> I am all for Europe being prepared for war. That is a necessity.

Why? Name one scenario where EU needs a bigger army and masses of barely-trained conscripts.

If you say "Ukraine loses", why not spend all effort on helping Ukraine instead?

> So, I am all for better health care, better education, less dependency on foreign gas and oil, better funding for goverment programs ...

You do realize that preparing for war is insanely expensive and can only be funded by cutting all those other nice things? Also, what do we need education for if we actually expect many people to die in World War style ground warfare?

How about: Let's build some nukes, spend the rest of the money on Ukraine support, and forget about ground war conscription lunacy?

> If you say "Ukraine loses", why not spend all the effort into helping Ukraine instead?

It can't be allowed to cost any real amount of money. In case you're about to say that's a contradiction with Ukraine support: 96% of all EU support to Ukraine is a loan that has to be repaid (and the "90 billion" package will be that, as well). If Ukraine wins, the current tally is that 15% of all Ukrainian tax will go to, well, effectively Germany. Still better than living under Putin, I get it, but ...

As for Germany's own wars: the German state sees Germans as both expendable and cheap. As you point out, these wars are pretty much planned in at the moment.

Oh and making these weapons, whether that means nukes or the other weapon that has worked really well in Ukraine (killbots), is going to be massively unpopular. (What are these killbots? Think the terminator T-1-8, except with realistic tires that will actually work and only one gun [1], or in the air [2]) Especially once AI is built into them.

Why? Every soldier, every person, that sees those drones is going to realize exactly what the German state wants of them: the areal ones are suicide drones: the German military will use the Zap Brannigan technique. After all, 1 German corpse = 1 disabled drone. Or get shredded to pieces by an AI machine gun that never misses in hopes that your corpse ties up it's tires afterwards. Odds are not good, so there will need to be a lot of you doing that.

I'm sure they'll give you a gun and be very happy if you disable a drone with a shot instead of your corpse, but the only guns that kind of work are shotgun net-launchers, which we all know right now: the military will never approve.

Don't worry, I'm sure the higher ups will get medals. Not for actually going on the frontlines.

Oh and the news from the frontline: those drones themselves are pretty good against bullets. Even hitting them does not often disable them. And hitting them is very hard to begin with.

Oh and, of course, it's not "the state" demanding this, it's the current German population not wanting to give up, well anything, to improve the future. By the way: the only thing worth discussing to be (partially) given up, really, is social security (41% of expenditures). The next 4 biggest costs are healthcare (16%), government jobs (17%), transportation (12%) and (least important) education (9%).

So it boils down to the same thing it always boils down to: the population must work more. In the sense that a decent chunk of Germans who either don't work, or work in government, must get themselves private sector jobs.

Alternatives? Well ... I have someone here: Wait! Comrade! Just say No! We'll just eat the rich instead! As for your question which party put Putin in power ... we don't talk about that. How rich is Putin? We don't talk about that either. Aren't most of the German rich "clients" of the state even now? And won't state control make that worse? I said: We DO NOT talk about that! Eat the rich! And don't build defenses at all! That's the solution.

[1] https://gdb.rferl.org/01000000-0aff-0242-3688-08dc5fafb30c_w...

[2] https://www.twz.com/news-features/inside-ukraines-fiber-opti...