After WW2 the US subsidized Europe's defense because we had the world's strongest economy and European countries were decimated. We did it in order to give them a chance to rebuild. Unfortunately, we never required the Europeans to assume their fair share of the burden now that they've recovered.
With France calling to establish a EU armed force separate and apart from NATO in order for Europe to distance itself from the US, maybe it's time to let them have their way.
The US has already committed around $175 billion to Ukraine. Apparently, it's not enough. The fact is, Ukraine is a European problem. Since Ukraine and the Europeans don't like our solutions maybe it's time for them to step up and solve the problem themselves.
An EU armed force would be a silly idea, because the EU is governed by unanimity on a lot of issues so it would just get bogged down and be an exercise in futility. Also quite a few non-EU countries, such as UK, Norway, Turkey, Japan, Canada might want to join it.
The fact that we have given Ukraine $175 billion in war funding and their gdp is around the same shows there is a problem with corruption and lack of respect by their leaders on what we as Americans have sacrificed for their country. Europe is lucky we are their big brother and they are just spoiled trust fund babies that haven’t had to fend for themselves.
If Europe wants to continue to fight and start WW3, let them be decimated.
On top of that insult, they added the injury of creating untold trillions of dollars of US dollar denominated derivative debt, the cash from which they've used to subvert and destroy the USA via bribes, PYSOPs, and financial vandalism.
The UK and Europe are not our allies. They are defacto enemies.
The drama in the news you see is the Trump regime destroying them, and reshuffling the deck of the global order.
So, in the pie graph showing funding shortfalls, why the weird spelling for Turkey, but nobody else? I mean, you didn't list Germany as "Deutschland"...
I'm Irish and live in Ireland, and for years prior to the invasion of Ukraine I've been complaining about smug arrogant Europeans scoffing about how much of its budget the US allocates to defense and military spending, as opposed to us caring intellectual Europeans who spend a tiny fraction on defense and allocate the rest to rainbows and smiles. When literally the only reason Putin hasn't run roughshod over Europe is because of NATO and because of the US supplying military aid to buffer regions like Ukraine.
Or as Orwell said about pacifists: "Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."
This is a decent analysis. I did not know how much of the deficit was due to Germany, Spain etc.
Caveat: posting this as a European with a dual connection to the UK and one of the dark blue countries "pulling their weight", where some people this morning started to wonder whether, in the light of Trump being perceived as actively pro Putin, American troops on the ground deployed there to protect the eastern flank of NATO could be potentially given orders to protect Russian tanks rolling west instead. This was not a dominant mood, but more than one voice like this. Leaving aside EE paranoia (admittedly rooted in much history).
In the so called grander scheme of things though. Do you really think that there are only two camps? The "it's neither our interest or our moral duty" (let's call them isolationists) and the "it's our moral duty" (let's call them "idealists")? Isn't there a "realist" camp that believes that it's in the interest of the US to keep Russian territorial/imperial ambition in check? Sure, Zelensky is strictly speaking wrong in claiming that if Ukraine falls to Putin in one way or another, the US will feel it over the ocean. But the idea that Ukraine is the end of this is.... kinda optimistic to the extreme? And once Putin gets a bit of rest and a chance to recover, what's next? Moldova, Baltics, Poland? Yes he's obsessed with Ukraine in ideological ways that he's not obsessed with those other places. But we're still talking about someone who wants to recreate a greater Russia on the ruins of the old Soviet Union AND Warsaw Pact countries. So, who owns Ukraine is probably not of your concern, true. But war rumblings in Europe and increasingly confident Putin feeling he's been given free board to play his war games there, probably significantly more so. Surely there are many people in the US who see this -- as I said, leaving all idealistic concerns aside.
American policy for 80 years was was that it was in their rational interest to keep Russia contained and in check. Had this interest suddenly changed?
Trump is not pro Putin and never has been, that's a US domestic contrivance by his enemies for his unwillingness to be mindlessly anti-Russia. Trump is a pro-US domestic populist representing a proletariat who has no vested interest in European security, and he's acting like it.
I think there is definitely a camp who wants to be realist, but I don't think a forever-war is easily sellable to realists.
Moldova, the Baltics, and Poland are all now NATO, and all have Article 4 to lean on, and Ukraine was Putin's bright-line hardon. And policy experts here knew Ukraine was a bright line for decades.
To your last point, Ukraine was part of Russia before the US existed.
Poland, Romania, the Baltics, and possibly Finland are the NATO members who might have to worry about Russia; the others, not so much.
Part of the issue for the US is that the cheap gear is mostly gone. Reserve equipment counting down until it would be scrapped, missiles due for expensive overhauls, and stuff we just don't use anymore is relatively cheap. (The math valuing the amount of military aid is an example of why the Pentagon can't pass an audit.) Actual new production costs a lot more.
A lot of the equipment used by both Russia and Ukraine is old Soviet stuff -- such as the BMP-1 IFV or the MT-LB/MT-LBu which is often used as an APC. While not the latest kit, these are still very useful, e.g. for supplying/rotating troops at the front.
In general, it makes a lot of sense for armed forces to store old equipment (this is something the UK is very bad at -- e.g. we had 900 Chieftain and 400 Challenger I tanks that could've been put in long term storage to reactivate in an emergency).
> American policy for 80 years was was that it was in their rational interest to keep Russia contained and in check. Had this interest suddenly changed?
That interest changed radically in 1991.
Granted, our actual *policy* did not. But our interests surely did. That, to me, is the point where the USA should have started weaning Europe off the tit, hard. And quite possibly should have done for Russia, the rest of the former USSR, and the Warsaw Pact countries what we did for Germany and Japan after we defeated *them* militarily, even if it was a vastly different sort of war.
> But we're still talking about someone who wants to recreate a greater Russia on the ruins of the old Soviet Union AND Warsaw Pact countries.
I have seen this claim a number of times. Do you have sources for this you could share which make the case in a calm, rational manner? I haven't seen any evidence of Russia meddling in the affairs of their neighbors that wasn't first prompted by US meddling in the affairs of Russia's neighbors. Mostly aimed at continuing this prolonged hostility towards Russia.
We certainly weren't their *allies*, but we had pretty decent relations with pre-Soviet Russia. We *really* should have continued *that*, rather than the Soviet Era relations.
The argument of “he’ll take more!” Is always so silly, because the answer to the question is in the question, he can’t take Poland and other eastern countries because they’re apart of NATO and would then give the other members(US included) justified reason to go hot.
“But trump hates NATO”, he hates NATO countries who don’t do their 2%, which Poland does. Poland has always been Pro US, they’re always ready to buy our newest weapons and gadgets, so that this doesn’t occur.
This is like saying “China takes Vietnam, so they’ll take Japan next!” We have bases and actual alliances with Poland/Japan, Ukraine/Vietnam are meant to be nuisances to their respective countries, they’re not meant to be actual allies, just the hanging rook that Russia/China take but puts them in check. A hot war for Russia/China, and proxy war where the US gathers intel, destabilizes areas next to enemy countries, and we lose no men.
The “realist” take is more like a “head in the sand” take, because it ignores all the planning and buildup the US has done in those countries for decades. It’s armchair generals that think all of this just suddenly occurred 3 years ago(at the youngest) or 10(at the oldest), not knowing this stuff has been on the back burner for decades. I’m sure their will be some “random” war in the southern Asia or SEA in 5ish years. And no, not Taiwan.
The “realist” perspective is “hey, glad to hear you want to cut off that wart, but I have an actual tumor you should cut off” but no one, Democrat or Republican, besides Massie, would EVER think of cutting aid to that “ally”.
The mature thing to do would be issue an ultimatum with clear conditions and an achievable deadline. We haven't had a president who can do that this century. Lacking that, we're left with motivating other through fear of chaos.
> Only the UK, Poland, Greece, and Estonia are pulling their relative weight
Looking at the UK, while it does spend a lot of defence, it does not get good value for money. E.g. over the last 25 years it has spend almost trice on defence as South Korea has, yet the Korean army is about 10-20 times bigger, in terms of number of tanks, artillery pieces, APC, soldiers, etc.
I did a comparison back in 2021 of the British army with Finland, Greece and Singapore, and concluded that UK could have much bigger forces *on the same budget*. But instead UK MoD seems to want a small number of expensive, gold-plated exquisitely hand-crafted pieces of kit. see: https://pontifex.substack.com/p/scottish-defence-policy-ii-nation
"You're a Putin stooge!!!!" -libs, probably, not realizing how NATO arming up is the last thing Putin wants
Seriously while I believe Ukraine is in the right and I support the general idea of helping them, it concerns me how many hardcore Ukraine boosters react with indignation to the idea that we should define a specific end goal and consider how our aid & other actions will get us to it. Instead it's vague platitudes about "victory," "it's in our vital interest," "whatever it takes," etc. The fact that they mostly focus their outrage on Trump and half of America rather than on the Euros as you say is another indication that they're not thinking things through.
What concerns me is most Ukraine supporters didn't give a single solitary shit about Crimea and wouldn't know Maidan if it hit them in the head with a bat. Most Ukraine supporters, in my view, needed an issue to latch onto as a virtue signal after their vaccine mandate issue fell apart. The Blue Egregore needed fuel and it latched onto a war that largely doesn't concern us, and probably got a lot of people killed in the process.
> Most Ukraine supporters, in my view, needed an issue to latch onto as a virtue signal after their vaccine mandate issue fell apart.
That's *certainly* not true of me, or of anyone else who's a serious geopolitical analyst (though TBH most people who talk politics on the net aren't serious people). I've been writing about how Putin needs to be stopped since before the full-scale invasion, e.g. https://pontifex.substack.com/p/the-skripal-poisoning-a-case-study
Actually it'd probably be fairly easy for the USA and Europe to end the war on broadly favourable terms, but it requires that Putin be treated firmly (otherwise he has no incentive to end the war). i wrote about this here: https://pontifex.substack.com/p/will-trump-end-the-russia-ukraine
"If you don’t know who Victoria Nuland is, or what she was doing in Ukraine in 2014, then you have no idea what’s going on.
The Deep State started this war. It was the Obama CIA/State Dept that funded Nazi militant groups to start a civil war in Ukraine, and initiated regime change to a CIA/State Dept puppet, Yatseniuk.
This was all revealed in the leaked phone call between State Dept diplomats and Deep State agents, Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt.
After the Maidan coup in February 2014, the US CIA/State Dept owned Ukraine via proxy, and the CIA began using Ukraine as a giant offshore playground for criminal racketeering and money laundering. Ukraine became one giant CIA base, directly on Russia’s border.
Then the US/NATO began building up Ukraine’s army for the sole purpose of one day fighting Russia. The US/NATO began supplying Ukraine with weapons, equipment, missiles, training, intelligence, etc.
Covert elements within the US government, along with their European partners in NATO, used espionage to overthrow and take control of the nation of Ukraine, then built a massive standing army on Russia’s border, then tried to bring Ukraine into NATO, and thus start WW3.
If you are still buying the official MSM narrative about this conflict, you should not be engaged in conversations.
Everything the MSM told you about Ukraine/Russia has been a lie, and in many cases, the inverse of the truth.
I personally think that Maidan was probably pushed by US soft power and probably organic as well, so some of both. Evidence of one does not preclude the other. That said, if we never pushed the soft power there we'd have far fewer dead people.
I don’t understand the need to create conspiracy theories for why ex-Warsaw Pact populations would want to more closely align themselves with Western Europe. Look at GDP. Look at corruption indexes. Look at relative constitutional freedoms. Is there any metric whatsoever one could point to to support an argument of preferring to be in the Russian sphere of influence as opposed to Western Europe’s?
A conspiracy theory is not necessary to explain Maidan, but lack of necessity for a conspiracy theory does not mean there wasn't a conspiracy. whynotboth.gif
Well, next step down this rabbit hole is sussing out the difference between application of soft power (which absolutely happened, in some capacity) and initiation of a conspiracy. I see a pretty big difference between those two ideas but I get the feeling some folks don’t see that distinction. Was French support for the American colonists a “conspiracy?” I guess I’m outing myself as an idealist here, but I find that historical reference highly relevant to this discussion.
One last unrelated point while I’m on the soapbox: I think it’s proper to weigh costs and benefits and “moral hazards” for the US support here. This article lays out important data and advocates a credible position. Withdrawing US financial support from Ukraine is a defensible position. But my biggest problem with the Administration’s apparent pursuit of this position is the blatant lying they are doing to enact it. Most critically in lying about Russia’s singular culpability in unilaterally invading a neighboring sovereign country (again and again.) It’s embarrassing and, frankly, un-American in my eyes.
That is accurate, but it's easily verifiable history that the US made a lot of noise about not expanding NATO eastward in 1990 and 1991, and then proceeded to do just that starting in 1999. I agree, it makes perfect sense why the Warsaw Pact countries would want to be in NATO, and part of the EU. It made no sense, and was in fact highly counterproductive, for the USA to be as antagonistic towards Russia in the intervening years since the fall of the Soviets.
So, honestly, that right there is the primary reason I *do* feel any sort of moral obligation to defend Eastern Europe and even Ukraine from Russia. We were acting like that dick at the bar who stands behind his buddies and taunts the big guy a couple tables over.
This is, please note, *not* me saying that we should continue Biden era policy on Ukraine. Just explaining why I, or someone else, might feel like the USA bears some moral responsibility here.
Certainly that is also extremely bad, but I strongly suspect (though obviously cannot prove) that Ukraine would not have been invaded in the first place without the last ~30 years of US policy towards Russia.
And I'm also certainly not claiming that the US bears *sole* moral responsibility.
Putin was always going to want Crimea unless Ukraine was just Belarus 2, which is just (Not)Russia. Were we screwing around in the country and making Putin sweat? Yea, but Ukraine having any independent thought was not okay for Putin.
Either America screws around in Ukraine and Russia invades or we didn’t screw around(or they never noticed it because it was very minimal) and then Ukraine is just a puppet state of Russia. It’s just six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Our NATO invest does what Europe would never do. NATO assures us that our military is interoperable with their's, using our standards and equipment. Our training. And helping lower the overall cost of our military equipment with volume. We learned in WWII that Europe can't manage itself. It's only worse now. And we should rethink it. But in many ways from a military planning standpoint the option cost of NATO means we had to spend less political capital with our own standing army or risk hedging on threats. From a military planning standpoint we always knew NATO would not pay it's way.
If the NATO member nations have a shared enemy, and we identify that us shouldering the majority of the burden saves us money in the long run, that makes sense. Without a shared enemy, the case generally falls apart in the eyes of the people who don't see a shared enemy.
NATO was founded to counter Russia. The question is, does USA see Russia as an enemy? Trump voted with Russia and against Ukraine at the UN recently, so maybe not.
There's a lot of interests in the US that see any war as a business opportunity, and their thumbs are on the scales with most presidents. These elements are probably the only reason the Russian Boogeyman has lasted this long. Their influence over Trump appears to be relatively minor.
Most business in the US exists outside of policy. The MIC exists *only* because of policy, so they have a very vested interest in manipulating that policy. Lots of folks talk about the revolving door between, say, the FDA and the food industry, but that revolving door is even more profound between the Army and the defense industry. Many of my extended family got filthy, filthy rich off that door, in fact.
And these folks live in DC brownstones and go to USAID cocktail parties, so it's an entire culture of foreign government manipulation for profit where questioning the wisdom of influencing a Ukraine election (for instance) is unquestionable in polite company.
I think that's exactly what we're seeing now with Russia and Europe spending double or more on ukraine as a percent of thier GDP as US. Or at least I thought we had a shared enemy.
Inside the last two years, Europe is taking their own security more seriously and making up for lollygagging the prior decade. Inside the last two years, the direct military aid to Ukraine has still only come from a small number of countries who are immediately adjacent to Russia or who read English language news.
You're saying Europe is giving half the aid to Ukraine (I've seen 60 percent), and US has 80 percent higher GDP. So the simple math is EU is giving about 2x the share of thier GDP vs. US. What am I missing here?
Check your GDP numbers. EU GDP is 20 trillion and that doesn't include the UK. Throw UK in and it's 24 trillion. US GDP is 28 trillion, so they're only about 15% off.
The claim in the article is not that the EU is underpaying Ukraine as compared to the US contribution, but rather that the US obligation to Ukraine is effectively zero whereas the European obligation to Ukraine is much higher, and is being ignored by countries outside a radius of about 600 miles of the Russian border.
Thumb in the air, if the countries across the EU all threw in at the rate that Poland is throwing in, the US probably wouldn't need to be involved at all in order to prolong the stalemate. Ergo, Italy doesn't give a shit about Ukraine, probably because Italy is on the other side of the Alps from Russia.
After WW2 the US subsidized Europe's defense because we had the world's strongest economy and European countries were decimated. We did it in order to give them a chance to rebuild. Unfortunately, we never required the Europeans to assume their fair share of the burden now that they've recovered.
With France calling to establish a EU armed force separate and apart from NATO in order for Europe to distance itself from the US, maybe it's time to let them have their way.
The US has already committed around $175 billion to Ukraine. Apparently, it's not enough. The fact is, Ukraine is a European problem. Since Ukraine and the Europeans don't like our solutions maybe it's time for them to step up and solve the problem themselves.
> France calling to establish a EU armed force
An EU armed force would be a silly idea, because the EU is governed by unanimity on a lot of issues so it would just get bogged down and be an exercise in futility. Also quite a few non-EU countries, such as UK, Norway, Turkey, Japan, Canada might want to join it.
My fuller thoughts on the issuer of a European Military Alliance are here: https://pontifex.substack.com/p/european-defence-policy-how-europe
The fact that we have given Ukraine $175 billion in war funding and their gdp is around the same shows there is a problem with corruption and lack of respect by their leaders on what we as Americans have sacrificed for their country. Europe is lucky we are their big brother and they are just spoiled trust fund babies that haven’t had to fend for themselves.
If Europe wants to continue to fight and start WW3, let them be decimated.
On top of that insult, they added the injury of creating untold trillions of dollars of US dollar denominated derivative debt, the cash from which they've used to subvert and destroy the USA via bribes, PYSOPs, and financial vandalism.
The UK and Europe are not our allies. They are defacto enemies.
The drama in the news you see is the Trump regime destroying them, and reshuffling the deck of the global order.
I'm definitely in the second camp, blaming Europe, and this post gives me some comfort.
Thanks for doing the math I can't.
> When Europe says they “stand behind Ukraine,”
they mean way, *way* behind Ukraine. Like one stands behind a punching bag and Mike Tyson.
So, in the pie graph showing funding shortfalls, why the weird spelling for Turkey, but nobody else? I mean, you didn't list Germany as "Deutschland"...
I'm Irish and live in Ireland, and for years prior to the invasion of Ukraine I've been complaining about smug arrogant Europeans scoffing about how much of its budget the US allocates to defense and military spending, as opposed to us caring intellectual Europeans who spend a tiny fraction on defense and allocate the rest to rainbows and smiles. When literally the only reason Putin hasn't run roughshod over Europe is because of NATO and because of the US supplying military aid to buffer regions like Ukraine.
Or as Orwell said about pacifists: "Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."
This is a decent analysis. I did not know how much of the deficit was due to Germany, Spain etc.
Caveat: posting this as a European with a dual connection to the UK and one of the dark blue countries "pulling their weight", where some people this morning started to wonder whether, in the light of Trump being perceived as actively pro Putin, American troops on the ground deployed there to protect the eastern flank of NATO could be potentially given orders to protect Russian tanks rolling west instead. This was not a dominant mood, but more than one voice like this. Leaving aside EE paranoia (admittedly rooted in much history).
In the so called grander scheme of things though. Do you really think that there are only two camps? The "it's neither our interest or our moral duty" (let's call them isolationists) and the "it's our moral duty" (let's call them "idealists")? Isn't there a "realist" camp that believes that it's in the interest of the US to keep Russian territorial/imperial ambition in check? Sure, Zelensky is strictly speaking wrong in claiming that if Ukraine falls to Putin in one way or another, the US will feel it over the ocean. But the idea that Ukraine is the end of this is.... kinda optimistic to the extreme? And once Putin gets a bit of rest and a chance to recover, what's next? Moldova, Baltics, Poland? Yes he's obsessed with Ukraine in ideological ways that he's not obsessed with those other places. But we're still talking about someone who wants to recreate a greater Russia on the ruins of the old Soviet Union AND Warsaw Pact countries. So, who owns Ukraine is probably not of your concern, true. But war rumblings in Europe and increasingly confident Putin feeling he's been given free board to play his war games there, probably significantly more so. Surely there are many people in the US who see this -- as I said, leaving all idealistic concerns aside.
American policy for 80 years was was that it was in their rational interest to keep Russia contained and in check. Had this interest suddenly changed?
Trump is not pro Putin and never has been, that's a US domestic contrivance by his enemies for his unwillingness to be mindlessly anti-Russia. Trump is a pro-US domestic populist representing a proletariat who has no vested interest in European security, and he's acting like it.
I think there is definitely a camp who wants to be realist, but I don't think a forever-war is easily sellable to realists.
Moldova, the Baltics, and Poland are all now NATO, and all have Article 4 to lean on, and Ukraine was Putin's bright-line hardon. And policy experts here knew Ukraine was a bright line for decades.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1700719253685678286
To your last point, Ukraine was part of Russia before the US existed.
Poland, Romania, the Baltics, and possibly Finland are the NATO members who might have to worry about Russia; the others, not so much.
Part of the issue for the US is that the cheap gear is mostly gone. Reserve equipment counting down until it would be scrapped, missiles due for expensive overhauls, and stuff we just don't use anymore is relatively cheap. (The math valuing the amount of military aid is an example of why the Pentagon can't pass an audit.) Actual new production costs a lot more.
A lot of the equipment used by both Russia and Ukraine is old Soviet stuff -- such as the BMP-1 IFV or the MT-LB/MT-LBu which is often used as an APC. While not the latest kit, these are still very useful, e.g. for supplying/rotating troops at the front.
In general, it makes a lot of sense for armed forces to store old equipment (this is something the UK is very bad at -- e.g. we had 900 Chieftain and 400 Challenger I tanks that could've been put in long term storage to reactivate in an emergency).
> American policy for 80 years was was that it was in their rational interest to keep Russia contained and in check. Had this interest suddenly changed?
That interest changed radically in 1991.
Granted, our actual *policy* did not. But our interests surely did. That, to me, is the point where the USA should have started weaning Europe off the tit, hard. And quite possibly should have done for Russia, the rest of the former USSR, and the Warsaw Pact countries what we did for Germany and Japan after we defeated *them* militarily, even if it was a vastly different sort of war.
> But we're still talking about someone who wants to recreate a greater Russia on the ruins of the old Soviet Union AND Warsaw Pact countries.
I have seen this claim a number of times. Do you have sources for this you could share which make the case in a calm, rational manner? I haven't seen any evidence of Russia meddling in the affairs of their neighbors that wasn't first prompted by US meddling in the affairs of Russia's neighbors. Mostly aimed at continuing this prolonged hostility towards Russia.
We certainly weren't their *allies*, but we had pretty decent relations with pre-Soviet Russia. We *really* should have continued *that*, rather than the Soviet Era relations.
The argument of “he’ll take more!” Is always so silly, because the answer to the question is in the question, he can’t take Poland and other eastern countries because they’re apart of NATO and would then give the other members(US included) justified reason to go hot.
“But trump hates NATO”, he hates NATO countries who don’t do their 2%, which Poland does. Poland has always been Pro US, they’re always ready to buy our newest weapons and gadgets, so that this doesn’t occur.
This is like saying “China takes Vietnam, so they’ll take Japan next!” We have bases and actual alliances with Poland/Japan, Ukraine/Vietnam are meant to be nuisances to their respective countries, they’re not meant to be actual allies, just the hanging rook that Russia/China take but puts them in check. A hot war for Russia/China, and proxy war where the US gathers intel, destabilizes areas next to enemy countries, and we lose no men.
The “realist” take is more like a “head in the sand” take, because it ignores all the planning and buildup the US has done in those countries for decades. It’s armchair generals that think all of this just suddenly occurred 3 years ago(at the youngest) or 10(at the oldest), not knowing this stuff has been on the back burner for decades. I’m sure their will be some “random” war in the southern Asia or SEA in 5ish years. And no, not Taiwan.
The “realist” perspective is “hey, glad to hear you want to cut off that wart, but I have an actual tumor you should cut off” but no one, Democrat or Republican, besides Massie, would EVER think of cutting aid to that “ally”.
Learned helplessness is heartbreaking here! Totally inept, the leaders of Europe have turned on their own people.
I have long said that European countries should spend more on defence (and spend it more wisely, in many cases).
BJ's gone Trumper! :P
This is good documentation, but not nearly tribal enough for most people.
As a European I would be happy for the USA to leave NATO (giving a years warning) if that's what they wanted to do.
But one way or the other clarity (something politicians are often very loathe to do) is important.
The mature thing to do would be issue an ultimatum with clear conditions and an achievable deadline. We haven't had a president who can do that this century. Lacking that, we're left with motivating other through fear of chaos.
> The mature thing to do would be issue an ultimatum with clear conditions and an achievable deadline.
That would make sense, although I don't see it happening.
> Only the UK, Poland, Greece, and Estonia are pulling their relative weight
Looking at the UK, while it does spend a lot of defence, it does not get good value for money. E.g. over the last 25 years it has spend almost trice on defence as South Korea has, yet the Korean army is about 10-20 times bigger, in terms of number of tanks, artillery pieces, APC, soldiers, etc.
I did a comparison back in 2021 of the British army with Finland, Greece and Singapore, and concluded that UK could have much bigger forces *on the same budget*. But instead UK MoD seems to want a small number of expensive, gold-plated exquisitely hand-crafted pieces of kit. see: https://pontifex.substack.com/p/scottish-defence-policy-ii-nation
"You're a Putin stooge!!!!" -libs, probably, not realizing how NATO arming up is the last thing Putin wants
Seriously while I believe Ukraine is in the right and I support the general idea of helping them, it concerns me how many hardcore Ukraine boosters react with indignation to the idea that we should define a specific end goal and consider how our aid & other actions will get us to it. Instead it's vague platitudes about "victory," "it's in our vital interest," "whatever it takes," etc. The fact that they mostly focus their outrage on Trump and half of America rather than on the Euros as you say is another indication that they're not thinking things through.
What concerns me is most Ukraine supporters didn't give a single solitary shit about Crimea and wouldn't know Maidan if it hit them in the head with a bat. Most Ukraine supporters, in my view, needed an issue to latch onto as a virtue signal after their vaccine mandate issue fell apart. The Blue Egregore needed fuel and it latched onto a war that largely doesn't concern us, and probably got a lot of people killed in the process.
> Most Ukraine supporters, in my view, needed an issue to latch onto as a virtue signal after their vaccine mandate issue fell apart.
That's *certainly* not true of me, or of anyone else who's a serious geopolitical analyst (though TBH most people who talk politics on the net aren't serious people). I've been writing about how Putin needs to be stopped since before the full-scale invasion, e.g. https://pontifex.substack.com/p/the-skripal-poisoning-a-case-study
Actually it'd probably be fairly easy for the USA and Europe to end the war on broadly favourable terms, but it requires that Putin be treated firmly (otherwise he has no incentive to end the war). i wrote about this here: https://pontifex.substack.com/p/will-trump-end-the-russia-ukraine
My grievance is real and has been left unanswered and unaddressed.
OK, I'll bite. Which grievance is that? :D
If you "feel a moral obligation to defend both Europe and Ukraine from Russia" the you have some waking up to do.
A terrific summary by @BioClandestine, an actual investigative journalist who has been all over this ever since the kinetic action started:
https://bioclandestine.substack.com/p/the-deep-state-started-this-war
"If you don’t know who Victoria Nuland is, or what she was doing in Ukraine in 2014, then you have no idea what’s going on.
The Deep State started this war. It was the Obama CIA/State Dept that funded Nazi militant groups to start a civil war in Ukraine, and initiated regime change to a CIA/State Dept puppet, Yatseniuk.
This was all revealed in the leaked phone call between State Dept diplomats and Deep State agents, Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt.
After the Maidan coup in February 2014, the US CIA/State Dept owned Ukraine via proxy, and the CIA began using Ukraine as a giant offshore playground for criminal racketeering and money laundering. Ukraine became one giant CIA base, directly on Russia’s border.
Then the US/NATO began building up Ukraine’s army for the sole purpose of one day fighting Russia. The US/NATO began supplying Ukraine with weapons, equipment, missiles, training, intelligence, etc.
Covert elements within the US government, along with their European partners in NATO, used espionage to overthrow and take control of the nation of Ukraine, then built a massive standing army on Russia’s border, then tried to bring Ukraine into NATO, and thus start WW3.
If you are still buying the official MSM narrative about this conflict, you should not be engaged in conversations.
Everything the MSM told you about Ukraine/Russia has been a lie, and in many cases, the inverse of the truth.
I personally think that Maidan was probably pushed by US soft power and probably organic as well, so some of both. Evidence of one does not preclude the other. That said, if we never pushed the soft power there we'd have far fewer dead people.
I don’t understand the need to create conspiracy theories for why ex-Warsaw Pact populations would want to more closely align themselves with Western Europe. Look at GDP. Look at corruption indexes. Look at relative constitutional freedoms. Is there any metric whatsoever one could point to to support an argument of preferring to be in the Russian sphere of influence as opposed to Western Europe’s?
A conspiracy theory is not necessary to explain Maidan, but lack of necessity for a conspiracy theory does not mean there wasn't a conspiracy. whynotboth.gif
Well, next step down this rabbit hole is sussing out the difference between application of soft power (which absolutely happened, in some capacity) and initiation of a conspiracy. I see a pretty big difference between those two ideas but I get the feeling some folks don’t see that distinction. Was French support for the American colonists a “conspiracy?” I guess I’m outing myself as an idealist here, but I find that historical reference highly relevant to this discussion.
One last unrelated point while I’m on the soapbox: I think it’s proper to weigh costs and benefits and “moral hazards” for the US support here. This article lays out important data and advocates a credible position. Withdrawing US financial support from Ukraine is a defensible position. But my biggest problem with the Administration’s apparent pursuit of this position is the blatant lying they are doing to enact it. Most critically in lying about Russia’s singular culpability in unilaterally invading a neighboring sovereign country (again and again.) It’s embarrassing and, frankly, un-American in my eyes.
That is accurate, but it's easily verifiable history that the US made a lot of noise about not expanding NATO eastward in 1990 and 1991, and then proceeded to do just that starting in 1999. I agree, it makes perfect sense why the Warsaw Pact countries would want to be in NATO, and part of the EU. It made no sense, and was in fact highly counterproductive, for the USA to be as antagonistic towards Russia in the intervening years since the fall of the Soviets.
> The Deep State started this war.
So, honestly, that right there is the primary reason I *do* feel any sort of moral obligation to defend Eastern Europe and even Ukraine from Russia. We were acting like that dick at the bar who stands behind his buddies and taunts the big guy a couple tables over.
This is, please note, *not* me saying that we should continue Biden era policy on Ukraine. Just explaining why I, or someone else, might feel like the USA bears some moral responsibility here.
I mean, I concur with everything else you said.
The real blame is on the UK for telling Ukraine not to sign a peace deal a couple months into the conflict because NATO would have your back.
Certainly that is also extremely bad, but I strongly suspect (though obviously cannot prove) that Ukraine would not have been invaded in the first place without the last ~30 years of US policy towards Russia.
And I'm also certainly not claiming that the US bears *sole* moral responsibility.
Putin was always going to want Crimea unless Ukraine was just Belarus 2, which is just (Not)Russia. Were we screwing around in the country and making Putin sweat? Yea, but Ukraine having any independent thought was not okay for Putin.
Either America screws around in Ukraine and Russia invades or we didn’t screw around(or they never noticed it because it was very minimal) and then Ukraine is just a puppet state of Russia. It’s just six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Thank you. I appreciate it when someone shows the details of their homework.
What details? I clicked it, there's nothing more in that post than what was in the comment...
Our NATO invest does what Europe would never do. NATO assures us that our military is interoperable with their's, using our standards and equipment. Our training. And helping lower the overall cost of our military equipment with volume. We learned in WWII that Europe can't manage itself. It's only worse now. And we should rethink it. But in many ways from a military planning standpoint the option cost of NATO means we had to spend less political capital with our own standing army or risk hedging on threats. From a military planning standpoint we always knew NATO would not pay it's way.
If the NATO member nations have a shared enemy, and we identify that us shouldering the majority of the burden saves us money in the long run, that makes sense. Without a shared enemy, the case generally falls apart in the eyes of the people who don't see a shared enemy.
NATO was founded to counter Russia. The question is, does USA see Russia as an enemy? Trump voted with Russia and against Ukraine at the UN recently, so maybe not.
There's a lot of interests in the US that see any war as a business opportunity, and their thumbs are on the scales with most presidents. These elements are probably the only reason the Russian Boogeyman has lasted this long. Their influence over Trump appears to be relatively minor.
> There's a lot of interests in the US that see any war as a business opportunity
Certainly the USA has been described -- accurately IMO -- as "government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations".
I guess the military-industrial complex is about 2-3% of GDP and considerably more as a proportion of donations to politicians.
Most business in the US exists outside of policy. The MIC exists *only* because of policy, so they have a very vested interest in manipulating that policy. Lots of folks talk about the revolving door between, say, the FDA and the food industry, but that revolving door is even more profound between the Army and the defense industry. Many of my extended family got filthy, filthy rich off that door, in fact.
And these folks live in DC brownstones and go to USAID cocktail parties, so it's an entire culture of foreign government manipulation for profit where questioning the wisdom of influencing a Ukraine election (for instance) is unquestionable in polite company.
NATO was founded to counter the Soviet Union. That's not quite the same thing as Russia.
Different name, same country.
I think that's exactly what we're seeing now with Russia and Europe spending double or more on ukraine as a percent of thier GDP as US. Or at least I thought we had a shared enemy.
Inside the last two years, Europe is taking their own security more seriously and making up for lollygagging the prior decade. Inside the last two years, the direct military aid to Ukraine has still only come from a small number of countries who are immediately adjacent to Russia or who read English language news.
You're saying Europe is giving half the aid to Ukraine (I've seen 60 percent), and US has 80 percent higher GDP. So the simple math is EU is giving about 2x the share of thier GDP vs. US. What am I missing here?
Check your GDP numbers. EU GDP is 20 trillion and that doesn't include the UK. Throw UK in and it's 24 trillion. US GDP is 28 trillion, so they're only about 15% off.
The claim in the article is not that the EU is underpaying Ukraine as compared to the US contribution, but rather that the US obligation to Ukraine is effectively zero whereas the European obligation to Ukraine is much higher, and is being ignored by countries outside a radius of about 600 miles of the Russian border.
Thumb in the air, if the countries across the EU all threw in at the rate that Poland is throwing in, the US probably wouldn't need to be involved at all in order to prolong the stalemate. Ergo, Italy doesn't give a shit about Ukraine, probably because Italy is on the other side of the Alps from Russia.
You're conflating NATO and the EU.
Well, so does the article, and that doesn't really change the math.