Fixed values don't mean much of anything if you're a big economy like Germany. The reason the percentage is of GDP is, to put it very bluntly, because 'money needs protection'.Becoming an economic force without spending properly on defence is just stupid.And we're not talking about money spent being a measurement of effectiveness: defense spending is mostly investing and protecting the economy itself, that's one simplistic view of why it's measured as a percentage of gdp.(Alongside with the fact that more members spending 2% means Europe becomes less reliant on US)
Both percentage and fixed amount is useless if you don't define a goal that must be accomplished.
Von der Leyen wasted lots of military money with McKinsey.
The US wasted lots of money on a shitty next-gen jet fighter.
So making money the measurements leads to corruption.
In Germany's case it's even worse because if the debt brake.
The money that goes to the military is cut from others expenses, most often healthcare, social security and education.
So the future will be full of devasted, poor people who can't afford education and health care for themselves and their children.
And that without the guarantee of proper ability of self-defence.
Of course poor people without social security are good for the military because many would join them to make a living.
The effect of this is pretty obvious in Russia and the US.
In the case of germany specifically i think the situation is more complicated, because they have been missing their 2% quota for some time now, compared to France, UK and even some EE countries after Trump began pressuring member states to fulfill that mark.
There's no discussion we don't want to take from healthcare and other institutions that are beneficial for the citizens, but at the same time with this 100B investment i think germany somewhat catched up(it's not an arms race though, germany has a lot of US presence).As for the poor people joining the military, I don't exactly know how much that applies to Europe's population as it does to US'.Saying we will have poor people >because< there's more funding for defence is a little off for me.Poverty is a more complicated issue even than defence.
>Saying we will have poor people >because< there's more funding for defence is a little off for me.
Not because there more funding but because more funding for one thing means less funding for another one.
Where does even the 2% come from?
Why only for the military and not education and health care?
Doesn't NATO need educated and healthy people?
Does it count towards the 2% if we fix infrastructure because military is mainly logistics?
How about health care workers.
More money for them is also part of military capability.
In the current form these 2% are just subsidies for weapon manufacturers.
I wonder who the biggest beneficiaries are.
Especially since armies don't win wars these days. In the end, it boils down to house fighting and guerrilla warfare. You don't need 100 billion for that
In a way you answered your own question: the 2% comes to not have to spend a lot of fixed money in a one blow, like the case here with 100B.Instead you spend constantly and improve, after all defence is an investment and that investment is not lost even if you don't have any wars.(unless you spend on active training and decades pass w/o wars)
Referencing my previous post with the link for the politics of 2%, there are a lot of things Germany frankly is really behind when it comes to military: Poland for example has stronger military relatively speaking if you compare the manpower, reserves, total population and military hardware.
The money indeed goes to the mil. industrial complex which is undesirable,that's why i'm skeptical about this, but at the same time: do you take the chances when a nutjob like Putin keeps daring you? There's no good answer, only compromise
I don't want to sound like a broken clock, but Germany could have used the investments of NS2 into energy independence(more nuclear, electric,etc),NATO contribution, or infrastructure.Socialistic policies are also good, but there's higher volatility in terms of what you get, and if you want to actually put socialistic policies in practice, follow the hungarian long-term model, not welfare-state for everyone: Merkel probably learned this the hard way, and the barely-not-recession numbers show that.
I don't know the details of the politics, but i believe this (outdated) article has good explanations about it: https://carnegieeurope.eu/2015/09/02/politics-of-2-percent-n...