Thursday, February 22, 2024

"Failure to back Ukraine aid could hurt US economy and defense contractors, says Germany: ‘We shouldn’t take freedom for granted’"

That seems like a weird pitch for war.

On the other hand it is similar to the Chinese bridges falling down over the last couple decades: Great for the GDP reports but not so hot for the actual building of national wealth.

See also Frédéric Bastiat and the Broken Windows Fallacy.

From Fortune, February 18:

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius urged US lawmakers to approve additional military aid for Ukraine stalled in Congress, warning that failure to do so could damage America’s economic interests.

As well as potentially hindering security cooperation and harming US defense contractors, Kremlin aggression if left unchallenged could also weaken Europe more broadly and disrupt the bloc’s trading relationship with the world’s biggest economy, Pistorius said in an interview Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.

“One aspect among many others of our transatlantic cooperation is that we signed hundreds of contracts worth billions of dollars and we are about to prepare new contracts,” he added. “It’s obvious that the alliance for security brings many advantages — for both sides.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other western leaders have mostly focused on political and strategic arguments in justifying their calls for additional US military aid for Ukraine.

Now Pistorius — a member of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party — is striking a different tone by highlighting potential pain for America’s defense contractors if more US support fails to materialize....

....MUCH MORE