Thread by @SaysSimulation

France is the premier European military power, but there are problems with such projections.

1. France is politically paralyzed because it is effectively bankrupt, it can't pay for for current social promises.

2. Military R&D is about gross spending, not percent of GDP.
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1. For decades, Europe has emphasized social spending while paying very little for defense. Europe is having trouble even paying for those programs, as it is battered by energy costs and deindustrialization - with industries fleeing due to the energy costs.
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Europe is very good at verbally discussing & then planning on doing much better in the future. But, some fundamental financial problems will need to be solved to pay for the *planned* military spending.
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2. Being in NATO created a false impression of what it takes to have a credible military. The emphasis was to spend 2-3% of GDP, and almost nobody was doing it.

When it comes to something like developing a new generation of stealth fighters or interceptors -
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there's no participation trophy that comes from spending a given percent of GDP. Europe's military is based on piggybacking off of massive US military R&D over the decades.

France has a GDP of ~11% the size of the US GDP. But, if France spends 3.5% of GDP,
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you don't get remotely the same military as the US gets for 3.5% of GDP, unless you are willing to spend 9X the money on R&D as we do, or we let you use our knowledge for free, as we've essentially been doing

This military divorce is going to be much harder than Europe realizes