Historic speech by Olaf Scholz. Germany completely changes its defense policy. It sounded like he would invest 100 billion EURO right here and now in military equipment and from now on spend at least 2% of GDP yearly on defense. This will furthermore have a ripple effect in that other NATO countries - like my own - have been hiding behind Germany in not spending the 2%. That will almost certainly change now.
This could actually be a real turning point. It could also signal a new world order where democratic Europe rises from the pathetic depence on the United States.
It’s worth noting ofc that even at the height of the Cold War the land forces between each side were not hugely outmatched in quality- and that was with a much larger USSR and a number of Warsaw Pact states.
Putin cannot go toe to toe with a U.K. France and Germany at Cold War levels of spending- along with other countries like Poland.
The WP countries had larger and more capable standing armies, but NATO could match them with mobilisation.
No, the NATO armies were standing army, they have most of the units near to full force, they can mobilize but the had not enough equipment for most men they can mobilize, the WP armies were mobilization armies they had many units under strength that need mobilization to fulfill the ranks.
