Lol, so if I’m hearing you right, people who yap endlessly about “being alpha” are “beta to alpha trans”?

Dubious means “suspect”, and what makes it “suspect” is the lack of any supporting argument. As a keen student of logic, I’m sure you must be familiar with this word and concept.

The burden is on you to support your own assertions, there is no irony whatsoever in me pointing this out. Any keen student of logic would be familiar with this principle.

Keen students of logic will notice you’ve refuted the argument using a dubious naked assertion.

To be fair, the immancy of war with Russia is purely a function of proximity and preparedness.

What does the government subsidy per vehicle work out to?

I’m not plugging my ears. I’m just ordering the coexistent issues by immediacy and impact.

Finland’s compulsory service, in the grand scheme of things, makes no difference to South America.

Finland’s compulsory service, in the grand scheme of things, makes a massive and immediate difference to Finland’s continued existence bordering a belligerent nation with clear aims to expand its borders.

Like, you need to understand, the US military is designed to do MANY things, across the globe, as an empire would to maintain a status quo.

Finland’s military, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania… These militaries exist for EXACTLY one purpose, which is self-preservation against a concrete threat.

Again, I think you’re not wrong in your acknowledgement of existent factors. I think you’re wrong in your relative understanding of the specific impacts for these countries in particular. Yes: there is human urine in the ocean, but it’s not practically valuable to conceptualize a swim in the ocean as a bath in piss.

If your only tool is a hammer, then of course every problem is going to look like a nail.

Neo-Imerialistic Finland?

I think you really need to step outside of your US-based worldview.

Yes, absolutely, the USA has a massive war machine that has been mainly used as leverage to maintain an imperialistic status quo. You have the luxury of a US citizen of not living under the knife of an existential threat.

That luxury, your privilege, is not shared by counties in eastern Europe. Neo-Imerialistic, what, Lithuania? Estonia? They DO live under a real existential threat.

Your US experience is ENTIRELY valid.

Thinking you can apply that experience broadly is not.

The US experience is exceptional. That, plainly, is the reality of life on Earth.

I’d challenge you to consider that your perception may be biased, coming from the context of a country that has been at war for 93% of its existence.

My frame of reference on the subject of compulsory service is Finnish, which I imagine is a better analogue to a potential German experience.

It’s a pretty cost effective alternative to maintaining an excessively large standing force.

If everyone gets 12-18 months of training, it allows the nation the capacity to mobilize quickly “on-demand”, instead of that capacity being “always on”.

I imagine there are other periphery societal benefits. Having a shared experience, even if it is military service, can be good for cultural unity.

Not saying they should or shouldn’t, btw. Just saying it might be more pragmatic than the alternatives.

I’m talking about the 60/70s where they were legitimately on par (arguably more successful) with their space-tech. Advanced weapons and space-tech are absolutely linked, the entire space race was a thin facade over demonstrating the capacity to deploy novel weapons systems. And, I can’t stress this enough, the USSR dominated in that realm.

I guess what I’m saying is that modern day Russia being a paper tiger is pretty valid… This has been the consensus for a long time in the West. Everything that we are seeing aligns with the rational assessment of military professionals.

That doesn’t mean this has ALWAYS been the case. The assessments of those professionals at the time, was that the Soviet military in the 60s-70s had the capacity to pose a legitimate military threat to the western world.

I think they are referring to the relative societal priority of maintaining a large modern fighting force. USSR was investing and developing bleeding edge weapons tech. Russia has just been sitting on that same stockpile.