This is false. The EU has put up more money than the US but they have not _donated_ more money than the US. A large form of the payment from the EU has been in low interest loans.
Loans which have no security guarantees and will almost certainly be written off, unless you can make Russia pay for them - i.e. they will never be paid back by the Ukraine. It's the standard money giving structure in the EU. Make a loan, write it off later without repayment.
EU is more and more open to the idea of paying for the Ukraine war from the Russian frozen assets ($200 billions or so). The big guns (France and Germany) are still opposed though...
I actually think we should be quite cautious about this. It's essentially seizing dollar assets. It might provide a big boost for China's efforts to get the world off the dollar standard.
(I'm a strong supporter of Ukraine, host refugees in my house, and have donated to Comebackalive.ua, so this is not because I'm neutral in this war.)
About why the dollar has been the world currency for the past few decades (during which EU consolidated into a huge market with a single currency, and China became either the first or second country by economic size): the world's currency needs a country that runs huge trade deficits [0]. China is a nation of savers so their instinct is to not run trade deficits. Europe is in a similar position. US - not so much. I would not expect the dollar to lose this status any time soon.
Yes. But now that the US is the enemy of the free world Europeans are likely going to look to divest from the US and take care of themselves. Meaning Euro first, and likely giving preference to non-US countries in matters of trade.
Huh, how would this seizure take dollars away? These assets are held in Europe, their valuation is stated in Euro terms -- are they actually being held as dollars?
You can open a US dollar account in a non-US bank. Some banks don't offer this service to ordinary private citizens (others do), but I think pretty much all will if you are a (non-sanctioned) business or foreign government or high net worth individual looking to deposit large sums of cash (millions).
The bank needs to somehow hold US dollars to back its US dollar deposits, but there are various ways of doing that – e.g. put the money in its own account(s) in a US bank, hold physical US dollars in a vault somewhere, purchase US treasuries, use the deposit to fund lending denominated in US dollars (huge market for US dollar loans outside the US) – likely it is using some combination of those
So probably some of these Russian assets in Europe are euros, some are US dollars, some are other financial assets such precious metals, stocks and bonds, units in managed funds, etc – and they are just all being converted to euros for reporting purposes
Only about 18% of which is actually owned by Russia. The rest is money that happened to be in transit between private persons at an unfortunate time. Do we really think it's fair that a lady who happened to be selling her house at exactly the time the war started... should have that money donated to Ukraine's war effort?
Re: "Only about 18% of which is actually owned by Russia." - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Care to show some?
(I do not understand your example with the lady that sold her house when the conflict erupted. Lots of people sold their houses at that time and somehow their money is not being frozen....)
That is complicated. And historically simply not true. Being subject/citizen of one country means that in case of war, your property is legitimate to be anything from damaged to seized by opposing parties in the war. The fact that we hadn't had any kind of real war in since WW2 means that no-one has that experience in recent history.
I'm aware that there have been significant amounts of armed conflict in the mean time, but the last conflict between states that ran similar to historic wars was the Korean war (which technically hasn't ended). Most wars the US was involved in where more similar to colonial expeditions (seizing local resources, defending local bases)
> That is complicated. And historically simply not true. Being subject/citizen of one country means that in case of war, your property is legitimate to be anything from damaged to seized by opposing parties in the war.
There are two sides in this war: Russia and Ukraine. Neither is holding the money.
Those Russians have their own government to blame, which in addition to stealing Ukrainian land has stolen assets of Western companies, including billions in planes. They are legitimized in overthrowing their poor leadership.
Russians are stealing butter and rationing electricity, Russia won’t level anything to rubble far beyond their borders this century. They are almost out of steam.
> Do we really think it's fair that a lady who happened to be selling her house at exactly the time the war started... should have that money donated to Ukraine's war effort?
You know what's not fair? The lady's government invaded a sovereign nation, committed genocide while doing it, and continues to do so. If that lady lost her fortune from it, then she should be vocal about justice for all parties.
America is a functioning democracy so individual Americans are much more responsible than individual Russians for the bullshit their respective countries do.
> America is not a democracy in a strict sense, its a republic
Most republics are democracies. You seem to think "democracy" is equivalent to "direct democracy," but a direct democracy is only one type of democracy. A republic is another form of democracy.
America is certainly a democracy (for now; who knows what will happen in two years)
How deluded do you need to be to detach yourself from all the responsibility in your life that are complicated? If you are an American, the US government is YOUR government and it is YOUR problem. You might not be able to do much, but it does not shield you from your moral responsibility.
Russians are responsible for their government too! They just have way less they're able to do to steer it, but it still their government.
Absolutely, she shouls pay! Also EU should suspend(or tax 100%) pensions and all social benefits to sponsor the war! If that is not enough, confiscate private companies and private properties!
I was saying that for years, since the war started! People thought it is some kind of joke. But that was the only way to win!
So to pay for the war to stop a new Soviet Union, a bloc of countries that all fear their alliance will turn into a new Soviet Union, must become a new Soviet Union?
Macron came out the other day in the interview with Trymp and stated that if the assets were to be seized from Russia that this would be considered payment.
After WW1, in the treaty of Versailles the German Reich, having just lost the war, was made responsible for starting it - it played a part in starting it, but was hardly fully responsible. So its successor state got a huge amount of reparations forced upon. Calling that out was a part of the appeal of the Nazis to the germans.
Now, how that is related to freezing assets from Russia I do not see. Even if interpreted as some kind of reparations, the lesson of that time was not that all reparations lead to a later war. Rather that humiliation will lead to resentment which can lead to war later. Huge and unjust reparations can be a part of that, but that's hardly the scenario we see today.
Macron is (understandably) deeply unpopular in France right now, seems like that seeps into the judgement of his actions here.
Some historians agree, some disagree. It's a typical question for your high school history exams. A good one as one can arrive at both answers when looking at the historic facts. In very short: The German Reich wanted that war and pushed it, but so did the other European nations.
"Germany" as we know it today did not exist before or during or even directly after WW1. You could just as easily say e.g. Poland was responsible for WW1 because most of that region was also part of the German Empire.
What's next, making Italy pay reparations for the roman empire? Making Turkey or other arab countries pay reparations for their empires?
I'm not sure what your point is because nobody is suggesting that modern Germany pay reparation for WW1. The discussion was about reparations that Germany has already paid after WW1, imposed on it by the victorious Entente. There's a long-standing historical myth that those reparations were 1) unjustified because Germany was not actually solely or primarily responsible for the war, and 2) excessive. It further goes to claim that this is a big part of why Germany went Nazi and started WW2 eventually. This was, indeed, the prevailing wisdom in the inter-war era, but Fritz Fischer poked a lot of holes in it after WW2.
At this point, while there's still no consensus as to the degree of German responsibility, most historians would weight it significantly higher than that of the Entente. The notion that reparations (and the Treaty of Versailles in general) was particularly onerous and punitive has also been largely debunked. However, the popular understanding still mostly reflects the inter-war consensus and not the later developments.
Macron wants to set a precedent of stealing assets so he could then steal citizens assets to pay for the abysmal debt he created.
If he cross the line ("freezing" foreign assets was already a big blow at property rights) I'm relocating and bankrunning whatever I have because it means property rights don't exist anymore in the country.
They definitely shouldn't be after this. This is the waking point, I've read article today that we could ramp up some serious defense within 5 years on old continent, skillset and money are there. This would massively boost parts of our economies, just like US did in WWII. Use russian assets, use green deal money that is beyond useless effort at this point and most costs are covered.
At the end this may be good for us, since Germany's stance has been pretty much retarded re defense to keep things polite. 4 superpowers instead of 3, albeit maybe Hungary and Slovakia should be kicked out to not sabotage it from within.
It seems an era is ending. Just like it did with 9/11, even outside US. All due to one orange man being voted by >50% americans to do exactly this. Why I don't get and probably never will but he is a symptom of current times IMHO, not a cause.
Anyway voting is not about recording a talley for every 18+ year old human with a pulse. It’s citizens selecting a leader and policy from their community. Getting your people out to vote is part of the event.
When people choose not to have their vote represented, for whatever reason, when the outcome was so clear in advance, then there is practically, legally, morally and philosophically no distinction between not voting and voting for Trump.
We (Americans) can’t be relied on. Yeah most Americans are still supportive of Europe but our political system produces whipsaw foreign policy. The end result of all this is America is weakened on the global stage as our allies lose faith in us and start working around us. Why should Europeans boycott China, sanction Iran, support Israel, isolate Cuba, intervene in another Iraq? These are American priorities, not European ones.
Because they are a part of NATO and have basically zero military to speak of on their own. There's a reason all of their proposed plans to support Ukraine include an American backstop: because they can't stand on their own and have relied on US military spending for decades to prop themselves up.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO and has no significant mutual defense treaty with America. We intervened nonetheless, to protect Europe. I think we should continue intervening, but I also think it's ludicrous for the EU to threaten to not support America, when they've allowed their military infrastructure to rot away at our expense.
Why do you think the US is going to remain in NATO for the next 4 years? Trump loves to say the quiet part out loud and he’s been repeatedly threatening to pull out.
If the US pulls out of NATO, then it's true that Europe has very little reason to support American interests (unless America "pulls out" of NATO by renegotiating a new mutual defense pact, in which case the countries in that treaty obviously will have plenty of reason to support America — similar to how Trump replaced NAFTA with the USMCA in his first term; which is also what Trump has said he wants to do with NATO).
However, that is an "if" statement that has not come to pass.
Well, threatening to seize an ally's territory kind of put the ally bit in question doesn't it? For all intents and purposes NATO ended existing with Trumps speculation to use military force to seize Greenland. After that statement nobody can consider the US a reliable ally anymore. So.. the US may not have pulled out of NATO^ but there is absolutely no reason to believe in any kind of support being available from the US either.
^which by-the-by is difficult to achieve on a practical level. Notifications of withdrawal have to be handed in to the US government
If you were correct, then European countries wouldn't keep asking that the US sign an agreement to backstop a Ukraine deal — after all, regardless of the paper, the US wouldn't be trusted to do it.
But they are asking for that; I think you should consider why.
The US has successfully created a system that integrates the US economy with Europe, limiting Europe's choices and greatly enriching the US for decades... and then last week JD Vance in Munich yelled at everyone and claimed the EU was somehow stealing money from the US.
The really funny thing is: Vance is ~right that the Europeans "steal money" from the US. What I do not get is why that is a bad thing. A "trade" nowadays basically always involves one side getting something tangible that they want, be that goods or services or commodities. And the other side getting something intangible claims or money.
If I can get something inherently valuable for essentially nothing but an empty promise? That's an extremely comfortable position to be in..
Look we're all grateful for the Americans that do care about The Alliance but we've seen the political trends in America and it looks bad. You can't elect Trump twice and say it doesn't represent America. Trump's politics isn't going away. The Democrats allowed 'radical' social change to dictate the party platform and didn't implement enough reforms to please the average citizen. Until they do or Trump makes massive blunders we don't have a hope that the old America is coming back.
Everything you're saying about the international trust American voters have betrayed and thrown away is pretty reasonable. But this:
> The Democrats allowed 'radical' social change to dictate the party platform and didn't implement enough reforms to please the average citizen.
is false.
Democratic policy has done plenty to benefit average citizens, in a long tradition (at one point bipartisan) going back to WW2.
And it's never been centered around any idea more "radical" than taking seriously the words of the declaration of independence about equality, inalienable rights, and life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, even for people who are doing something others think is weird.
It's even pretty clear that Democratic policies have strong electoral popularity:
But "swing" voters (assuming they really exist in any form as popularly understood) among others are often not really clear on who supports the policies they prefer. My suspicion is that this comes from Democratic underinvestment and poor investments in media and culture while their opposition has been doing this aggressively, which allows others to define them as radical.
That’s some creative mathematic gymnastics you’re doing there. “Anyone who didn’t vote chose the one who gamed the electoral college best.”
But that still does NOT mean anywhere near half of Americans actively chose the current situation. To say so is wholly, maliciously, egregiously disingenuous.
EDIT - Showing my work:
US Census in 2020 - 331,449,281
2024 Trump votes - 77,284,118
Even skipping any possibility for growth since 2020, 77.3mil/331.5mil is not “>50% of Americans” by any possible mathematical definition.
You're right that my numbers were of the voting eligible population, though, and not the total population. Okay, so let's work that out.
244,666,890 total eligible voters
- 156,336,693 total ballots cast
= 88,330,197 passive votes for Trump
88,330,197 passive votes for Trump
+ 77,284,118 active votes for Trump
= 165,613,316 total votes for Trump
/ 331,449,281 total US population
= 49.9% of the total population figure
That is, indeed, just shy of 50%. So I'll concede that Trump did not have >50% of Americans supporting him. Just >50% of American voters.
No. Passive voters effectively for the winner, not the loser even if they don't know in advance who that will be. They're delegating their decision to their fellow actual voters, whatever that may be. Perhaps it's because they trust others to know better or perhaps because they don't care. I've tried to do this explicitly in a small club election submitting my vote as for "whoever gets the most votes" but the administrators didn't like that :P
Nobody gamed the electoral college this election. Trump won the popular vote too.
Many voters are voting for the lesser of two evils; they don't like either candidate. Non-voters are simply taking that to the next level: they can't decide between two evils strongly enough to value casting a vote.
Bikeshedding over the difference between active vs passive votes in a single-winner first-past-the-post election is fruitless.
If they're truly both evils, there's always the option to do a write-in vote for someone else. Futile? Sure. But hopefully headlines like "X won the election with 30% of the vote" would start to raise eyebrows in ways that "X won the election with 49% of the vote" doesn't.
> ll due to one orange man being voted by >50% americans to do exactly this. Why I don't get and probably never will...
Not agreeing is one thing, but it is a remarkably easy decision to understand - people go to WWII because every single war since then has been a disaster for US interests and outcomes (I think every single, certainly most). The last time the US had an unambiguous win by fighting was 70 years ago when they got involved in a fight very late. Since then all the warmongering has made America poorer, they don't achieve anything good and generally make the US worse off.
They made a call that they don't trust the military industrial propaganda and they want to see some peace happening for once. Pretty solid decision too; if we can all have normalised relations with the US after Iraq then we can stomach Russia misbehaving in Ukraine. Escalating a land war in Europe is stupid and its been a mistake every other time the Europeans tried it; even in WWII where they claim to be justified. The blood-lust left everyone closely involved broken and it'd have been better if they found a more peaceful route to ending the violence. The fact that they failed to negotiate something doesn't mean it was impossible.
The last time the US had an unambiguous win by fighting was 70 years ago when they got involved in a fight very late.
No, it was in 1999. A short aerial bombing campaign that lasted less than 3 months and cost less than 600 lives ended a decade of wars in former Yugoslavia that had killed 140 000 people and made millions refugees. What an incredibly small price to pay for peace.
Ukraine needs the same kind of support, but instead, they got misguided "de-escalation" that only boxed Ukraine in and gave the initiative to Russia. By knowing that the US would force Ukraine to throttle back every time the Russians made a large misstep, Russia was encouraged to keep escalating without the fear of triggering an overwhelming response.
That war was a huge win for the US, much more so than for the reasons you mention there. It was the first time they managed to convince other NATO pact countries to execute a unilateral offensive campaign, until then a defensive alliance. The PR campaign had to be extensive and effective to justify violating the UN charter, and it was - for the first time successfully positioning a US-led NATO-run offensive war as altruistically motivated in the public eye, paving the way for the numerous wars that followed.
The campaign was valuable to everyone involved. The US got to assert itself as a global moral authority, also finally getting to build Camp Bondsteel[0] after decades of trying to build a base in the region (the largest US base on foreign soil since Vietnam, and it was built and managed by KBR meaning Dick Cheney and his shareholders also profited considerably; they've since lost interest so nowadays it's just a mini Gitmo). For the allies that backed them and helped justify the war, they received carte blanche permission to do what they like and settle their own scores. Their Dutch friends, for example, got to brazenly violate international law from the start by dumping their out-of-date depleted uranium cluster bombs on my densely populated home town[1], choosing to target the main building of our university, the main building of our city hospital, and the biggest civilian central steam heating plant that kept half the city warm.
The campaign did have some negative effects though. In the east it was interpreted as a deliberate provocation toward Russia at a time of particular weakness (their president getting hammered and falling out of planes etc), and Putin used this extensively as an example of Russian embarrassment at the hands of the US, helping him rise to power as PM in August '99, acting President in December '99, and President in March '00.
I'm not particularly emotional about any of this btw - I just thought you'd appreciate the geopolitical perspective and the ripple effect that war had on Russian politics & subsequent opinion towards the West.
The Russian-leaning world remembers this event differently, they think of it as the US unilaterally bombing Yugoslavia, taking out a Chinese installation full of Chinese nationals, and facing absolutely no consequences or ill effects.
This was one of the factors that guided Putin's thinking when he took Crimea.
At the very least, protecting Ukraine's skies when Russia started targeting its cities with missiles would have been exactly the right move, an appropriate international response to warfare against the civilian population. A huge missed opportunity.
Shooting down incoming missiles is not considered an act of war under international law. It falls under self defense. Japan has shot down a number of North Korean missiles and nobody has accused them of declaring war on North Korea.
Planes stopped flying over Ukrainian-held territory only a few weeks into the invasion. Since then, they've mainly launched glide bombs from far away, due to the high risk of being shot down if they penetrated Ukrainian airspace.
There's nothing preventing Ukraine's allies from setting up air defenses and fighter patrols to shoot down drones and missiles. A number of countries did just that when Iran launched a missile attack on Israel last year.
> Since then, they've mainly launched glide bombs from far away, due to the high risk of being shot down if they penetrated Ukrainian airspace.
And Russia would go back to planes if other countries were shooting down their missiles, because they know that other countries would hesitate to declare war by shooting down one of their planes. Other countries taking over this responsibility neutralizes the air defense against planes.
Ukraine can shoot down planes on its own, that needs no foreign assistance. Feels like you're just looking for excuses to sit idle and give the initiative to the aggressor.
This is simply not the case.
There US has very successfully used it’s military to enjoy the position of absolute top dog in the world, but a major part of why they could do that was that the US has made very strong allies in the whole rest of the western world who have never, until now, seen any reason to try to compete with the US in this regard.
A well placed network of foreign aid has also generated influence in other parts of the world.
The United States has now irrevocably destroyed this position.
There will be enough time for the Trump Family and Elon to make out like the bandits they are, but the US position long term is diminished.
Can any of those things be traced back to a specific positive outcome for anyone outside the US weapons industry? Like, say the US hadn't invaded Afghanistan back in '01 and the trillion dollars in budget had been put towards handing out how dinners for the poor instead - what would the negative part of that trade off have been?
> Can any of those things be traced back to a specific positive outcome for anyone outside the US weapons industry
Yes, you have a ton of money to buy stuff that is much cheaper for you than for anyone else in the world because of the global reserve currency being in dollars, not to mention smooth trade guaranteed by the existence of the US navy.
Every thing you do is positively benefited by America's ability to project its military might across the globe.
American hegemony happened by chance, and the dollar just won the reserve currency lottery?
Granted, not every war was a net win but that war machine is uniquely expensive and it may be sacrifice the public is willing to pay. But it probably wouldn't hurt to see how contemporary books on history differs from propaganda.
Wouldn't have happened. A series of impressive military victories early in WWII looms large in peoples heads, but there's no getting away from the raw numbers of how outclassed Germany was wrt material and manpower against the USSR. Barbarossa was launched on very limited, low quality intelligence, and even when more accurate numbers came in regarding Soviet division numbers in 1942, the top brass refused to believe it.
Who can tell what would have happened? It sure would not have been easy without US support:
"... Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars. Trucks were also vital; by 1945, nearly a third of the trucks used by the Red Army were US-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3⁄4-ton and Studebaker 2+1⁄2-ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical."
It's "Ukraine," not "the Ukraine." "The Ukraine" is a Russian imperialist term because it's rooted in the idea that Ukraine is a mere territory (akin to "the Great Plains" or "the Midwest") that belongs to a larger political entity.
It’s called Ukraine. It would be particularly prudent to avoid using the Soviet-era nomenclature given the context of the conversation you’re participating in.
> "The Ukraine" is incorrect both grammatically and politically, says Oksana Kyzyma of the Embassy of Ukraine in London.
That doesn't really make any sense. There is no magical deity that arbitrates rules of English. It is merely a tool invented by humans to use as they please. The only semblance of "incorrectness" that might be found is in failing to communicate with the reader, but in this case you clearly had no trouble understanding what "the Ukraine" meant and I suspect nobody else has either.
> and politically
This makes more sense and is a much stronger point, but political correctness is bound to intent. There is no evidence I can see that suggests "the Ukraine" was previously used with intent to offend or marginalize the people of Ukraine. Even if "the Ukraine" can be used as a politically incorrect device, that does not imply that all usage is politically incorrect.
> It’s called Ukraine.
Officially that is true, but there is typically nothing official about a casual comment made on Hacker News. As before, context is significant, and there is nothing in the context that I can see that suggests that the comment was made in some kind of official capacity.
"The Ukraine" is grammatically incorrect for the same reason "the England" is grammatically incorrect. An article doesn't go there.
The politically incorrect usage here is not bound to intent, because unaware readers will subconsciously lower Ukraine's status in their minds regardless of whether the writer intended them to do so.
The official status, or lack thereof, of the comment doesn't matter either. There is no compelling reason to not use the accepted name. If your friend was called James, would you intentionally call him "the James" just because you're not making an official statement? That doesn't make any sense.
> "The Ukraine" is grammatically incorrect for the same reason "the England" is grammatically incorrect.
It is grammatically atypical, perhaps, but not incorrect. It is fundamentally impossible to use English 'incorrectly'. The closest you can get to any semblance of 'incorrectness' is failing to communicate with the reader. But that is certainly not the case here. Everyone is well aware that in the above comment 'the Ukraine' refers to Ukraine.
> The politically incorrect usage here is not bound to intent, because unaware readers will subconsciously lower Ukraine's status in their minds regardless of whether the writer intended them to do so.
A faulty lowering of Ukraine's status may be politically incorrect, but the words are not to blame. That's your fault for thinking about its status improperly. There is no onus on the writer to worry about a failing mind. If there were, communication would be out of the question.
> If your friend was called James, would you intentionally call him "the James" just because you're not making an official statement?
I personally would not be intentional when writing casually. That defeats the purpose of writing casually. If I happened to put "the" down on paper I certainly wouldn't put in the effort to remove it. Who cares? Assuming the context is otherwise clear, nobody is going to be confused about who "the James" is.
there are reasonable policies between "give ukraine everything she possibly wants to protract a war of attrition that risks backing a nuclear power into a corner" and "tell ukraine to pound sand and kiss putin's ring."
for instance, EU states were repeatedly warned about their reliance on russian energy. the EU preferred to empower putin and constrain future actions in exchange for cheap power. perhaps, rather than passing the next massive aid bill, the EU could focus on hurting the aggressor state by literally just not sending her more money on a regular basis. eurocrats continue to, thanks to their reckless energy policy, literal billions of dollars straight to the Kremlin with which she can finance her expansionist war. stopping that would be a great first place to start.
or perhaps EU states could have gotten their act together faster and sent more than busted old helmets (cough Germany cough). trump says a lot of dumb stuff but he's entirely correct that europe has repeatedly failed to adequately invest in her own defense, particular since she has an aggressive, expansionist, would-be-again superpower on her eastern border. then when America doesn't pony up what europe thinks is enough, she goes on a whining tour and asks why the evil Americans won't spend enough money and lives to fight fascism.
I’m not sure it will help if we disclose taxpayers that the loan won’t be paid back. The idea was to sweep it under the rug, not boast about the EU’s lost money.
Noone in Europe knows these are loans. Everyone assumes the money is gone. Politicians don’t talk about loans, they talk about giving money to Ukraine.
Loans are the way to do it because of the way most European budgets work. But you can’t call them regular loans in good faith, and no politician in Europe does so. The language towards the public is that Europe is giving money.
That's just a technicality. There is no "EU" tax so the institutions does not have the billions to give away. They can however secure loans so that is the method being used. But make no mistake what is happening here.
Look at the backing countries and how they are spending on Ukraine. There you will see the direct donations.
No EU member country has yet to make a billion dollar repayment claim post facto. Certainly not five hundred billion.
I don’t see how you’re describing anything other than what I’ve described.
The money may come from the private sector, but the government guarantees for it. This is government spending.
On paper, the government may theoretically not have to pay, but in practice everyone knows that the loans aren’t paid back and then the government must pay for them.
These loans really are just creative accounting for giving money within the budgetary constraints European governments find themselves in.
Of course they are, what did you expect would happen in war? Fighting with pillows? However it's not my responsibility to bear financially. My responsibility is caring for my own.
>We're donating cash
People are dying here as well as politicians are saying the healthcare is underfunded so clearly we need the cash back home.
No one will bother about those loans when a Ukrainian victory will give the EU access to at least the Ukrainian market if not also the market of a new democratic Russia. Please do some long-term thinking on this.
There are reasons why the EU should support the Ukraine, but access to the Ukrainian market isn't one of them.
The Ukrainian GDP is 179 billion USD (https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gdp?continent=euro...); they're a market smaller than Greece (244 billion USD) or Hungary (212 billion USD). If they succeed in driving the Russians out, they'll have to rebuild their country and will probably be in debt for decades.
Democracy in Russia is a pipe dream; they have nuclear weapons and Putin isn't about to give up power. I guess it's possible that his successor could hold elections, but that's highly unlikely at best.
But people are bothered about affording food and rent now, and when they see their tax euros aboard they're gonna be salty, and speak of potential future winnings (which are all gonna go to some megacorps anyway) are not comforting.
> This is false. The EU has put up more money than the US but they have not _donated_ more money than the US.
That's not quite right, either. A large portion if not a majority of the financial aid from the US is--and tacitly required to be--spent on purchase of weapons and services from US defense contractors. That's in addition to direct military aid where the Pentagon directly purchases and transfers weapons, and transfers old weapons--I think the replacement cost is what's calculated as the US "contribution" for that portion.
This is how military aid packages are structured for Israel and Egypt also. I don't mean to insinuate anything negative, but the reality is that the majority of all this aid is effectively a direct subsidy to US defense contractors.
The EU does the same thing, but the structure and pretense is different--loans tacitly required to be used to buy EU weapons and services, the loans forgiven after the public stops paying attention. Though in the case of Ukraine I think a much larger portion (relative to US) of aid is intended for civilian programs, at least early on, on account of the EU's squeamishness.
The US has mostly donated their obsolete weapons that were going to be decommissioned anyway. While expensive, they would’ve otherwise cost the US money to decommission instead.
Are you referring to ATACMS, Hi-Mars, M777's and M1 Abrams, the backbone of the US military and many of its allies? The materiel currently used all over the world? That 'obsolete' heavy weaponry?[0]
Or is it the thousands of Javelins that annihilated the Russian tank columns so that the Russians are currently mounting assaults in Chinese golf carts?[1]
There were only a few M1s given. MANY more M1s were used against the Iraqi Army!
The stream of weapons has been more of a trickle of weapons. The Javelins have good PR with the nice Saint Javelin but the British-Swedish N-LAWs are wicked and the tens of thousands of the Bofors AT4 did a lot of the initial grunt work.
There is no proper replacement for ATACMS yet. At the projected rate of production for the new replacement missile, a years worth would last about a couple weeks of usage in a serious conflict. ATACMS are still 100% valuable to the US.
> A total of 110 PrSMs are expected to be procured in fiscal 2024 and 190 in fiscal 2025, Inside Defense wrote, citing the Department of Defense documents.
What did we replace "legacy" ATACMS with we could use in a war today? PrSM?
In November 2023, the Army delivered the first four Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) as an early operational capability (EOC). The Army shot two PrSM EOC missiles at a maritime target in June 2024. Between November 2023 and August 2024, the Army executed three production qualification test (PQT) events. The Army intends to complete a limited user test (LUT) with the fifth PQT test event in 1QFY25 and the remaining four planned PQT test events by 3QFY25.
Not to mention that maintaining M1s must be a nightmare.
The Ukrainians seem to prefer the Bushmasters. This kind of makes sense, given it seems a lot of what Ukraine is doing is guerrilla warfare then equipment that is easily serviceable likely is more useful.
ATACMS... The ones Biden reluctantly donated after Ukraine begged for them because they can strike deeper behind the frontlines and inside Russian territory? They may be an older platform but they appear to be highly desirable and still brought out for juicy targets.
It was 31 M1s donated, last time I looked. And they survived a helluva lot longer against the droneless Iraqi Army, which helps explain the low number. A $500 drone can ignite a $5M tank. Drones have changed the calculus of tank warfare.
Maybe the AT4 and NLAW didn't have the same effectiveness of Javelin? The Javelin has had a pretty good PR campaign with it's point and destroy videos.
>A $500 drone can ignite a $5M tank. Drones have changed the calculus of tank warfare.
No. What you see in Ukraine is the 20th century war with some drones. Active defense system can take out RPG and anti-tank missile. It can easily take out a much slower moving drone. Unfortunately, the Western tanks and IFVs came to Ukraine without ADS (and many even without reactive armor). And for whatever reason Ukraine was pretty slow to put passive drone defenses onto the armor - you can see on the videos of the Ukrainian 2023 counter-offensive that the Western tanks and IVF are mostly "naked", just the bare base armor.
There are stories - videos - from recent decade how tanks correctly "dressed up" with passive defenses and reactive armor would survive direct hits from Javelin, RPG, etc., in some cases it would even survive multiple hits from RPG. And active defense system is a huge step up even from that.
If anything, with the next generation of active defense systems being able to shoot down even incoming artillery/tank gun round, the tanks will continue to rule the battlefield, especially in autonomous version.
If you've been watching the war you'll notice that tanks are largely absent from battle these days. Russia had thousands more tanks than Ukraine 3 years ago, and now is scrounging the last of its inventory leftover from WWII.
The Super Tank™ you've described sounds cool, though. Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?
watch the videos from the war - the tanks are mostly without ADS, and the ADS that Russia has is really a crappy one. You can also watch videos how soldiers shoot down the drones with shotgun or just using some stick/stone. Drones are much easier to shoot down than RPG, and nobody has been able to shoot down RPG with shotgun (a great baseball player probably would be able with some non-zero probability to bat an RPG out though).
>Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?
No. Even the existing ADS with shrapnel warheads are not sold to Ukraine.
No navy would deploy a battleship today, no matter how good an anti-missile system it had. Only needs to miss one, and battleships just cost way way more than even a thousand missiles. Plus ballistic artillery just isn’t that useful compared to what a drone or cruise missle can do.
What's the cost of all your whizzbang technology? Does it cost $10M or $20M per tank to make? And how quickly are they produced? Maybe 1-2 per month? And how many years does it take to modify or improve them?
Now compare that to the hundreds of thousands of drones manufactured every month for far less and adapted monthly.
We've already seen mothership drones used in Ukraine.[0] How long do you think it will be until we see fire and forget multiple attack baby drones that overwhelm any whizzbang ADS? 6 months, a year? As the old saying goes: quantity has a quality all it's own.
A man-portable, fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missile system before its expiration date is still a man-portable, fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missile system.
It is however not worth as much to the US than a man-portable, fire-and-forge anti-tank guided missile system that they won't have to replace for much longer.
"How dare you refer to our weapons designed to fight in eastern europe against Russia. We need those weapons in the USA in case we have to.. fight... in eastern europe... against... russia?"
US never wanted to fight Russia directly as it would mean nuclear escalation.
US needs somewhat strong Russia as a scarecrow for Europe and everyone else in the world, so that people would join NATO and pay 4% of GDP to the American military industrial complex: Lockheed Raytheon and friends.
The goal is to scare people and force them to shell out dough for overpriced US weapons.
If Russia becomes too weak, there are two risks:
1. Nuclear/Biowarfare proliferation due to instability inside RU
2. Europe won't spend a dime procuring US weapons because Russia would not be a threat anymore
3. China can increase influence in Russia
so American goal is to keep somewhat stable Russia and force EU to shell dough on US weapons. Thats the racket, everything else is a distraction
Having stockpiles of obsolete weapons to give away is a byproduct of having funded our military for decades. If other NATO countries were doing likewise they, too, would have stockpiles of obsolete weapons to give away.
The fact that it's just the US doing this is indicative of the overall military posture of the EU. It's reasonable to question whether they are prepared to do their part to defend themselves should Russia penetrate further west.
Plenty of european countries have given both stockpiles and modern weapons.
As an example sweden has given Strv-122, CV90, Archer, Saab 340 AEW&C and has offered Gripen fighter jet (but Gripen has been blocked by US/France). All of those are up to date weaponry, and besides that much from older stockpiles has been given.
That's just one example from one small country with less people than one city in the US.
This has very long term repercussions for the US. No-one is making the mistake of using a US jet engine in their design again and getting export controls because of that. Already plans are evaluated for switching to an upgraded Volvo RM12 or something from Rolls-Royce.
The same scenes must be playing out in various industries across Europe and the rest of the world. Such wheels turn very slowly, but they now turn away from the US defense industry.
Certainly a world where NATO countries spend <2% of their budget on defence but the shiny new weaponry all comes from US contractors doesn't seem obviously more helpful than one where they're targeting 3% spend but making a point of building domestic industries or buying from pan-European projects.
Plenty of NATO members already build and buy from non-US sources. France basically made it a principle because of their historic fence-sitting NATO policy, Sweden mostly builds its own (but licenses parts from US/UK like fighter engines), other countries are buying artillery or tanks from south korea, etc. The US itself buys anti-tank weapons and riverine patrol boats from sweden, dutch rifles, german handguns and much more.
"but the shiny new weaponry all comes from US contractors" is not true.
It is true that the US has spent far more on it's military and made it far more global than any other country. It is also true that the US acted as a guarantor for west Europes security for most of the last 70 years and that should not be understated. That era seems to have come to an end.
I'm not suggesting the US has ever been literally the only NATO member supplying arms. I'm suggesting US companies have gone from the top of the list for a lot of procurement contracts to the bottom.
Yeah! Just from Czech Republic - our old Mi-24 are shooting down Shahed drones daily, some of the first tan shipments were czech t-72s, we sent our old Kub SAM bateries, Vampire MRLS, BMPs, etc.
The EU froze over 200 billion Euros from Russian assets. Russia will never see that money again. Once Putin is defeated Ukraine's debt will be paid with that.
Also, please do think long-term: A victory for Ukraine and a second try for democracy in Russia will mean that the EU will regain huge markets right at its doorstep that need rebuilding and in the case of Russia some diversification would be sensible.
If Trump has his way, the US's "support" will have been in exchange for rare earth minerals. Not really support in the end though, if Ukraine doesn't get any security guarantee.
Not sure why Ukraine would believe any new agreement would be honored when the Budapest Memorandum turned out to be worth less than the paper it was written on.
They have, but they need to double it. You can't count on the US anymore, and Ukraine needs a lot more than it's getting.
And let's face it, the EU can easily afford it. Sure it hurts a bit. But more war with Russia hurts a lot more. The cheapest way out is to stop Russia in Ukraine, and not give him the opportunity to try again in a few years.
We can afford it, but it is very difficult to do politically. The rise of far-right parties has everyone spooked, and in ageing societies pensioners cost more and more money, while holding most of the wealth, and constituting the majority of the voting power. Working people feel increasingly disenfrenchised, and it is only going to get worse. At the same time we are judging climate change to still be a larger problem (or we are at least investing a lot more money into it), and there's this horrific fetish for fiscal conservatism in law and in practice.
If pensioners have most of the wealth, then they should pay those working class people higher wages to take care of them in their old age. That's one factor of many in to end this disenfranchisement.
Ukraine needs more manpower primarily, they keep saying it for a long time this is a critical issue, they have relatively enough equipment for waging war. At the end equipment can't solve it all, enough boots on the ground is what conquers or defends territories.
They don't even have enough 155 shells, long range drones, body armour, training facilities, fighter jets, bombers, cruise missiles, tanks, howitsers. The list goes on and on. It's exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.
They had to develop their own long range drones instead of getting off-the-shelf stuff. Germany blocked Taurus, Tomahawks were a no-go.
https://english.nv.ua/nation/generalsyrskyi-says-he-banned-t... (NV Ukraine, Jan 2025)
However, certain categories of Air Force personnel, after preliminary training in training centers, are reinforcing the Ground Forces and Air Assault Forces due to a shortage of personnel on the front.
https://archive.is/WKqxz (Financial Times, Oct2024 but updated)
The commanders estimated that 50 to 70 per cent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation.
So if they don't have manpower OR enough weapons, maybe when their head of state comes to ask for support from their biggest benefactor, he should, I dunno....not piss off his host? Wouldn't that help him get what he wants?
I guess it shows how critical is technology that keeps the human away from harms reach. Drones are a great example of that, especially how costly/hard it is to train a jet pilot.
With (almost) fully autonomous weapons and systems it comes down to simply who has the better economy and production lines.
How can you afford an indefinite war against a nuclear power? He will just drag you into a quagmire, which always works against the west. I'm genuinely curious what strategy Europe will have here to squeeze Russia.
Nukes don't give Russia infinite resources. Russia's economy is suffering. They've mostly ran out of modern tanks (except for the T-14 which still hasn't seen combat somehow), they're using donkeys for trucks now, their artillery has lost the punch it had two years ago. They're mostly sending demoralized soldiers in deadly human wave assaults, and dropping bombs on cities. That's all they've got left.
Russia has the economy of a medium-sized EU nation. The EU is vastly more powerful. If the EU wants to, they can give Ukraine everything they need to win. Only they're divided and unwilling to believe in their strength after 80 years of dependency on the US.
>Russia has the economy of a medium-sized EU nation. The EU is vastly more powerful.
This is why GDP is a useless metric. Last year it was reported Russia was manufacturing 3x more artillery shells than the US and whole EU combined.[1] Billion-dollar cosmetics and luxury goods industries don't translate well into battlefield success.
>If the EU wants to, they can give Ukraine everything they need to win.
Except manpower, which Ukraine needs and doesn't have.
> Only they're divided and unwilling to believe in their strength after 80 years of dependency on the US.
And perhaps a tiny bit cautious about escalating a conflict with a neighbouring country that happens to have the world's second largest nuclear arsenal?
That is absolutely a possibility, but not a certainty, and a very dangerous gamble to make. That said, Europe probably does need its own nuclear deterrent and its own anti-ballistic missile defense.
First, I've been hearing it all my life. More often after 2014, and very often since 2022. In 2022, it was "russia has days left of reserves".
Second, nationalism was always (since 1300s?) strong in there. It always united russians against the enemy even if they hated the goverment. That's why every incrusion attempt always failed.
Sure. We don't need incursions. They can stay and be nationalistic all they want.
We need to keep applying pressure until something breaks. There's a constant refrain of "Sanctions don't work. Please stop the sanctions." from the Kremlin.
> Sanctions don't work. Please stop the sanctions.
Examples? All I can see is majority of russians living their life as usual. Sure some transplants in Moscow are sad that their consumarism routine got distracted, but that is it.
As for money frozen in EU, IIRC most of it aren't realted to the goverment and just happened to be in trasit when sanctions started.
Every oligarch knows that Putin is the hand that feeds and biting it at best gets you in prison at worst an express descend to the ground.
In general I don't think sanctions work. They're clearly not working against Russia. EU countries still use tons of Russian gas, they just pay 5X more than they used to because now they have to stick their fingers in the ears and cover their eyes and buy the gas re-routed through India or Azerbaijan at a premium while they pretend they are no longer buying Russian gas. It is quite silly.
And a naval engagement to the Czech Foreign Legion :)
Russia has historically been very good at killing off invading armies through attrition, but that's not necessarily a strength when they're the invading army in similarly inhospitable conditions
Russia didn't lose to Afghanistan, rather Russia, Ukraine and Belarus dismantled the Soviet era occupation force. In fact the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan lasted 3 more years on its own - unlike the US installed government which collapsed before US troops left.
Easy to defend mega land with harsh winters (but not so harsh anymore as they were during those failed campaigns), especially when both defeated invading armies severely underestimated... cold weather. Nobody is really invading russia here, whole world just wants to be left alone from them, including all former soviet republics (funnily this includes Belarus too).
That's not saying anything about their offensive capabilities, which as whole world sees are a fraction of what was thought about them. They really are supremely ineffective, corrupt and lazy in numbers and levels that cripple whole war for them. They can't produce enough new armed vehicles and their stockpiles from cold war are running very thin as per independent satellite analyses, they use stolen motorbikes, donkeys and golf karts for troopers now (with corresponding death rate). Their nuclear weapons are just a guarantee they won't be attacked on Moscow conventionally or nuclear in any way, nothing more. As we see all other 'doctrines' and 'red lines' fell apart with long lasting incursion in Kursk so that was just an empty bullshit.
They know all this, their country is falling into inflation spiral which can easily end up with people's revolt and I believe puttin' realizes how fragile his relatively soft power grip on russia is. Plus he has positioned himself as an arbiter between various power clans within his hierarchy, not as a single supreme single ruler whom everybody fears for life like in North Korea for example. He desperately needs to finish this war within a year or two since he is an extremely paranoid person. But he has some sort of effective reach or control over orange man and we saw what we saw, who knows why.
Myth. Russia had superior tanks and manpower. German high command had no idea of the depth of Russias armament industry or the number of troops (see eg the Hitler/Mannheim conversation).
Yes the winters did help, but they were still outnumbered, and outproduced.
My point is that the Russian people have a capacity for self-sacrifice that shouldn't be underestimated, especially when their (perceived) sovereignty is threatened.
During WW2, for example, the Soviets lost a total of 20-27 million dead. Only China, a country almost three times as populous, came close at 15-20 million.
My theory is Russia can continue to produce long range weapons and drones in factories near the Urals or even beyond in Siberia, far out of reach of anything the Ukrainians can get their hands on, and just outproduce the Ukrainians as long as it takes.
They're certainly trying. Had you asked me before the full scale invasion, I would have answered differently. But Ukraine still stands, and it's looking more and more like a Finland-like situation. After all the repatrionization propaganda that doesn't look good for Putin. And the Russian economy absolutely suffers from this, we just don't know how much.
The Soviet Union lost 20m+ dead because they faced an existential threat from an enemy that intentionally massacred many millions of people who lived there (including people who weren't particularly enamoured with the idea of a Soviet Union or Stalin as leader)
The situation isn't quite that bad in either Russia or Ukraine which was also one of the constituent parts of the Soviet Union. But it's certainly closer in Ukraine, even if most Russians hold an irrational level of enthusiasm for the war
It won't be indefinite, eventually the nukes will fly. On a long enough timescale, whether it's this war or the next or the one after that we humans are going to pull the nuclear trigger. The question is "for what reason?" This seems as good a reason as you can have. Much better than an accident or miscalculation.
The European countries that aren't closely allied with Russia and don't have nuclear power plants all over the place have collapsing economies because they're paying 5X what they used to for Russian gas.
It's really grim.
I don't think the EU thinks it can afford it at this time.
Loans are not the same as heavy weaponry and intelligence.
Other American administrations have been spending decades begging NATO allies to keep their militaries up to a higher standard. Their refusal to do so is now coming back to haunt the world order.
"Their refusal to do so is now coming back to haunt the world order."
I would think, the US going against the International Court of Justice, threatening allies over land and making deals with a official emperor is doing worse.
Putin obviously. And no, "formally" he is surely a elected president. Just one who talks about and compares himself to the great emperors of russian past a lot and acts pretty much the same.
There are some cases where that is true, there are some cases where Ukraine got the same stuff that is current with the US, and there are cases where Ukraine was literally the first user of new tech (the GLSDB, for instance.)
One reason for this mix is that the Russo-Ukrainian war has defied some US expectations of what future wars it might need to deal with might look like, making previously-retired equipment relevant again (the drone war has made a lot of retired anti-aircraft tech more relevant, because relative cheap short-range missiles and short range anti-aircraft guns are a lot more useful against drones than they are against modern fighters, for instance) and, in other cases driving new weapons development.
>the us is at least a generation ahead of that equipment.
Can you list the in service equipment that is a generation ahead of M777 and ATACMs? I sure wish we could get some of these wiz-bang fires assets out here in the First Island Chain.
While a replace for M777 may not be in service, the US had stopped manufacturing and continued only after Ukraine requested it. This indicates that it isn’t an integral tool to the US’ arsenal, and has been superseded.
> November 2024 BAE announced the opening of a new artillery factory in Sheffield during 2025 to resume production of complete M777 artillery pieces for Ukraine and to help fulfil orders for fresh titanium cast spare parts from the US supplementing its US parts factory which also resumed production during 2024.
Similarly, ATACMs production was also halted.
Really, your question, tone and phrasing really indicates that you are not really looking for an actual conversation but rather a gotcha moment.
It’s worth noting that variants of weapons and exist, and sending older ones to Ukraine does not imply that it is getting access to newest and greatest.
I made some grammar errors when i was writing this — i was on the phone. The gist is there; both weapons had their manufacturing ceased which means either the US had enough stockpiles or they were superseded.
The weapons were either sold to Ukraine or other countries, and it was only after Ukraine requested more of them that production started again, which implies the US had no need to produce them because they were superseded in US’ arsenal.
Furthermore, just because Ukraine received X weapon, doesn’t mean they received the latest and greatest variant that’s in use — they might have very well received a previous generation of said weapon.
Asking which weapon or system replaced them as is in service does not look like discussing in good faith simply because the systems might change or newer variants may be used.
>which implies the US had no need to produce them because they were superseded in US’ arsenal.
No, it does not imply that they were superseded. It means that the stockpile of weapons and spare parts was considered large enough to support the US's expected burn rate of material. Supplying Ukraine in a peer conflict changed that calculus, requiring new production to keep parts supplies above a certain desired threshold. The M777 is proving to be....not that reliable in the harsh conditions of the Eastern Front.[1][2]
>Furthermore, just because Ukraine received X weapon, doesn’t mean they received the latest and greatest variant that’s in use — they might have very well received a previous generation of said weapon.
This is supposition on your part....and it's WRONG. That's my point. You're simply stating things that are factually incorrect. Ukraine received M777A2s[3], the most modern variant of the M777 in service with US forces.[4]
>Asking which weapon or system replaced them as is in service does not look like discussing in good faith simply because the systems might change or newer variants may be used.
>Do better.
It's not a question of "variants", it's not a question of whether systems "might change", and it's not an issue of grammar errors. You made a false statement, perhaps unknowingly. I asked you to clarify with specifics, perhaps you know some weapon system I'm not aware of (despite having a rough idea of the IOC fielding plan for Marine fires assets in my AO over the next several years), and you've now made 2 posts bereft of details or references to obfuscate the fact that your original post was completely wrong and baseless. All this does is lower HN's already-low signal-to-noise ratio on military subjects.
US Army and USMC towed Field Artillery batteries are equipped with M777A2, the same weapons platform and variant we sent to Ukraine. We are not "a generation ahead" of the equipment sent to Ukraine. Period.
What i do not get is the lack of understanding that contractsecurity goes with the western world order too. Investments worldwide are as safe as a owing a mc donalds in russia, in a multipolar autorian world. How a whole world is willing to risk their retirement funds and pensions like this, for peanuts..
Trump is merely another step in the bar being lowered. And make no mistake, it can go lower.
The Western acceptance of authoritarianism in exchange for a good deal is what got us here. It's not just the US; it's Europe too. Putin did what he did because he knew that Europe was willing to exchange the end of Russian subordination to the post-Cold War world order for cheap gas. Middle Eastern countries have seen their awful human rights records punished by the granting of a World Cup by FIFA and European tourism to Dubai. Both China and Russia were made Olympic hosts in the last 20 years. Russia hosted a World Cup in 2018, four years after the invasion of Crimea and ten years after its invasion of Georgia.
Well China's economy is currently tied up in a housing pyramid scheme that's gone burst.
Russia's economy is on such a war footing regardless of if it wins or losses in Ukraine, the economic shock of the end of the war will bankrupt the country. See Dutch disease.
And no one wants to host the Olympics, it's a huge money sink.
So it doesn't really pay, it's just bankrupts you. Even Trump's America is having massive stock sell offs and other countries dumping the dollar.
The EU member states have their own foreign policy and extensive veto rights within the federation. It is not so strange that the EU itself has been slow, if anything I think we have pulled together better than expected.
Individual member countries range from having done a lot fairly quickly to active sabotage. We have member countries like Hungary and Slovakia, who are firmly aligned with the Russian side, as if 1956 and 1968 and the entire iron-curtaint-thing never happened.
Fico in Slovakia is a hopefully crumbling anomaly- the previous governement (while a bit unstable) donated a lot of material, including a criticalzly needed S-300 battery and Mig-29 jets. And even with all the Ficos rambling, Slovakia is making good money selling artillery (both SPGs and ammo) to Ukraine.
Austria donated what amounts to a couple of helmets but no one is talking about that. Must be nice being surrounded by NATO countries and a wealthy world police state across the world you can free-ride.
Because they thought(incorrectly) that we can "tame" russian threat by having a really good economic relationship with them. Turns out, they don't care, Putin will raze his entire country to the ground and kill hundreds of thousands of his men just to say he tried to bring the Soviet Union back.
This is incorrect. EU still buys Russian gas, its just re-routed through friendlier (than Russia) countries like India or Azerbaijan, and it costs a lot more than it used to because of logistics and transit costs.
What is incorrect? EU buys a lot less russian gas than it used to - that is an undeniable fact. And how exactly is russian gas re-routed through India to EU? Have you looked at a map lately? There is nothing in any other country that can match the output that was being piped directly to the EU from Russia. The pipelines to India and Azerbaijan are a tiny fractions of what was going to EU even when running at 100% capacity.
Trump's a bully, but he's a bully that exists because the lowest common denominator keeps getting lower.
Russia wouldn't have thought it had the leverage to invade Ukraine if not for their control over European petroleum supplies, leverage the Europeans gave them of their own free will.
Markets do not solve everything. Trump is the ultimate expression of this so far, but he is not the first.
The energy policy of most European countries was clearly mismanaged. Depending on the country, bad decisions have been taken either due to incompetence, bribery, political pressure, and psyops.
Psyops doesn’t just work to incite… an equally powerful goal is to normalise. Like normalise how a country that has unlimited sun and wind elected to use oil and gas from Russia.
A different nuclear energy policy would have changed Europe’s fate. It will do so again…
I mean I'm real content to blame the environmentalist movement on this, which very obviously bifurcates into "pragmatists" and "anti-nuclear". The anti-nuclear people will pay lipservice to everything else, but it's abundantly clear that their top priority at all junctions was eliminating nuclear power regardless of consequences and they'd believe convenient lies to that goal ("the natural gas is just temporary. We'll definitely stop using Nordstream voluntarily...")
Nah the anti-nuclear power people are not environmentalists. Those people would know that nuclear waste is handled far better than any other waste from power production. Instead the anti-nuclear power people are the immense number of people who are scared to have nuclear power plants anywhere near them. It doesn't matter how safe the plants actually are, people think they are crazy dangerous compared to other ways that power is generated.
Going back on shutting down nuclear would cost more money and energy than building out sustainable energy - just see how well UKs or Frances most recent nuclear experiments went - tens of billions over budget and nothing to show for it after a decade
This isn't a credible reason to wed yourself to Russian gas and decommission the plants Germany already had running. Despite three years of bombing the nuclear plants in Ukraine have not been (properly) hit.
Terrorist attacks on nuclear power stations can be dealt with via the standard security services.
German aversion to a functional army and nuclear energy has had consequences for the country and the EU.
Why is parity the goal? The US is on a different continent, and also (theoretically) defending US allies in the Pacific, and middle east.
It's Europe's backyard. Europe should be contributing 5x what the US contributes. They can afford it. It's the richest (per-capita) continent on earth. They outproduce Russia 5-10x.
I have been a strong supporter of US support to Ukraine and I think this meeting was gross and unbecoming, but Europeans need to wake up and understand that this is a problem they can, and have to, solve, not just as a supporting player to the US.
"We did as much as the US" doesn't matter. Give enough support to solve the problem. You have the economy and can, if you make even minor commitment — 5% of GDP would vastly outproduce Russia, for a small cost to living standards. The alternative is giving up.
This debate is probably a communication strategy to fuel anger in the american public while distracting / confusing other partners. From the time I could watch TV I always saw USA spend intensely on military and foreign policy. I'm trying to find when the reversal occured, but it's probably during the previous campaign, as a trick to blame biden.
I have said this many times. I feel, as an American, many people are tired. WE have no insight into the vast sums of money that are being spent by the DOD and where it is going. I see debt climbing and I have to ask myself, do I want my country to spend money on other countries or maybe focus on cleaning up our own house first? I would rather America focus on putting its own house in order, wasted spending, corruption, cartels, China buying up land, and the erosion of our education system.
Many of us no longer feel the juice is worth the squeeze in supporting Europe. We have done enough over the last 100 years. Yes we have benefit some from their troubles, which they caused, but that doesn't mean we have to continue to support them.
One thing to note is that you are looking at this as a government cost, whereas it’s seen as a massive mechanism of hard and soft power, with immense economic and political benefits for the US, including being able to do whatever it wants wherever it wants. A significant amount of the wealth of the US depends on that soft/hard power dynamic. Break one, break the whole.
But I agree with you. The US spends too much on military and intelligence budgets and not enough to and for its citizens. And this has led to the misery of so many Americans. The land of the plenty has not much to give to the ones that need it most.
And on the other hand, the immense asymmetry of (non-nuclear) military power between the US and the rest of the world should ring alarm bells across every nation right now. Especially so in the EU, UK and Canada.
Why is this massive military budget and complex supported by sacrificing public services, healthcare, education, and social services, and through higher taxation of the relatively poorest? And why is it not supported through taxation of corporations and the richest of the super-rich?
And for me, the most important reason for why I found today so upsetting:
What is true dishonour if not to betray a friend in need?
Well I'd argue that there was no such thing as 'friend' in the mind of people hosting that event. It was clearly abusive mobster negotiation tactics, immoral power play and profit extraction.
One party greated the other cordially in a suit. One showed up to meet the President of the United States in leisure attire! One had made an agreement with Secretary of State and then reneged on it publicly. This same individual then decided to threaten the President of the United Sates. Who exactly was acting like a mobster?
There is nothing immoral about getting paid for services or products. If you don't like it go somewhere else. Why is it that everyone expects hand outs from America but never once ask what can they do for America? It is Ukraine who is exploiting the American people for free arms. Finally an America stood up to their ridiculous behavior, the petty dictator was kicked out of the White House.
>What is true dishonour if not to betray a friend in need?
Great Powers don't have friends. Nor do they have enemies. They only have eternal Interests. (paraphrasing a quote often attributed to Henry Kissinger)
As I was looking for a more exact source for this quote, I stumbled upon this interesting piece in Time Magazine....from 1955:
https://time.com/archive/6798908/no-friends-no-enemies-just-...IT is high time the United States quit throwing money and materials around the world like a drunken sailor and settled on a foreign policy clearly consonant with our national interests first and foremost. We pile deficit on deficit until we threaten ourselves with bankruptcy.
So you have some good points about soft power. Yet at this time as I look at Americas GDP Europe is playing less and less of a factor in it. So as I said the juice may no longer be worth the squeeze. Also what is the point of soft power in Europe when we are being over run by immigrants? America needs to look to itself first. We can't be a strong world power for much longer if the issues at the southern border continue. I know no one in the world cares about Americas problems, they tend to ignore them and view us as something to use or get something from. Yet we have not only a right but obligation to look to ourselves first.
Ukraine is not and has never been an friend or ally to America. We were one of many parties to an assurance that we wouldn't level them if they turned in their nukes. We have given them aide in their time of need. There was a deal in place for more aide and the President of Ukraine came in, in athletic gear mind you, and reneged on the agreement and started grandstanding and threatening the US President in the Oval Office! This was a HUGE mistake, he basically said to America I do not respect you and spit in our faces. I know many people do not see it that way around the world but if a world leader comes to ask for aid from the country they are completely dependent upon for their survival and their plan is threats and leisure attire how is that not disrespect?
I mean fair play for being bold and all. Yet that was unwise in the extreme.
You're repeating all their narrative. Zelenskyy wore the same clothes as he did in canada, Sweden, France and I would assume any other country. This is most probably a a bad faith argument developed by Trump's team.
I fully understand this sentiment. After all, combined more than $6tn (!) have been spent on the rather ill-advised engagements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. It's unfortunate that the US invested so much in these affairs that there is little capacity or willingness left now when it matters.
So help me understands Europe's reasoning for not keeping its spending commitments to NATO during peace time? We still met ours, still met all our obligations despite ongoing wars.
I agree now things really matter but why should America be on the hook for wartime sacrifices when Europe couldn't be bothered to do the easy part in peace time? No one ever answers this simple question. They all just down vote me which is fine but if there is a rebuttal to this let me know.
From my perspective most of Europe believed in the "end of history", i.e. a world where armed conflicts would no longer be relevant. They thought local wars were only instigated by "medieval barbarians" in remote geographic locations or by neocons and the military-industrial complex for the hope of increasing US influence (and profit). Many Europeans associated NATO with wars they did not fully support and were not at all convinced that the money there was well spent. One could argue that Europeans indeed overlooked the growing threat of another imperialist force and its military-industrial complex, Russia, and that at least after the invasion of Crimea in 2014 should have started taking NATO as their life insurance policy more seriously.
You got my upvote! If there's one good thing that comes out of Trump's position on Ukraine, it's Europe stepping up its own security and strength. This will be good for Europe and America in long run.
I watched the Trump Zelensky show today. I dunno about you, but I detected a possible calculated confrontation. I don't think Vance is a good actor. He took it to 11 too quickly.
These days the media demands wartime strategy be played out in real time detail. How is that beneficial for actual strategy? To counter this, Trump may be leaning into the media circus by playing some sort of ambiguous good cop bad cop card. Smacking Zalensky while buttering Putin's muffins and arguing against world leaders, might be what's needed to penetrate Putin's emotional bubble. A kind of Trumpian trojan horse. Fascinating stuff. I know many here wouldn't give Trump such tactical credit, but if he were short on tactics he wouldn't have won two presidential elections.
That's funny, I thought Zelensky was the one who came in calculating. He had already agreed to the "deal", but (a) insisted on not signing it remotely, but instead flying all the way to the US; (b) waited until he was on camera with Bush and Vance; (c) changed his tack and tried to get Trump and Vance to agree to more than what had been previously discussed, thus baiting them into confrontation; (d) hopped on a plane within 2 hours, when Trump had stated publicly "all he needs to do is come back and say 'I want peace'"; (e) headed straight to the UK where almost all the EU leaders were already waiting and had a photo op done.
It really looks like a carefully crafted narrative was planned and carried out to intentionally smear the current US administration.
Everything up to your last bit about smearing the US is not wrong. As you said, Zalensky insisted on flying in to make the deal, then stepped over the line relative to the original deal they were meant to be doing.
I don't think there's any smearing attempt on Zalesky's part though. Contrary to Vance and Trump's assertion, Zalensky has thanked the US a lot of times. He wouldn't be wanting to smear the US. Trump did begin the meeting diplomatically, it was going fine, he even complemented Zalensky's outfit. Then JD opened his mouth!
It's hard to know for sure what's going on, which may be the point. The theatrics of argy-bargy is like a smokescreen.
You are in luck! You will get more Chinese Gold Citizens buying up collapsing stock and any savings will be plowed right back into tax cuts. (For those with billions of course, not you.)
What we got, and get, out of supporting Western Europe at the end of WWII was that otherwise, the entire continent would have been run by the Soviet Union. Not just that, we got a valuable trading partner, and our rebuilding put an end to hundreds of years of European wars.
Not that you might care about the moral aspect of it, but we also finished Nazi Germany and prevented that horror from taking over the world.
What we got out of expanding the alliance to Eastern Europe was a further bulwark against Russia, which has always been an expansionist totalitarian empire that enslaves or kills anyone who disagrees with the dictator. It's no different now than it was under the czars.
Europe is basically America's backyard now, and Russia wants it. Giving up your backyard because your violent neighbor threatens you for it, doesn't make you strong, it makes you weak.
Not really sure I care if the neighbors across the water think we look weak just because we don’t want to defend them because they don’t want to be strong.
And bear in mind that doesn’t mean that we are weak…
And the us has called for that and the sabotaged that with policies again and again. The military industrial complex doesn't want a thriving europe at arms. And the Russians supported every longterm self defeating movement. And they won, first in europe, then in the us, finally in this thread .
> Not that you might care about the moral aspect of it, but we also finished Nazi Germany and prevented that horror from taking over the world.
There's a lot of research on how the Allies helped move many Nazi war criminals to safe havens in other countries, help the remaining Nazis into positions in government and business in West Germany, used the remaining Nazis as intelligence networks, helped them organize into wild-eyed anti-Communist cells all over the world, and of course absorbed several Nazi scientists into research institutions in the US.
In a moment of madness Churchill put out a plan to hire the Wehrmacht after their defeat to go invade the real enemy, the Soviet Union.
I am aware of the long history we have with Europe and how it came to be. Yet I am in the present and I no longer care what we look like to the rest of the world. I see problems at home and these are far more concerning to me then Russia taking over Europe. China is a much bigger enemy of America's in the Pacific. We should be focusing our defense spending there. Let Europe stand for Europe.
No matter what happens America will be blamed and shamed, we didn't spend enough, we didn't xxxx enough, if only America had done yyyy zzzz wouldn't have happened, and on and on. So I am all for putting Americas interests first.
Also I find your last sentence to be the antithesis of what I am talking about. Why does America look weak? Wouldn't Europe look much weaker??? It feels like gaslighting, like someone will call you names so you need to come and die for us! It gets old.
Regarding the ukraine war I don't remember any tangible criticism regarding the US. That would be way too hypocritical considering Europe aid has been too slow. At least nobody in my circle was asking more of the US. I really think you're being played. Also so far market are down, prices are up. Was it the best administration to deal with problems ?
I understand the parent last sentence differently. Considering America's might, giving in to a mediocre aggressor seems weak. It's not that you have to do it, but it was the previous foreign policy / aura of the USA. Leader of the free world IIRC. Now you're free to change course. But it would be wise to operate smoothly.
This weakens the US against China. Europeans have no stake in a big Pacific conflict and will be much less interested to back US war mongering now. It’s short sighted for us to forego alliances that were helping us build a world order and a trading bloc that isolated China.
Like I said bigger problems at home. That Southern border is a mess and needs to be addressed. That is America's largest security issue as it is how anyone will get into America. Well that and Canada, but they are less violent thus far then what is coming from the south.
I'm pretty sure America doesn't have to give up its world power just to deal with its southern border. If it does, it's going to be a lot weaker on both.
Define "giving up world power." Because last I checked, being a world power means taking care of your own nation first, ensuring its security, economy, and people are strong. If America can’t even secure its own borders, prevent foreign influence on its soil, or manage its own spending, then what exactly are we protecting?
Prioritizing America isn’t weakness it’s a strength. No empire in history lasted long by neglecting its homeland while overextending abroad.
Ukraine isn’t America’s priority or ally, our borders, economy, and strategic position in the Pacific are. Europe is more than capable of handling its own security, and if they aren’t willing to, that’s on them not us.
America looks weak because it has just lost the cold war. All the effort spent since 1945 to counter authoritarian superpowers have been thrown in the bin. Instead it turned into one itself. It is pathetic.
Pathetic is to have an authoritarian superpower on the same continent as you for 80 years and still opting to rely on a superpower an ocean away to be the primary defender of your interests.
Some of the countries in Europe to take a cue from Finland and not outsource its defense.
Sorry, I think my sentence was not very clear there.
Finland always seemed to be very sensible when it came to its country’s security. I realize “Finlandization” may have had a negative context but during that time Finland made sure it was prepared as militarily as possible if its political “non-alignment” approach failed. It didn’t assume anything.
My point was their approach to their security vs outsourcing defense was a more pragmatic approach considering where we have ended up in 2025 and one that other countries in Europe should have probably followed. If and when your “strong” partner moves away from your interests, you still need internal strength. To a degree Europe (save for a few countries) never expected their strong partner to get wishy-washy on their interests.
The cold war ended when the USSR ceased to exist. Russia of today looks much more similar to Europe of the 70's and 80's than it does to the USSR. It also looks weird that the "allies" spend so much money with Russia but worry about them so.
The USSR didn’t "come back"—it collapsed, shattered, and never recovered. What remains is a weakened, demographically dying, economically struggling Russia.
Territory lost by the USSR/Russia since the Cold War began:
The entire Soviet Union dissolved—Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are all gone.
The entire Warsaw Pact flipped to NATO—Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. Germany, the biggest Cold War prize, reunited under the West.
Territory lost by the U.S. and its allies? Zero.
Russia isn’t a rising empire—it’s a wounded animal lashing out, terrified of its own irrelevance. They’re afraid, backed into a corner, and desperately trying to hold onto power. They don’t dictate world affairs.
And as for negotiating with Russia? The U.S. has been doing that for 80 years—and it never made us weak before. Why should it now?
America dictates terms not Russia, and certainly not Europe. If Europe wants to keep playing games, let them but America chooses when, where, and how we engage.
America is powerful because it operates as a global empire. Not by holding land, but by maintaining alliances. Everything you think is wrong at home right now would be infinitely worse if we didn't control global trade, force the rest of the world to buy our debt, and use soft/hard power to shut down every other actor from the Chinese Communist Party to ISIS - over there, not over here.
A lot of people in America, on both left and right, loathe the fact that we are this gargantuan empire. But the reality is, once you're at the top of the food chain, there is no easy exit. If America stopped being the world's only superpower, it would become a third world country immediately. You point out that America will get blamed for X,Y and Z. Of course. It already does. The only reason you don't experience the immediate consequences of that is that America (until today) held a lot of global sway. You can't just opt out of your alliances and still expect to have the preferential treatment you have, or the power you had.
We live in a republic that functions as a global empire. If we weren't that global empire, we would be Argentina or Brazil. You want to give up generations of investment in American supremacy for... what, exactly? Problems at home will not get better if America withdraws from the world. They will get much worse, because the only thing keeping this country from being a disaster is the fact that it is central to the world order.
And the only people who want it to not be central to the world order, who want to destroy the functions of government and weaken us on the world stage, are the autocrats who find America to be a beacon that they wish their populations didn't have to look at.
America is not perfect and you can be Bernie or Tucker or Trump and argue that we have no business doing it, but it's a lot better for you, me, and the rest of the free world that America is in charge of maintaining order than to have no one in charge of that.
So my statement was not that Europe looks weak, but that Europe is already America's plaything. Only a traitor would hand it over to the enemy.
Fair enough. But doing so 3 years into a war with a now half dead Russia is a different matter. It was the US and UK that took a leadership role in the beginning of the conflict ("for as long as it takes.."). It must be pretty convenient to have a big ocean between yourself and the consequences of your actions.
He believes that Russia's economy is not doing wonderfully, but not nearly as bad as the Western press says it is, and that whoever runs Russia is probably willing to put up with some pain a lot longer than Ukrainians can put up with no power no water no food, etc.
I dont think pain is the possible problem, total collapse is. Russia does everything to hide any pain and problems. Banks are forced to accept loans from soldiers and military adjacent companies while being prohibited from calling them in. The capital controls. The private sector is mostly gone, there is no local car manufacturing any more. 21% interest rates with an official 10% inflation. The increasing lack of official economic data being released...
Hard to tell, and I am not convinced if even the Kremlin has a good overview. In the end it does not matter that much. If Russia is really that robust then they wont stop attacking and if they are bluffing then Ukraine should not stop defending itself.
Most western countries are indebted way above the normal limit. I'm only a newb, but afaik, the global monetary system was wired this way. And US was said, being the currency reserve of the world, to have no problem with large debt. In reality, what I heard is that US inflation gets passed onto the world through dollar dominance. (not an unusual move for Trump to invert the logic to gain political point painting himself as the savior).
You never considered it was just a story to justify shaking "allies" ? I don't know what the truth is, but it smells like it.
And so far there's no announcement about investing in education or health, it seems quite the opposite, isn't it ?
I sincerely don't understand how there can be any trust invested in Trump and his speeches. So far all he's done is creating meme coins and reviving the ruble.
It takes time to turn a big ship. Why would I be excited to see more spending into government agencies until I am sure of how they are operating and what they are spending money on. Once things are cleaned up then you can start spending money as needed to get the results you want. It feels everyone is near jerk like, you actions didn't improve everything immediately so they were wrong. The reality of all of this will play out over the next few years.
But cleaning can't be done Musk's way. The whole system is kinda stable because everything is linked together. To start from scratch without anything in the meantime is just suicide.
It's like if a scientist what not giving food to an animal for a month to test if really food is needed. Well, he will conclude that food was needed, but now the animal is dead.
If this was really about cleaning up government, or balancing the budget then it wouldn't have started with small potatoes. You would immediately cut the low hanging fruit. Say, oil industry subsidies. That would get you something like 13 billion a year in savings.
All the destruction sown by DOGE (outside of USAID) represents (favorably) 0.2% of the US budget. Including USAID it's closer to 1.3% of the US budget.
At the same time Republicans are proposing reducing revenue by 4500 billion dollars.
Again these things take time. I can see how people don't like the method but I will wait to judge it by the results. Please bear in mind that Clinton fired 377,000 federal workers in the 90's. Things didn't come crashing down.
We need more oversight and less people imho. I am actually hopeful that they will have the ability to push through better software systems to track initiatives and spending. It isn't the number of employees it is where was all the money going, it was/is the lack of insight/transparency which has eroded my confidence in the federal government.
My true wish is they have the guts to pass legislation outlawing campaign contributions. It isn't just parts of the house that need a thorough purging to be honest.
Counter point Bill Clinton fired 377,000 Federal workers in the 90's and it turned out ok. Well aside from the Glass–Steagall legislation but that was legislation, still hurts though.
Not random shotgun immediate firings. Your weather forecasts are about to become less accurate because of some of these firings and planned improvements in them are not going to happen:
This is chesterson’s fence playing out in real life with the major superpower of the world and it has real consequences for people. It should not be the insane fiasco that’s happening right now with an unelected foreign citizen admitting in a cabinet meeting that they accidentally stopped Ebola vaccine financing. If you seriously think this is going to turn out well after we saw trump’s first term I just don’t have anything to help you.the funniest shit is that all of this upheaval is literally < 1% of the actual budget and it’s going to be touted as billions in savings by musk the grifter in chief. I don’t need time to see that this is a dumpster fire.
That is what we are trying to find out! We have no idea how much wasn't wasted so we are going looking. We can't get clear answers on how many land transactions ultimately go back to the CCP, so we are trying to find out! This is about increasing transparency. We may find out hey it is all amazing and we are super efficient with your money, that would make us happy.
> I see debt climbing and I have to ask myself, do I want my country to spend money on other countries or maybe focus on cleaning up our own house first? I would rather America focus on putting its own house in order, wasted spending, corruption, cartels, China buying up land, and the erosion of our education system.
Not helping Ukraine won’t solve any of that, though. Regardless of the US policy regarding Europe, I am willing to bet that military spending will keep ballooning now that the broligarchs are in power and fighting to redirect public spending to their pockets. Ultimately, I understand your sentiment, but this course of action will not lead to what you hope. If anything, everything will get worse because the people in power have no interest in fixing the issues you mentioned.
>I am willing to bet that military spending will keep ballooning now that the broligarchs are in power and fighting to redirect public spending to their pockets.
Why would you think that military spending would go up, given the tasks the executive has currently issued, and diplomatic direction indicated vis-a-vis other world military powers:
Because there is too much money to be made. Thiel et al. stand to win too much to let it pass. It’s like with SpaceX: in theory Musk is all for smaller government, in practice he wants the government to serve him.
Representatives and senators get a lot of political credit for the military-industrial complex, as well.
A great nation can do two things at once. The problem is the unreformable oligarchy turning into a sour gilded age zhe moment the Soviets falteted. Cant have a democracy with what are nobleman at heart at the helm.
One of the things that was highly propagandized was the "deep state" relationship with big oil and the whole conspiracy theories of billionaires influencing policy and pushing for war to get access to oil.
I get that people got into this narrative.
What I don't get is that you're now supporting a new groups of tech billionaires influencing policy to get access to rare earth, to the point of threatening to annex USA allies like Canada, and Greenland, and doing deals with Russia to capitulate Ukraine.
Yet Americans seem to be cozy with this idea, and support it, when in reality it's the same. In fact, it's worse because it's not even a conspiracy theory, it's out in the open.
Imagine if Biden or Obama had the Black Rock folks behind them when they took the presidency, it would drive some folks up the wall. The same folks don't mind having the Twitter Guy, Bezos, Zuckerberg... Can you help me understand why?
The reason the US is the global hegemon of the western world was because they won the cold war against USSR. Being the leading member of NATO largely contributed to that, and ensured US dominance in geopolitics and trade.
With Trump now in office, the US seems to be willingly breaking, or at the very least withdrawing from, the NATO alliance. With that they give up their position as hegemon, and sacrifice their influence on Europe.
To me, it seems like Russia is now winning the cold war, 35 years after it "ended".
If you compare to how things began in Cold War, it’s far from a win for Russia no matter how much it may take from Ukraine.
SU lost, here we feel some ripple or aftershock. US enjoyed years of prosperity, its people lived in much higher living standards for a long time.
What’s a shame for the US is the innovators dilemma that it was not able to improve its system after the pressure of competition was gone, and now inequality brought you Trump II.
Perhaps saying "Russia made the US lose the cold war" would be more accurate than saying "Russia won".
From a lost position, Russia managed to make the US resign from the game.
Unfortunately, EU is not an entity with single and unified view on things. In the case of Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a surprisingly strong opposition to related policies in Brussels amongst the people in quite a few member states. In fact, many support Putin and now his best buddy Trump - with plain stupid belief that Putin/Trump wants peace and Zelensky wants to continue war. In short, EU (+ UK, Norway, maybe Switzerland) is simply not as unified against Putin as it may appear in the Brussels press conferences. Putting more effort (in money, materials, soldiers even) in this conflict will be hard to pill to swallow for large percentage of citizens and by extension politicians. What I see happening in the near future is more money flowing into militaries of the member states, which is a sad necessity by having Putin as neighbor. But I'm skeptical of EU countries becoming much more involved in the Ukraine conflict.
Britain, Germany, and France alone have the military production and economy to win the war. Doesn't matter if Hungary or Ireland or whoever back out of the consortium.
These three countries have been a bit unstable politically during the last couple of years. This did not help. At least they are going in the same direction and not shooting each other’s foot.
Except that since "war effort" is measured in $ the devil is in the details.
It's very simple to claim "we have given the most in military aid, in $" but much harder to look into it.
Then you find out that everything is priced insanely high, bullets and artillery that is identical to European (due to nato standards) can cost dozens of times more.
Then you find out that billions have been spent in private "consultancies" (I guess US military and navies have no clue how to organize logistical transports, even though we're talking about the biggest naval power on the planet).
Then you find out that Ukraine offered to come pick the weapons itself with their own ships to make it faster and save US taxpayers money and US said nope, we got people to feed with those contracts.
This is what people don't get. US military spending IS a huge part of the economy. It's jobs. It's not like all the money goes up in smoke. Some of it does, in the form of munitions, but someone has to make those too and the US pays for them.
US sent Ukraine 31 Abrams tanks so far. This is for the largest land war in Europe since WW2. Now, can we compare this to the amount of military assistance by the US to USSR during WW2? The US could have helped Ukraine win the war, but chose not to.
That's not true. As of 2024-12-31, the US had provided 64bn EUR of military aid to Ukraine, and Europe had provided 62bn. The US had pledged further 66bn and Europe 100bn. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073733
I have never seen a number similar to that quoted anywhere before. Can you name a source?
The BBC:s most recent rundown[1] has the strictly military support from the US accounting for a bit more than half of the total of the top-ten contributors (of which it is number one, of course).
When comparing dollar values for military equipment with other types of support, we should keep in mind that they are inflated. A lot of the equipment (ammunition, vehicles etc) are old things that were due to be rotated out of the stockpiles anyway. This is true for many (perhaps all) donor countries.
Example: GMLRS rockets have a shelf-life of 10-15 years and their disposal costs at end-of-life is not zero. Sending them off to Ukraine as they approach their best-before date does not incur much real cost on the donor, but the gift can be labeled as "253 gazillion dollars worth of ammunition." The value description is sort of true, as they will be used in their full capacity by Ukraine, but it might even save money for the donor who is the off the hook for disposal and was going to replace them anyway.
This is correct. Proof of this can be found in 37 places on government websites (I actually checked, took me three hours). If you add these up its obvious that the EU spent a lot more that the USA.
If you consider what EU countries pay besides arms and aid, for example on housing the millions of refugees from Ulraine or buying stockpiles of arms to be used on behalf of Ukraine in the future the numbers are much higher, between twice and triple the US budget. Even the sanctions against Russia and their weapon suppliers China, India, North Korea and Iran add to the costs of this Russian conflict. Also consider the EU pledges to rebuild Ukraine should be counted.
Today I estimate 1,234 trillion Euro's, part of which was spent as dollars, some as loans with the estimated 300 million of confiscated Russian bank accounts and assests from Russian oligarchs as collateral.
To suggest the EU/Europe has done anything close to the bare minimum for Ukraine is absurd and Europeans who think otherwise are as delusional on this as the long term usefulness of the actual EU
