No. of Recommendations: 1
Since you mentioned Germany, I just looked that one up.
https://www.gmfus.org/news/germanys-defense-budget....
This week, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced that she wants to spend '130 billion ($140 billion) on defense equipment until 2030 ' increasing the overall defense spending by '3-4 billion annually over the next 15 years. There is a significant push to increase spending. Of course, Germany has a peculiar procurement system (contractors that don't get contracts routinely sue the German government, and the spending is put on hold until it resolves). I could link a video that takes a deep dive on that.
Poland is shipping lots of hardware to Ukraine, and scrambling to build/acquire more. Though, to be fair, they already spend more than 2% on the military. But they're increasing even more.
https://www.trade.gov/market-intelligence/polands-....
I didn't check all the NATO countries, but many/most are supplying Ukraine and beefing up their defenses in response to an aggressive Putin. Turkey might be an exception since they have closer ties to Russia than any other nation in NATO. They are walking a tightrope, though I am not an expert on why they are close to Russia. I just gleaned that from my consumption of the war in Ukraine, and how it has affected NATO (i.e. increased spending, admission of new members suddenly desperate to join the Alliance, etc).
To your point, having the Chinese run the Philippine Coast Guard out of the Spratlys and build an air base there definitely got the PI's attention.It did. But it really wasn't until Duterte termed-out, and the PI got a new president, that there was significant movement. Duterte
hated the US because of at least one incident while he was a governor(?) in Mindanao. So he refused our vaccines, tried to buy equipment from Russia, etc. Anything to avoid dealing with us. Marcos (Jr) isn't as anti-American, and is rightly scared of an aggressive China. China is not going to back down. I am predicting a dust-up in the future, whether it's invading Taiwan, or attacking a vessel on a FON mission, or seizing yet another island...it's probably going to get ugly.
