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.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crew8y7pwd5o