Neither did the Viet Cong

Okay. So you want them to continue to pay the bill indefinitely?

Russia's faced tremendous costs in maintaining the war, and would almost certainly settle for something less than their wish list and 100% of currently occupied territory in order to get out from under. But not if we kneecap Ukraine's negotiating position.

Again, you don't know this.

Germany's military budget in 2004 was lower than it is today, both absolute and percent of GDP. They spend more on personnel than military today than they did in 2004, because that's their role in NATO.

Sheesh. You understand that they've dug themselves a giant hole that they need to climb out of just to get back to where there were 21 years ago, yes?

Germany's not on the front line, so the tanks and heavy equipment aren't in Germany or under control of the German army - they've invested in personnel. If they needed to shift, they could shift - your excerpt assumes the status quo, which is by definition not the world we're talking about.

Sure. Why not give them a bunch of horses and send them off? That's pretty cheap.

The other problem you have is that you're treating total dollars spent on defense like Time of Possession in football. It's an important metric but not the only one. The Germans are spending more and getting WORSE in terms of readiness.

Your insistence that they're not materially contributing their own defense flies in the face of the facts.

No it doesn't. They're not spending to the level they need to. For one, they're getting WORSE year on year despite spending more. What does that tell you?

They're maintaining a massive fighting force,

What are you talking about? Their heavy equipment is way lower than what it was in 2004 and here's their manpower:
macrotrends.net - Military army size

183k troops. They had 550k in 1990. Hardly a "massive" force, especially one with not so much equipment.