this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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Military R&D has created good technology though, like the internet, and GPS. Both of these obviously benefit civilians.
Also maybe Europe needs to be more serious about defence and military capabilities, especially if Trump weakens NATO. Macron said yesterday that Europe needs to stop being "herbivores" and start being "omnivores", otherwise the world's "carnivores" will push Europe around.
You're missing my point. I even stated that the block would benefit from a concentration of military development instead of each nation's own industries with occasional transnational cooperative projects.
My point is that I don't want to simply replicate the U.S. american.military industrial complex and focus more on civilian issues first. Military must stay a means of defense, not a means in andof itself as I often have the impression of the U.S. military is.
The US defence industry does pretty well though, given that it makes the world's best military hardware. Although of course Boeing has had problems in recent years so I guess it's not all great.
But yeah military and civilian benefits would of course both be good, I'm just saying that military research has produced stuff that also has civilian benefits.
At what cost though? What about the rest of the U.S.'s public infrastructure, i.e. healthcare, education system, social security, etc?
The U.S.'s military industrial complex does well because the U.S. defense budget was $886 billion in 2024.
The U.S. drives on a fucked up system. We should be very careful about what we use as a role model.
Sure, I wouldn't want US-style healthcare for Europe. I'm not saying Europe should copy everything that the US does, but imagine if European research (military or otherwise) came up with something as groundbreaking as the internet... that would be cool.