So in latest news, last opposition figure in Russia dies together with any hope for regime change while Russia's war effort is starting to get some traction with it's overwhelming man power and Ukraine is forced to cede more territory all while west is busy either with it's in-fighting or comparing each others superior GDP and how Russia will crumble just any day now (TM). Man, are we in for a ride next decade in Europe, I would have never believed all this just a few years ago, how it will go down.
The (small) upside of all this missery, death and pain is Europe will lose some territory but gain it's own military security after decades of living from the US strategy alignment. Countries like Poland will no longer buy US weapons but increase European defense spending - they fear just like Ukraine that US congress just turns around and will stop delivering parts for F-35s in a conflict [0]. The US lost all it's trust that was left in Europe.
We just need to get our act together, not every country building or buying it's own incompatible weapons (like tanks, planes, frigates). The war in Ukraine shows how bad it is to run a war with ten different models of tanks etc.
And we can - at last - close Ramstein, Landstuhl and Weilerbach in Germany, no longer supporting US wars in the Middle East and beyond.
Living as a kid through the 70s and 80s with the PershingII/NATO Double-Track Decision I also would not have thought this threat is coming back the way it did.
[0] I'm sure Germany will not proceed on it's $10b F-35 plans
The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin, and the lesson you take away is that the US is somehow at fault. The one bill that was blocked by Congress would be more support than Europe as a whole has provided to Ukraine to date.
While I agree that European countries should start to take their defense seriously I don't see how you fault US support of Ukraine.
Not sure about the US providing more funding (especially not by a large margin):
This chart shows EU outspending the US.
https://www.statista.com/chart/28489/ukrainian-military-huma....
Total aid, yes.
Military spending no.
In fact this war has highlighted that NO ONE was ready for the fight that came about.
Skip the money for a moment. Ukraine right now is marginally fucked for one reason: 155mm artillery shells.
There isnt enough global production to have a war. The US is far and away the largest producer. EU can not keep up and did not bring on anywhere near enough capacity to defend itself in a future conflict.
I would also like to point out that without that humanitarian aid flowing INTO Ukraine those folks flee TO the EU. Sending money there avoids bringing the problems to Poland and Germany and having to spend it there. After taking in so many refugees in recent history the EU is gunshy about another migration.
Artillery shells are but one tool though, which for some reason has become the main tool (? citation needed) in the Ukraine war; I would expect more air force being put in play if the conflict escalated into the rest of europe.
Even though Russia has got the bigger air force on paper (https://rlist.io/l/european-countries-with-the-largest-air-f...).
The reason is that neither side has air supremacy. Ukrainian AA defense is good enough to keep the Russians at bay, but Russian AA defense is also good enough to prevent Ukrainians from taking out their frontline defenses.
So with classic air forces being all but taken out, the only way either side can make progress is by using tanks and artillery.
Can’t we give Ukraine HARMs?
You have already done that. [0] They don't seem to work too well. [1]
[0] https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/missile-defense-weapo...
[1] https://www.eurasiantimes.com/hamrless-missiles-us-supplied-...
We gave them nerfed HARMs that can't properly integrate with their soviet planes, and they have zero SEAD training. HARMs aren't magic, without the strategy and training required for good SEAD, they won't do much. Things may improve when the F-16s start flying since those are properly integrated and capable SEAD platforms.
"Things may improve when the F-16s start flying"
This could only end with tactical nukes starting flying and with the strategic ones if the US attacks Russia. Things won't 'improve' no matter what happens.
Putin is done for in those scenarios. He doesn't look the type to fall on his sword.
In which scenario he isn't done for if the US keeps escalating?
I think Putin can find a way to exit the Ukraine and define that as a success if he wants to. But he still thinks he has a chance to win on the battlefield, so he has no motivation to do that.
How can he exit if Zelensky's goal is to retake Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk?
Hopefully we are about to find out.
The USA seems unable to give any more support due to political deadlock.
It definitely could provide much more to Ukraine if both parties were aligned to the common cause of sustaining America's hegemony by being a reliable ally, right now there's one party which the whole ideology centers on going against whatever the other party does and/or supports. Even if that means allowing Putin's Russia to gain more power and influence.
I don't think the vast majority of Americans understand the long-term consequences of allowing the USA to become unreliable to its closest partners (the West in general). You will be feeling this over the next few decades, America's soft power is waning.
It's even worse. The 45th is actively calling for Russia to take what they want.
Ukrainan Air Force has HARMs, but they are VERY limited in their capabilities due to them being employed from soviet-era jets. Basically area where target resides have to be pre-programmed on the ground, rocket then flies to that area and lock on any radar it finds there. But what previous commenter missed is that even if Russian air defenses are suppressed, their planes outclass Ukrainian ones. For example, air to air missiles that UAF has available need to be guided by planes radar all the way through, also that missiles have shorter range than something like R-37, which is fire and forget with VERY high range. Western air to air missiles are much better than what Ukraine has right now, but they can't be fired from Su-27 or MiG-29, they require something like F-16 or Gripen, but while a bunch of European countries agreed to transfer them, Ukrainian pilots and ground crews don't know how to operate them, and need to be trained, which happens right now. If there were trained beforehand it would've changed current situation on the front lines VERY significantly.
What happened to the F16s, Ukraine was promised?
F16s will arrive this spring, but Soviet AA was designed to contain them. None of the expert observers seems to consider F16s a gamechanger on the battlefield right now.
Because Soviet (and ex-Soviet) armies were heavily built around massive numbers of lower-trained conscripts.
It's difficult to conduct maneuver warfare without highly trained troops.
It's a lot easier to throw a lot of artillery at the problem.
"Military spending no."
And if we take % of GDP the US looks worse on military aid.And if we take % of military budget, the US is last on the list.
And this is chart is missing EU strongest military - France, they do not announce all the support they give for strategic reasons.
France published a list of equipment they sent to Ukraine, about an hour ago [1]
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/international/live/2024/02/16/en-dire...
Quoting and translating the best I can (any translation error is mine):
Ground - Air
Air - Ground Artillery Armoured and liaison vehicules Engineering and small arms Aerial domain No idea how important / relevant it is. Just posting"SCALP : about a hundred missiles"
Wish Germany would send long range Taurus.
Could the strategic reason be to avoid explaining why they give so little?
Unlikely. The Caesar artillery systems are large, expensive and well publicized.
They need USAs 155mm production the most. the fact that we cut off our specialty is ridiculous.
I’m not sure how the calculations work in other countries, but the US was/is heavily depreciating its donations, and funding/facilitating a much of European donations.
There's also ring trades where the us donates surplus gear to European countries to get them to donate hardware to Ukraine - somewhat inflating tallies. Greece got several c-130s in expectation that they would donate 152mm ammunition.
Yes, and Germany has ring-traded a lot of military equipment, e.g. several dozens of Leopard 2 tanks.
Sure about the 152mm? Not 155mm?
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill...
It's more messed up than that. The ROI on US dollars vs Euros is stupefying. There has been a fairly significant spend IN the us retooling for this war. The ramp up of 155 production ISNT aid to Ukraine but is going to benefit them.
And I called out 155 for a reason, the ebb and flow of it has been at the forefront of Ukraine being successful or failing. It is the the most consistently asked for and consumed large item as it in combination with drones has proven effective beyond anyones expectations.
Um, so the UK has rejoined the EU?
I'm mean it's a nitpick, but you're kinda nitpicking.
I‘d argue that refugees, 50% of whom intend to stay, are the reason why EU is the only party to win something from this war. I actively support Ukrainian refugees by giving them some work and talk to people: those who will stay, want to integrate and they offer some relief to the job markets.
NATO already won; it has expanded and defence commitments are up, and that is besides the renewed raison d’être Russia has leased it.
The US defence industry has seen a minor win, too. It will reap the long-term win of new NATO accessions.
The EU got a wakeup call (not so much a win, but hey) to seek energy independence from belligerent petrostates, so that could be seen as a future win.
I‘m not sure about NATO, at least while Trumpism exists in America. If U.S. voters will think that Europe has to be sacrificed in favor of bilateral Russian-American deal, NATO is effectively as dead as it was pre-war.
U.S.defense industry will also depend on that. If Trump wins and commits to do everything he promised, they will be in a weaker position, loosing foreign markets one by one.
There is a lot of money riding on NATOs continued existence and I think if Trump decides to pull the USA out of NATO he will be in for a rude surprise. Playing with the climate accords was dumb enough and didn't have any immediate impact, if the USA visibly isolates itself from NATO after other countries supporting the USA in various efforts over the last couple of decades then the world as you know it will grind to a very rapid halt and the United States will be the big loser from that unless Trump is reigned in. I would expect him to receive a couple of very pointed reminders of what the consequences of such a move would be. Fortunately even an unhinged TV personality can not single-handedly destroy a country and what it has stood for for the last 70+ years.
"some relief to the job markets."
I agree and have done the same with Syrian refugees.
Oh, yes, Syrians. Danke, Merkel, I found some good IT admins from there.
In Sweden two of my favourite doctors are Syrian refugees, they gave me more humane and personal care than many Swedish doctors I've been to.
My landlord (and by far the best landlord I've had in Sweden) is another refugee doctor, a very laid back Iraqian pulmonologist, to the point I even invite him over to have some beers during summers.
How do you do that? I've hosted refugees for free, as opposed to locals who've had to pay for hotel stays, but I'm not discriminating against locals when hiring.
How do you "actively support refugees by giving them some work" in a way that's legal, without hiring bias?
E.g. I use cleaning services from a company that employs refugees.
Besides, using only specific recruiting channels to select candidates from certain demographics is not a discrimination. If locals would apply this way, I would consider them, but honestly… In Germany, esp. in Berlin hiring locals? The market is so tight, that by just removing the German language requirement you will find some immigrant faster.
Looking at Military aid only [1]:
The US has provided: ~$42.2B
Germany + United Kingdom + Denmark + Norway + Netherlands + Poland + EU inst.: ~$51B
[1] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
France is up there with UK, but they are not on the chart because they do not disclose all the transfers they do.
Source?
I think South Korea does pump out more 155mm shells than most other countries, including US ?
And Europe doesn't order there due to french veto.
If you can not deliver personal, delivery is fine as long as no cannon go hungry.
I wonder if there is such a clear cut between aid and military spending. Most of the aid of Europe is send to Ukraine government such that the government can spend that money. I understand that about 90% of the USA military spending stays in the USA and is actually stimulating the economy.
This war is also a display of weapons produced by defense industries in the USA and increase the spending of foreign countries in the USA. So, the netto effect might be actually turn out to be possitive, if it were not chilled by the current position of the USA in not providing weapons. This is definitely not making European countries happy and might actually result in the EU on putting substantial effort in developing it own weapon systems in the coming decades and reduce the spending the USA.
North Korea was ready...
Good thing Bulgaria is able to supply Ukraine with plenty of 152mm shells for their old soviet artillery.
US also right now possesses the largest stash of 155 munition. Small fraction of that trove would've save Avdiivka.
Congratulations for picking with 155mm shells one of the few items that Europe has far outproduced the US with an estimated capacity of 650k shells/year pre war and a ramped up actual production to 1 mill/year in the next few months.
We’re talking about the military portion on that page.
That was certainly not clear, but it is still does not fit this chart [1]
Looking at Military add only:
The US has provided: ~$42.2B Germany + United Kingdom + Denmark + Norway + Netherlands + Poland + EU inst.: ~$51B
[1] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
Oh man, the EU plus the rest of the world are eking it out before the US passes another spending bill. . .
This also includes long-term commitments that have not yet been delivered. EU promising to provide 1 million artillery shells two years from now doesn't help Ukraine at this time.
The US not passing a spending bill and getting constantly deadlocked by the GOP to even table it in Congress also do not help Ukraine at this time.
Also, it's not even close to a certainty that the spending bill will pass, and the chance of that happening diminishes every single day while this stupid presidential election doesn't happen.
The quote from OP was "The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin". Which is just completely false. Now you're just moving goalposts.
But does it change the more significant point of the US being Ukraine's most important partner in terms of military support? I was countering the narrative that the US is not a good partner. As internet forums do, everyone globbed onto the specific number, not the point being made.
And the EU is spending more on military aid then the US.
As World = EU + X and X>0 => The world is spending more on military aid then the US.
does anyone know how much Russia has spent so far in the war?
I've read somewhere today that it's around ~$210b+ so far
perchance, ledger, tallying, coffers, ponders, arsenal, remnants, tally, scales, colossal, amidst, perplexing, enigma, benefactor, patron, coffers, benefactor, defies, coffers, denouement
Do you always write like this? It reads like something from the 19th century.
That chart is a bit pointless
USA can claim that one Bradley is 2mln, but what is a real value? Polish T-72 can be worth 1mln, but it's much more valuable than Bradley. UA army knows how to fix it and operate.
I would say that Bradley is actually more valuable, since it can serve wider range of missions, while having higher crew survival rate and being more maneuverable.
Without crew trained on that particular vehicle the value drops steeply.
That is Europe vs the US. Europe has almost 800million people, US less than 350million. On a per capital basis the average American has outspent the average European by a significant margin.
EU != Europe. EU has a population of just under 450 million. To get even close to an 800 million number you have to include all of both Russian and all the former Soviet states, which in this scenario would be rather misleading, given the geopolitics of the events under discussion.
More like 450 million.
The US and the EU are mostly at parity when it comes to total spending (that includes military spending), with the difference being of about 5-10% last time I checked (which was sometimes in September of 2023). By how things have progressed since then it is fair to say that the EU has taken the upper hand on that.
And this is all without counting the "externalities" of the war in Ukraine which Europe had to absorb all by itself, such as higher energy prices, selling assets in Russia at very discounted prices (for comparison, the US and the UK didn't have that much stuff to sell there anyway) and the material help and assistance provided to the millions of Ukrainian refugees.
This is not true for some time now.
First google result (but there are more charts, numbers and sources): https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
Yet whoever provided more aid is irrelevant, since it's not enough anyway. We, as a world, are observing (and doing nothing, for the most part) fourth reich coming into action.
"we" are doing nothing because "we" are not under attack; Ukraine did not have defense pacts with other countries, and the military aid took a while to get started because of the risk of Russia seeing it as hostility towards them, further escalating the conflict.
If it escalates, it will escalate bigly. If Russia attacks a NATO country, article 5 will / should kick in and the combined military force of 31 countries (with or without the US) will combine their strengths.
But nobody wants this to escalate further, because nukes. Nothing will matter anymore if Russia decides to use them. It doesn't matter if they lose hundreds of thousands of people, material, and are completely humiliated, as long as they have nukes, "we" cannot strike back.
At this point, wishful thinking that the Ukraine conflict seizes up again, keeps the Russian army occupied, and things cool off slowly. Or that the Russian leadership is replaced, but there's no guarantees it would be replaced by someone who would stop the war.
The easiest solution to this war is sitting Zelenskyy down with Putin and striking a compromise and forming a peace treaty, if the U.S. war mongers allow it.
"to this war"
What about the next war? Have you listened to Putin? Ukraine is an artificial nation according to him and Russia has the right to reabsorb "Little Russia". How do you compromise with that view?
I listened to him speak for two hours. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the war, how many more lives should be sacrificed to avoid compromise? What about prioritizing the value of human lives over drawing lines on a map between two very broken, very corrupt countries?
I don't really get how you can even begin to trust anything that Putin promises or signs.
Russia has a long tradition of treating treaties as scraps of paper, and they have a recent history in this regard with Ukraine.
Their long-term aim is to absorb Ukraine and exploit its industrial and agricultural potential for further imperial expansion. The next will be the Baltic countries and after them Central Europe.
Whatever peace will be signed now will last precisely as long as it takes Russia to rebuild their offensive capabilities for the next round of war.
All the dead are fault of Putin and his imperial ambitions. Our only choice is whether to submit and become serfs in a neo-Russian empire, or fight back and help Ukrainians fight back.
I'm not sure how anyone begins to trust our own military or elected Establishment leaders who start and fund endless frivolous wars for decades, for greed, leaving the Middle East absolutely laid to waste.
Bush, Obama / Hillary, and Biden are no different than Putin, if not far worse. They deserve no more trust from Americans than a serial killer who took out members of your family for fun. They are reckless abusers, for greed and continued power.
If I were a Middle Easterner, I would agree. Or South American, for that purpose.
(With one huge caveat, both the Middle Easterners and the South Americans are perfectly capable of starting various shit themselves. Don't deprive them of agency by painting them as blind and obedient puppets of Washington. Especially the Middle East is a very ancient civilization with a tradition of backstabbing and betrayal going deep into the Antiquity. They don't have to learn that from some Westerners.)
But in the context of European security, the main problem of the last decades was either the USSR or Russia, not the US. It was Soviet tanks that rolled through Czechoslovak cities in 1968 to crush our attempt at political independence, not American ones.
Context matters, and for former Soviet Bloc nations, Americans are an ally against potential reestablishment of Russian rule.
But today's Russia is explicitly against the Bolsheviks and any form of the USSR altogether. Russia has moved well beyond that, so it isn't a matter of reestablishing former Russian rule under the same horrible terms as before. They are prospering now, are they not?
In 2023, a trusted, world-renowned expert — Bill Gates — stated that Ukraine is one of the single most corrupt nations in the world, and that he feels very sorry for the people there. [1] That says a lot, doesn't it?
Zelenskyy shuts down churches, imprisons political protestors and American journalists, and launders money back to the U.S. war machine after we "fund" them every month or less — to the order of $113 million per day now. How could anyone not see clearly what's happening there? It seems that people are so blinded by their hatred for Russia, that what the people are suffering in Ukraine on Ukraine's own accord isn't enough of a problem, despite how gaping it is.
1. https://x.com/RG_SargeXB/status/1758499201468768291?s=20
Russia may be explicitly against Bolsheviks (though recycling the Soviet anthem!), and Putin's Russia is indeed more akin to the former tsarist Empire than to USSR, but the tsarist Empire was fairly evil, too. Just ask the Poles or the Jews. Russian empire didn't grow to its huge size by trade and friendship, it was conquest.
Ukraine is corrupt. So what? Ukrainian corruption is a threat to no one. Not a single nation from Finland to Bulgaria considers itself vulnerable to Ukrainian military aggression, because they aren't an imperial nation and don't seek to dominate others. They were perfectly fine within their 1991 borders and never attempted to annex any extra territory by any means.
It is Russia's problem, in the words of great Václav Havel, that it does not know exactly where it ends.
All the hatred for Russia stems from their former heavy-handed rule of other nations. If they sincerely tried to make amends, it would slowly go away. They are now trying to rebuild their former imperial system. OF COURSE that nations which escaped their tyranny once are going to hate them.
It is freaking simple: we, as in Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Czechs, Rumanians, Ukrainians, Georgians etc. DON'T WANT TO BE THREATENED OR ATTACKED BY RUSSIA. That's it. We have had enough experience with Russian rule. It is primitive and brutal at the same time. Never again.
Judging by Putin's recent interview, it seems he isn't interested in endless imperial conquest though. He stated it himself, and of course, many people think he's lying, but this isn't exactly something he can pull as a ruse by lying about it because we would already be seeing Poland and other neighboring territories taken over by Russia with great ease by now — but that simply isn't the case.
Putin also stated that Russia is the largest land mass in the world assigned to a nation, and that there's absolutely no reason that it should grow. However, when its borders are threatened, it will act accordingly, like any nation would. Ukraine has a history with manufactured agitation and baiting [1][2]. And before you judge the sources, there is always more than 1 side to a story.
Putin wants to reclaim only a small fraction of Ukraine where the people in those regions have openly stated wanting that very thing to happen, due to Ukraine's corruption and oppressive policies.
Kiev is practically spotless when you compare it to Gaza, so in the grander scheme, Russia isn't doing anything nearly as horrible as Israel or Hamas combined. This really puts things into perspective by comparing these conflicts and measuring not only their outcomes, but the timeframes in which these events have occurred. Putin's actions have been overblown tremendously, and has publicly stated he's open to peace talks, but the U.S. (and by extension NATO) will not allow Ukraine to do this. They want their war.
1. https://x.com/randyhillier/status/1755286103945277574?s=20
2. https://tass.com/politics/1629441
How long will that last?
Like the last several ones, before or after Russia invaded Crimea?
Or the one where Russia guaranteed Ukraines sovereignty if they would give up nuclear weapons? (Russia playing the long con, got what it wanted, Ukraine free of nuclear weapons, ready to be invaded).
"But nobody wants this to escalate further, because nukes."
France and the UK will not use nukes when Poland is invaded.
Russia will not use nukes when invading Poland.
Russia might not even use nukes when losing Kaliningrad (but I'm not so sure there, if Ukraine gets back Crimea we will see).
What are you going to do with Kaliningrad if you occupy it? Are you going to hand out EU Schengen passports to its residents? You may get a large line for ingress if you're going to swap Russian passpors for EU ones.
If you don't, Russia will politely ask to have its territory back and would get that eventually.
Bottom line, stop thinking about the land as if it was not full of people settled there.
Honestly if you offer residents of Kaliningrad some free EU passports on condition they need to move out of Russia I pretty certain like 90% of them will gladly accept.
Not when they realize how immigrants are absolutely plundering EU nations' economies and putting citizens at risk due to spikes in crime. There's no way they're leaving Russia for that. They're prospering there just fine.
They would sooner live in the U.S. with our open borders if it were better, but we're finding that's not the case. The demographics of our mass-immigration issue show otherwise.
Because Germany has no interest in Kaliningrad and Poland has no (or a very weak) claim, I'd say should it come to that, Kaliningrad will be demilitarized and then "given back" to Russia.
And the argument was about nukes, in the event NATO invades Kaliningrad because of missle sites, not if it should or would.
Funnily the staunchest supporters of Putin in Germany (Nazis) would also be the only ones who would like to have Königsberg back.
https://bellenews.com/2013/12/16/world/europe-news/russia-de...
Actually the USA does have a defense pact with the Ukraine. Ukraine gave up its nuclear bomb and destroyed its strategic bombers with the promise that it would be defended by the USA and Russia. Now that Russia stept out of that deal, it does not mean that the USA no longer has the moral obligation of its part of the deal.
I stand corrected, the Budapest memorandum is not a defense pact. The Ukraine government acted in good faith that they would not be invaded. Now that it has indeed be invaded by one of the countries signing the memorandum, it does give the other parties a moral obligation to step in. The USA is now showing to be an unreliable party and I think that this weakens the position of the USA in the world.
The Budapest memorandum is not a defense pact. The only obligation the US has is to e escalate to the UN security council if Ukraine gets nuked.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170312052208/http://www.cfr.or...
The promise[1] was to not invade it, it was not to provide defence.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
It looks like your charts include things like refugee aid costs, which make up a large percentage of European aid. If you remove these costs and go strictly by military support, which is what we are talking about, then my point stands.
No it does not; You said:"The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin"...
Pick "Military" only in the chart, add up the numbers of, Germany, UK, Denmark, Norway, and Netherlands, and you'll get a higher number than the US.
Sorry, I'll rephrase: the US has delivered roughly equivalent military aid to Ukraine as the rest of the world combined.
Does that diminish my point?
I guess that means the US cannot be trusted.
Seems kinda unfair. USA has the biggest military complex, bigger than the rest of world combined IIRC. Naturally, can they deliver military aid faster and better than the rest of the world.
Part of the annoyance, as a US citizen, is that we spend ~3.5% of GDP on military. And that's off a large GDP, so hiding scaling efficiencies that would allow it to run lower while maintaining capability. And much more during the Cold War era!
That "bigger" is bought, and has been every year. We could spend that money on other things: social welfare, health care, etc.
So, excusing Europe's inability to deliver mass military aid, when they've willingly underinvested in their defense industry and equipment for decades, rings a bit hollow.
Yeah, especially when Europeans have mocked the US for decades for spending too much on its military while relying on security guarantees for their protection.
The US does get a lot from that in exchange, it's not like the US is being altruistic and providing security out of the goodness in your hearts, the US never does anything altruistically (as most nation-states do not), the dissonance that even well-educated Americans have as if they were footing a bill without getting nothing in return is frankly baffling.
It's infuriating how many Americans don't seem to realize that we would spend the exact same amount on our military even if Russia, China, and NATO all evaporated tomorrow.
We police the world because being the world police is fabulously profitable. You want to maintain the largest economy in the world? Well then you want to keep up the status quo of "you can do business between most countries, and can ship anything across the world for pennies per pound with near zero risk".
Arguably, the biggest beneficiary of the US Navy's protection of commercial shipping has been China.
Especially considering China doesn't pay for any of that protection.
That seems kinda unfair? You don't think it's unfair that the US invests in defense for its own strategic reasons but also happens to greatly benefit the rest of the world while the rest of the world can invest in social programs that only benefit themselves all to turn around and criticize the US as soon as that plan seems short sighted? I think that's pretty fucked up personally.
If this isn't strategics reasons, I don't know what is.
That's for the US to decide. Outside of fair share of NATO dues, the rest isn't for Europe to stick its nose in any more than the US doesn't stick its nose in how Europe spends its budget.
Sure, that is unfair. But what is happening right now is the US having dragged its European partners into a very aggressive position in the Ukraine war, suddenly decides that it no longer cares about it. So Europe has a half dead crazy Russia on its door, has to fill in for the lack of US aid and might very well have the US retreat from NATO when Trump takes office.
Fair in what way? My point isn't about who is better. My point is that the US has been an extremely crucial partner to Ukraine, in terms of countries, _the_ most crucial partner. My feeling from the interactions on this forum is that Europeans do not see it that way.
Can you win a war with weapons alone? Can a nation survive with military aid alone?
USA is not the only crucial partner for Ukraine in this war, they are the crucial partner in a specific area. That's why it's unfair to undersell the crucial partners in other important areas. Everyone is doing their thing to support in the areas they can give support. But not everyone can give the same support, and not everyone should support in areas already covered by others.
Well yes, a big chunk of the world relies on the US to provide military power. How dare the US actually be good at doing the thing that the world asks the US to do.
You are not rephrasing, you are moving the goal posts, you said:
No, it has not provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined, the EU by itself has provided more military aid than the US already.
You're just wrong. It's not hard to admit that, trying to save face just made it worse...
The EU's military commitments narrowly edge out US military commitments before a new bill is approved. This does not take away from the larger point of the US not being a bad partner to Ukraine or that the US cannot be trusted as a partner.
Not with US high school math.
My US high school math was the equivalent of Calculus 2 in college. I don't understand your point.
I don't disagree with the overall point you are arguing (AKA I agree with you), but comments like this are of no help to the conversation. I get a strong sense from this and other comments in this thread that you might be anti-American, which strikes me as biased and small minded thinking for someone that seems so intelligent.
This is not intended to be an insult, but be better. There are plenty of forums to act like this on, and HN isn't one of them.
That's just something they tell you during your election campaign. The truth is a bit different, USA is good at promissing and forcing other to do, but it did very little, compared to own GDP and military abilities.
Money:
- EU - 85,0 Mrd. €
- USA - 67,7 Mrd. €
- Deutschland - 22,1 Mrd. €
- Vereinigtes Königreich - 15,7 Mrd. €
- Dänemark - 8,8 Mrd. €
- EU: nur gemeinsame Hilfe
- Quelle: Institut für Weltwirtschaft / Ukraine Support Tracker
Tanks, promissed and delivered:
- Polen 324 Stück 264 Stück
- Niederlande 104 Stück 23 Stück
- Tschechien 90 Stück 90 Stück
- USA 76 Stück 23 Stück
- Deutschland 55 Stück 48 Stück
You cherry-pick tanks as your metric? Why don't we look at the totality of American deliveries, including long-range munitions and artillery, and see who comes ahead? What equivalent of game-changing ordnance, such as the GDSLB, are European countries providing?
This is why a large portion of Americans could care less about the defense of Europe. No matter what we do, it's either wrong or not enough. Meanwhile, Europe spent the last few decades enjoying cheap Russian energy and neglecting its defense spending and then turned around and told the US that we don't do enough to stop Russia.
Me: "Europe can't trust the US"
You: "How dare you ....!?"
Later You: "This is why a large portion of Americans could care less about the defense of Europe."
That was easy.
Q.E.D.
I don't see how that means you can't trust America. A large % does not equal a majority. Look at polling to see where the majority of US sentiment lies.
Similarly, if you look at surveys of Germans, you will see that a large % do not support Military aid of Ukraine, not a majority, but a large percentage. By your logic, does that mean that Ukraine cannot trust Germany?
It doesn't take a majority of voters to elect a President in the U.S. thanks to the electoral college.
Only 31% of the US believes we are providing too much support to Ukraine.
Because you are objectively not providing more than any other NATO land.
Which country is providing more than the US? The only thing that matters is the absolute numbers. Ukraine doesn't care if Moldova contributes 10% of its GDP because it amounts to nothing compared to 1% of US GDP.
Someone should tell the Speaker of the House that
Due to the fucked nature of the political system in America most people don't matter. Who cares if someone in California supports aid to Ukraine when Trumpistic and Putinistic swing-voters in Georgia does not.
That comment comes off as surpisingly ignorant of the benefits that the US gets by having a buffer zone between it self on either side (Europe on it's eastern flank and the indo pacific on the western flank).
Your whole foreign policy revolves around keeping these areas armed and protected in cooperation with local governments in an effort of keeping conflict from reaching US shores (an evolution of the Monroe doctrine, which started back in the 19th century with keeping European conquest out of the immediate surroundings).
I would highly recommend picking up 'The Grand Chessboard[0]' by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former counselor to Presidents Lyndon B Johnson and Jimmy Carter. It is an excellent light read on the landscape in the mid 90's in regards to US foreign policy and national security. It even forshadows much that has happened recently.
It will truly fill in some gaps.
Let us not forget that for a long time the US was hooked on foreign imported oil from the middle east, and even in 2021 Russian energy made up a total of 4% of the domestic US energy usage (up since Venezualian sources were not available as readily).
Please don't paint the US as some white knight that does what ever it can to please others on the world stage for altruistic reasons.
At worst it is disingenuous, and at best signals a massive ignorance of the world stage, history and the actors playing on it (again, highly recommend the book[0]).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
edit: spelling.
The US funds their own economy, most of the money they send goes back to the US economy because they produce the weapons that Ukraine purchase.
And the stockpiles of artillery, long-range munitions, armor, ammo, guns, etc sent?
The US really can't win. If we didn't support Ukraine we would be blasted. If we do it's because we are just trying to enrich ourselves.
Because the only winning move it not to play. This is Europe's war. Not sure why the US is involved at all. It's not like Ukraine has oil or a NATO partner.
As Viscount Cunningham famously said when he risked his fleet to evacuate troops in the Battle of Crete in 1941, 'It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition'. Which feels like how America's new insularism is undoing all the "leader of the free world" fandom that it has carefully cultivated - and profited from - in the last 80 years.
Today the US has two strategic enemies - Russia and China - and two strategic partners, Nato in Europe and everyone in pacific except China.
The US can spend peanuts - it really isn't a lot of money in US defence terms - backing Ukraine and using Ukrainian casualties to defeat it's strategic enemy, Russia, whilst making it's other strategic enemy, China, fear it.
Or it can waver and show it's no longer the leader of the democratic world and make all it's allies in Europe and Asia not believe in it.
My big fear is that it is empowering China to dare to have it's go at Taiwan in a couple of years.
Do Europeans think the US is the leader of the free world?
Realistically: either the US is, or no one is.
It certainly seems that the US is unsure whether it wants this role. The Congress is putting US credibility at huge risk right now.
Nevertheless, if the US abdicates its leadership, the free world will shrink. Even democracies have domestic enemies and all of these will be encouraged to push autocracy as an alternative to the messy parliamentary system.
I'm not a leader, but behind closed doors, grudgingly, my impression is that they do (still) think that.
A few more quotes by Trump might change that though.
When polled or asked? Absolutely not.
When viewed by how they act? Unquestionably.
Europe is probably uncomfortable/ashamed by how dependent they are on the US for maintaining the western-centric global power axis. But on the same hand are unwilling to make the sacrifices their societies would need to in order to pick up the slack. Especially now that European economies tend to be in a slump.
This presumes there's any amount US can spend to allow UKR to strategically defeat RU by proxy, and thereby have PRC fear it. UKR as proxy is as much limited by quality/quantity of it's human capita as it is by external support. What happens to US credibilty / desire to be US proxy in IndoPac to fight for US security interests when partners see UKR decimated to the last man despite full US assistance? The western wunderwaffles delivered to UKR have underdelivered, meanwhile US failing to guarantee red sea shipping against Houthis that US armed Saudis have failed to contain for over a decade. Single digit salvos of shit tier RU and Houthi missiles successfully penetrating Patriots in UKR and Flight2/3 DDGs in Red Sea has basically affirmed PRC the vulnerability of US hardware and validated their doctorine to deliver 1000x more fires. If anything the more US commits/show hand, and the more she reveals her (in)capability, the less her adversaries fear it. Sometimes better to commit half heartly and be thought incompetent (or indifferent) than go all in an remove all doubt. Nothing worse for US credibility than trying and failing.
"And the stockpiles of artillery, long-range munitions, armor, ammo, guns, etc sent?"
Quite a lot of those are older weapons that need to be either spent or securely disposed of within a decade or so.
Don't take me wrong, I am happy that the US helped Ukraine and I certainly wish that the next package passes the House, but the economic cost of your help isn't easily calculated in dollars. (Or, for that matter, our in Czech crowns.)
Stockpiles need to be either spent or renewed/replaced. Perhaps you could have used some of that older stuff in training, but not all of it. Military equipment has an expiration date, you would need to refresh your stockpiles anyway.
That is a lie. EU and European countries has given more than double that of the US.
If you go by military support of Ukraine, this is not true. It's only valid if you include things like humanitarian support. If the US passes its support bill, it would be on equal footing with all aid to Ukraine from Europe, including humanitarian support.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
Please stop making baseless accusations.
Based on what number? You tell other people not to make things up, then throw out outlandish claims without citation.
And as for the "by GDP number" - you all seem to be failing to take into account overall military spending by GDP. Most of Europe spends almost nothing because they rely on the US to present a threat to their potential enemies. It's a lot easier to spend 5% of your GDP on military spending for a year or two when the rest of the last 40 years it's been less than 1% because the US has been spending 4-8% YoY for the duration on top of the direct aid.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64656301
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine...
https://app.23degrees.io/view/5V9AdDpw1pmLxo1e-bar-stacked-h...
There is nothing in the parent post to even hint that they are saying that the US is to blame for what happened.
The US cannot be trusted to fulfill it's approved upon role in NATO if and when the push comes to shove (that damage to the US reputation is done).
I want to make it clear that the US does not sholder this responsibility alone. Every signatory to the convention is required to come to it's allies need if needed.
Europe has to get it's act together when it comes to securing its own borders, with tech and armaments produced inside said borders but in a cooperation with the US. As partners.
Ukraine is not part of NATO, so how has push come to shove?
The very politicians blocking Ukraine support are openly talking about how NATO should be abandoned. I don't know how else you can interpret that other than making Europe doubt the US would come to her aid.
I would say the rest of the Republicans have ignored or shrugged off his comments more than agree with them.
What role as the US failed to fulfill in Ukraine? Ukraine isn't a NATO member, the US had no obligation to come to their support, yet we did anyways.
Meanwhile Germany divested their entire domestic energy security and became subservient to Russia for energy - enabling this entire conflict b/c Russia felt Europe became addicted and depended to Russian fuels and wouldn't oppose their dealers.
Yes, like buying LNG from the US [0]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-export-pause-...
"Europe became addicted and depended to Russian fuels "
Yes like the US was addicted to oil from the middle east. The difference, Europe couldn't invade Russia and take the gas away.
In terms of % GDP, USA is quite far down the list.
And in % of military budget, it's near the end of the list.
It’s not the US’s fault Europe spends so little on defense. You reap what you sow. If you get rolled, that’s on you and your poor planning hoping Daddy USA is going to play world police.
We remember the decades of mocking for our choice of investing in defense. Enjoy your “free” healthcare while it lasts.
"It’s not the US’s fault Europe spends so little on defense."
Exactly!
This crisis will probably bring nukes to Poland and hopefully Germany (Macron offered nukes several times, to safe costs, the German public sadly is anti-nuke) to make the EU independent of US protection. We then can close Ramstein, Landstuhl and Weilerbach and close air corridors for US military machines to no longer support US wars in the Middle East. European countries will stop buying US weapons and create jobs in Europe instead of US voting districts.
Well, of course, do you think the US is going to donate its aircraft carriers, F-35s, F-22s, B-2s, and nuke subs to Ukraine? The US isn't spending trillions on artillery rounds.
Funding to Ukraine is even more complicated than most people realize. A massive amount of the money spent for weapons to be delivered to Ukraine is produced outside Ukraine in the US, EU etc. In cases where existing vehicles and ammunition is sent it is also an opportunity for all donors to modernize their vehicles and ammunition by replacing the donated ones with new ones.
The money is produced or the weapons?
With fiat, both :-D
Spending a lot is not a badge of honor in an asymmetric conflict. If the US was spending more efficiently than Russia the way it did in Afghanistan, this would be sending a message to the next Putin that invading one's neighbors is a losing proposition.
The US's economy suffering more than Russia's sends the opposite message.
Completely agree. I wish I could upvote this harder because it's common sense. I would be curious what (if any) rebuttals can justify our tanking economy for the sake of this frivolous war.
Honestly what's the difference whether it's POTUS or Congress blocking the bill ? The writing on the wall is here: if Russia invades Poland, NATO article 5 or not the US will not go into full blown war with Russia.
And honestly it was the European's fault to believe in this pipe dream.
"And honestly it was the European's fault to believe in this pipe dream."
Having lived through Reforger exercises, with US tanks everywhere and sonic booms every few minutes, I believe up and including Reagan it was clear the US would not let Soviet Russia invade Western Europe b/c of the resulting shift in world power.
After the EU got more powerful and expanded, dynamics changed.
It's unclear with the Bushes and clear that Clinton/Obama/Trump would not aid Europe.
the usg considers russia one of its key rivals, and so this ukraine thing was a godsend for them: ukraine provides the cannon fodder to fight and die, usg provides the materiel, and russia doesn't have a casus belli to nuke new york. the usg gets all the benefits of fighting a land war with russia with almost none of the costs: no messy body bag parades on cnn, no psychologically disturbed veterans blowing up federal buildings in oklahoma, no sheets of radioactive glass that were until recently thriving metropolises, and no test of the us nuclear response capabilities
all it's cost so far, in direct terms, is a hundred billion dollars or so over a couple of years, in an economy with thirty trillion dollars a year of gdp. 0.2% of gdp, say. contrast with, for example, 2.5% for the apollo program, or 1% for the manhattan project
it sucks pretty bad for the ukrainians tho. and the russians. they're being ground into hamburger by the machinations of putin and the usg, jockeying for power. anyone with a scrap of human feeling is horrified by what is happening. but that's not what animates the cfr
Meanwhile even in this "we can't spend fifty bucks on Russia that we could be spending on tax breaks for oil barons!" political landscape, Russia would run out of hunks of metal to recommission into tanks within two years.
Can you imagine erasing your biggest rival's entire military threat with $300 billion? That's like four whole miles of Californian high speed rail!
Is it truly supporting Ukraine though?
All of that money is being laundered back to the U.S. war machine, yet it's somehow losing this "war"? Mitch McConnell admitted that himself just recently.
Meanwhile, Kiev is in pristine condition while Gaza is a now a wasteland. None of this makes sense.
Here is my source, for what it's worth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZnizA0N8wg
The downvotes won't erase the truth, so nice try I guess?
It's less about current actions and more about how mercurial and dysfunctional the US congress currently is. No one is willing to bet their sovereignty on the outcome of a US presidential election.
The delay in US aid is going to lose this war. It's unconscionable.
Didn't EU just now agreed on future aid of the same amount the USA is still struggling to get through?
"by a large margin"
Numbers? Source?
"The US has provided more funding to Ukraine than the world combined by a large margin, and the lesson you take away is that the US is somehow at fault."
I've said the US can't be trusted to keep support up. Don't twist my words.
You write in the past tense, and in that sense you're right.
But the US is no longer providing that help.
I don't think anybody thought that it would, but here we are. It is quite amazing how time and again we seem to enable little narcissistic men to gain hold of positions of power. And I can't even really complain because NL has Geert Wilders to deal with right now and his foaming-at-the-mouth band of supporters who believe that everything that is wrong with this country can be traced back to immigration. On top of that they believe that this is the fault of 'the left', when in fact we haven't had a left wing government since I was riding a 16" wheeled bicycle.
Same in Germany, and Germans should know better.
But Germany has a left-wing government. And it is pushing this week to enact a law to prohibit speech that is not extreme enough to be against the constitution or otherwise criminal.
Then the US has an extreme left wing government compared with Germany
This is very hard to believe, honestly.
I get it may feel so for an American, since America is the strongest exporter if culture in the world - the whole world for example consumes American movie and songs, with the consequence that most people have some kind of approximate idea how it is to live in the US, what moves Americans etc .
On the other hand, by this same fact, that Germany isn't such a strong cultural exporter, few Americans really know what moves Germans, since these topics are rarely talked about in movies, songs, radio that Americans consume.
From this vantage point, I think it's hard for Americans to imagine just how left-wing Germany became compared to the US. For example, the US doesn't have a system for wide social security benefits, relaxed border controls (I never understand what the US is fretting about in terms if immigration, you can basically just walk in over the to Germany and register as a refugee - as millions have since 2015), and all other amenities that are typically "left" causes.
Furthermore, while Germany may not have a legal framework regulating what you can say, it has a lot of implicit rules, how to talk about foreigner, an implicit "speech police" so to say.
(The issue is actually not having all of thr above -because, after all, they are very nice things to have- but it's that they were allowed to be abused and overused at the expense of the general population, who keep paying more and get less if these services, and these initially nice ideas end up hurting now many more people. )
source?
Every Western European country, the US, Japan, Australia and tons of other territories should know better.
Germans don't know better!
They voted time and time again for unpragmatic solutions and nanny state approaches, to the extent that the head state, Angel Merkel, become informally called "mother Merkel" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Angela_Merke...).
Except perhaps for the Dalai Lama who enjoys adoration out of religious reasons, I know of no other state (and definitely no other big economy) other then Germany where public infantilization reached such advanced states.
Imagine calling Biden "Uncle", Macron "Cousin" or Meloni "Aunt". Strange world.
The upcoming 2024 election cycle will be one for the history books, regardless of outcome. And that outcome can be incredibly bad.
I said it before, if Trump gets a second term, he will have a third. And then democracy as we know it in the Western world will be dead.
And about half of the West will be OK with that. Interesting times we live in.
If you really drill down the numbers, there are the cibstant 25% or so actively supporting it, regardless of country, with enough others tagging along passively to get the 25% dangerously close to actual power.
Interesting times indeed.
The one saving grace is that he's old. You'd hope for some divine intervention, unfortunately I'm not religious.
Yeah, Trump wont drop out unless he dies. He desperately wants to stay out of prison. And people behind him want to stay in power. Fingers crossed we all dodge a bullet this year.
Because if we end up with Presidente Marine Le-Pen, President Trump and an AfD-let German government, well, things look grim. Poland gave me some hope so.
That's absolutely not the sentiments among Poles. If anything, there's a belief we can only rely on US when poo hits the fan.
As I've said, when the Suwałki Gap falls and the US stands by - and the US will under Trump - sentiments will turn 180°.
Poland hoped the UK would safe them from Germany and Russia and was betrayed.
Poland now hopes the US would safe them from Russia, and they will be betrayed.
Trump can forget about the upper Midwest Polish vote then
Once he's President then he probably won't care.
"Once"? "Probably"?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/13/politics/fact-check-trump-nat...
He hasn't cared previously, and more recently... https://apnews.com/article/trump-backlash-nato-funding-russi...
With respect to the Polish midwest voters, given that it'll be his last term he definitely won't care about them anymore.
There is a name for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_betrayal
Looking at it historically, you are going to be short changed again...
Suddenly the following scenario, is not far fetched anymore: Russia will find an excuse around Kaliningrad Oblast, and a NATO hostile US president will negotiate a cease fire in the name of stopping a Nuclear conflict...
I get so tired of these sentiments.
Without a doubt the US pushes its might around the world BUT in the case of Europe, European countries do not have the willpower to create a military like the US's. How did the US lose all its trust? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Europe was frolicking around for decades, most countries with no real economy and making many mistakes a long the way regarding energy security.
"European countries do not have the willpower to create a military like the US's."
Yes, not yet, except Macron.
"long the way regarding energy security."
Germany is switching to US LNG as fast as it can just for the US to signal it will no longer support LNG in Europe. This kind of energy security? [0]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-export-pause-...
The French military will likely continue to be bogged down in Africa, given that the situation there is pretty dire and French vital interests are threatened.
The French betrayed Czechoslovakia in 1938, then got steamrolled by the Wehrmacht themselves, and their credibility in Central and Eastern Europe has been shot ever since.
I don't think the US stance on limiting LNG export for its own security is a valid defense. Europe/France/Germany made many mistakes before that by shutting off generation plants before having secured long term resources.
We weren't frolicking, we were peacefully consuming Apple's wonderful technology, cursing at Microsoft's abysmal OS, and other great product from Silicon Valley ;)
I absolutely agree with your criticism on European defense spending but I know how the US managed to do that.
By first dragging the rest of Europe in a very aggressive position in the Ukraine war. Dont get me wrong I fully support that stance. But it was only possible because the US stood front and center, president and congress hand in hand "as long as it takes".
Now less than two years the US lost interest and left Europe with a half dead crazed Russia running on a war economy on its doorstep. So Europe has to try and fill in for the lack of US support while a possible upcoming Trump presidency makes it rather likely that the US wouldnt honor article 5.
Germany will buy its F-35s. Poland will start taking delivery of its HIMARS from the US starting next year and will continue to order US hardware. As part of the deals that Poland and Germany signed, they will be ramping up local production to support the systems they are buying.
One thing you're missing in lots of your predictions is that Ukraine had no US military presence. Poland does. There's 10k US troops in Poland right now. There's zero chance other European countries will be closing US military bases with the looming threat from Russia.
"Germany will buy its F-35s"
No. Germany needs those F-35 only for delivering nukes ("Nukleare Teilhabe") [0] replacing aging Tornados in that role. With Trump as the next president I don't think you find a German politician (except the far left and far right) who thinks sharing nukes with the US is working any longer.
I'd think Germany will rather take French nukes instead of using US nukes in the future.
"There's zero chance other European countries will be closing US military bases with the looming threat from Russia."
With a US president shouting "Russia, go, invade Germany, rape, plunder and torture with my blessing" - US bases will all be shut in the coming decades.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
I'm pretty sure Trump didn't say "rape" (source?).
One assumes Poland would actually like someone to fulfill those orders in a timely manner, so perhaps not. Germany can afford to "spend" money on weapons and then not produce anything, but it's not going to work for Poland.
Poland will not get spare parts for its F-35 in a conflict under Trump, or more likely be blackmailed for higher prices or other concessions. Or the software will stop working and they need to pay to make it work again. Trump would love that.
The only way for Poland to be safe is having military production in its own country. Because it's easier if everyone has the same weapons, I it should join Airbus and KMW+NEXTER and get production facilities on it's own land.
As seen with AstraZeneca you need physical control to be safe.
This is an interesting read on the US sending more than half ($47.38b / $88.94b) [0] of the total worldwide military aid allocated so far to Ukraine.
[0] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/ukraine-support-tracker...
Suspect parent is thinking of another perfect call in the future.
I don't think Poland is very doubtful towards US(some is always welcome). We have strong ties and generally are on extremely good terms with US compared to other western countries.
As for weapons, well its a market situation, sometimes perhaps having non-us weapon systems is actually better.
A lot of these wars are connected - Russia is working with Iran and North Korea.
Thinking Europe should just care about what happens in their backyard while criticizing the US for not caring enough about Europe's backyard seems hypocritical.
Trump winning, with his comments about encouraging Russia to attack NATO countries, would not do much to help.
This isn't how it works. You buy expensive and unnecessary weapon system from US not because thye are any good but because this is your designated protection fee. After you spend several bilion dollars US feels more obliged to help... Just a racket..
this is very hopeful to me. as an american who is aware of whats going on its been discouraging to see my govt consistently spreading evil through the decades
why rant and rave against US? This isn't 2012 post-Snowden era of "friends don't spy on friends". The US are not the enemy here but our long-term ally. Right now Russia, China, the Assad regime, and IRGC are.
If "we" means Europe I agree, that "we" need to reintroduce mandatory military service, prepare to fight Russia and its allies on their own turf, defend against Russian terrorists on our own turf. Ans most importantly we must wage war against pro-Russian mouthpieces in our own countries, e.g. Geert Wilders, Marine Lepen, Meloni, Bjorn Hoecke and AfD, the entire Orban government, current Slovakian regime, and anyone who takes money from Putin and spouting their propaganda.
War is already here in Europe. It's just unequally distributed.
If you believe the western media, the west no longer believes in or upholds its values, and watches while Russia pushes westward while China builds up a military and eyes Taiwan, both more than happy to destabilize the middle east in pursuit of their goals.
The west needs to wake up, we're slowly sliding towards a world conflict. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
Edit: Russia is pushing westward not eastward!
Listen to internal speeches by Putin or Xi, they are often available on YouTube. We are not slowly sliding towards a world conflict, it has already begun and we are hopeless to stop it. It is arrogant to ignore or dismiss the happenings.
Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO towards the East this path was set in stone. The late 2000s were the absolute breaking point.
Major Eastern players are asymmetrically breaking US hegemony through proxies and internal conflict. They cannot face the US conventionally but it doesn't mean they cannot face the US. They can, they do and they will continue to do so.
Brexit, MAGA, Mideast conflicts, Ukraine, EU refugee crisis, inflation, energy crisis, recent development in North Korea, social media disinformation etc. etc. etc.
The BRICS countries (and others) are pursuing a multipolar, non-democratic world with heavily reduced US influence over Asia and Europe, who are now discussing defense independence and their own nuclear umbrella after Trump strategically placed some Russian talking points (again).
What deeper integration would that have been? Geniunely curious, I don't see what could have worked once the oligarchs were minted. They only care about selling simple low-effort stuff, easily corrupted, like oil.
Boris Yeltsyn was proposing to Bill Clinton to admit Russia into NATO. This way Russian ambitions would be tamed and channeled into something more constructive.
Of course, we can't know what a Russian NATO membership could have lead to.
But a few red flags - Russia just barely held together at that time and had its own civil war. Also, there's the risk of Russia joining just to walk away with the keys to the kingdom at any later point. If the CFE inspections (1) were anything to go by, Russia didn't exactly play fair.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
That's comical that you mention CFE.
Your own link says: "The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact" and later "most former non-USSR Warsaw Treaty members subsequently joined NATO, followed later by the Baltic states and the states of the former Yugoslavia".
"CFE-II took into account the different geopolitical situation of the post-Cold War era by setting national instead of bloc-based limits on conventional armed forces. NATO members refused however to ratify the treaty..." [0] What a surprise.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
I'm not saying there wasn't mistrust from all sides. I'm saying Russia may have had ulterior motives to join NATO.
"Ulterior motives" like what?
Having a veto on who gets in the alliance, gathering intelligence, who knows? Not me.
I just don't think Russia joining NATO is an apparent slam dunk success. Maybe it would have been great, we can never know for sure, but I can understand the suspicion.
"Having a veto on who gets in the alliance, gathering intelligence"
With what goal?
Attack Ukraine? But on the other hand, joining NATO could have changed the course of history for the better, so such plans may never have come into motion. This is all counterfactual. There was deep mistrust on all sides and it didn't happen.
Attack Ukraine why?
Read Putins "scholarly article".
I haven't read it. What do you have in mind specifically?
For starters, pre-2014 Russians would be glad to have a visa waiver with the EU. But they never got that. Then 2014 and Crimea affair came and EU didn't have that lever to pull.
Things like student exchanges, etc, were also severily limited in scope. Russians only ever saw EU as tourists, not as neighbours. And tourists can sure swap one destination for the another. Russians knew that they live in Europe, but did not feel the neighbourly presense of the EU.
This is not accurate. In the USSR and after its collapse, Russians generally don't consider themselves European. I also think this aligns more or less with how the rest of the world sees Russia if you consider the standards of living and the freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech; not being able to freely travel to most of the world). On top of that, don't forget that geographically, most of Russia is in Asia.
Russia is a 100% European country.
Comparable and exceeding some countries in EU (e.g. Bulgaria)
Some freedoms are there, some are not. Before 2022 it was similar to some parts of Europe.
Also, freedom is not synonymous to Europe.
It is not that bad. 127 visa-free countries, more than e. g. Montenegro, Moldova, Albaina - all of which are 100% European.
This is a meaningless argument. Britan was 90% not in Europe in the year 1912. But no one would say it was not European.
We talk a lot about economic integration but we rarely talk about cultural integration. imo part of what will keep us safe in the future is cultural integration. We have multiple generations of families established across many borders now. With enough of that, the appetite for world war in theory might be decreased. I don't know the answer here, but I do feel we don't think about cultural integration as a national security asset often, and it probably could be.
Like the multi-generational families some of their members living in Ukraine, some in Russia? Didn't seem to stop the war sadly.
You're totally correct, to be clear I don't know if this is a good prognosis for regional conflict, I was more alluding to something like WW3.
It might be difficult to believe, but in the 1990s the people of Russia truly wanted to be in Europe (kind of like Ukrainians do now). That sentiment is now gone, and it's not (just) due to propaganda. The common people believe that Ukrainians will just be used to achieve some goal in the US vs. Russia power struggle and then abandoned.
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-...
Like this (2010):
No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday.
"We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0]
[0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-v...
Putin has pushing this lie that he tried to get closer to NATO and was rebuffed for a long time, but it's simply not true. His ideology has always been completely against being junior partner in a US led alliance.
Your point would have been better made without weaseling in a Mearsheimer apology for authoritarian states. Russia snatching Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with NATO's expansion. Indeed, had NATO expanded earlier, we wouldn't have found ourselves in this mess, with Ukraine left to fend for itself.
NATO grew because of the desperation of former USSR satellites to shelter themselves from their abuser.
As to the other bit here about rejecting Russian integration as a cause for war: I think that point has been proven quite wrong with Merkel's absurd fantasy that trade with Russia would bring peace.
The West didn't reject Russia's deeper integration -- Russia, and more particularly, Putin did. There was always a plan to add Russia to the EU and even at some point get them to join NATO. Russia abandoned democracy and closed that door.
How do you propose the west avoids conflict with Russia and China?
Is there any examples in history of appeasement leading to less bloodshed?
Fan fiction, but: Civil wars might do it, the Russians need to overthrow Putin, Xi in China, and we need to elect peace hawks in places that have democracy. People would have to really really really really not want a word war. On the history part, I have no clue, but I do know that today the citizenry is more connected and able to strategize for ourselfs than at any point in history before.
Putin's old, but he isn't that old. Plus I assume there are similar people waiting in the wings to takeover. Idk how to fix the situation but it would make me nervous for them to have a civil war in a nuclear power.
Xi might go, but that party isn't going anywhere.
Geographically probably not, but politically the Chinese Communist party already covers a very broad spectrum with Xi and others currently at the top being the most insular, paranoid, and economically impractical of all the various factions. A "fix" to the situation is unlikely, but changes that yield improvements are all but inevitable at this point.
This is interesting to me, I naively think of the CCP as being highly unified as they paint such a great picture of that, I always thought there would be some decenters but for the most part complete unification. I should probably learn more about this and would gladly accept any resources on digging into the modern CCP more.
You can start here and work outwards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_clique
I am not a historian, but I have always found diversity of thought inside large political bodies: Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Jimintou, etc. Surely if you have a large political party where you are from, you have also seen that they have factions as well?
There is loads written about this. Wikipedia has a category page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Factions_of_the_Chine...
Painting a great picture of party unity - and national unity - is a key propaganda goal of the CCP, so if that's what you see then they are succeeding. In practice, the party has almost 100 million members so naturally it is composed of people with many different points of view, although those differences are rarely expressed openly and they're all still shaped by the overall political and educational environment of the PRC.
It's generally accepted that Xi Jinping has used his anti-corruption drive to wipe out rival factions, and one unlikely conspiracy theory is that he somehow orchestrated Bo Xilai's fall from grace in 2012 so he could take control of the party. The whole thing could provide material for stacks of palace intrigue thrillers... and in fact it did, which resulted in the Causeway Bay Books disappearances of 2015. Gotta control that narrative, after all.
If you're interested in the propaganda side, I recommend reading China Media Project: https://chinamediaproject.org/ If you just want to know about the party maneuvering, all the usual thinktanks (CSIS, Brookings, CFR etc) publish a ton of English language content.
It's a damn shame everything going on, really gets me down sometimes. My mum said the other day one of the reasons my folks had us when they did was the Cold War was ending(Gorbachev came in), there would never be war in Europe again, and the world was happy and healthy for the future.
Lol
"the Russians need to overthrow Putin, Xi in China, and we need to elect peace hawks in places that have democracy."
We overthrew communists in 1991, USSR crumbled, in 1992 Pentagon declared that America's "first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival" [0] and 17 years later NATO, after multiple rounds of expansion, announced that it would expand into Georgia and the Ukraine [1] despite all the promises given by Western leaders [2].
The trust between Russia and the collective West will not be rebuild for a very long time.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/excerpts-from-penta...
[1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm
[2] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
This gets repeated a lot, but who on the Russian side has ever confirmed it? Many people from that time are still around. Both the USSR's last minister of foreign affairs (1985-1990) and the first Russian minister of foreign affairs (1990-1996) have called that bullshit, with the latter adding in a recent interview that people believing this are "chumps and useful idiots"[1].
[1] https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/russias-ex-foreign-ministe...
"This gets repeated a lot"
I gave a link to the documents, not to hersay.
"who on the Russian side has ever confirmed it"
You mean apart from 'nationalists', 'hardliners' and 'communists'?
It's a speculation that has been categorically refuted by the very persons it mentions.
Apart from people like Putin, who at the time was nowhere near the foreign policy circles, but served as an enforcer for St Petersburg's mayor, collecting protection money and bribes from businesses.
How can a document be refuted?
The Soviet minister of foreign affairs has explained that references to "NATO expansion" have been mischaracterized, and that their discussions were limited to placement of US forces in East Germany after reunification, and that no wider discussion about the future of Eastern Europe in NATO ever took place, let alone reached any agreement, because at the time they couldn't have imagined that the USSR would cease to exist in a few years. Both he and his successor find nothing wrong with the fact that most of Central and Eastern Europe eventually joined NATO and see no reason to whine about betrayal like Putin. If anything, they regret that the Europeans and Americans didn't engage more with Russia and didn't pressure it enough towards becoming a civilized country:
https://transatlanticrelations.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...There's a lot of things the West can do without throwing nukes at the problem:
- arming ourselves and our allies (especially Taiwan) to the teeth
- supporting exiled and in-country opposition
- intervening against hostile operations (such as "police stations") on our own soil
- strengthen links with "global south" countries to minimize Chinese/Russian influence on them, support local rebels against regimes that have already fallen towards Russia/China.
But if we change Russia/China and West places here you would scream bloody murder and terrorists not even finishing your own list.
Of course I would. We're at least a bunch of democracies, neither Russia nor China are.
I believe that we should have done much more, and much earlier, to foster democracies and to stop dictatorships and bullies. Instead, we let them fester (unfortunately, even amongst our own like Hungary and Turkey), and now the cancer has grown so massive that it will be very hard to kill it.
I'm not sure we can avoid conflict now, I think we're past the point where that was possible (last 10-15 years were critical). I think both Russia and China understand that, and are planning accordingly.
I'm proposing we wake up and start doing the same, planning and drawing "do not cross" lines in the sand to hopefully limit the total/final scope of the conflict.
Yes this will force an earlier confrontation -- but WWII would have been a lot less bloody if Europe had stood up to Hitler earlier -- problem was everyone thought that appeasing him would make things better.
It's clear both Russia and China can't be appeased at this point. Both need to be checked.
GP wasn't talking about appeasement. The west has to make sure, that it is not a winning option to attack it.
it is only possible to reduce not to avoid bloodshed.
Russia does not honor the rules of law so we should not negotiate with them in good faith. They are a terrorist state.
The only solution are preemptive strikes against Russian interests.Russia really is not to be feared.
The Ukraine war is a tragedy and I hope it ends soon.
But they have no economical & military power to really do any harm the Europe & the US. Putin makes a lot of noise but really can't even win a few km's in Ukraine.
But the real threat is further east. China is slowly building it's empire, and it's a scary one. Taking over parts of Africa. Migrating it's people. Integrating it's tech worldwide. Making the world dependent while building it's own full independence.
As soon as the Ukraine war comes to a standstill, Russia will start riots in the Baltics to create a land connection to Kaliningrad.
How exactly will Russia start "riots" in NATO countries?
Via the standard playbook.
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-pag...
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/ru...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/30/blacktivi...
Making it about US, main concern is Baltics
I think the links there are less about 'wow look at how this disruption playbook worked in the US' and more about'look you can cause instability without inviting open warfare with NATO'.
Or are the Baltics and her people immune to propaganda?
A playbook is made up of repeatable tactics.
With the large Russian minority living there. Just like it started in Donbas.
There are significant Russian minorities left in the baltic states from the SU.
Russia will support and radicalize those.
If the Baltics dont react it will lead to unrest and Russia is forced to intervene and "protect" their fellow Russians.
If the states react this will be seen as suppressing the Russian minorities and Russia will be forced to intervene and "protect" their fellow Russians.
The same way as in Transnistra, Georgia and Ukraine. Soviet Russia colonized these areas with Russians to control access to the baltic sea/coal production/... and today these Russians lead a "Back to Mother Russia" campaigns.
Let's see how the situation in Avdiivka develops in the next few weeks. Ukraine is reinforcing the area, but it doesn't look good.
We've seen plenty of blunders by the russian army. But you should not underestimate your enemy.
Avdiivka will fall next week.
Putin (and the Russian (leaderhsip) culture in general, see Stalin) is this:
What are a 100M (of our) people dead if we own Ukraine/Baltics/East Poland/Georgia/... for the next hundreds of years?
Stalin had the same blunders, thats priced in, the Red Army had meat wave attacks in WW2 and lost millions, but achived all it's war goals (Poland, Baltics, Eastern Europe including half of Germany - only the US achieved all it's war goals too, everyone else lost, sadly Poland had the biggest loss).
The fertility rate more than halved since then, they're not playing with the same cards anymore
Putin is doing everything to get fertility rate up again [0]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-urges-russians-ha...
Any success?
you can just make people poorer and they'll have more childs, that's the lifehack
Exactly the same logic followed by US/Germany elites fuelling and capitalising on this war by selling weapons and preventing peace talks.
This reads as if Red Army was aggressor and not Nazis, are you deranged ?
And the US couldn't win against a few thousand goat farmers with Ak47s, or maybe there this is a bit more complex...
As it turns out, glassing an entire country is politically unpopular.
Unless you're Israel
The problem of Afghanistan has never been conquering it, but holding it, the Soviets ran into the same issue. Anyway, the km's really do matter, if people truly fear for a deeper invasion into Europe.
I don't think it's a convincing narrative that that's what Putin wants, and also that that's something he could reasonably accomplish. But I do hear it often as a powerful narrative to help Ukraine more, and I understand why, but from my point of view it's not very convincing.
At the same time I agree with the sentiment that heavier the losses in Ukraine, the more he will have difficulties in starting similar drama in other countries with large Russian communities.
You underestimate how Russia is playing the long game while everyone else thinks in election cycles.
The natural election cycle is pending though. I want to believe this is his last term.
Any unstable and/or desperate country with nukes is absolutely to be feared.
Ukrainians, Lithunians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns and Polish would disagree with your first sentence.
Also slowly folding. It is not happening only in little countries like Slovakia. US has relevant party that is now openly pro-Putin.
I assume you don't know much about Slovakia besides the few headlines that pop here and there, right ?
I have mentioned Slovakia because conspiracy theories are mainstream there. Ministry of culture is ruled by one of those medias.
I have mentioned Slovakia because I constantly hear about 'US bad Russia Good' there.
I mentioned Slovakia because that is my home country.
So tell me why would you assume my lack of knowledge?
My wife's from there and I spend quite a lot of time there. Everybody and their uncle became a Slovak politic expert during the last election while half of them didn't even know Czechoslovakia wasn't a thing anymore the day prior.
Unless you evolve in very weird circles you probably know that it's infinitely more complex than 'US bad Russia Good'
Hard to tell if you're part of the "Slovakia should be kicked out of EU because they voted bad" crowd that popped up out of nowhere (and disappeared as quickly apparently). It's much less black and white than people make it look like, for example: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/27331.jpeg
Not sure why you went that far with your assumptions. I just stated that situation in Slovakia changed. It is not black and white - I agree with you. I mentioned Slovakia where it happened and US where it is starting to happen. It is not going to be black and white there either but that should not be excuse to stay passive.
Fair enough, I jumped on the gun because I heard lots baseless attacks on Slovakia in the recent past, which I assume might be partially orchestrated or at least coming from very uninformed individuals trying to fit their local political games onto other nations'
I was bit vague with my original comment. I should have expect comments like that but I posted that under emotions of this news and what is currently happening at home.
I live in Slovakia. My impression is that the country was always divided; half of the population pro-Western, the other half pro-Russian.
The pro-Western people are over-represented in Bratislava and among the university-educated people. So if you are a smart person living in the capital city, it is easy to forget how the rest of the country thinks... and then you always get surprised when they elect an anti-Western alpha male: previously Mečiar, now Fico.
For reasons I do not understand, Russian propaganda (Slobodný vysielač, etc.) is extremely popular here. I have never actually listened to it, but I don't even need to, because people quote them on internet all the time; it is the source of all popular conspiracy theories.
Luckily for us, Fico lies to everyone, including his own voters. He promises them to side with Russia against the Ukraine... but most of that are just empty words. The actual policy probably will not change a lot, because his main concerns are somewhere else: staying out of prison, remaining popular, stealing more money. Otherwise he will give up under the slightest economical threat from EU. His voters only care about rhetoric, and at home he is going to give them exactly that.
That sounds like a yes to me
Can you elaborate?
I would prefer not to on here.
What relevant party in the US is openly pro-Putin?
I’d say it’s more accurate to say the Republican Party is firmly beholden to a man who is at times openly pro-Putin and the rest of the time merely transparently pro-Putin.
Thanks for clarifying, I'm not an American, and I was not aware Trump is openly pro-Putin. This is quite concerning, do you mind clarifying what openly or transparently pro-Putin policy positions he takes?
Well for one, his public and sharp criticism of NATO countries that he's decided are not or have not been spending enough on defense. Airing that stuff out in the open sows division and weakens the unity of the alliance. And it often seems like he is angling toward pulling the US out entirely at some point--though I'm not sure he'd be able to.
Why would NATO members not spend enough on defence? NATO members would never spend less on defence than they should, that is clearly an insane and slanderous lie that only a pro-Putin idiot liar would ever make. Trump is probably trying to goad them into tanking their economies by redirecting too much spending to defence so that Russia can be victorious over them in the global economy. Thanks for explaining. It's not quite what I would describe as openly pro putin but I understand the need for some level of dishonesty when faced with some so blatantly openly pro putin.
Recently Trump said that if Putin invaded Europe, he (Trump) "would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they wanted to you".
It's not full pro-Russia yet, but he's certainly moving in that direction. Unfortunately, Trump is currently the republican party.
Europe has to wake up. We are so lazy and political incompetent that it would easy for anyone to invade us and have us work in gulags. The only people left that fights back are the slaves, the rest of us is uncomfortably unconcerned.
Please help us by selecting Trump.
There is none, it is 100% rhetoric. When AOC says "Eat the rich" , do people think she literally wants the masses to go find the nearest billionaire and start cannibalism?
Trump thinks that the US pays too much into NATO and others not enough. This his tactic for getting other countries to pay more for the security we all enjoy which isn't free.
I'm not a Trump fan but I see through his words to his tactics.
The MAGA subgroup of Republicans: https://accountability.gop/ukraine-quotes/
Tucker Carlson is on there too, he's now a full time Russia shill.
You have to wonder about the sanity of people that are in love with power for power's sake.
Europe will now spend more on it’s own defence which is very good for the West and just horrible for Russia. Invading the EU is a different proposition to invading Ukraine. Invading a well-armed Europe is almost impossible.
“Invading a well-armed Europe is almost impossible.”
Funny, the world had the same thought in 1936.
Fair point. But if you want to use that analogy, maybe you are also willing to admit that the might of the Wehrmacht accomplished substantially more than getting bogged down about 100km beyond their initial borders two years into the conflict?
I will admit no such accomplishments. Where I'm from, we punch Nazi's in the face.
Not sure if refusing to learn from history is the approach I would take to stop nazis or Russia, but to each their own I guess
I refuse to acknowledge any nazi accomplishments. That does not mean I haven’t learned from history. I think the evidence shows it’s the other way around. That people forget history and like to admire a fascist regime for their murder rate or ability to take down unsuspecting neighbors.
Russia got bogged down because Russia doesn’t want this fight. Russia’s Kremlin does.
Nobody "admires" the murder rate of nazis (except perhaps other nazis). People are horrified by the efficiency and success that Nazis achieved. It's a stark reminder of what can happen when the wrong people get too much uncheckered power. Denying or minimizing that it happened will make it more likely for it to happen again.
Not sure how admitting that the current state of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation relative to the rest of Europe is not as good that of the pre-WWII Wehrmacht has any relationship to punching Nazis.
I do not admire Nazi military accomplishments nor compare current military strategy to a world invasion. Russia’s military state is because Russia’s military doesn’t want this fight, but they must.
How did that work out for the Germans?
Someone was always wrong about something similar in the past.
That proves nothing about the present.
"Invading a well-armed Europe is almost impossible."
- You don't get it. An alliance of china, russia, iran and north korea will be enabled to do whatever they want. Including invading or, more likely, hitting with missiles critical infrastructure in any Nato country with the exception of US and UK
This feels like the complacency that has meant Europe is almost entirely dependent on the US for credibile defence against Russia. Europe is not well-armed, as shown by the panicked response to Trump's threat to let NATO allies be attacked if they don't contribute enough to the budget, and it will take a long time to re-arm properly in the current economic climate. (For clarity, I think Trump's threat is terrible in many ways, but it has exposed NATO's fundamental dependence on the US)
The writing is on the wall for a while now, the only problem is that people talking about it are promptly labeled as not worthy of being listened to
Exactly, did people forget Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014? Let's not be naive here.
Yup, this was the time to arm Ukraine. (or even in 2008 with Georgia).
The US did actually train Ukrainian troops after that. Eg https://www.newsweek.com/us-troops-prepare-ukraine-soldiers-...
Could more have been done? Probably, but effort was definitely put in.
If you compare what happened in 2022 to what happened in 2014, you could make the argument that basically nothing was done in 2014.
I had a friend who kept saying that we needed to do something back then, and kinda ignored him, and now looking back, it's depressing how right he was.
This is just silly play of ironic smirks. The interests of key players in Europe are secured, some intra-Slavic conflicts have no importance for them.
Security isn't a thing that can be secured in an absolute sense, only a relative one.
For example, while the catastrophic ineptitude of the Russian forces at the start of their invasion has caused me to believe 80% of their nukes don't work any more, even just one nuke detonated as a HAEMP would destroy a continental-sized power grid — and the same visible signs of corruption that gave me the previous 80%, that also means there's a substantial chance at least one of the warheads ended up on the black market.
Have you ever thought about what Russia's influence in the AI sector would be by now if they would have focused on developing it instead of starting a war? Developing it while pretending a peaceful cooperation with the West?
It might well be that China supports Russia's war effort so much because it knows that this way Russians will have zero time and resouces to focus on being an AI leader, and through it, a threat to China.
The biggest win for the US and China is that Russia will now never be at the cutting edge in AI development. The longer this war goes on, the better it will be for both the US and for China.
Even Europe will be more advanced than Russia during the next couple of decades.
This sounds so random. Did Russia ever proved they can do AI in any significant capacity?
Yandex was doing alright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex_self-driving_car
Their "Tesla killer" not so much: https://news.yahoo.com/russia-presents-electric-car-amber-16...
Putin's Russia does not have a good track record of developing strategic projects with big R&D component. If anything, they spectacularly failed in space, in nanotechnology and other fields which were designated as strategic 15 years ago. All Russian successes were in commercial sector so far thanks to many technology entrepreneurs and ignorance of Soviet boomers - the generation currently in power. Despite the enormous brain drain, Russia may be now in a better position to start and make significant progress in something. Russia is traditionally better in mobilizing the nation in times of war than in peaceful times and it shows now, when they were able to scale military-industrial complex capacity very quickly.
Russia could have done many things, but it's entire business environment is broken.
It fits very well into the narrative that democracy is ineffective and basically a hot-house flower, that some culprits propell.
Democracy is an ideal. There absolutely are bad implementations, democracies that get hijacked and are democracies in-name-only, dumb populaces, etc.
Yes, as long as said autocrats spent billions to undermine it ;-)
What keeps my hope for democracies in the world is an observation I made after reading The Year 2000 by Joseph Goebbels written on 25 February 1945. He more or less said that Stalin wasn't bound by the rules of democracies then he would succeed after all. I like to analyze such predictions because you know the outcome and you can guess what was wrong when someone wrote this. My version is that democracies have values kept while transitioning from a state to a state (after elections) while dictatorships change in many respects. It was visible in the Soviet Union, every new ruler brought a new system despite the fact that they all claimed to fight for the same goals.
Not sure I remember the source, but even Navalny was not against Russia’s war to get its buffer zones back. Of course, if Navalny was able to magically overthrow Putin, it’d be harder for a democratic regime to fight an offensive war because no one wants to personally participate in a war.
Not sure about downvotes, but Navalny was definitely against bringing back Crimea to Ukraine. In his own words: "Crimea is not a pastry to pass from hands to hands". After it becomes clear that "3 day" invasion of Ukraine is unsuccessful he changed his mind. But only after it, not before.
The last one is pure fantasy. He made a statement on the first day of the war and was strongly against it from the start.
https://zona.media/online/2022/02/24/pokrov4
And where this statement in this article? Are you lying? He against the war sure, but show me where he mentioned returning Crimea to Ukraine.
Putin has cancer and Father Time is undefeated. There’s reason for much optimism in the world.
He has Princes waiting in his wings that will continue the same kleptocratic dictatorship in that country for decades to come. Nothing will change when he, hopefully soon, dies.
I know it is enough to fill several books but I don’t see how we went from Gorbachev to this.
I’ll hold hope that the Princes will be less homicidal maniacs. I think there is something extra psychotic about Putin that you don’t find in normal people.
We've been hearing news about his cancer periodically since ~2012, now it's the time to believe
You forgot a chunk of the US right actively supporting Russia and praising Putin as savior of the West.
They aren’t the majority but are influential.
Xi Xinpeng should take a lesson here. Apparently all you have to do is dunk on gay people and pay lip service to right wing culture war stuff and they’ll roll over. You don’t even have to mean it. (Every core statistic the right claims to care about is worse in Russia like birth rate, divorce, abortion, etc.)
I hang out with people of a huge range of political views, from classical Marxist-Leninists to earnest tear-it-down anarchists, from neolib Obama stans to full magapedes.
I've yet to meet a single one who "actively supports Russia and praises Putin as savior of the West". Like, literally not one. The only time I've _ever_ heard this viewpoint uttered in North America is when people online are sketching it out online as a bogeyman. Even on the trashier, more marginal sides of Twitter it's still America First - I just don't know who these people are that you and others in this thread are so concerned about.
Have you personally met someone who believes that crap? Who, given the option, would prefer a world of Russian hegemony over American? I think we're getting mad at a population that in North America doesn't really exist in any meaningful way.
Usually, I believe the underlying reasoning is that they think someone is not pro-war enough, or anti-the guy enough, when they accuse someone of being pro the guy. Like secret supporters or something. Because actual pro the guy seem extremely rare.
Surely not the last opposition figure and Russia will run out of manpower as every attacker has a higher loss than the defender. You forget Lukashenko, he wasn't unwilling to let Belarus join the Russian Federation for no reason. As soon as Putin dies for whatever reason, Lukashenko will be the first to race to the Kremlin and take over.
Personally I have great hopes that an outsider like Kasparov could become President of Russia once Russia is defeated. He did attempt to run for presidency in 2007.
You do read the news? Ukraine is sinking the Russian Black Sea fleet ship by ship with cheap sea-drones. Ukraine is destroying Russian oil refineries and Russia has to reduce it's crude oil production now that India seems to saturated with cheap Russian oil.
On Ukraine ceding territory, I assume that's in case of a peace deal? Putin will sell that as a victory to the Russian people and prepare the next attack a few years later. This simply isn't an option for Europe to allow. Russia will crumble.
Lukashenko taking over Russia is the funniest take I’ve heard about him
Remember at the time his competition was Yeltsin
Europe deciding to depend on Russia for their energy and not focusing on defense spending is the unbelievable part to me, but they've been doing this for quite some time now. They walked right into it. Russia is doing what they've always done and always will do.
It was reasonable not to see Russia as enemy. It was well integrated into European trade and some political structures (PACE, NATO-Russia council etc) and there were even talks about visa-free travel between Russia and EU. What went wrong was the glacial speed of integration, letting the nationalist sentiment and disappointment in West grow. Post-WWII Europe was pacified through a political union between Germany and France, post-Cold War Europe should have done it too. Putin could be another Orban in the worst case.
There's not so much infighting as there is a fascist fox in the hen-house (Orban). They still managed to get the €54bn aid package through this month - and that's just a Marshal Plan to set the country up for future EU membership. Germany alone has pledged €8bn in bilateral military aid for Ukraine this year, and there's a further €5bn coming from the coalition.
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-eu-aid-funding...
Also are we just ignoring Vladimir Kara-Murza in terms of opposition figures fighting for regime change?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/putin-ukr...
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a minor figure, one of the many others in jail, who are decent people but irrelevant politicians. 99% of Russians haven’t heard of him. At this moment the only active and relevant politician is Nadezhdin.
Let's keep in mind the man was no saint either, perhaps his regime would have preferred sending some rockets to the Georgian "rats" rather than Ukrainians.
Context: https://web.archive.org/web/20200414045757/https://navalny.l...
Why does this surprise you? Russia just can't afford another Lenin during the war. Or another Yeltsin.
The last thing they need now is a fight for supremacy, similar to what we have in Ukraine, that would cripple their war effort and benefit only their enemies. The death or one of the opposition leaders may be considered as a small price to pay to avoid the 1917 like catastrophe. Today, with the abundance of nuclear weapons, the stakes for the whole world are much higher than then.
He never represented any real hope for regime change.
He was just a useful figurehead to attract sympathies from the west, but he never posed any threat to Putin and even if he somehow got into power he would do nothing to change Russia for the better.
He died (was killed) because he no longer served a purpose for Putin.
Sad reality, from the pov of their neighbors, is that russian regime change wouldn't really change much on their side.
As much as it is incomprehensible for America, there are societies that do not value freedom from the very bottom to the very top - and Russia is one of them
There are more oppositional figures, they’re simply barred from entry because it’s not a real democracy.
Russia is not gaining noteworthy traction. Avdiivka is a tiny pointless place aside from the fact that Russia is willing to impale itself at horrible odds to achieve any victory it can for optics.