Why

[Suff]

It needs to be done. But also it needs to be done by strengthening our own manufacturers and buying British products which in many areas are among the best in the world.

Labour does not have a good record with this.

WM is quite right, many of the NATO countries thought it had become an anachronism in modern times and didn't keep up their expenditure. Even in Trump's first term they all said he was being difficult when he told them to spend more. Everyone remember that? He was dead right but nobody wants to remember that.

What Germany did was inexcusable. They "leased" over 2,000 of their tanks to the former Eastern bloc countries then didn't make any new tanks for themselves. Literally stripping their own military of defence weapons on the basis that "someone else would do it for them". The former East bloc countries got rid of their old tanks and leased the German tanks. Lowering the capability of defence dramatically. Bit of a shocker for everyone now.

With Israel taking on the sacred cow of Iran it has become a much more urgent issue. Ramifications from that will be large and the regime is likely to go out with a bang and causing as much trouble as possible at the same time. They are already attacking US assets and Trump clearly stated the consequences of that.

The problem is not so much all these far away wars. It is that with the noise of war all around it is easy to lose track of weapons and forces being realigned to face us and for sudden and quite decisive attacks to be successful. At least initially. Driving us into a wider war.

Our world became significantly less stable with the fall of the USSR. I was aware at the time but most people seemed to be oblivious.