Europe's Opportunity
The financial case for supporting Ukraine


Glad to see she gets short shrift in the comments.

The idea that Europe can outproduce Russia in armaments using a stronger larger economy is a farce when Russia runs it's military Industrial complex for war, whilst the West runs theirs for profit.

We can extrapolate from the earlier artillery where NATO shells at $3-5000 are clearly much shinier and look prettier than the terribly dull Russian ones at $300 each, but as they do the exact same job, then the Europeans would need to spend well over ten times what the Russians do to achieve mayhem parity.

What has been amply illustrated in this war is that a zealously capitalist society which places profit seeking as the prime focus of its orthodoxy cannot win a war against an enemy who holds no such freakish creed.

Otherwise the very idea that there is a financial benefit from investing valuable resources to manufacture costly things merely to destroy lots of other valuable useful things such as the entire infrastructure of a nation is an absolute oxymoron, unless of course, you intend to steal all those resources back from the loser after winning:

In short, the permanent conquest of Russia would be required...Of course it would be far cheaper and better for everyone if the Russians gave them, say, very generously, all the gas they require at a greatly reduced price through a big pipeline. We could call it "Nordstream" or some such.

-Marvellous idea right but wishful thinking...