Where was this three years ago? Europe wants to make sure every last Ukrainian man is thrown into the meat grinder.
Our leaders have been too complacent, for what I think is a simple reason: It's easier to depend on the Americans so your own national budget doesn't take a hit and cause you to lose the next election.
Now that we've seen that the US is an unreliable ally and (rightfully) wants to reduce its' own military aid spending, they're hopefully seeing the bigger picture.
But why did Europe wait for America to bail before suddenly pulling a trillion dollars out of their pocket?
If Ukraine was supposed to win Europe should have thought about ponying up that cash a bit sooner.
Because they didn't need to. As long as the United States was spending money on their truly vast military and was using that military capacity to defend Ukraine there was no requirement for any other the country do anything.
Now that the US has decided to become a pawn of Russia, it has become important.
They did need to. Ukraine is losing the war bigtime. They needed more weapons at the start before Russia ramped up production.
If Europe sent the weapons at the start they could have broken the stalemate. Filling the American deficit does nothing to help Ukraine win.
Because as soon as you propose spending billions of dollars on defending another country, people will generally say "but I don't wanna pay more taxes or lose out on any comforts", which causes you to lose your position of power in case of a democracy. It all comes down to selfishness in the end.
yeah, that would have been an even better idea, 3 years ago.
Day 1 of the invasion, cut literally all economic ties with Russia and put 3% GDP into defense across the EU.
We (EU) should have unleashed our defense industry 3 years ago. Hopefully, the US MIC received the message, their profits are going to sink unless the orange turd starts to provide military aid to fucking Russia.
I am an American and I am willing to endure the pain caused by the rest of the world telling our orange turd to fuck off. Please do it. Please make it so incredibly painful that even those who love Orange Turd will start to smell it and reject it. Make it sooo sooo bitter!
MAGA cultists will gladly eat up all the shit that’s served to them, and even gleefully ask for more of they think there’s even a passing chance that a Dem/liberal/leftie would smell their breath.
The US willing descent towards Gilead has been horrific to watch, as an outsider.
The sooner the rest of the civilised world decouples from that insanity, and hopefully bands together around the common ideals that the US used to (at least pretend to) represent - the better.
The sooner the rest of the civilised world decouples from that insanity, and hopefully bands together around the common ideals that the US used to (at least pretend to) represent - the better.
The problem is that I feel the rest of the civilized world is going down the same path, and is just several big steps behind...
That well may be the case, all we can do is hope that the rest of the world can bulwark against the rise of Fascism long enough to watch it fail in the US - at which point, it should hopefully diminish its allure.
That's true. Much like Brexit in the UK stopped other countries' appetite for their own brexits.
Trump could literally start world war 3 and his supporters would still back him.
Hey I'm American and I'm all for EU paying for the war in perpetuity and for our mic sinking all the way to the bottom on Mariana trench.
In a way, it's what I was hoping would happen. The US backs off its own defense spending and stops acting like the world police force. The flip side of that is that Europe and the rest of the world picks up their own defense.
What I had in mind as an end game is that the US would be at a table of equals. That's not at all what this is.
What the realistically means is Europe will be starting it's nuclear weapon programs in earnest again. France and the UK have a handful, but it'll need a lot more to be an actual deterrent for Russia.
Russia only cares about Moscow and st Petersburg. Britain and France have more than enough to turn those two cities into glowing glass craters.
Well, there are some in the EU who are hoping to bargain with Trump so that we reduce our import taxes on American cars (US has them at 2.5%, we have them at 10%, so we've been doing exactly what Trump is trying to do, at a smaller scale), buy more weaponry from them and as the US ramps up its' gas production, we could buy more of that from them as well - if Trump in return does not put 25% tariffs on everything made in the EU.
It's not a bad deal for either side, really, though it sorta defers the whole making more of our own weaponry part of trying to be more independent of the US. And I'm sure both the automakers and MIC would do what's in their power to persuade Trump to take it.
Please factor in Putin. The EU is under a two prong attack from the USA and Russia and any reasonable or fair deals will be ignored. When you examine the US auto manufacturers, they have nothing to offer for the majority of consumers in the EU. We could apply 0% tariffs to US manufactured automobiles and they would end up sitting at the dealerships.
Realistically, the only actual solution to this problem in any long term would probably involve stationing nukes, which nobody really wants to do. A combination of not wanting to risk pissing off putin, because everyone thinks that he's an insane trump-level idiot that will engage in mutual self-destruction over ukraine, combined with the post-soviet destruction and hollowing out of the ukranian economy into private enterprise, an economy which wasn't exactly doing hot before. So it's pretty clear that most everyone doesn't actually give a fuck about ukraine or the ukranian people at all. Everyone's just gonna use this as an opportunity, as with every conflict, to pawn off old military hardware, bury the receiving country in a huge amount of IMF bank loan debt, and scale up their own domestic military production while paying off a bunch of private contractors which are, hmm, suspiciously close to the levers of power inside the real government. Weird how that happens. What a noble sacrifice.
I dunno, the wheels turn.
This is great but IMHO they really need to start building industrial capacity to produce millitary stuff as well. Money's no use when nobody wants to sell you weapons for it...
Errrm, 5 of the worlds largest exporters are European
Zut alors! Vastly outclassed by France, Scheiße!
Oh, thanks for the heads up. That's good to know.
Some of the most iconic and renowned weapons of the 20th and 21st centuries were made by European countries. HK is a German company for example.
This is the best thing about a Donald Trump presidency: sometimes good things happen by accident, and it's definitely a good thing for the EU to be depending less on the US.
Same thing that happened with Canada. This man is so stupid it's coming full circle
Thank you, Europe. God, let this be what Ukraine needs.
This is also what Europe needs. Europe needs to seriously increase their domestic military manufacturing capabilities now that the US has proven they can't be trusted.
If this money is invested in European military industries then they will need to considerably ramp up their production and overall it will strengthen European military power.
Finally Ukraine is getting the help they need! Kick out Russia once and for all!
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