but even if you then NEED that insurance you aren't even quaranteed to GET what you signed for in the first place.

Yeah, but you're forgetting that old saying about war being good for business.

All that defence spending creates jobs and employment opportunities, advances research and Development, and pays for itself.

My country, Britain, makes tons of money from making and selling guns and other military stuff to overseas markets.

Again, returning to the American example, 600 billion dollars a year is one hell of a sum of money,

but, it supports almost a 1 million + jobs, and the side benefits from military R and D, has given us things like microwaves and the internet.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Maddermax wrote:
Dammit, poll question is worded completely the opposite to the headline question - only saw that after I'd hit "yes"

I wonder if any others made the same mistake.

NATO is not outdated or unneeded - while it was born out of the Cold War, it is not a relic and it continues to serve a useful purpose by keeping a network of working military alliances in place.



Edit:
Actually, reading the comments, it seems like a lot of people got caught out by the poll question being opposite of the headline question. Perhaps it might be worth changing the headline so that it matches the question asked in the poll?

It's interesting that both Australian commentators have been caught out by this question. Now, I don't want to draw any conclusions about the Australian education system, but I'm beginning to think Crocodile Dundee was a documentary

I think the total is roughly 7.5 million jobs exist because of the DoD's budget, can't back that source up, just dredging up the memory banks.

7.5 million jobs? There you go then, and not all of these people will be working for the DoD or serving in the military.

There will be thousands of supply chain jobs, and thousands of indirect jobs like that hot dog stand near a military base and stuff like that.

tneva82 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, well no one is asking them to. 2% is 2% no matter what your GDP is.

And that's the bad side of NATO. You are forced to spend 2% with zero quarantees of getting anything actually back ever. It's worst insurance in the history of insurances. Not only you have to pay for it but even if you then NEED that insurance you aren't even quaranteed to GET what you signed for in the first place.

You understand that the 2% is for the nation's own military, correct? It isn't 2% going to NATO, its 2% spent within that nation's borders for its own military force. In that they are in fact getting something back. A well funded military. Which, you know, is the default insurance policy for any nation ever.

NATO only helps that by having other well equipped and well funded militaries cooperating and backing one another.

 Blacksails wrote:

NATO only helps that by having other well equipped and well funded militaries cooperating and backing one another.

2% of the GDP might not seem like much to some, but it also depends on how taxation works in those countries too.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

NATO only helps that by having other well equipped and well funded militaries cooperating and backing one another.

2% of the GDP might not seem like much to some, but it also depends on how taxation works in those countries too.

I'm not debating that, there's a reason most NATO countries don't currently meet that standard. It is expensive, and most countries have a population that would rather see the extra few dollars on their pay than increase military spending. Such is the political game.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Yeah, but you're forgetting that old saying about war being good for business.

All that defence spending creates jobs and employment opportunities, advances research and Development, and pays for itself.

This doesn't really work. For starters, the argument for military spending giving an economic boost applies equally to any kind of government spending. You'd get the same impact in jobs and return tax revenues if you were spendng the money on highways, and at the end of that you'd have a better highway than you had before. Spending the same money on the military nets you no greater benefit in jobs and taxes, and the tanks don't help other economic activity.

The second issue, identified by the US in the 1960s, is that modern warfare is fought with mass destruction over very short time frames. They studied the incredible carnage of the mid-east wars of that era, where whole divisions of hardware and whole wings of aircraft were destroyed in days, and realised that this wasn't WWII any more, you couldn't start from scratch and leverage a production advantage to eventually win a war. This shifted US strategy to instead making sure they had a a dominant standing army.

This means that in the event of a breakout in fighting, it's going to be fought by the army you've got. Sure that will involve additional costs in more extensively using the platforms that you have, as the Iraq war showed with its trillion dollar price tag, but it isn't going to be like WWII where you actually see spending on a scale that it massively shifts GDP.

It's interesting that both Australian commentators have been caught out by this question. Now, I don't want to draw any conclusions about the Australian education system, but I'm beginning to think Crocodile Dundee was a documentary

We just caught out because we're used to living in a utopia where we we love all our politicians, all our kids get above average test scores, and things like thread titles being different from poll questions would never happen.

 Blacksails wrote:
I'm not debating that, there's a reason most NATO countries don't currently meet that standard. It is expensive, and most countries have a population that would rather see the extra few dollars on their pay than increase military spending. Such is the political game.

There is a reason, but the one you provided doesn't tell the whole story.

The main reason is that they simply don't need to. France doesn't need to spend money to have military logistics sufficient to make it the 2000 miles to Mali, because when they want to go, they just use our tankers. The combined aerial might of Europe doesn't need to spend money on ordnance, because when they run out within a shockingly short amount of time, as in Libya, we just give them more. We're keeping British, French, and Spanish aviation alive by training their pilots, since they don't have enough active carriers to do it themselves. Britain's decided it can make do with a Royal Air Force that's only roughly the strength of two of our carrier air wings because the reality is that if they're bombing someone, so are we, and they know we're going to do the overwhelming bulk of the work.

They don't need to spend the money because we do.

 Blacksails wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, well no one is asking them to. 2% is 2% no matter what your GDP is.

And that's the bad side of NATO. You are forced to spend 2% with zero quarantees of getting anything actually back ever. It's worst insurance in the history of insurances. Not only you have to pay for it but even if you then NEED that insurance you aren't even quaranteed to GET what you signed for in the first place.

You understand that the 2% is for the nation's own military, correct? It isn't 2% going to NATO, its 2% spent within that nation's borders for its own military force. In that they are in fact getting something back. A well funded military. Which, you know, is the default insurance policy for any nation ever.

NATO only helps that by having other well equipped and well funded militaries cooperating and backing one another.

2% of Finland's economy to military wouldn't be that helpful. Are we seriously worried ESTONIA would assault us? Defending that doesn't require 2%). Russia attacks and it's game over even if we spend 50% which would drive Finland into bankrupt(which would cause problems elsewhere as well since western economy is based on idea countries CANNOT go into bankrupt...)

Similary arqument it provides jobs is false arqument. That money spent on military can be used to create jobs in more useful areas. Goverment spending creates jobs whether it's military or by building infrastructure that will also help non-government parties to create work or education which in turn creates more jobs as well.

tneva82 wrote:
2% of Finland's economy to military wouldn't be that helpful. Are we seriously worried ESTONIA would assault us? Defending that doesn't require 2%). Russia attacks and it's game over even if we spend 50% which would drive Finland into bankrupt(which would cause problems elsewhere as well since western economy is based on idea countries CANNOT go into bankrupt...)

Similary arqument it provides jobs is false arqument. That money spent on military can be used to create jobs in more useful areas. Goverment spending creates jobs whether it's military or by building infrastructure that will also help non-government parties to create work or education which in turn creates more jobs as well.

"We can't stop Russia therefore there's no point doing anything" is a terrible argument.

For starters the most likely use of any NATO force is in projection. It means having the capability to stop really terrible things happening in other countries. Remember the genocide on Europe's doorstep, in the Balkans? Remember how everyone was outraged when the US was reluctant to put troops on the ground? If Europe had properly developed its capabilities then it wouldn't have had to wait until the US finally decided to get involved.

Secondly, the whole point of a defensive arrangement is that you develop a capability to defend other members, and they develop a capability to defend you, and combined you have the capability to stop any threat to any one member nation. In this instance the arrangement has gotten weird because one member nation has individually developed the capability to stop any threat. But that just makes it an even better deal for the rest of the nations involved.

Seaward wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
I'm not debating that, there's a reason most NATO countries don't currently meet that standard. It is expensive, and most countries have a population that would rather see the extra few dollars on their pay than increase military spending. Such is the political game.

There is a reason, but the one you provided doesn't tell the whole story.

The main reason is that they simply don't need to. France doesn't need to spend money to have military logistics sufficient to make it the 2000 miles to Mali, because when they want to go, they just use our tankers. The combined aerial might of Europe doesn't need to spend money on ordnance, because when they run out within a shockingly short amount of time, as in Libya, we just give them more. We're keeping British, French, and Spanish aviation alive by training their pilots, since they don't have enough active carriers to do it themselves. Britain's decided it can make do with a Royal Air Force that's only roughly the strength of two of our carrier air wings because the reality is that if they're bombing someone, so are we, and they know we're going to do the overwhelming bulk of the work.

They don't need to spend the money because we do.

I think that's a key point - cooperation via NATO saves everyone a fortune.

Well it saves everyone but the US a fortune, but the US doesn't seem satisfied if its not the biggest baddest player in the neighborhood

 LordofHats wrote:
Well it saves everyone but the US a fortune, but the US doesn't seem satisfied if its not the biggest baddest player in the neighborhood

We're not.

That doesn't mean we like our allies to be severely lacking in basic capability, though.

 LordofHats wrote:
Well it saves everyone but the US a fortune, but the US doesn't seem satisfied if its not the biggest baddest player in the neighborhood

Not just the US though, we can share resources with Europe that means we don't need to be self sufficient (I don't think we should be as deficient as we are currently though), assuming it's properly coordinated.

Herzlos wrote:
Not just the US though, we can share resources with Europe that means we don't need to be self sufficient (I don't think we should be as deficient as we are currently though), assuming it's properly coordinated.

Again, y'all ran out of bombs within a month in the air campaign against Libya, a third world nation with a deliberately weak air defense. That was a coordinated effort.

You can't crowd source expeditionary capability if nobody you're sourcing from actually has it to begin with.

tneva82 wrote:


2% of Finland's economy to military wouldn't be that helpful. Are we seriously worried ESTONIA would assault us? Defending that doesn't require 2%). Russia attacks and it's game over even if we spend 50% which would drive Finland into bankrupt(which would cause problems elsewhere as well since western economy is based on idea countries CANNOT go into bankrupt...)

It would be helpful to the Finnish military. Sure, you won't automatically become some world superpower, but generally speaking, spending 2% of your budget will lead to a military that is well trained and well equipped to perform the tasks your government wants and needs based on the size of the country and its military. And the idea of NATO is that if someone much bigger than you attacks you, you'd have the entire alliance fighting for you as well. But part of that deal is to fund your own military sufficiently that its not helpless.

No one is arguing Finland or any other nation should spend 50% of its budget. The agreement was 2% because it is realistically attainable. Most nations don't because either the government feels like money is better spent elsewhere for political purposes, or as Seaward pointed out, because we all know the US is going to the bulk of any international war fighting.

Similary arqument it provides jobs is false arqument. That money spent on military can be used to create jobs in more useful areas. Goverment spending creates jobs whether it's military or by building infrastructure that will also help non-government parties to create work or education which in turn creates more jobs as well.

Its not a false argument because it does provide jobs. What you're arguing is that the money could be funneled into making other jobs, which is also true. That said, many military jobs are highly technical and pay well (at least here in Canada) so it provides a great avenue for people to learn a valuable skill/trade and get paid very good money to do it. You know, providing jobs.

 sebster wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Yeah, but you're forgetting that old saying about war being good for business.

All that defence spending creates jobs and employment opportunities, advances research and Development, and pays for itself.

This doesn't really work. For starters, the argument for military spending giving an economic boost applies equally to any kind of government spending. You'd get the same impact in jobs and return tax revenues if you were spendng the money on highways, and at the end of that you'd have a better highway than you had before. Spending the same money on the military nets you no greater benefit in jobs and taxes, and the tanks don't help other economic activity.

The second issue, identified by the US in the 1960s, is that modern warfare is fought with mass destruction over very short time frames. They studied the incredible carnage of the mid-east wars of that era, where whole divisions of hardware and whole wings of aircraft were destroyed in days, and realised that this wasn't WWII any more, you couldn't start from scratch and leverage a production advantage to eventually win a war. This shifted US strategy to instead making sure they had a a dominant standing army.

This means that in the event of a breakout in fighting, it's going to be fought by the army you've got. Sure that will involve additional costs in more extensively using the platforms that you have, as the Iraq war showed with its trillion dollar price tag, but it isn't going to be like WWII where you actually see spending on a scale that it massively shifts GDP.

It's interesting that both Australian commentators have been caught out by this question. Now, I don't want to draw any conclusions about the Australian education system, but I'm beginning to think Crocodile Dundee was a documentary

We just caught out because we're used to living in a utopia where we we love all our politicians, all our kids get above average test scores, and things like thread titles being different from poll questions would never happen.

True, very true, but without warfare, some of mankind's greatest inventions would never have seen the light of day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, well no one is asking them to. 2% is 2% no matter what your GDP is.

And that's the bad side of NATO. You are forced to spend 2% with zero quarantees of getting anything actually back ever. It's worst insurance in the history of insurances. Not only you have to pay for it but even if you then NEED that insurance you aren't even quaranteed to GET what you signed for in the first place.

You understand that the 2% is for the nation's own military, correct? It isn't 2% going to NATO, its 2% spent within that nation's borders for its own military force. In that they are in fact getting something back. A well funded military. Which, you know, is the default insurance policy for any nation ever.

NATO only helps that by having other well equipped and well funded militaries cooperating and backing one another.

2% of Finland's economy to military wouldn't be that helpful. Are we seriously worried ESTONIA would assault us? Defending that doesn't require 2%). Russia attacks and it's game over even if we spend 50% which would drive Finland into bankrupt(which would cause problems elsewhere as well since western economy is based on idea countries CANNOT go into bankrupt...)

Similary arqument it provides jobs is false arqument. That money spent on military can be used to create jobs in more useful areas. Goverment spending creates jobs whether it's military or by building infrastructure that will also help non-government parties to create work or education which in turn creates more jobs as well.

It's very likely that Finland would be defeated in a war with Russia, but I doubt if the average Finn would be happy just to let the Russians walk in. A heavy price would be exacted against the Russians, same as the previous two conflcits.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


It's very likely that Finland would be defeated in a war with Russia, but I doubt if the average Finn would be happy just to let the Russians walk in. A heavy price would be exacted against the Russians, same as the previous two conflcits.

Just remember when the Russians attacked Finland before. The Finns can fight.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


It's very likely that Finland would be defeated in a war with Russia, but I doubt if the average Finn would be happy just to let the Russians walk in. A heavy price would be exacted against the Russians, same as the previous two conflcits.

Just remember when the Russians attacked Finland before. The Finns can fight.

The bad performance in the Winter War was caused as much by Stalin's incompetence (after having virtually all of its officers killed and being force to organise itself in a higly inefficient way just because Stalin was being paranoid, you can imagine the Red Army wasn't really much of an army anymore... It was an unruly mob of conscripted peasants with guns) as by the skill and fierceness of the Finns (who had excellent officers, some of whom where former Imperial Russian officers... History really likes to be ironic, doesn't it?). Regardless, we definitely learned not to mess with them.
Finland doesn't need NATO to defend itself, its reputation is enough. Putin would never dare to invade Finland, he is way too afraid Mannerheim's ghost will come get him while he sleeps.

History really likes to be ironic, doesn't it?

As something of a professional on the topic, yes. Yes it does

Seaward wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Not just the US though, we can share resources with Europe that means we don't need to be self sufficient (I don't think we should be as deficient as we are currently though), assuming it's properly coordinated.

Again, y'all ran out of bombs within a month in the air campaign against Libya, a third world nation with a deliberately weak air defense. That was a coordinated effort.

You can't crowd source expeditionary capability if nobody you're sourcing from actually has it to begin with.

We'd have run out of bombs within a few hours if we were going it alone, though.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


It's very likely that Finland would be defeated in a war with Russia, but I doubt if the average Finn would be happy just to let the Russians walk in. A heavy price would be exacted against the Russians, same as the previous two conflcits.

Just remember when the Russians attacked Finland before. The Finns can fight.

Yeah. We got beaten. Your point being?

Winter war we didn't get taken over because of impending Nazi invasion so Soviets had bit more pressing concerns than waste any more time and manpower on the completely irrelevant piece of lands. They settled for what they wanted to help against Nazi's and that's it.

Continuation war and again we got beaten and were saved from suffering same fate as Ukraine etc because we were NORTH of direct line between SU and German/France and there was this anti-SU campaign that started with D-day. SU wanted Europe or even more specifically German and maybe even France so were in a bit of a hurry to go there. Only fool would claim Finland is worth more than German so no surprise SU aimed for German rather than Finland! If Brits/USA wouldn't have moved in to prevent SU from simply taking Europe at their leisure Finland would have been under red flag as well.

So yeah...So far only war Finland has really won was...Independence war. Does that count as win? At least one part of Finland could technically be said to have won there...

We can't always expect Brits/USA help us especially as in WW2 that was more of accidental as we were friends with the country(Nazi german) USA/Brits on the surface were moving against(though real target was SU).

NATO helps keep the peace *between* NATO members. When everyone is coordinating and talking to each other, people don't feel hostile to each other.

It's also good for business for its members, because when you've got the US, Britain, France, Germany, Canada etc. military might all securing, say, Estonia, people aren't afraid to do business there. Like they might be in, say, Ukraine.

Celerior wrote:
NATO helps keep the peace *between* NATO members. When everyone is coordinating and talking to each other, people don't feel hostile to each other.

It's also good for business for its members, because when you've got the US, Britain, France, Germany, Canada etc. military might all securing, say, Estonia, people aren't afraid to do business there. Like they might be in, say, Ukraine.

Not necessary true, as Greece and Turkey, both NATO members, came to blows over Cyprus in the 1970s.

Then during the Falklands War, Argentina was still getting help from French engineers on its aircraft and missles, despite Britain and France being NATO members!

Often, national needs and plain old greed, can trump the alliance.

I still think that NATO is desperately floundering around looking for a new purpose.

Celerior wrote:
NATO helps keep the peace *between* NATO members. When everyone is coordinating and talking to each other, people don't feel hostile to each other.

But that's another reason why it's obsolete. The EU accomplishes that already, and most European states have degraded their militaries to the point where a conventional war between any of them would be...absurd comedy, for lack of a better descriptor. Nobody's a military threat to anybody else over there.

Seaward wrote:

Celerior wrote:
NATO helps keep the peace *between* NATO members. When everyone is coordinating and talking to each other, people don't feel hostile to each other.

But that's another reason why it's obsolete. The EU accomplishes that already, and most European states have degraded their militaries to the point where a conventional war between any of them would be...absurd comedy, for lack of a better descriptor. Nobody's a military threat to anybody else over there.

The EU is part of that but not all of it, and in case it missed notice a major NATO member just withdrew from the EU. A large part of that military drawdown is reliance on US assistance through NATO, not other members of the EU.

The EU is a big important factor in the current European tranquility, but so is NATO.