What I mean is that Russia is now getting their tanks and other equipment replacements out of their old cold-war time stocks.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/15/how-to-outfight-russia-destroy-at-least-4500-armored-vehicles-a-year-for-two-years-and-do-it-without-american-help/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-relying-old-stocks-after-losing-3000-tanks-ukraine-leading-military-2024-02-13/War economy cannot be kept forever, the war economy cannibalises its own economic future. Non-military infrastructure suffers because investments are diverted.
If you build and blowup a grenade it will add 50USD (or whatever is grenade cost) to your country GDP. But this is empty GDP.
And we both agree Russians shouldnt be underestimated. Although they are only 140mln people, while NATO is 7 times bigger, its true that regimes can spend more resources on war, than democracies, also NATO is not a single country.
NATO is:
- USA on another continent, that takes care of their Mexico border and defends Taiwan
- France and Germany who dont really spend enough of their military and sadly dont have leadership ambitions for the whole Europe.
- UK who have their own island and are reducing ties with continental Europe
- Turkey, Hungary that are not really that much allied with rest of us
- some uninterested countries like Italy, Spain
- finally some eastern European countries, that are not strong enough to fight 140mln Russia on their own
So the best way for Europe to prevent future war with Russia is to build up its military. Its sad because this money could be better spend on luxuries or preventing climate changes, but what can one do.