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Macron, who met with students from Vilnius University (VU) in September, spoke about the importance of military production, stating that EU countries are mostly customers of American industry.
“The Americans are, of course, our partners, but here I will remind you again of sovereignty. If we talk about partners, we must be able to choose them, not depend on them. If we are completely dependent on American teams, we will not have the power to act,” he emphasized the French president.
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Macron assured that NATO “has taught us to work together, and now we can transfer the experience to the European level.”
“It is very important for European countries to be able to defend themselves. You may think that their security is guaranteed by NATO. But we cannot always trust the power that is on the other side of the Atlantic and that focuses more on China than on us,” he said. the French leader of VU.
“Uniform definition of threats”
General Jonas Zemaitis Liudas Zdanavičius, an analyst at the Defense Analysis Center of the Lithuanian Military Academy, says that Lithuania’s most important interest is that any development of European defense capabilities would not compete with the development of NATO capabilities or weaken relations. with the United States and the United Kingdom.
According to Margarita Šešelgytė, political scientist and director of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University (VU TSPMI), if we consider that the United States is a “world policeman” and a guarantor of European security,
He noted that there are no guarantees about the interest of the United States in being in the region. “We have no guarantees, even if Trump is not elected [prezidentu]that the United States will honor its long-term commitment to European countries.
Photo by Julius Kalinskas / 15min / Margarita Šešelgytė
As America’s power shrinks slightly, new powers emerge. And fighting new powers like China may require far more resources from the US than they could allocate. Resources available in Europe may be needed to combat this. ” 15 minutes said the political scientist.
According to L. Zdanavičius, European countries have a great lack of military capabilities, in most of them they declined very strongly after the Cold War.
“Decision makers often did not see a great need for military capabilities, defense funding was not a priority, there were certain illusions that conventional warfare was unlikely to occur. However, practice shows that we are returning to the era of conventional conflicts between potentially equal rivals, “he said.
However, the researcher praised France for the recent increase in defense spending. “Of course we could do it faster, but compared to 2017, France’s nominal defense spending will increase by 22% in 2021, despite the economic problems caused by the pandemic.” 15 minutes he said.
According to M.Šešelgytė, Lithuania could benefit from European autonomy in the field of defense.
“If this means that European countries invest more in their defense capabilities, they are developing modern capabilities, defense systems that are not as fragmented and inconsistent as they are now.”
The cost of such an irresponsible investment is estimated to be € 26 billion a year. euros. If strategic autonomy means that there will be more coordination and no money will be wasted, everything will be fine, ”said the director of VU TSPMI.
However, even in this case, M.Šešelgytė sees two challenges. In particular, the EU does not currently have sufficient capacity to defend the region from Russia, and it would be damaging if the United States were angry. Furthermore, there are different perceptions of threats in Europe.
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