No. of Recommendations: 7
Where do you get 300 from? The Leopard number is 105 and it's going to take them 5 or more years. For the record the US tank production rate is currently 12 per month.
Sorry - that was a typo that I kept repeating.
As for the U.S. production rate, that's different from the amount of time it takes to build a tank. If it takes me two years to build a tank (from refurb), and I commence twelve tank starts a month, in two years I'll be producing 12 per month - but it still takes me two years from when I start refurbishing the tank until it's ready. For refurbishing existing Abrams hulls, the U.S. takes about two years to go from starting the process to the tank being ready for deployment. The process for the new tanks that the Army is going to order, which don't use existing hulls, is projected to take about 65 months from order placement to delivery.
They're moving as fast as their political system will allow> them to move. Which...isn't as fast as they need.
Yes, it is, and it's really fast. Again, Russia isn't an imminent threat, and they're still under the NATO umbrella. That means they don't need to upend their economy to convert to a wartime footing.
No one is saying 'pull out of Europe completely'. However, there's no need to station many tens of thousands of US troops there nor is there a need for clouds of aircraft. There will soon be a need to have those in the Pacific theater along with a Navy capable of confronting the PLAN at sea (and not for nothing, a logistical fleet able to move supplies around the globe).
Yes, there is a need. Because having 80K troops and clouds of aircraft means that the nations of Europe don't need to be independently ready to take on an invasion (should one happen) on their own. And because they don't have to do that, it dramatically lowers the temperature and risk of intra-European war.
Now - whether that need is greater than other needs around the globe? A more complicated question. But there are negative consequences to the U.S. dialing down its military footprint in Europe and getting all those individual countries to dial up their own. And given European history before we decided to become the overwhelming military force on the Continent, the risks posed by doing this should be treated as considerable.
Why is asking the Europeans merely to return to their early 2000's levels of armaments 'abandoning Pax America'? It isn't, not in any way, shape or form.
Spending 5% of GDP on defense isn't merely a return to the Pax America status quo ante. It's a significant remilitarization of Europe beyond those early 2000's level. About 2.5x spending. To put that in context, the delta from today's 2.1% of GDP being spend on defense would result in an additional $6 trillion being newly spent annually on European military - which is like adding six entire U.S. militaries on top of what's being spent now. A massive rearmament of Europe. Even making them increase defense spending by a single percentage point of GDP is $2 trillion in new spending, which would (again) be like adding two U.S. militaries on top of all their armed forces.
And as you have alluded to on this thread, pressing them to do that is a precursor to significantly reallocating U.S. military forces out of the Continent and into Asian theaters. That would certainly improve our security posture vis-à-vis China....but at the cost of reducing our security posture vis-a-vis either an invasion of Europe or an intra-European war.
Both those things combined would result in the end of the Pax Americana in Europe, where the U.S. had an overwhelming footprint and the countries would have to rely on a collective military response via NATO (including the U.S.) to achieve any military goal. That level of spending would render U.S. forces a more minor player and give many of the countries there a newfound ability to pursue military objectives that are currently beyond their grasp. That has positive aspects (now they can defend themselves without NATO!), and negative aspects (now military adventurism becomes possible!).
