First two paragraphs, sure. I wasnt disagreeing with your conclusions, just pointing out that your analysis was flawed. I share your opinion that Europe is unlikely to be credibly militarily threatened by the US, CN, RU, or even CN+RU. I do think china is significantly closer to being a credible threat than your analysis indicates. Historically, how many expansionist empires have decided they had enough territory on their own?
As far as disagreeing with SIPRI figures… they have been the global academic authority on defense economics for almost 60 years. You are welcome to disagree with them based on vibes but there’s really no more to discuss if you don’t have a reputable source of evidence to back your opinion.
This last paragraph is entirely vibes based on my end, so don’t give it more credit than the opinion of some rando on the fediverse. I don’t know that I’d count on Ukraine to be ride or die with Europe in the future. The rest of Europe certainly has not acted in a way to engender that level of mutual defense with Ukraine in the past 12 years. Maybe the Baltic states have, but the larger European economies have spent 12 years appeasing their gas station dictator rather than fully supporting Ukraine. They are saints beyond what the EU deserves if they do fully commit to the EU defensive bloc in the future.
Reminds me of the undergrad experience of someone who is not me, lol. They had “the dropbox”, spoken about only in hushed tones and never openly acknowledged, which may have contained a pdf copy of every single text required by the curriculum of that person’s major.