Ukraine’s situation is better than many people realize, and the US, in siding with Russia, may be betting on the wrong horse.
The EU has provided more aid to Ukraine than the US, Ukraine drone production is through the roof. Europe needs Ukraine and its army as a bulwark against Russia.
Ukraine’s situation is worse than many people realize. Ukraine is losing the war right now with roughly equal support in monetary terms from both US and EU! They have huge manpower problems because of losses and apparent political inability to mobilize enough men. Even if EU suddenly doubled its aid to compensate (which I think is _very_ unlikely), there are gaps in weapons production in Europe, e.g. for SAMs.
Manpower was always going to be their hardest-to-overcome problem in a protracted war. The relative population sizes when the war started meant they needed an extremely positive kill/death ratio (if you will) just to stay at parity.
Being on the defense and retreating gives exactly that parity. Soviet doctrine even has a number for that which is somewhat close to the ratio of Ukrainian to russian populations.
Yes, they have serious advantages from being on the defense, and a lot of other things working in their favor. I just mean that it was clear from the beginning that that was the thing that couldn't really be adjusted by aid (short of direct involvement of other militaries) and where the numbers were extremely not in their favor, so it'd be the thing to watch out for, as far as what might eventually force them to cede territory for peace or even to outright lose, even if foreign aid remained steady.
We have powerful weapons now. Manpower is not the (most) limiting factor. If the Ukraine had 10 times its current long range drone production, the Russians would start whining about peace deals.
Yes, and from the videos all over the Internet, a lot of what those weapons do is kill people. If just blowing up machines won the war, Ukraine would have declared victory in the first year.
There are lots of potential limiting factors, population's just one where Ukraine started at a big disadvantage and that can't really be made up for by foreign aid, unlike munitions or food or what have you (short of other countries outright sending troops). Weapons can be sent, but if they run short of people to use the weapons, to the point that they can't maneuver, can't credibly threaten counter-offensives, eventually can't cover the entire front... then things start to fall apart.
Like once they survived and repulsed the initial attempt at blitzkrieg, and things settled in to a stable-ish front, population is the particular figure that would tend to give you a knot in your stomach, looking at the on-paper situation from their perspective, and the prospect of a long war.
Oh, sure, mess up their logistics network enough and they'll have trouble keeping their front resupplied. I don't see evidence that it's happening yet, but sure, saturate important targets with enough bombs and it will eventually, hopefully Ukraine finds a way to do just that. I'm sure it's at least helping, even what they've managed to do so far. It might be a big part of why Russia's having trouble putting together major offensives.
I'm not disputing that there are ways to win a war other than killing all the other dudes, I'm just pointing out that if Ukraine got backed into a corner, the smart money very early on was it'd happen either because "allies all pack their bags and go home" or "they run short of manpower".
How would you categorize Russia's manpower problem, given that they need to rely on North Korea for people, have to send injured soldiers back to the front line, and suffer multiple more deaths and injuries compared to Ukraine?
It's bad, but not as dire. Russian losses are very likely higher, but if I have to guess - multiples of 2 and above are just propaganda mixed with wishful thinking. They still didn't need to resort to further rounds of mobilization since 2022 or large scale usage of conscripts. And I don't understand what "North Korea" argument even is - Ukrainians would love to rely on someone else! But no one is willing to help in this department.
I mean, are Zelensky or Syrskyi willing to share truthful information with you in private? If so - good for you, otherwise I'm not sure what "first hand" reports you can use. I'm relying mostly on data about obituaries collected on both sides as proxy for true figures.
If you use Russian recruitment and army size numbers, you get much more realistic figures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja6-espHVSE. Russia is up to ~700k to 800k casualties Russia has lost ~3-4x more people than Ukraine so far.
I think that's probably a good estimate for the Russian side, while 200k casualties total for Ukraine is a joke. Aren't even their official figures for wounded in the 400k range?
Ukraine didn't release casualty figures for a long time (though to be fair, Russia government doesn't exactly post daily casualty figures either, the Russian casualty figure is divined by infering what we can from Russian media), the Western press released a figure for the Ukrainian forces, which is probably quite low, and the figure hasn't increased in almost a year.
It's sort of like how Western press has been claiming for over a year that 20,000 people have perished in Gaza, and the figure never goes up.
This is the most recorded war in history and I know someone(History Legends)offering a good amount if you can show him videos of these Russian meat wave attacks .
sometimes yes, sometimes no. In both US iraq wars, the US had way fewer casualties than Iraq. Invading is harder than defending, but a country won't invade unless they think they are likely to succeed with acceptable losses.
first hand reports from friends who are fighting the war every day.
I'm sure the very lacking obituaries that Russia is actively fighting to suppress will give you a better picture.
They're trying to avoid extensive drafts in their power-base cities for fear of unrest. Plus that's their reserve if they need to supply a second front for any reason.
> How would you categorize Russia's manpower problem
As strained, but not as bad as Ukraine's.
Russia's population is over 140 million. That's 100 million more than Ukraine's pre-war population. Russia's territory isn't meaningfully compromised, their cities aren't in ruin, their industry is mostly intact. They haven't sustained something like 15-25% population loss from people fleeing the way Ukraine has.
North Koreans aren't in Russia because Russia is out of guys. Putin just wants to avoid wider scale conscription/mobilization if he can help it and will take other options first
That's why earlier stages of this war involved ex-convict Wagnerite units, mercenaries from the third world, local militias raised from the "people's republics" in Donetsk and Luhansk, and conscription when necessary from poorer ethnic minority regions far away from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
> North Koreans aren't in Russia because Russia is out of guys. Putin just wants to avoid wider scale conscription/mobilization if he can help it and will take other options first
This is correct and shockingly obvious given the initial invasion used mercenaries. It's a straightforward exchange with an ally that benefits Russia the most and is great PR for NK, internally and locally.
At this point in time would anyone bet against US troops going in and "peacekeeping" for Putin against Ukraine? It seems pretty clear that the US is aligned against the West now.
Almost everything pouring out of his mouth today is replaying what is in Russian state media sadly.
The US is not "aligned against the West". The US is simply breaking from the ideology it's had since WW2 that it's in the US' best interest to get involved in every international conflict in the world.
You'd think that the left would be ecstatic about that considering how much it's criticized US involvement in other countries conflicts, but here we are - it's the left that is trashing the US for not wanting to get involved.
> The US is simply breaking from the ideology it's had since WW2 that it's in the US' best interest to get involved in every international conflict in the world.
The publicized ideology, is not always the reality. The US has always been involved with every international conflict. The CIA was the formalization of the interest.
I mean that ideology is, practically speaking, what "the West" is.
But certainly in the UK it was a party of "the left" that invaded Iraq with the US. It was a party of "the left" that invaded Afghanistan with the US. And it was a party of "the left" that is now bolstering the military after a decade of decline by a party of "the right".
"The left" were fighting fascism across Europe in the last century, from the International Brigade in Spain to the Soviets against Hitler.
The actual problem The West has now is that the guarantor of military power has gone. Trump and Vance were literally shouting propaganda from Russian state media to Zelensky (look up starting WW3, or VIP tours) and making false equivalency between being invaded and defending your country.
Trump has carried out the biggest rug-pull in history and aligned the USA with Russia. Against The West.
> I mean that ideology is, practically speaking, what "the West" is.
This makes no sense. The current ideology is only 70 years old. The "West" has existed for centuries before that.
Maybe you're young and you think there are no options but the current path, but I can assure you there is.
The truth is that the US (or Europe) is not willing to go head to head with Russia. They have neither the public support or the willingness to take the economic hit.
So if they aren't willing to defeat Russia, what is the only possible outcome? A negotiated peace.
So rather than grinding up another few hundred thousand human lives in the war and end up in the same place a few years from now, why not just finish it now?
Because appeasing aggressors never works? I mean, we literally took the appeasement route when he annexed Crimea. A few years later and here we are. Guess what happens when we appease him now?
The term The West applies to those countries born out of European heritage which _assumed_ semi-direct lineage from the Graeco-Roman empires of Antiquity (notably the Late Antique split in the early church across Eastern/Western lines). Like all political terms it's in constant flux, but yes, today it largely means the superset of NATO + Five Eyes countries.
Vance's Munich speech and the Whitehoust confrontation yesterday confirms that the USA has turned its back on the west - you only have to see the reaction of world leaders to see that - outside of Orban, the only people congratulating Trump were Putin and Lavrov. Who could singlehandedly stop the war - right now - by pulling their troops out of a sovereign, democratic state.
Not sure what my age has to do with anything but I was bought up during the Cold War if that helps.
Who said anything about appeasing? Fighting for the best peace deal you can is not "appeasing".
NATO is never going to escalate with Russia to the point Ukraine gets all it's territory back - and Putin knows that. NATO isn't stupid - Ukraine isn't worth expanding the war beyond Ukraine into Eastern Europe. They have neither the financial resources nor the support back home. They are willing to sacrifice Ukrainian lives, but not their own grip on power.
So if we know how this all ends - Ukraine giving up territory in exchange for peace, then why not pursue that instead of throwing another million lives and hundred billion dollars into the chipper and getting the same deal in 3 years instead?
> Vance's Munich speech and the Whitehoust confrontation yesterday confirms that the USA has turned its back on the west
No, it means the US is turning it's back on the neoliberal geopolitical position that grinding down competing powers through proxy wars is always worth it in the end. George Kennan died long ago, and it's time to let his geopolitical strategy die too.
It's a position that only existed since WW2, and one that has gotten the US involved in dozens of wars since then, often at a greater cost than the benefit in the end (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq).
How is it not appeasing when "finding the best peace deal" equals "letting an agressor state keep a chip of neighboring state", even more so when this repeats every few years?
Read again what Putin's stated aims are. Hoping for a peace deal with a totalitarian, expansive state does not work. It didn't work when it was "just Crimea", it won't work when it's "just some towns they took by force".
It's utterly naive, given all his history, to think Putin will just acquiesce.
Even if your geopolitical assumptions are correct, Trump and Vance's behaviour yesterday - humiliating a war leader in front of the worlds media, using the rhetoric and tropes of the invaders he is facing was unbelievably disgusting.
Also, please don't forget what Putin's stated aims are - reconquest of Russian border back to pre 1930 limits (maybe you understand why Polish defence spending is at 5% GDP) and the breakup of the EU. These are his aims - he doesn't just want that little bit of Ukraine he has - parts of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia all are at stake.
Ukraine is _stalling_ the war right now. Russia is able to capture more moonscaped villages by forcing expendable (their words, not mine) manpower to assault Ukrainian positions.
Ukraine is slowly retreating, but at the rate that will require Russia _years_ to gain a meaningful amount of territory.
The military experts I listen to all more or less agree that the focus on territory is just wrong. It's a war of attrition unsustainable in the long run for both sides, the question is who runs out of resources first (or if there is some sort of ceasefire before that). Germany famously lost such a war a century ago without losing any territory!
For China, a balkanized nuclear Russia may be a greater threat than supplying them manpower (due to surplus men and civil unrest) and materiel. I would not expect Russia to run into the WW1 germany problem.
There's no evidence of a substantial number of Chinese nationals serving in the Russian military, rather then just a few notable examples. The largest foreign troop commitment by state-sanction was the North Koreans, which were about ~10,000 strong and have since been withdrawn (after heavy losses).
Yes, and the point I'm making is that (1) Chinese nationals have served, indicating that Beijing at least tacitly approves mercenary actions and (2) China can increase deployment if needed by either economic or prisoner release coercion.
This is a meatgrinder conflict. If China can reduce its dissident or potentially rebellious population while avoiding a collapse of Russia mirroring WW1 Germany, they may very well (and I would argue are likely) do so.
That doesn't follow: Ukraine has the international legion (probably about 3,500 people in country last I checked) and a number of Russian groups fighting on behalf of Ukraine.
The only thing Chinese nationals fighting for Russia tells us is that China is not expressly limiting freedom of movement to do so...but there has also been at least 1 American who tried to join Russia to fight Ukraine (and was tortured to death by the Russians on suspicion of being a spy for his trouble).
First, 3,500 is a drop in the bucket. Second, just because China hasn't yet mobilized doesn't mean they won't if they feel a line is crossed like they did in Korea.
With a country like China, everything is on the table
> (1) Chinese nationals have served, indicating that Beijing at least tacitly approves mercenary actions
I wouldn't assume a small number of Chinese nationals volunteering to fight for Russia means China approves of their actions. Several Australians ended up fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq, that doesn't mean the Australian government approves of Australians fighting for ISIS, it just means it failed in those cases to stop them – it didn't realise they planned to do that before they left the country, or they didn't decide to do it until after they were already living overseas.
And one difference, is obviously Australia and ISIS are sworn enemies, so when Australians volunteered to fight for ISIS, the Australian government could openly condemn their action. Whereas, China and Russia are allies, so even if China disapproves of its citizens volunteering to fight for Russia, it can't condemn them publicly because it would harm the alliance.
China isn't sending a "small number"; casualties alone have supposedly reached into the hundreds (see this account: https://x.com/whyyoutouzhele/ you will need to go back awhile) and recruiting is heavily concentrated among former PLA.
Make no mistake: if China wanted to shut this down it could.
> China isn't sending a "small number"; casualties alone have supposedly reached into the hundreds
I think the word "supposedly" is important here – I don't think we have any hard data on how many Chinese volunteers there are serving with Russia.
And I'd question how big a military contribution these Chinese volunteers are making. Russia has hundreds of thousands of troops fighting in this war, even a thousand Chinese volunteers would be less than 1%.
> Make no mistake: if China wanted to shut this down it could.
Even if the Chinese government is willing to "turn a blind eye" to this going on at a low volume, that doesn't mean they'd let it grow to a significantly higher volume.
It also isn't clear whether this is a deliberate initiative from the very top, or something that has grown organically bottom-up and the people at the top have decided to let it be for now rather than crack down on it.
Which military experts? If you listen to actually knowledgeable people like Kofman it's been known forever that 2024 would be (and as we now are seeing from Russia being pushed back) Russia's peak. Russia is out of equipment and is starting to get similar problems with manpower. In the meantime Europe's investments are starting to pay off and allow Ukraine to pull ahead in 2025.
Ukraine is sending troops over 26 or so years old now. They will need to dip into their prime-aged young population eventually, the 18-to-26-year-olds. That will be a hard moral choice they apparently want to avoid, but perhaps necessary.
As a graybeard with teenage kids, this is terribly disheartening... I would rather be cannon fodder than my sons. After all, I have already reproduced and I have taught hundreds of youngsters all what I knew. I would gladly accept that my contribution to mankind is already done and gone, before seeing one of my children go to war. Is youth so important for soldiers? Wouldn't it be better to send forty and fifty year olds to the front? Anything before 18-26 youngs? It makes no sense. Are they so much more competent than any random middle-age?
Ukraine has churned all their greybeards and middle age folks, and 18+ are the only ones not conscripted yet. (Hence Trump's comment that Ukraine is having manpower issues and has no strong cards left for negotiations)
It hasn't any strong cards only because the west (which is now Europe - the US is almost at Russias side now) is trickling the weapons supply. Open the taps!
What's the point of more recruits when the existing ones don't get enough training and adequate equipment? Ukraine needs weapons far more than it needs manpower.
All these 18 year old cohort - they dont exist in Ukraine anymore, a lot of them escaped Ukraine while they were minors before reaching 18, because this issue of conscripting 18+ has been discussed for quite a while.
If you look at the reports from Ukraine high schools - its all girls class, no boys
There are pros and cons. I live in Canada now, and one major downside is that, because technically I would be an international student, I cannot afford a university. The tuition fee for international students is through the roof. But, ultimately, leaving Ukraine was a correct decision, because otherwise I would have ended up fighting Russia. In summary, it sucks but could have been worse.
You are correct. But, ironically, unlike in Ukraine, in Canada and probably in the US, entry-level jobs (also known as internships) are reserved for undergraduate students. You could call this is another downside of leaving Ukraine.
At least in the US, you can just make something complicated enough to show some skill and get a real job. That's what I did, anyway. I used to work in a factory.
Yeah, that's what I think too. I have been working on a project[0] to do just that, would you mind commenting if my project is something that can be considered complicated enough? In your experience, were you not blocked by the fact that companies are looking for "years of professional experience"?
Yeah no worries, I was wondering why the threads didn't show up and found the bot profile where it said it's actually the first weekday of the month, so it's all good.
There are almost no boys left in senior classes of Ukrainian schools. This was reported by the publication "Strana.ua" on the Telegram channel with reference to blogger Alena Yakhno.
As the blogger said, the 17-year-old son of her friend studies in Kiev , but all his classmates have left. "Only girls are left in the class. There will be no moral. It's just a fact," she wrote.
The publication recalled that upon reaching the age of 18, young people from Ukraine are no longer allowed to go abroad. In addition, the report notes, information about Ukrainian schoolchildren aged 16-17 leaving Ukraine en masse has appeared before.
Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada reported on hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren who left the country before the start of the school year. According to MP Nina Yuzhina, about 300 thousand students, mostly high school students, left Ukraine in July and August. In addition, due to the departure of young people, 2,114 schools have been closed in Ukraine over the past four years.
You can count how many high school children there are in Ukraine. There is something like 4 millions now, so the loss of a couple hundred of students of both sexes does not make classes girls only.
People, families with kids, leave Ukraine, because living in a country during war is not nice, to say the least. The fear of mobilization is only one aspect of it.
I don't know if original claim is true or not in general, but lenta.ru in particular is a poor source of information, it's heavily skewed into Russian-government side.
The media operation Strana is mentioned as the source for the lenta.ru story.
Strana is sanctioned and banned by the Ukrainian government, though Ukraine government hands out a lot of media bans.
It's a bummer that just about every media outlet in Ukraine is either tightly linked to Russian propaganda, or on the other side its mostly super pro Ukrainian (formerly funded by USAID) outlets with ties to weird libertarian billionaires who want to turn Ukraine into free market paradise. Hardly any middle ground.
Just think about it logically, if you are a mother of 16 y.o kid, and USA says you must conscript 18+ y.o to receive any further aid - would you just sit and wait for your child to get drafted on his next birthday?
oh totally, I would leave immediately. I financially helped a family with teenage kids smuggle themselves out of Ukraine to a different country a few months into the recent invasion.
And that will cost Russia a great deal. This has turned into a war that heavily favors defenders. Both sides are dug in, with a wide no-mans-land between the front lines, where anyone who enters is likely to get killed by a drone.
Ukraine has been loosing a three-day-special operation for three years.
Russia's refinery's are getting hit and all that crude oil is worthless with a refinery. In the case of the campaign again Nazi Germany's refineries funny enough it's the allies who didn't think it as critical as the Nazis did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_campaign_of_World_War_II#O...
Ukraine knows the future of warfare and will prosper if they survive this. They will be the ones with the technology and experience in future warfare, and the USA is throwing away a chance to partner with Ukraine and guarantee such a victory.
In 20, 15, or 7 years from now when terrorists are sending drones into medium-sized cities in Alabama to kill indiscriminately, it would have been better for the USA to have been on Ukraine's side.
>In 20, 15, or 7 years from now when terrorists are sending drones into medium-sized cities in Alabama to kill indiscriminately, it would have been better for the USA to have been on Ukraine's side.
Spot on. This is what Zelenskyy implied when he said "now you have an ocean but one day you'll know how it feels". But the dumb kakistocrat commander-in-chief took it personally.
By the way remember the New Jersey drone sightings that spooked the East Coast for a week? That was likely the government secretly testing defense deployement against a hypothetical drone swarms attack.
I have assumed the same about the gatwick airport shutdown caused by drones in the UK in 2018. Newspapers saying "No culprit ever found" says "results of military exercise are classified" to me...
The value of having a front-row seat to this, from a doctrine and R&D point of view, is staggeringly high. Anyone who's getting copied on the reports is going to be a full generation ahead of countries that aren't.
... that goes for Russia's partners, too. Meaning it's even more important for us.
Trump is the commander in chief. Top military leadership who disagree with him will be forced to retire, and replaced with loyalists, if they haven't been already.
I agree, no coup. On the other hand, if we the US keep changing alliances at the whim of what are essentially twitterheads, we could end up having ZERO allies.
Beau of the Fifth Column (Youtube channel for Justin King) would always emphasize (before he relinquished it all for his wife "Belle of the Ranch" to take over) that international relations are usually well-orchestrated, even between enemies, with speeches and releases using heavily coded language, to minimize the possibilities of conflict. Friends and enemies both would telegraph to some degree their intentions, their protestations, their agreements, and shifting policies ... very very carefully.
Trump, Vance, Musk ... have upended this all with their amateur hour antics. They are not serious people. They think they can rewrite the rules but they've bought us at least a decade of hurt and isolation on the international stage, and likely worse economic prospects for a while. Nobody will trust us, even if saner leadership comes round in a few years.
Betting on the wrong horse while Xi just has to stand aside to see the crown of superpower being handed to him with no effort, Russia on the road to implode in a fire sale, while China looks to sign lucrative trade agreements with the EU.
Brexit was shooting yourself in the foot, today was a gruesome display of diplomatic suicide on live television.
The EU could end up taking that crown if they handle this well.
Firstly of course, they need to be united, steadfast and decisive in their support for Ukraine until Russia collapses. They should be building new alliances, with India, South America, and any free countries in Africa and Asia. And maybe some unfree ones. Possibly even China, because let's face it, despite its many flaws, China is not the threat to Europe that Russia is. A wedge between China and Russia would weaken Russia and help the EU.
Then, after Russia collapses and the US has withdrawn from the world stage, it will be the EU that saved Ukraine, just like after WW2, the new super powers where the US and USSR that defeated Germany. And Ukraine has a lot to offer that the EU lacks.
The EU is incredibly powerful. Biggest common market in the world, half a billion people, 2nd largest military in the world if they put it all together. The EU just needs to learn to flex its muscles, to unite and assert itself, instead of hiding behind the US.
The ascent of Europe is the sort of outcome I might hope for — speaking as an American who believes in American values that my country no longer represents.
Speaking of religion and Europe ... while not in Latin America I spent a few years growing up here and there in Arizona, my parents being ministers in a pentecostal church. All the pentecostal and charismatic churches were in thrall of the Hal Lindsey book "Late Great Planet Earth" [0] and other prophetic books trying to map nations/geographies from the Book of Revelation / Apocalypse to the then-day international power structure. "Sister Drew", our local in-congregation prophecy expert, would relay the latest findings. From what I remember, the idea was that Russia and Europe were to fight it out, Europe being the seat of the Antichrist's power, and somehow the Vatican was embroiled in it too.
Europe was supposed to be the "late stage" of human civilization, from Daniel's Old Testament dream of the human-form statue. The head of gold was the pinnacle of civilization, Babylon. The silver chest and arms were Persia. The belly and thighs were the Greek Empire. The legs of iron were the Roman Empire, resurrected as the fractious European Common Market (now European Union) in the feet of "iron mixed with clay".
The USA was variously portrayed as the Great Wh*re of Babylon, or else had some heroic role of some kind in these End Times.
At some point, all nations would stop fighting each other and join together to turn on Israel. Israel would be doomed but for God's intervention. From Daniel's dream, a pebble would form from nothing, grow to be a mighty boulder, and smash the feet of iron and clay (Europe, and by proxy godless humanity) and the rest of human civilization in form of the statue would crumble. The mighty boulder being ... Jesus. Israel would be mostly destroyed but a rescued "remnant", faithful Christians would be raptured / taken to heaven, the World would End ... and eventually all humanity would be judged for eternal salvation or punishment.
Wacky, fringe stuff ... EXCEPT THAT THESE BELIEFS ARE SO RELEVANT TO OUR PRESENT POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE USA. Check out the book "The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy" by Matthew D Taylor [1]. In this book and various podcasts Taylor describes the origins, religious and political philosophy, and current political power of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). No NAR church / congregation will claim the moniker today, but it remains a perfect description of the structure, leadership, and influence of this movement. The Bebbington Quadrilaterial splits "evangelicals" in the USA (and internationally) into four groups based on measures along two axes ... the "denominational vs non-denominational", and "charistmatic vs non-charistmatic". I grew up in in the denominational charismatic square, where churches believe in and expect the miraculous, but also belong to a centralized denomination with standards and accountability. The NAR congregations fit in the non-denominational charistmatic square, have a very authoritarian leadership structure with "apostles and prophets" at the top of each organization, and with a forest of MLM trees of such organizations, with no accountability at all for the "apostles" (c.f. the Mike Bickle scandal, and so many others, where people got away with abuse for years). In any case, in 2015 Trump's "spiritual advisor" Paula White (in early 2025 now is head of the White House Faith Council) gathered many apostles in this NAR movement around Trump, to throw their weight behind his candidacy and make him an acceptable candidate for their brand of evangelicals, and to pull in low-information evangelicals of other stripes behind his candidacy. And hence ... a conversation today between Trump and Zelensky, and many other knock-on effects.
Note that the NAR proposes to take over the world through their Seven Mountains Mandate, to "Bring Heaven to Earth", and usher in the End of Time. Of course, Trump does not believe any of this, but the evangelical power base is extremely loyal to him.
>China is not the threat to Europe that Russia is. A wedge between China and Russia would weaken Russia and help the EU
It gets interesting when you realize that Russia is also a rival to China in Northeast Asia. A balkanized Russia, like the one the EU could have manifested had it took Russia warnings seriously and brought about decisive action after troops were invading Crimea. But no they lived in their "End of History" fantasy and that virtuous liberties will magically be spread if we just trade goods and ideas between spheres of influence.
Of course this reality will be bad for our allies in Asia (ie. Japan, SK, Taiwan). But maybe this time it'll wake up some in America from becoming isolationist again.
I see SK and Japan also as necessary allies for the EU. But if China decides to take Taiwan, I don't think there's anything the EU could possibly hope to do about it; Taiwan remains independent because the US guarantees their independence. If Trump were to withdraw that guarantee too, I don't think there's anything that can save Taiwan.
It sucks, but the EU has more urgent problems closer to home. All I can hope for is that Trump hates China enough that he'll continue to guarantee Taiwan's freedom. But I'm sure at some point he's going to ask them for some more material "thanks" too.
But yeah, the EU's relationship with China should not be the same as that with other allies. But I think there's room for some cooperation, and the EU might not object too loudly if China were to take outer Manchuria back, for example.
Honestly I don't think I can see China taking Taiwan militarily. They witnessed how the world isolated Russia economically after the aggression on Ukraine and especially since their economy relies on exports. They don't have much to win other than some geopolitical credit at the expense of their manufacturing and technology sector.
China is conducting a policy where they'll cripple Taiwan's will to seek independence from just sheer soft and economic power. They offer fantastic perks to Taiwanese from the oppurtinity to work visa free, access to credit/mortgage with no social credit screening and ability to invest with no usual red tape.
The Taiwanese are being told China is an aggressor but nowadays they see the opposite. Also if China invades it'll destroy every goodwill they had built to win over Taiwanese hearts and won't get control over TSMC supply chain market since the latter promised to torpefy their fabs before China gets its hand on them.
> 2nd largest military in the world if they put it all together
Military industrial capacity is Europe's main problem right now. I believe they're ramping up production, but it's going to take years. They may end up having to buy the arms from the US in the meantime if they want to aid Ukraine. If it gets to that, the question is whether they give China some business.
I'm not so sure that's a realistic option when there's US officials saying to allies they should buy less US equipment.[1] It doesn't inspire confidence.
> A British defence figure, who is not part of the government, was told privately by US officials that it should “recalibrate” its reliance on US equipment.
And then there's this.
> They said that a US administration could put restrictions on kit from the US and that if countries are “deemed not to be doing what you are told you will suddenly find out missiles won’t fire and planes won’t fly. You have got to be careful.”
When allies buy less US equipment, what happens to the US citizens employed in the defence industry?
Seriously, I'm wondering who is going to be a more dangerous geopolitical foe for Europe going forward, the US or China. The ascendant forces in the in the US are pro-Russia, and that's not likely to change in the near term. Unlike China, though, we haven't sold military hardware to Russia. Yet.
I'm not so sure China is a threat to Europe. They're as far away from each other as they can possibly be. Sure, Europe is upset about China's human rights record, and their cheap manufacturing circumventing EU rules, and maybe also the economic influence China is trying to gain over other countries (Africa, central Asia), but it's not a threat to Europe itself, which Russia clearly is, and the US could become, if Trump decides to join Russia.
If the US turns, Europe may have to ally with China.
EU is a lot looser union of sovereign nations than USA, where the states are federal. California or Texas do not have their separate foreign policies; France and Germany do.
I don't see "EU taking that crown" happening any time soon, sadly. With the ascent of (often Russia sponsored) far-right nationalist parties, this is even less likely.
Why are you acting as if China is a benign bystander in this? They literally sided with Russia in the very beginning of the war, including notifying Putin of intelligence the US shared with them in the months leading up to the war.
You also seem to be yet another person predicting Russia's "collapse", which is a prediction I've been hearing since a few years after Putin took control.
In an ideal world I'd agree with you, but the world is unfortunately very far removed from that. You don't have to agree with everything to look for common ground in other areas. Support the good, criticize the bad.
True. Well, I still don't disagree with the initial policy of opening trade with Russia. It's just that Europe should have realized much earlier that in Putin's hands, Russia was becoming more hostile again. And after they invaded Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 and 2014, they should have cut ties immediately, and not invest in more ties.
Though I suppose you could argue the same is true after China's expansion into the South China Sea. But even then, China isn't remotely as aggressive, expansionist or hostile as Russia is. And their government, although totalitarian and unfree, is at least competent. Although Xi's narcissism and vanity are definitely a bad sign.
Trump's approach is probably going to work partially in the short term. - The US is very powerful, a lot of countries are reliant on them, so bullying can be used to extract benefits. They got their plane thingy with Colombia, Mexico didn't react much to the preludes of military action against the cartels. The US could annex the Panama Canal and Greenland.
There's a reason why hawks like Bolton and Cheney are against it. It harms US interests in the mid-to-long-term. To me it seems like the Trump adminstration is a) trying to distract from their domestic agenda and b) isolate the US internationally and create new external foes to justify domestic changes.
China sided with Russia from the very beginning of the war, including notifying Putin as soon as the US revealed their intelligence in a meeting with Xi before the invasion. Interesting how quickly you forget this inconvenient detail in the narrative you've constructed in your head.
Oh is China going to guarantee Ukraine's security now?
At the end of the day, Zelensky had the most obvious proposition in the world -- allow American companies access to Ukrainian minerals. He kept asking for a security guarantee as if he needed anything more.
If he expected Trump or Vance to publicly announce they would go to war with nuclear-armed Russia over these mineral deals, then he's not fit to be president of any country.
The security implication was obvious... if Russia threatened American mining operations, the United States would obviously respond.
But the demand that Trump say he would go to war with Russia.. what purpose would that possibly serve? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows the implication.
So maybe he can now turn to China, but I'll tell you that China's propositions for Ukraine's rare earth minerals will likely have Ukraine losing a lot more sovereignty than the scenarios where America took them over instead of the one where Russia wins.
Colonize it while it remains nominally Russian, would be a pretty good move. "Sick Man of Europe"-style. "Oh we British are just, just, like, helping the Ottomans administer Egypt, we're good chaps like that"
Other regions are comparable, 2-3 million rubles ($20000-$30000) are available in several more regions. Then there's a federal one-time payment of 500000 rubles ($5000) and a monthly salary of $2000.
Not exactly to get enrolled, but in Moscow websites officially advertize 2300000 rub to sign, which is about $25000. Then monthly payment is 190000 rub so for first year it'll be about $50000 which is 5 to 10 times more than average salary (depending on the region). Initial bonus for enrollment is city-dependent but as far as I understand anyone can just travel to Moscow and sign in there.
I heard that volonteer numbers right now are pretty high so army became more selective - people expect that war will end soon and hope to get sign in bonus without spending much time on the battlefield, if any.
Most informed analysts say Russia has the opposite problem. They don't have any more meat for the grinder without tapping the middle and upper class of Russian citizens, which will have repercussions, potentially serious ones, for Putin.
Well, North Korea benefits from getting experience and field-testing radios and winter underwear. The drone environment is very good advertising for their goal of becoming a major arms dealer.
Yes, North Korea gains immediate benefit (money or material aid) and a theoretical delayed benefit (demonstration of mercenary abilities, and real world experience for their troops if they survive). Russia gains bodies to throw against bullets. If every North Korean soldier died but took several bullets for Russian soldiers, it's a win for Russia. They do not care about the North Korean soldiers or North Korea.
The regions Russia is taking from Ukraine have some value in terms of GDP. It's interesting that the Freudian slip US offering involved an additional minerals deal (as in, this is the main interest of the taking parties). Russia is not going to give back GDP, and that's probably behind the break in negotiations. Russia is not relinquishing any gains, and the US wants more resources, and there is no guarantee given to Ukraine regarding its remaining territorial integrity. They are trying to make Ukraine eat shit.
I follow a lot of Ukrainian commentary, it's hard for me to conclude Ukraine is doing well.
They're having to conscript younger and younger people every day.
No business is insane enough to invest in Ukraine at the moment.
Some companies are crazy enough to try to ship goods in and out of Odesa, but its significantly less than pre-war.
Every time the Ukrainian army tries to take back territory in the Donbas, the Russian army repels their forward strikes, and usually takes a few more feet of the Donbas in the process.
It's really hard to win a war of attrition against the largest country in the world.
The Russian army occupies some of the largest energy sources of Ukraine. I haven't investigated recently but I suspect Russia is still Ukraine's largest LNG provider.
Ukraine doesn't consume Russian LNG. As of January 2025, the LNG transitting Ukraine for Russia has stopped because Ukraine refused to renew the deal.
No, Ukraine is not in a position to reclaim significant ground. The state of the war is such that any offensive action is ruinously expensive, and while Russia is willing to pay that price, the fact that they're shipping North Koreans in to pay that cost rather than generally mobilize speaks volumes about the state they're in. Interest rates are at 21%; food inflation at 30%; unemployment at 2%, which indicates a severe labour shortage. They're destroying their own economy to grab just a few more feet before it unravels at home.
Meanwhile, Rheinmetall is launching joint ventures and building factories in Ukraine because they have the most warfighting experience of anyone right now and are leading the world in drone combat. Ukraine is still not conscripting anyone under 25, which is a large pool of recruits they've held in reserve. And after today, Europe is making a conspicuous show up increasing spending and standing behind Ukraine.
They can't kick Russia out, but they can certainly hold on longer than Russia with the ongoing support of Europe, and the way Zelensky was treated today has been a huge morale boost for standing firm.
Yes, plus Ukraine learnt a lesson when the GOP stalled aid and they ran low on supplies, so they have stockpiled and domestic production has increased. It's a war of attrition and so both sides are hoping to keep going until the other collapses. The US withdrawing support is a victory for Russian, but it won't end the war. What happens with sanctions might, but also without the US telling them what to do the gloves will be off Ukraine.
So much for stopping the war in 24hrs. Trump's plans were never going to work there, and both Russian and Ukraine were going to try and make it look like the failure was not their fault - guess Russian won that particular battle, maybe it was never even a contest.
This is not a popular analysis. Russia has ramped up their war machine significantly over the last 2 years and have been successfully grinding Ukraine down. They can and will continue to do this. They’ve reoriented their economy around sustained military production, and the tariffs issued against Russia by the US and EU have proven to be ineffective.
> Ukraine’s situation is better than many people realize
What makes you say that? I thought it was generally agreed that Ukraine has been on the back foot for a while now. People used to be quite optimistic about Ukraine recovering the occupied territories.
Ukraine isn't likely to recover much territory. But Russia will have a hard time taking more territory. At this point the war favors the defenders in either direction. Both sides are dug in and attackers get hammered by drones.
Russia was supposed to win easily right away. There is a huge size difference.
But if the little guy, even thought has been on back foot since the beginning, has lasted 10 rounds, and still hitting back. They are on the back foot. But now it starts looking like a win could happen. The underdog wins the crowd right? Now looks like US is the bully.
Current (by some of course) long-term analysis is that Ukraine is better commited to a long-term strategy of fiercely defending its rights, and it can grind Russia long term.
If you like Game Theory, is more as if Ukraine is much more prone to Total War than Russia possible will. Russia is spending their own GDP maintaining the war, Ukraining is "spending" its infrastructure but has foreign money being poured in.
That's why USA withdraw by Trump is so important to Russian interests.
There are two truths when it comes to Ukraine. The one quietly stated in dispassionate terms by actual military and geopolitical analysts which is that in the long run Ukraine loses in virtually every scenario, but it’s in everyone except Ukraine’s best interest to drag it out and for the West to weaken Russia via aid without the political fallout of actually putting boots on the ground.
Then there’s the “Ukraine will win as long as we keep sending aid” truth that the pubic needs to believe in order to accomplish that goal of weakening Russia since the alternative is Ukraine still loses but Russia doesn’t suffer for it.
I suspect someone misguidedly told Trump the first one, and his takeaway was that if Ukraine loses anyway, why should the American taxpayer be funding needless deaths.
This does not account for what can happen in Russia itself. There's this widespread belief that Russia is stable, no matter what.
If that were true, why would Putin take such extreme care for the elites in Moscow and St Petersburg? What is he afraid of? We don't need to know exactly what, but we can conclude he probably has a good reason.
Russia is not stable. The economy is creaking. Unsound, favourable loans are being made to corrupt companies who pocket as much cash as they dare while they deliver as little they can, Soviet style. Something is gonna give eventually, probably to the sound of drones over Moscow becoming the new normal.
Credit to Biden who set the tone. He was very fast and forceful in backing Ukraine even when the general assumption was that they had no chance. Europe was willing to step up since then and will have to carry them from now on.
He was pretty wishy washy and would never say he'd like Ukraine to win and get their land back. The UK generally led at the start sending missiles and tanks and the Biden was embarrassed into matching it.
If only that credit had any weight against his equally quick decision to fund a Zionist genocide against Palestine, and engage in administrative subterfuge, Doublespeak and Ministry of Truth type shit about the true nature of the conflict.
The insane AI-generated one he posted to his socials the other day outlining his vague plan to profit off the suffering of Palestinians by building a utopia resort? What a world we are living in.
It's a weird world that objecting to genocide makes you an antisemite now.
Don't support Netanyahu's weaponization of the word antisemite. It endangers Jews everywhere, and does not help Israel. It only helps Netanyahu silence his critics.
Some people cannot understand that a country, its people, and its government are all completely separate things. Other people pretend not to understand.
Regardless of which, the person you're replying to has decided to be on the wrong side of history. I will not be shamed into silently supporting genocide in the name of a made-believe invisible man in the sky.
“the US, in siding with Russia, may be betting on the wrong horse”
This is delusional. Russia would’ve bulldozed Ukraine without US support. What county is under US sanctions? What country is receiving US weapons? Which, to be sure, is the correct choice. And having public spars with Ukraine is not.
But the fact that someone just typed this out and posted it is just so delusional. The fact that people upvoted this is delusional.
On March 16, 2014, the President issued Executive Order
13661, which expanded the scope of the national emergency
declared in Executive Order 13660, and found that the actions
and policies of the Government of the Russian Federation with
respect to Ukraine undermine democratic processes and
institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security,
stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and
contribute to the misappropriation of its assets.
…Therefore… I [Trump]… am continuing… Execute Order 13660.
I don’t know why this pisses me off so much. Ostensibly we agree broadly. It’s just, HN really used to have such good nuanced and factual discussions, even outside tech. Now it’s all just raw anger.
There's a difference between "siding with Russia" and siding with negotiated peace.
Many people seem to think that the US, and to a lesser extent the EU, should fund this war indefinitely. However, the US clearly does not benefit from a direct war with Russia, and while we may gain from a proxy war, choosing not to fund it does not equate to “siding with Russia.”
Negotiated peace was what Russia and Ukraine had before, and Russia unilaterally broke it.
That is why the focus now is on security guarantees, which the U.S. is refusing so far. Without those, anything negotiated is a gift to Russia, specifically the gift of time to regroup and re-arm for another attack later on.
Lasting peace is not created by concessions, it is created when instigators believe they have more to lose than to gain from further violence.
It is an absurd position that the US should be on the hook to indefinitely pay for any war anywhere in the world forever, and if they attempt to negotiate peace while pulling out of that war that they are siding with the opposition.
The problem is not that the U.S. is trying to negotiate for peace, the problem is that the administration is doing a hilariously bad job of it by giving up all leverage right off the bat.
We don't have any leverage against Russia. America has no appetite to fight them directly. If Ukraine were more effective at hurting Russia where it counts, then we might have leverage but the last few years have shown that they are not capable of that.
US should be on the hook to indefinitely pay for a particular war that resulted out of a diplomatic agreement (Budapest memorandum) that effectively prevented Ukraine from defending itself by making it surrender its nukes in exchange for nebulous security guarantees that weren't honored by US.
I think it's a fine rule of thumb but what does Putin have to gain from negotiating with Zelenskyy who he is seen as a Western puppet orchestrated as legacy of US intel agency involvement? (Which we admitted is true…)
People in this thread are completely incapable of seeing any legitimacy in any Russian concerns about Ukraine.
Whether someone's concerns are legitimate is in the eye of the beholder, but actions can be directly observed. Unilateral violent invasion must not become a legitimate tactic again. It was the norm for centuries, and excluding it resulted in the fastest rise in global living standards in history--including in the U.S. and Russia.
Putin could have kicked back and enjoyed his dacha like other less powerful dictators do all over the world, but no, he had to write a "scientific" treatise about Ruski Mir and how the Ukraine isn't actually a thing. He wants a legacy.
Well, he got it and whatever happens in the war, Russia is cooked. It's never coming back from this.
It will either fracture from the war going badly, or it will become a vassal state of China, and ironically, perhaps the US, the way things are going with the White House these days.
The other powerful “dictators” get dragged through the streets or hanged for daring to enjoy an economic system outside the US dollar. Putin knows this and so should you.
> That is why the focus now is on security guarantees, which the U.S. is refusing so far.
This seems obvious to me, but is apparently not obvious to many here.... America (no country really) can guarantee Ukrainian security without risking WWIII, and frankly there's no reason to. At the end of the day, from a non-Ukrainian standpoint, it doesn't really matter who administers the land that today is Ukraine.
When the “negotiated peace” is “Russia gets everything they want, you give us every dime and your treasury, and we don’t promise to actually help you when Russia attacks again after we let them re-arm for as long as they like”…. That isn’t a peace deal, it’s virtually unconditional surrender.
Under what circumtances is the US allowed to pull out of a war they didn't start, which does not directly involve any US interests, in which we have already invested $110bn? Never? Not until we spend another $500bn we don't have?
No one is arguing that the US isn't allowed to pull out.
But "negotiating" a treaty with the other side and then claiming that that treaty is the final word on the war is atrocious. That's what's crazy. Not ending US involvement, but trying to say that Ukraine must stop fighting.
Now, I also think the US should keep supporting Ukraine, but that's a totally different topic.
This isn’t pulling out. It’s embarassing an ally on the world stage while acting like the spoiled toddler and Putin asset that he is. This is not normal. This isn’t even bad. This is outside politics and just flat out treasonous.
The US has sided with Russia against European and Western civilisation. Don’t understate what we are witnessing. The betrayal of civilisation is almost complete.
Yes, there's a difference, and what Trump is doing is clearly siding with Russia. His "negotiated peace" is neither negotiated nor peace. It's a surrender.
You don't have to support Ukraine indefinitely; only until Russia stops. Your options are to support Ukraine until Russia stops, or to surrender until Russia stops.
No. Not at all. There will come a point when Russia will stop the war because either Russia is completely exhausted and on the verge of collapse, or Putin is dead or removed from power. And chances are those two will go together.
Depends on who does the removing. It could go a lot of different ways, but even if it's someone from his own government who is hostile to the west, they're still likely to use it as an excuse to end the war.
It's mind blowing to me to see the left being the war mongers now. That used to be the mantle of the right, but hey, here we are.
The arguments I see for the US staying involved are the same hand wavy ones used in Vietnam - "better to fight them over in Asia then in America". It was a weak argument then, and it's a weak argument now.
The people that helped fan the flames of this war don't give one crap about Ukraine. What they care about is the neocon policy of "do anything to keep America's rival weak". So funding a war that Ukraine pays the price for works just fine.
The truth is that the war is going to end eventually and it's not going to be Russia capitulating. So rather than a hundred thousand more dead might as well find a solution.
I do not think you can compare this conflict with Vietnam. US army went into Vietnam, while Ukraine is fighting a US rival with their own military, but they do use US provided equipment.
General public in Europe didn't see US as actively involved, or at least didn't see it until the new administration said it would end the conflict. This is when Trump administration started getting into "talks with Russia" and offering Ukraine "mineral deals". While US might have tried to do that even before, it was not discussed openly by presidents.
This war is going to flame out eventually. Lessons learned in this one will be used for the next one, which is going to hurt even more.
> There's a difference between "siding with Russia" and siding with negotiated peace.
There is absolutely no difference, when the US is negotiating that peace only with Russia, without Ukraine in the room.
With Trump administration officials not able to name a single compromise they’ve asked from Russia.
If the “negotiated peace” is “I asked the country that invaded you what they want, and you must do everything they asked for”, that’s not negotiation.
I will never understand how people can be so quick to abandon independence nations, and are so willing to bow to dictators. You would cheer Chamberlain submitting to Hitler as he launches an invasion as a momentous day for peace. You would be wrong then, and you are wrong now.
Exactly... so what's the purpose of continuing the fight and killing Russian and Ukrainian men for no reason? This forum used to be a strong supporter of men's rights, but apparently these disappear once we dehumanize them via international relations. There's literally no reason for any individual Russian or Ukrainian man to die right now, since we all agree that no territory is being gained or lost.
Europe is happy to let others do the fighting and dying for them. They want Ukraine to fight the Russians so they don't have to. Sounds like a continent of cowards.
World needs to help out Ukraine because if Ukraine falls it shows that you should never give up your nuclear weapons for any agreement or treaty. They are just pieces of paper that guarantee nothing. This will just lead to more countries getting nukes which means higher likelihood of a nuclear war.
> World needs to help out Ukraine because if Ukraine falls it shows that you should never give up your nuclear weapons for any agreement or treaty.
This is, unfortunately, already the case. No country will ever fully trust such treaties again, and we are closer than ever to a new era of nuclear proliferation.
It is the rational choice for their own self interest, yes of course. It used to not be necessary for most countries in the world. But now there is no good alternative to having your own nukes if you don't want to be invaded by others.
I'm gonna get flak for this, but both Trump and Biden are heavily to blame for nuclear proliferation. Trump due to his actions against Iran in ripping up the nuclear deal just because he didn't like the person who negotiated it in combination with his decision to assassinate Soleimani. But Biden is just as much to blame due to his refusal to do anything of consequence when Russia broke the agreements of the Budapest Memorandum. We should have had boots on the ground when they invaded, but we waffled back and forth on selling them 50 year old weapons technology for months and now years. Unacceptable, and now the whole world knows that the major nuclear powers can't be trusted to come to anybody's aid.
I had to Wikipedia the memorandum to even know what it was, but wasn't Obama president in 2014 when Russia first breached it? Asking honestly, was that not a crucial failure but Biden's response (or lack of one) in 2022 was crucial?
Yes, I consider Obama to also be to blame somewhat. But in practice, the situation with the 2014 invasion was a lot more complex to respond to. Russia quite successfully obscured their involvement in the first couple of days...all signs pointed to Russia but they denied involvement and the little green men wore no Russian insignia, so it could have just as easily been framed as internal separatist activity, which was the Russian intent. It actually took a couple of weeks before it was crystal clear that Russia was behind everything. By then, Crimea was already occupied.
The war in Donbas was only a little bit more clear. Even though Russia's fingerprints were all over every action there, there was also no doubt that there was significant Ukrainian separatist activity, and even the most resolute of allies will hesitate to defend their allies from separatist activity.
With Biden, we saw the buildup, knew it was going to happen, and had been warning Ukraine that it was going to happen. We saw it for what it was on day one without any equivocation. We just did nothing about it.
Yes, Obama also bears a lot of the blame for this. If US reacted properly back in 2014 (or at any later point before 2022), the 2022 invasion wouldn't have happened.
True. Non-proliferation is dead, killed three years ago. Only when Ukraine gets Russia to the point of a Compiègne Forest railroad car end (remember how much of Germany had been occupied at that point?) there is hope for a future without widespread nuke availability.
The railroad car was used in 1918 and in 1940. In both cases Germany was unoccupied, in WW1 because the war was fought on French and on Flandern fields, in 1940 because it was the beginning of the war.
You're possibly thinking of the German surrender, first in Reims, then a day later again in Berlin.
> it shows that you should never give up your nuclear weapons for any agreement or treaty
This is something every related country already knows, think of Pakistan and North Korea. Are you expecting China and India to drop their nukes because of some nice treaty?
> World needs to help out Ukraine...
... to achieve peace ASAP, because thousands of lives are being lost.
This is exactly right. Current US allies should not trust the United States to stand with them at least for the next four years or so.
I would go further than that and say you can't trust the US for anything, ever. The United States will not keep long term commitments for more than four years at a time. If you're lucky, or unlucky depending on which side you're on, that cycle will last 8 years.
Not one person ever expected American blood to be spilled in Ukraine. Framing the opposing side with having these thoughts is arguing in bad faith. And what peace is there in letting a bully get away with the spoils? What's going to stop them from doing it again?
And yea the US didn't technically start the war, but if Ukraine didn't give up their nukes because of assurances by the US, then they wouldn't have been in this situation.
Because all the allies signed a treaty promising exactly that: we'll come and die for you. It's the whole point of an alliance! You don't consider someone an ally if you can't count on them to show up!
No the allies signed the treaty because they desperately needed Americas protection. They were looking for us to protect them, not for them to do anything for us. NATO was never a treaty of equals. It was America flexing its might and Europe having to concede. Europe has tried to play it off like they are "allies" but that is too strong a word as that implies the would actually be able to do something, which at the time they couldn't.
Also please note that Article 5 of the NATO treaty doesn't obligate the US to actually do anything. We can take any "Action It Deems Necessary". We are not obligated to send troops, money or material. There is no timeline for when we must take action, nor is there an automatic declaration of war. The whole thing is we can do what we want when we want.
Part of that treaty was they had spending requirements to meet as well. Yet that gets frequently forgotten by the parties who didn't meet those obligations. It is like Europe wants all the benefits of the treaty but don't feel compelled to keep up their end of the agreement.
Because they didn't keep their end of the agreement this means a greater burden would fall on America if we actually got lassoed into another European war. It seems the height of hypocrisy for Europe to demand America do the hard part in wartime when Europe couldn't even be bothered to do the easy part in peacetime.
First, 2% is a guideline, not a requirement. No one is required to spend 2% of GDP, which is an inherently fluctuating target anyway.
Second, European underspending has been by American design. Europe spent decades being told to rebuild their economies and states and not worry because the US nuclear umbrella protected them. This redounded to the US in terms of leading the world economy; it also gave the US tremendous influence in the EU.
In the 90s, Europeans talked about standing up an EU armed force. A small one, around 50,000 people, mainly to serve as an umbrella organization should EU forces come together for some mission, or to go to war as part of NATO. Clinton leaned on France and Germany to scuttle the idea. If Europeans became less dependent on the US, it meant less soft power for the US; less say in European affairs.
The secondary benefit of keeping everyone individually weak and collectively strong is that no European war was possible. The 80 years of peace in Europe following WW2 are the longest period of peace they've had in almost 400 years. Europe upping its defence spending directly threatened that and was actively discouraged until about a decade ago.
Europeans haven't been freeloading. They've wilfully subordinated themselves to the US security establishment for the collective benefit. To pretend otherwise is to be deeply ignorant of modern history.
This is a tough one as I agree with many of your points but not fully.
So here is my follow up. I don't believe it was Americas intention to keep Europe weak. That treaty was signed after WW2. Russian was at western Europe's door step and they were depleted from the war so they needed protection. They signed NATO treaty with America for that purpose. It was not a treaty of equals, it was America flexing its global power and Europe having to acquiesce. Over the years it has been retconned into an alliance of "allies" but really most of the "allies" were protectorates and not contributors.
I would counter that they have been freeloading. Europe absolutely willfully subordinated themselves for THEIR benefit. They have been getting national security for free for nearly 80 years. I am not ignorant of that. Yet I am no longer of the opinion that there is as much benefit to us as there once was. We have our own issues to attend to at home that we haven't had in the past. 100,000 Americans die every year from the drugs brought over by the cartels. We have 100,000's of illegals coming across our borders. We should prioritize our own defense for now and let Europe stand on its own. If Europe cant keep from having wars with each other than maybe the security the US was providing would be worth paying for.
Europe in total equals the US by numbers: population, GDP, military availability (though obviously not cohesiveness). It's not that the US wanted a weak Europe; they wanted weak individual states depending on each other and the US for collective security. No, it was never an alliance of equals; that's not the point. Collectively, NATO was incredibly strong, and what Europe offered was the battlefield. In the Cold War, the plans were that the Warsaw Pact forces would come streaming through the Fulda Gap and burst through NATO defences, crossing plains to the Rhine River and surging westwards across Europe. The NATO plan to handle this was to detonate nuclear land mines in the mountain passes, blocking them.
The NATO plan was to detonate nukes on German soil to take out the initial advance and block the second echelon of Soviet tank divisions (without Soviet nuclear weapons, tactical or otherwise, having been used). Germany OK'ed this plan. Upon detection of an imminent Soviet attack, special forces would, 12-24 hours in advance, emplace the nuclear mines (about the size of half a minivan) and prepare to detonate. NATO's warplans always anticipated first use of tactical nukes (because NATO numbers were always dwarfed by Warsaw Pact numbers) and the battlefield was always Europe. Every warplan always involved European allies taking the first blow and America responding.
Calling European states protectorates that begged for American protection really undersells the value of a relatively independent (western) Europe, both economically and militarily. Without Europe as the front line in a future war against the Warsaw Pact, America would either have to watch Europe be subjugated by the Soviet Union, or fight a war across the Atlantic without local cooperation (and the Pacific, where Japan/South Korea stood in for Europe). Europe offered intelligence co-operation and direct contact. Economically, Europe (and Japan) rebuilding quickly and participating in first world market economics was unbelievably beneficial to the US. If nothing else, the fact that the US dollar is the world's reserve currency is justification enough for US expenditures in the Cold War.
To go back to my original point, it was always mutually beneficial, and everyone knew it and was in agreement. Everyone was stronger together, and no one is in debt to anyone else.
If the cost/benefit calculus has changed, then that's just life: shit changes. All of the problems you mention are exclusive of America's (previous) commitment to NATO--American has more than enough money to attend to both. But the idea that Europe/the rest of NATO should suddenly be a defense subscriber to the US is just... America didn't bootstrap itself to the position it's in now. Its prior close workings with the free world have made all the difference, and for a while (and no longer) it seemed like everyone understood how it all worked.
I appreciate the thoughtful response it’s refreshing to have a real discussion rather than the usual knee-jerk reactions.
That said, I think you’ve actually made my point for me. You laid out how Europe is equal to the U.S. in GDP, population, and military availability, all of which just reinforces why it no longer makes sense for the U.S. to keep shouldering the majority of European defense.
If Europe is fully capable, then it should be fully responsible for its own security. That doesn’t mean alliances disappear, but it does mean the dynamic needs to shift. The U.S. has carried this burden for 80 years, and at some point, grown-up nations take full responsibility for their own defense.
I agree that NATO served its purpose mutually during the Cold War. But now that the geopolitical landscape has changed, so should the arrangement. The U.S. has pressing priorities at home, and if Europe is as strong and independent as you say, then it should have no problem stepping up.
If Europe wants full American protection, then maybe it’s time they start paying for it.
I think you're going to get your wish: the summit in London today is focussing exactly on "how does Europe proceed without depending on the US?" They're going to ramp up defense spending, and support of Ukraine, and France is already talking about lending its nuclear weapons to partner nations to establish broader deterrance. Between this and Trump's tariffs, the EU has been given a strong push towards independence, and is jumping on it.
Honestly, at this point I think NATO itself is over. Once the trust was broken, once Europe realized that they can't depend on the US, the alliance was a foreign policy option rather than a commitment. The loss of stability that implies scares me to death, though.
May I remind you that the last wars, which lasted multiple decades, were started by the US? Where you happily raped, tortured and murdered AND expected your allies to support you, which they did without throwing pathetic tantrums?
The US does nothing for free or out of goodwill, if you think this, you've been sniffing your own propaganda a bit too much and should try watching something other than Tucker Carlson, Fox or NewsMaxx.
I think our news cycles are very different. All I heard about from our allies in the wars was how they didn't want to be there and America should ramp them down. Also their contributions weren't exactly "overwhelming" aside from Canada and British they were more token then anything.
Line of "The US does nothing for free or out of goodwill" comes up all the time. Please tell me what country does? Then the next thing they do is go right into some form of name calling or denigration, just like you did.
Nothing in your response was about the main points of my comment. Which were firstly that America doesn't have to negotiate peace for/with Ukraine in a way that Ukraine really wants. Secondly because of how Americans feel they have been treated by Europeans over the last century a large portion of the population no longer views them as worthy allies, they feel more like fair weather supporters than allies tbh. So they feel it would be unwise to send our children to die for Europe's safety.
The last point is Europe has been neglecting its own commitments to NATO via its annual spending. So it feels like they are expecting free protection from the Americans which feels like a form of entitlement which leads back to the second point.
I get that these are contentious issues and controversial topics at times but trying to insult or insulate things about someone based on perceived political alignment is not what this site is about.
This has been par for the course for decades. They used to be on good terms with Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Iran after they couped Mossadegh. Heck, they even armed and trained Osama Bin Laden to fight the soviets in Afghanistan. It has always been a deadly gambit to ally yourself with the United States.
I'm not saying it's universally the case of course. For every Saddam there's a Pinochet, for every Gaddafi there's a Suharto. But the fact that the US can drop an ally just like that should not be a surprise to anyone.
Traditionally the US turned from ally to bully in a predictable manner though. Ally with the Soviet Union, expect hostility, even if your previous right-leaning government had been their best buddies. Invade another country the US also regarded as a regional ally and oil supplier and you might not last long.
The switch to verbally attacking Ukraine and the rest of Europe whilst fellating Putin is an altogether different one, and one much more damaging to US soft power than its past belligerence.
I'm curious where you see Libya fitting in this pattern.
Personally I'm more inclined to believe that the ally-turned-foe's invasion serves as a convenient excuse for the US to attack, rather than the root cause. One thing that at least Gadaffi and Saddam have in common is nationalizing their oil industry. This to me seems like a much more believable reason for US aggression.
Gadaffi was a nominal socialist who kicked the US military out, aligned himself with the Soviet Union, proposed pan-Arabist and pan-African alliances to exclude the west and was implicated in bombings of US targets, undermining US-allied causes overseas etc. And yes, he nationalized the oil industry early in his rule. Even if he briefly achieved some sort of rapprochement (mostly with the EU) when he'd run out of allies, he's pretty much the exemplar of how to piss off the US, and so them helping finish his regime off fits the pattern perfectly.
I don't know if I'd phrase it as the "power" to do whatever it wants.
Anyone can always do whatever they want. And the only way there aren't repercussions on some level are if you're some kind of god-like being sealed in the equivalent of closed terrarium.
Does the US have power? Sure. But the US could act disgracefully even if it didn't have power.
The framing I'd give this is that the US is trying to extort Ukraine without actually bringing anything to the table, and all it's going to accomplish is making the US itself less powerful, less reputable, the rest of the world more convinced that nuclear weapons need proliferate because otherwise invasions are on the table, and a litany of other things that will basically make the US weaker over time.
I would go further: this is the end of the US. The pieces haven't hit the ground yet, but they are falling. NATO cannot last when Europe doesn't trust the US. Nations cannot trust that trade agreements will last beyond the whims of the moment. Federal workers are being sacked indiscriminately. The executive branch has openly stated that they will not obey the rule of law if it is against them, even after packing the courts. What is left?
There is something left: the land, the people. But not the country, that is something new.
The future of NATO is secure. It just won't include the US. Whether that exclusion is done implicitly or explicitly remains to be seen. The US has put itself in the position where it has no allies and no peaceful trading partners. That's not going to work out well for them, regardless of how much military might they believe they have.
NATO is an alliance of 32 democracies and from time to time some of those will vote in unfortunate leaders. I guess the remainder will have to carry on. I doubt the US will remain this way after the next election.
They’re not though… it’s just that endless billions being sent for a war that Europe won’t proportionally help support has to end. How much more money and lives will be wasted in Ukraine?
The killing won't stop until Russia is firmly stopped. There is no peace without completely and permanently pacifying Russia. They will attack again and again until we render them unable to continue. The best time to do this is thirty years ago, the second best time is now.
Who is "we"? Are you a soldier in Ukraine? More death is not going to help and neither side will stop. The only chance to stop killing is an agreement.
More death wouldn't, but a solid established and supported promise of retaliation in case of aggression from either side would.
And "we" here means the democratic world - solidarity is the only way to deter bullies - if Russia knew that EU/US would retaliate in case of an attack on Ukraine, they wouldn't invade.
But of course if you yourself is a bully, you will do everything in your power to cause feuds. And here we are, oh well.
I know lots of Ukrainians. They all know that life under this sort of "agreement," which is actually Ukraine paying reparations for a war it didn't start, for zero security guarantees, was beyond moronic. It wasn't an agreement it was mere capitulation to Russia to continue genocide.
Actual real Ukrainians are fighting, and signing back up even after being injured.
Ukraine is on "death ground" and has nowhere to go except to fight to survive. Ukrainians know that. Russia knows that. I'm not sure that those that spout Russian propaganda know that, and for example I doubt you know any Ukrainians with questions like yours, but you sure do sound like the Russian propaganda lines that get trotted out to Americans.
I'm assuming that was sarcasm :) Since Trump and his followers seem to save that type of posturing for Canada. But I guess he's just trolling to own the libs, like a president does...
I believe the clip of the interview disproves that point. If money was the problem (or, more generally, a protracted investment in a conflict perceived as senseless) then a sobering talk would be the way - think of the speech that Biden gave when he announced that the US was withdrawing from Afghanistan for similar reasons, fully aware of what the likely consequences would be.
This interview, on the other hand, has the US VP talking on top of a head of state while chastising him for not being grateful enough while pressuring him to take a deal that would effectively surrender Ukraine to US and Russian interests. Whatever the objective of this meeting was, "a fair result for Ukraine and its dead" did not seem to be it.
Listen to JD Vance speak about Europe, and listen to the way he bullied Trump into increasing bullying in this meeting, and you'll never think that.
If Ukraine signed this deal they would lose so many more lives than with what Zelensky did. I can't imagine how cowardly and easily fooled you'd have to be to think that giving into Russia will make the genocide stop.
The original clips I saw made it look more like Zelensky was behaving unreasonably. Watching more of the context, it seemed more like things escalated.
Watching Trump and Vance and others posture and try to score political points while you could just see the depth of exhaustion and horrors witnessed in Zelensky's face… I don't even know how to feel about it all.
I found it deeply uncomfortable to watch, to be honest. Both Trump and Vance acted like playground bullies.
Maybe that's what a bunch of citizens want? Pretty depressing, if so. I will say that I'm reevaluating my countries alliances and (lack of) security capability.
It is interesting how the US's influence in the rest of the world is declining every day, and that it appears the main entity trying to tear it down as fast as possible is the US.
Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression this is what most of the world wanted? And if not the world, then most elites in the US?
I speak both from public and personal history: when American leadership signed its various trade treaties with China back in the 90s and earlier, opening itself up to the swift transfer of manufacturing to its one-time enemy, was American leadership not signaling its strong desire to diminish American power for the sake of peace?
And on a personal level: my hippie parents had often railed against American imperialism and voted for candidates they thought could stop it. What did they (and other similarly-minded folks) think would happen once America withdrew from the world stage? Do people who think the same way today believe America will grow stronger by pulling back?
Having been around since the late 60s, I can only say this attitude has been in the making for a long time. I can't point to college sit-ins or Nixon going to China or Carter turning over the Panama Canal or the US-China Relations Act (2000) or anything specific stating 'this is the definitive moment', but this desire for a weaker, more isolationist America is neither surprising nor accidental for those of us who've been watching it grow. It's ultimately what my parents and their contemporaries wanted. It's... dream fulfillment.
My thoughts on this is it appears the 2nd Trump administration is obviously better for everyone _outside_ of the US (with the exception of Ukraine, Syria, Palestinians), and is lowering outcomes for groups _inside_ the US.
I think the current administration's actions are backed by the desire to kick out all immigrants, build a fortress wall around the US, and I guess wait out the end times.
Us lefties often say the best way to lower immigration rates is make other countries a more desirable place to live. I'm not sure if this has ever been put into practice though.
Regarding China, the European and American financial relationship is the largest in the world. Chinese trade with Europe is tiny. Sounds like that is all about to change.
I'm assuming you're on platforms dominated by Americans and Westerners so you're not seeing it much, but I can assure large portions of the world are quite happy to see America's downfall in real-time.
Personally, I hope to see China fill the void America will leave behind; the world will be better for it.
I think a more likely outcome is nobody filling the hole America leaves behind, and the incentives of a multipolar world are much more brutal then that of a unipolar world, as a result I expect a rise of new nuclear armed states.
No not at all. The vast majority of Americans are uninterested in being world policemen when it means it's mainly American boys (and girls, but mostly boys, let's be real) dying in foreign wars.
The Chinese are not stupid enough to send their kids to die in war, and even if they were, they at least have an excess of young males.
I think the Trump family has been bought a lot harder by very wealthy Israel supporting Americans and the UAE. The Kushner stuff is well documented. There's checks moving around. Both parties on each end publicly announce huge real estate deals.
I can't point to anything concrete about Russia funding Trump.
Can you please inform me how the US bullied UK into mineral rights in WW2? We exported arms and equipment to them even before Lend-lease acts.
It would be true if you were to mention about our special flavor of freedom exportation during the cold war. However, this time Ukraine is a democratic nation being invaded by our biggest political rival, Russia.
In a political sense, well, that's much more debatable. The problem there is that because the US itself did not feel threatened, US aid came with a price tag: the impoverishment of Britain and the demolition of the trade barriers around the British Commonwealth. US aid was on a cash-only basis
until Britain had spent all its hard-currency reserves (both gold and negotiable securities). Then came the Lend-Lease agreement -- arguably the point where the US truly entered the war -- and its price tag was explicit, although unadvertised: the agreement itself contains a clause
stipulating the removal of the Commonwealth's trade barriers.
The UK paid the US all it's gold reserves. Next it stole of the UK people's gold to use that to buy weapons.
The US was not giving the UK when it exported, it was selling. Lend lease came in once the UK ran out of gold. So the US gave them credit: which the UK tool until 2006 to repay.
The US had about 60% of the world's wealth after ww2. With that, their industrial base and with their "democratic" missions in South America for resources I'm amazed how fast they managed to squander it to make the rich richer.
It's true. Also, the UK has never repaid its WW1 debt to the US.
The US joined WW1 when it became clear that the UK would not be able to repay its debt to JP Morgan and its clients if Germany won. Of course, that was not the only reason, but it was a huge factor. (Source: Adam Tooze, The Deluge)
(London had, bizarrely, decided to bankroll the Russian and French war efforts in addition to its own, so its debts were vast.)
FDR was opposed to imperialism, and so his terms for our meager involvement prior to direct entry into the war were pretty steep, as were his terms for the postwar order. Truman backed off on some of that though.
Stealing radar tech (go read how Raytheon got started), and blocking the UK from nuke development tech after British scientists helped thoroughly the Manhattan Project are the ways the US bullied the UK during WW2.
It also took the White House being set on fire to understand the sovereignty of the land across its northern border. And now there's all this Trump talk of trying to invade once again.
I saw on russian TV how they pretty much said "yea, trump may be an ally of ours now and do what we want but we must remember how they turned on ukraine and that they might turn on us"
Why are people acting as if there's nothing "different" going on here? Like this is all just driven by standard foreign policy choices, and the current US regime doesn't have some unique allegiance to Russia and its leader?
The US military was concerned about this scenario long before and raised concerns back in 2011. They predicted why someone like Trump would would come in power and question the purpose of NATO. But it was not taken seriously by NATO allies at that time. Obama even wanted European allies to be able to launch their own military missions with just US as a support role. The Libya interventions was supposed to be a test of that.
Yep. The warnings have existed for a long time, but most European states have continued to ignore the hallmarks.
Even Poland only started rearming after Kazynski's plane was shot down in Smolensk in 2010 (edit; not shot down), Romania only (started after Crimea and it's implications of a similar incident in neighboring Moldova in 2014, Turkiye began due interventions in Syria and Libya that lead to Turkish and Russian soldiers fighting against each other in 2012-15, and Netherlands after over a hundred of their citizens were shot down in an Air Malaysia Flight in 2015-16 (forgetting the exact date)
Trump is absolutely wrong in publicly abandoning our European allies, but this is something every administration since 2008 has been saying would eventually happen.
The failed UK-France intervention in Libya should have been the warning call (France and UK's air forces couldn't disable Libya's A2AD and ran out of precision muntions, forcing the Obama admin to intervene and spark the Benghazi crisis which helped bring Trump into the Oval Office in 2016). In fact, that incident probably further emboldened Russia as Libya's military apparatus was heavily Russian/Soviet in armament and strategy.
Uhm, that Polish plane wasn’t shot down. Don’t spread silly conspiracy theories.
Polish military spendings were rising steadily since long before the accident, but a significant increase happened after Russian full scale invasion on Ukraine.
Fair point about the Smolensk Incident - confused it with the Netherlands incident - but it was that incident that sparked Poland's fears about Russia again [0], and most of Poland's military buildup and modernization only began in the 2012-13 period after the partnership with South Korea kicked in [1][2]
Do yourself a favour and look up the origins of the stories Trump has been saying
- Zelensky a dictator
- Messing with WW3
- Not wearing a suit
- VIP tours of the front line
They're all Kremlin lines/tropes commonly found in state media.
And then TASS was allowed in to the Whitehouse and PA News aren't?
I saw a lot of people justifying Trump's moves because "the US shouldn't be spending so much money helping Ukraine in the war."
I understand that argument, but what about security guarantees? Zelensky has been simply asking for security guarantees so that Putin doesn't start another war in a few years (like he did in 2014 and 2022). Why can't Trump provide that? Why should we just trust Putin's word? Or is there something I'm missing here?
Trump can't provide that because any "security guarantee" from the US would essentially translate into "send armed troops", which is something that would run counter to his campaign stance.
Isn't there a middle ground possible? For example, a guarantee, in law, that the US and Europe send military equipment to Ukraine if there is another war in the future?
USA could guarantee a deployment to European NATO countries large enough for them to be able to move much of their forced into Ukraine.
And just guarantees on being able to buy armament would be useful.
If there had been any ounce of political will something would have been possible.
No one is going to believe any guarantees now anyway, so it's a moot point. The US no longer has the goodwill capital for agreements, only transactions.
A few years ago we kept making comparisons to Chamberlain appeasing to Hitler, inviting Hitler to keep expanding its territory at the expense of other sovereign nations in Europe, but at the same time made it very clear that Putin is no hitler and the comparison is too extreme.
Now it seems quite clear that the US under Trump is not willing to intervene in military fashion. For Russia, getting east-Ukraine in a year and waiting 3 years while ramping up its war economy to take the rest of Ukraine is a great outcome. For China, Taiwan is now a no-brainer as Trump declined to say whether he would intervene like Biden did. This is appeasement. Trump seems to want peace at any expense, he doesn't seem to recognize at all what the people of Ukraine have been willing to give their lives for, their country.
It's easy to have peace if you just surrender everything to a bully. Peace without justice is more like slavery. MLK said it right, there can't be peace without justice.
I suspect The Trump camp realise a peace deal acceptable to Ukraine isn’t viable. Trump having promised one would be easy means he needs an excuse.
Manufacturing a split with Zelensky gives them that excuse. Now they can turn off the tap of support to Ukraine, forcing them to capitulate, and blame Zelensky.
Meanwhile they can make a deal with Putin to split Ukraine between them. Putin gets East Ukraine, the USA gets the mineral wealth of West Ukraine. It’s win-win.
Most of the mineral wealth stuff is all in the Donbas, or a couple of kilometers from the front lines. I am unaware of much of anything like that in western Ukraine.
Historically most of the heavy industry, near the mineral deposits, has always been in eastern Ukraine. Agricultural stuff in western and central Ukraine. Putin would be perfectly happy w/ a Ukrainian only rump state centered around Lviv.
Make no mistake, this display was a disgrace, but... after the annexation of Crimea the EU (Germany) moved ahead with Nord Stream 2, we are culpable too, massively. Ironically there's a famous video of none other than Trump lambasting the Germans about it.
The US has been a bully since at least WW2. The US has been betraying "allies" for just as long.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been a godsend for US influence. Finland and Sweden joined NATO. The Russian military was exposed as a paper tiger. A huge portion of the Russian military's capability was destroyed without a single US military serviceman or asset being deployed. Russian energy exports to Europe (and the influence that gives them) have dropped to a mere fraction of what they were in 2020. Europe is now dependant on US LNG exports.
The second largest military in NATO is Turkey and Turkey is America's puppet. Turkey has been in direct military conflict with other NATO members (ie Greece) with the blessing of the US.
Ceding territory to Russia, which seems all but inevitable now, doesn't change the the security picture for Europe. Russia still can't occupy Ukraine. That was true before the invasion. It's still true now. They certainly can't roll into Poland let alone Germany and Western Europe.
The EU really has no interest in paying for their own security. Politically it's a nonstarter too with the right of far-right parties like National Front in France and AfD, AfD in Germany and Reform in the UK.
Lots of this is correct however Turkey isn't anyone's puppet, they're a wildcard if there ever was one. Lately they've been quite insistent that Crimea should not be ceded to Russia, for example. They're also certainly not going to tolerate a Russia/Iran axis in their neighborhood and they've been quite aggressive vs Russian forces that encroached their interests.
There's a world of difference between what Erdogan says and what he does. And you should only look at what he does.
For example, since October 7, Erdogan made lots of statements about how he was upset with the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. That was all for show. Something like 40% of Israel's energy comes from Azerbijan and transits through Turkey. Turkey could've cut that off. But they never would.
Likeise, Erdogan's family continued to trade with and make money from Israel.
Turkey buys a Russian anti-missile defense system [1] while selling Bayraktar drones to Ukraine and hosting US (technically NATO) nuclear weapons.
Turkey is consistently aligned with US foreign polciy with some minor exceptions that are really deviations tolerated because of Turkey's strategic importance and recognizing the need for Erdogan to maintain power.
Yes. Like sell a ton of drones to Ukraine, partner with Ukraine on producing drones, shooting down a Russian plane in Syria, conflict with Russian troops in Syria, etc...
They have been aligned with the US most of the time but they very clearly also have a mind of their own and that includes a lot of actions against Russia.
Must we endlessly fund a war that is in stalemate and will continue to savagely end the lives of military and civilian alike? Otherwise, we are a bully? Is it in our interest to continue to run up debt, send overseas ammunition and hardware? To what end? And for how long? I remember wondering the same during Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this really America's permanent responsibility, for any country in the world?
It's quite remarkable the change in America over a couple decades. In the 90s, the left was solidly pro-free-speech and anti-war. Anti-war sometimes to a fault, even. Maybe aside from some censorship effort of rap and Mortal Kombat, you could count on the left to defend free speech at nearly any cost.
Now, it is the left that seems interested in doubling down on wars, without any plan for escape, and of "reigning in" speech deemed by some as harmful.
I'm not here to say correct or incorrect. Pick your own ice cream flavor. My point is that it's striking how much the parties have flipped 180 degrees (on some issues).
This is a defensive war. This is the lesson we learned when the world did nothing to stop Hitler's initial aggression. This is the moment of truth. Doing nothing is easy, it's the default. We now know the possible consequences and we've made our mind to not let that happen again. Have we learned nothing?
And they way they are trying to bully Ukraine into a minerals agreement and rebuilding agreement to strip Ukraine of everything it has. Trump doesn't care about peace, he wants to make money
If the war ends, that is peace. Do you believe Ukraine will be better off financially by continuing the war, even if it is on America’s credit card? They will not flourish in the present state, however noble they believe the effort is. War is not fair.
I am not a country. Nor are countries sentient beings with intentions; they are abstract entities. “We” didn’t bully anyone — one or two specific people did.
> Must we endlessly fund a war that is in stalemate and will continue to savagely end the lives of military and civilian alike? Otherwise, we are a bully?
Ukraine has lost massive amounts of lives, territory, and foreign funding under his leadership; Zelensky effectively has zero negotiating power.
Where are the voices that simply want the war to end so people stop dying? It’s easy to say bully this and ally that from the comfort of your office while hundreds of thousands of people die in a strip of land most “supporters” couldn’t point out on a map. At this point there’s a collective ego tied to the outcome more than there is any care for the actual people involved.
What a dogshit poll. There were three options given:
1. Ukraine should continue fighting until it wins the war.
2. Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible.
3. Don't know/Refused.
"Ukraine should surrender unconditionally" and "Ukraine should negotiate permanent security guarantees" and "Ukraine should fight its way into a better negotiating position" are all in the same bucket. This is maliciously bad poll design.
This is not at all consistent with U.S. foreign policy. It is one regime, that clearly has different thoughts about our alliances. It's an anomaly or, more accurately, an aberration. And it's similar to what's happening here domestically as well.
> The EU is going to be thinking long and hard about the future of NATO now.
Thinking long and hard apparently is all the EU is capable of.
Trump's first term should have been more than enough to make the EU come to their senses. Now, we have tethered caps and the AI Act, but the EU still has no coherent vision or just even the slightest idea of how to move the continent forward instead of keeping it in the past.
The EU needs to get armed to the teeth and to pile up on nukes. The US cannot be trusted, half of the country is compromised and that's not something that will change any time soon, even after Trump goes to meet his creator.
There’s probably going to be a decade long build up for that to happen. European military industrial production could barely surge to the promised 1 million shells to Ukraine
France has nukes. But for nukes it doesn’t matter in practice if you have 10 or 1000. If you use one, it is one too many. It only matters that you have them.
Half the country isn't "compromised." We simply woke up to the fact that a continent of people that do nothing but mock and sneer at us refused to pay for their own defense, and we get nothing from it in return, other than having our exports tariffed at higher levels than EU exports to the US.
For the US, NATO is an obligation, of which the EU nations (with their lavish social spending and anemic defense spending) benefited from.
In 2014, the EU did NOTHING to help when Crimea was invaded. You continued to buy gas, and even bult new pipelines like Nordstream to continue to hand Putin money. I'm all for the EU to take on it's own protection and investing in militaries. World War II ended 80 years ago. Move on and grow up and pay for your own defense.
Ukraine is in this war partially (largely? primarily?) due to United States foreign policy in the years since the "end" of the Cold War. No surprise Trump screws them over and doesn't honor our geopolitical debts tho.
I wish more people would remember that Ukraine was once 3rd nuclear power in the world but agreed to give it all away in return for promise that US will defend it instead.
This is why Zelensky keep saying he doesn't want another paper.
It is not bullying to say that American monetary support means basically doing what the United States want you to do. This is basic human social interaction.
Heck, less than half of Western Europeans would fight to defend their own country[0]. In the UK, only a third of people surveyed would do so. That's less than those who believe that the US would come to their aid!
Irrelevant. This measures trust towards USA to send their people who are willing to fight implied by them joining the military, not willingness to fight amongst the general public.
We don't care. Approximately 0% of the American public believes the UK would help us if we were invaded, because we have eyes and have seen how absolutely degraded the European militaries have become, outside of a few outliers like Poland and Turkey.
I worked in the Pentagon for 10 years, and went over to the UK about twice a year for work at RAF Mildenhall, which, of course, is primarily filled with USAF planes and airmen.
European nations stopped caring about defending themselves, and turned NATO into a charity of which they are the recipients.
More recently (2016-2021), I would travel to London on a regular basis to work with a team based out of an office in Shoreditch. The sentiment of the average Londoner to the US military was fairly negative, typically accompanied by a face that looked like they had just smelled a fart.
My son is 18. I don't want him being drafted into any war on behalf of a demoralized population that doesn't want to fight for their own country. It's morally reprehensible to expect us to subsidize a society that has imprisons citizens for social media posts and fines our tech companies every chance they can get.
Brits and Europeans died for America's last two wars, on a percentage basis more Dutch and Canadian troops died than Americans. Nearly 500 British troops died for your war.
Next time America asks for assistance, whether it's troops or firefighters I hope the attitude is reflected back and it comes with a costs+ invoice due up front.
Our next war is going to be in the Indo-Pacific, and the Diego Garcia is already a de facto American run base, and now going to be part of Marutius due to French and Indian lobbying [0], and because the UK deal was set to expire in 2036.
I'd trust the French more than the Brits in an Indo-Pac conflict, because they have actual stakes due to French Polynesia and Mayotte.
And if we're honest, it doesn't make sense for the UK to fight a Pacific war anyhow. The UK has constantly stepped up to help Ukraine and remains a very strong buttress against Russia. It's best if the UK remains a lynchpin for European security.
America not honoring another country's article 5 after America itself was the only country to call article 5... this attitude will absolutely spur nuclear weapons programs in countries across the world.
> Approximately 0% of the American public believes the UK would help us if we were invaded
This is just silly nonsense.
In various polls the US and UK poll quite similarly, in that the percentage of people who believe their country should honour article 5 in case of an attack on a NATO ally, polls about 2x greater than the percentage of people who believe their country shouldn't.
So approximately 0% is nonsense.
But besides the fact that the beliefs of the US population isn't 0%, look at the reality: the UK went to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight alongside the US on foreign soil, while most of the world didn't and opposed those wars. What makes you think the UK won't fight alongside the US if it was under attack on its own territory? It makes no sense.
The US being invaded essentially means there is a world war. The idea that the UK would try to stay neutral instead of follow its treaty requirements with its greatest historical ally ever, and bow to its new ruler, is just silly.
As for the UK military's prowess, it is obviously not what it used to be, in relative terms. But to compare it unfavourably to Poland and Turkey? Neither could beat the UK, except on their home soil. And in the context of an invasion of the US, I'd rather have the UK as an ally, it actually has long-distance projectionist military power which is exceedingly rare outside of the US, Turkey or Poland don't have it.
I'm curious if there is any polling data on British willingness to help Canada should they face invasion from the U.S. Canada being a commonwealth country with their King as their head of state.
What if the trigger was the US annexing a NATO nation's territory? He's already made noises about Canada and Greenland (Denmark). That would be the ultimate farce.
Greenland is about the arctic. It's not some farce or meme. Look at an actual globe and when the ice melts that white stuff is going to be a navigable ocean between Canada Greenland and . . . Russia.
We tend to think of the world on a flat world Google map and Russia seems so far away, but when the pole melts Russia will be closer to north America and they will be wanting that area too.
No ice means it's easier to drill for natural resources. The US is preempting the melt and trying to get ahead in the race for the arctic. It's much more valuable than at first glance.
I laughed first too. I then felt that my laughter was due to not understanding it. "How bizarre, LOL". Then I felt like I was missing something big. Now I try to use these "bizarre jokes" as a sign to look deeper.
In a way (although this info isn't secret at all, just boring) we can use Trump's inability to have a filter to leak the advice that his advisors are giving him more than past statesmen would.
Yeah, we should ask USA to pay for the help we offered them and for our soldiers that died in those conflicts sinee the USaians really are into "deals" and paying for help.
You entered ww1 in 1917, almost at the end of the war after German submarines attacked American ships, if I remember correctly. So the US tried to stay out for quite some time.
You mean when Japan attacked USA and you were forced to enter the war? I do not remember USA attacking nazis because of morality, in you were forced by getting attacked. I remember USA doing business with nazis so the "help" was mustual you were fighting same enemy and my country Romania was in fact on the other side , we were sold to USSR in the end so you got your payment when you split the world with USSR
You implied the US entered WW2 to help out the European allies and thus they still owe you. But as the person you're responding to pointed out, you entered it of your own accord, pursuing your own interests.
So, no, we're not going to, in your own words, "compare them to WW1 and WW2 and see if we owe you any money".
Moreover, the US were paid back for any weapons or resources you supplied.
No, you're the one gaslighting. It was not a few NATO nations throwing some resources, although, obviously, you deliberately chose this language to gaslight...
In reality, it was NATO nations responding to the US invoking Article 5, the only time it's been invoked in NATO's history. And in contrast to righteously throwing around empty words about Americans hypothetically coming to die for someone, these nations actually sent their troops, and some of them literally died for you.
> I said bring receipts and we can compare
Again, what are you going to compare against? WW2? The US did not enter WW2 as a favour to the other allies, you entered the war in response to Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile Hitler was dreaming of New York in flames. So your troops went to Europe to protect your own country. Sure you were fighting alongside the UK's forces but they were helping you to protect the US as much as you were helping them defeat Nazi Germany.
> Europe has not been meeting is spending targets as specified by the treaty.
Yeah, because recognizing USD as the world's reserve currency is suddenly not enough.
> I say article 5 is a complete non starter and should be utterly disregarded
Don't remember a lot of US people saying this when it was being invoked in 2001. Maybe you were saying it back then?
That said, it's not surprising at all. What do you call taking advantage of a friend and abandoning them afterwards? Another Friday?
Yeah, I was wondering at what point Putin decides to roll the dice and put that to the test by rolling into Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia. He must be feeling his chances are pretty good right now.
yeah NATO got irrelevant and Putin certainly now wishes he would not have attacked Ukraine. Rolling into these 3 mini countries with his entire army from 2022 would have been a much easier task
Even if the US did nothing, rolling into NATO lands would put them up against the UK, Germany, France. Poland et al as well as Ukraine.
The worry is more that a ceasefire is called. Russia rearms and succeeds in taking over Ukraine and then a combined Ukraine and Russia attacks Europe with President Vance supporting Putin.
Is that dumb? These transport animals basically make themselves. Self-replicating, way cheaper than robots, easy to replace when they break down. Don't need sophisticated software, etc. Just some training and sensory deprivation.
I wish humans would not involve other species in their sadistic ways of killing and maiming each other, though. Donkeys, horses, ... all benefited from war mechanization. Dogs not so much so far. Dutch happily train dogs that are then sold to allies to be used to attack, threaten, maim, shit and piss on, sodomize, and kill defenseless people. Bizarre.
It isn't dumb so much as desperate. Their preference is to supply troops with trucks, but they have lost a huge number of trucks and use many of those remaining as troop transports on the front line which also speaks of desperation.
I don't think that we're this far gone yet, but is there a chance the US sides with Putin in this case? I think it would be risky, and I don't _think_ Trump's base would go for it, but it does feel like the long term goal is to try to sanitize the idea of a shift in the geopolitical order to ally America with Russia instead of with Europe.
trump and the republicans must really be stupid to trade NATO for russia, while leaving an opening for china to side with europe. If US ditches europe, india/SK/JP and the rest of asia will soon reciprocate.
All this so that US sides with a bankrupt cleptocracy and dictatorship. 1000iq move, I guess.
Unless Trump wants to start WW3 the US won't be able to do anything, and even if he did start WW3, Europe would be able to destroy those bases.
The whole point of them was to give the US influence while improving US security. Given Europe can't trust Trump will come to their aid, they won't give the US as much influence over Europe.
Have you ever wondered why the US is able to spend so much on its military? Ever wondered why the US keeps on printing the dollar that's not backed by any gold reserve and other nations still give you real things such as food, resources, goods in exchange for it?
Here's a hint! It's your military. To put it bluntly, European nations and other US allies pretend the dollar has actual value and the US in turn guarantees security and backs the world order based on the rule of law.
Looks like the US is looking to pull out of its end of the deal. That's fair enough, being the world's policeman is sure a heavy burden to carry. I just don't see many people recognizing the implications for the US economy.
Maybe this passes as insightful in some circles but it's completely untrue when you consider how much of his base is currently fuming about weak Epstein annoucement and Israel more generally.
I am trying to express in good faith, I have found the Left to be generally less effective in dealing with grassroots criticism (it's seen as too populist). Trump will flip on an issue due to pressure from the frog guys. The Left are more dogmatic from top intellectuals, don't really listen to the base. Huge issue in the last elxn. Fixable though imo.
Nah, they'd say it was god's will or some nonsense and pretend it's all right. A minority might even be completely fine with losses as long as their god emperor wins in the end and owns the libs.
Yes, he did everything he could to prevent it - being mocked mercilessly by the rightwing for suggesting Putin might do what he eventually did.
Biden did not do enough to kick Russia out, though. He should have given Ukraine everything they wanted, including a no-fly zone (and ideally Warthog support when Russia was stuck in the mud).
IMHO, they are already there. There's no spine in the Republican party to prevent bowing down to Putin, they have always been anti-Europe, and Putin is a big daddy that they actively court when they idolize Hungary's dictator and hold CPAC meetings and try to emulate Orban.
I think in this era of misinformation Trump+Elon can convince their falolowers that is the greatest idea to help Putin, and that Putin is the second greatest leader in the world history after Trump... you can still see USAians claiming USA paid more then Europe even if the lie was exposed days ago
"Glory", so not specifics around hypothetical land Putin aka Hitler 2.0 imagines he wants. There's no evidence for him saying anything besides … what he's literally says. This fantasy conjecture is weakening the international position on Ukraine, especially with such easy access to Russian translation tools where we can just expose this secret conspiracy of yours. He literally only talks about Ukraine, you can look into this yourself.
Or perhaps you mean "glory" in the sense of some kind of national pride and confidence in culture and nationality? I am not sure arguments against any nation seeking a sense of themselves are particularly compelling…
Just because the US changing its mind about Russia changes NATO's dynamic as a whole does not mean that the Baltic states are immediately in danger. Poland and Finland are both nearby NATO countries that have experienced Russia's thumb directly with their own military industrial base or are developing one that would absolutely step in if need be.
Reminder that Finland is really close to St. Petersburg, the 2nd largest city in Russia with some pretty big cultural and military importance. Putin's done some fantastically stupid stuff in regard to the 2022 Ukraine war, namely resuming it, but he's probably not that dumb.
You are right. I do hope Zelenksy noticed the sudden caveats he added a few days ago, too. Same thing - Trump wants many billions in resources, yet "can't" guarantee anything in return.
Russia immediately responded by saying it would happily share those resources. Of course.
Trump doesn't understand soft power, nor how much he has destroyed in such a short span. I have hope that a some future point we can repair these relationships, but they will never be like they were. So stupid. Such a waste.
History will record than once...An unsuspecting stand up comedian, who once recorded the voice of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian dubbing of Paddington and Paddington 2...
Left his family, took on a uniform...And had to fight, at the same time, Putin and the President of the USA: https://youtu.be/4zwfukYhq-k?t=6
With Trump's fragile ego, there's a chance he will designate all humanitarian charitable organizations, and military-aid organizations, to whom USA citizens might want to donate, that have any ties to or otherwise benefit Ukraine, as terrorist organizations. I will be evaluating these ... if you have plans to assist, it may be better to do so sooner rather than later.
I bet this is all a part of Trump's strategy into pushing Europe into geopolitical irrelevance. And if it counts for anything, the Europeans did this to themselves by relying on the goodwill of America for their own security.
Europe can defend itself against Russia just fine. Maybe it will be a bit poorer, as it has to spend more money on defense, but it can do that. The bigger threat is that European countries start fighting each other again. That could happen in a few decades, if Eurosceptic parties become too popular.
On the other hand, Europe does not care about China. It has no interests in the Pacific. In the absence of mutually beneficial alliances with powers that oppose China, Europe would rather see China as a (somewhat unpleasant) trading partner than an adversary. If China is not a threat and the US is not an ally, it doesn't matter much which of them is the dominant power in the Pacific.
> On the other hand, Europe does not care about China. It has no interests in the Pacific. In the absence of mutually beneficial alliances with powers that oppose China, Europe would rather see China as a (somewhat unpleasant) trading partner than an adversary. If China is not a threat and the US is not an ally, it doesn't matter much which of them is the dominant power in the Pacific.
China keeps getting blockaded left and right when trying to establish shorter routes with the EU, and there's a reason for this. The EU and China both want to just live in peace and are natural trading partners — the main obstacle being distance, blockades, and unfriendly territories in between.
Russia started this war. The US abandoning their closest allies against their historical main antagonist results in losing the status of hegemon, and the economic and geostrategic benefits that entailed.
Russia is winning the cold war, 35 years after it "ended".
You don't get to pick and choose between benefits and costs. Like, over the long term you can, but blowing up your alliances at a press conference is not a strategy for long term geopolitical success.
Seems to me that the country Trump is pushing into geopolitical irrelevance is the United States of America. Thanks to him, we're making enemies of friends and allies, throwing away our influence on the world, throwing away any claim we had to being a model, and turning in on ourselves. Trump is MALA: Make America Little Again.
Europe hasn't been geopolitical relevant beyond it's own borders for a while now.
I mean think about it - it had to rely on US transportation just to participate in the Iraq War. How much of a threat can a country be if it can't even project force into that theatre?
US was always a bully Trump is doing overtly what US has been doing covertly using CIA etc for decades. Actually Trump is more honest than previous US administrations as those would have killed Zelensky and then blamed it on China or Russia if he was not willing to do what they want.
European Democracies should start a, new, NATO-like military Alliance on their own, but without Trump's America.
(and without the notorious US-made military equipment kill-switches)
And while we're at it, this time will be different:
Instead of the membership criteria being anti-soviet communism, as in NATO, it should be effective Liberal Democracy - and - Freedom from Exceptionalist Exemptions, namely from the International Rule of Law. So, to be part,
1. Compulsory International Criminal Court membership and compliance - hence no exceptionalistic US, and no exceptionalistic Israel.
2. No "Illiberal Democracies": say, for example, composite of a minimum 0.67 score on the WJP Rule of Law Index and others: therefore no Orbanic Hungary, and no illiberal others like it. Poland, Slovakia, Italy: time to make some hard choices if you want in.
3. Democratic backsliding removes you rights in the Alliance, and, can proportionally lead to outright expulsion.
Not one more new military equipment purchase from the US, (and dispreference for other non-qualifying nations procurement). Member nations should use their - substantial - industrial capacity to equip themselves with indigenous military materiel.
Hey, it would be actually great for the economy!
Initially European scope, but bridges to a broader global scope (or even a secondary sister-Alliance) with open-ended partnerships with Canada, Australia, New Zeland, Japan, South Korea, and yes: Taiwan.
US and/or Israel want to join, if a more Democratic future selves? Simple: fully join the ICC, and meet the Alliance's full criteria as every other member.
Same applies for prospective new members.
Sweden shows how principled positions can be maintained while building serious defense capabilities. Now multiply that model by Europe's combined industrial and technological base.
We just need the political will to execute - instead of just rolling over and wagging our tail to bullies.
Why a separate alliance? In 2015, only 5 nations meet the 2% funding requirement for NATO, with all previous US administrations asking for increases. That's concrete evidence of disinterest in the concept or intentional reliance on the US. Only recently, with threats of the US pulling out of NATO, have the numbers improved.
If the US scaled back the 2%, and was less involved, I would think Europe would be in a better position than a brand new alliance.
I understand your point about NATO's historical funding issues, but this isn't just about money - it's about aligning with shared democratic values and international accountability.
The 2% GDP threshold has indeed been a persistent issue, but European nations have substantially increased defense spending since 2022. The proposed alliance would be fundamentally different from NATO in two key ways:
1. It would prioritize democratic values and rule of law accountability (ICC membership) over simply being anti-Russia
2. It would develop true strategic autonomy through indigenous defense production
NATO remains structurally dominated by US interests and equipment with their potential "kill switches." Recent events demonstrate why European security can't be outsourced to powers with potentially divergent interests.
The existing industrial and technological capabilities across Europe are more than sufficient to create a credible deterrent force when properly coordinated. This isn't about creating something from scratch, but realigning existing resources toward greater sovereignty.
Democracy and rule of law aren't just ideals - they're strategic assets worth defending with our own means.
Ah... the league of 'liberal democracies' where blasphemy is still a prosecuted crime. So very liberal.
It's also insane that you place Japan in the realm of this alliance while Hungary is kicked out. Japan is significantly more ethno-nationalist than Hungary ever could be.
Interesting how you overlook Japan's strong judicial independence, press freedom, and regular peaceful transitions of power to focus on ethno-nationalism.
Meanwhile, Hungary systematically dismantles judicial independence, crushes media freedom, and rewrites electoral rules to entrench single-party rule - but sure, they're the real liberals here.
The proposed alliance isn't claiming perfect members - it's establishing clear, measurable standards through indices *like* WJP Rule of Law. If Japan doesn't meet the 0.67 threshold, they're out too. That's the whole point: consistent standards applied equally, not convenient exceptions.
But please, continue defending Orbán's "illiberal democracy" while nitpicking flaws in actual functioning democracies. That's definitely a coherent position.
In the same league as the UK and Germany. This is why I don't support unfettered American alignment with these countries. There is no major country as liberal as the United States.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
I understand. I'm saying that that alliance is in real danger of shrinking before it even gets started, and at any point thereafter.
Seven countries now have far right parties in government, including Italy, France, and Germany. If they go the way of the U.S., any liberal alliance will be greatly diminished.
In 2025, Trump dumped Ukraine, sided with Putin and made a number of bully threats (including invasion) to its formal National Security partners. Security which - at least still today - is bound by literal treaty.
Should Europe just roll over and wag its tail?
What kind of partnership is this that one side wants to boss around its only-good-if-wimp partner?
Democracy isn't binary and doesn't start and end with elections. It is not democratic, for instance, for a president to subvert the powers of Congress (whose members also won their elections).
> The EU is going to be thinking long and hard about the future of NATO now.
European defense spending has, for decades now, suggested that they don't particularly care about NATO. Well, the Western European members at least. Those who used to live in the Warsaw Pact take it more seriously - see Poland, for example.
They also should have been thinking about the implications of buying so much gas from the Russians for the last 15 years. The invasion of Georgia should have been a trigger to move off of Russian exports permanently. Instead it just brought further dependence and a major pipeline project.
I despise Trump as much as anyone but strategic security shouldn't rest on one country never being in a position to elect an isolationist demagogue.
> European defense spending has, for decades now, suggested that they don't particularly care about NATO.
I'd argue the opposite: Western European countries' low defense spending was exactly because they they believed NATO (in particular the US) would intervene if needed. They don't believe this anymore now, hence will increase defense spending, hence making NATO less relevant. They will now be able to rely on the EU alone.
> I'd argue the opposite: Western European countries' low defense spending was exactly because they they believed NATO (in particular the US) would intervene if needed. They don't believe this anymore now, hence will increase defense spending, hence making NATO less relevant. They will now be able to rely on the EU alone.
They're increasing spending, but that takes years to translate to real results.
It's not particularly hard to pump out a few hundred thousand rifles, small arms ammo, and hand them to cannon fod... I mean... the fighting-age men of a country.
What is hard is developing a weapons industry that can act upon intelligence provided by spies planted in places like Russia, develop systems with indigenous technologies, and produce them at scale, all with the logistics to make them mean something on the battlefield. This was on full display during WWII, when some more advanced weapons came out of Germany too late and in too small of numbers to give the Nazis a chance to avoid the ass kicking they so richly deserved.
That takes decades to develop. Europeans, with the exception of the UK and maybe France, have let that fruit rot on the vine since 1991. Putin wouldn't have made this gamble if he didn't think this.
I mean all you need to do is look at South Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, many South American countries, the list goes on and on.
America is like a fickle woman. When she pays attentions to you it feels wonderful, but when she changes her mind it's like you never existed in the first place.
Zelensky had to know that going in. The writing was on the wall.
Frankly, the EU is only able to "think long and hard" but never to actually do anything. They have no warfighters anymore and it will take years for the member states of the EU to rebuild anything resembling military capability, if the EU even allows it. Brussels is the equivalent to the Deep State in the US but with official status, instead of being a shadow government. The only leverage EU member states have vis a vis the US is as trading partners and as vassal states for Pax Americana. If the EU wants to move away from the US, good luck. The member states of the EU are soon going to realize they are "a peninsula at the tip of Eurasia" and their best interests lie in close ties to the US.
Ukraine is in a bind, and it is sad when a buffer state is put through the meat grinder in a proxy war between two great powers. But here we are. The upside is that the Ukrainians who weren't killed in the conflict will be, along with Poland and Lithuania, the only "European" states with anything resembling a capable military. I doubt the EU members want Ukraine as a full member of NATO. Too risky. There are some proposals on the table for a more complicated peace without conceding full neutrality of Ukraine to Russia.
I don't think many people understand the nature of this conflict. They merely see "Russian aggression" but have little comprehension of great power competition and the events leading up to the hot part of this war. I feel for the Ukrainians but I wonder if any of the Ukraine boosters would shed a drop of their own blood for Ukraine. If the US demands that the Europeans take a larger role in the security of Europe, we will see if the European NATO members are up to the task. The US needs to pivot its resources to China in the coming decade. The war with Russia has been very costly and strengthened the bonds between Russia and China (and Iran and North Korea). The Europeans should take a great role in policing their own neighborhood, but I don't believe the EU, as currently constructed, is the governance vehicle capable of leading a unified Europe. The member states are, quite understandably, not happy to give up their sovereignty and culture. Participation in a common market has been a disaster for the working class of Western Europe (unless you think cheaper products is the only measure of a country's vitality). The EU experiment might be at an inflection point. They can remain in this bureaucratic quagmire, or reassert the spirit of Wesphalian sovereignty, or await the arrival of a new Charlemagne to unite a strong Europe under sovereign leadership capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century. My money is on the decline of the EU into irrelevance and a return to the Westphalian spirit. There is no political will centered in Brussels capable of leading this ragtag assemblage of diverse states and peoples. The border problems persist. The result will be more populist revolts and ascendant "right wing" parties advocating "blood and soil" nationalism. If that's the future, then the western european states will only be supported militarily via bilateral treaties with the US or under the umbrella of a NATO dominated by the US. The latter is just the norm for the post-WWII "New World Order" so it will feel familiar. With luck, the collapse of the EU will allow EU member states to reassert control over their own borders and laws. If that happens, they should abandon this resentment of the US and be grateful they were saved from the managed decline of their central government in Brussels.
I don't think America would/should shed blood for Ukraine nor Europe for that matter. We have bigger issues at the moment, like illegal immigrants, drug cartels, corruption, and China's stated ambitions in the Pacific.
Ukraine is a buffer state to constrain Russia's westward ambitions. Think of it as an unfortunate flat road connecting Asia and Europe, ideal for military movement (especially Russian tank warfare). It is seen as a linchpin or "heartland" of Eurasia. Unfortunately, there is no strategic option to let Russia dominate it while maintaining US global hegemony. Whether that's "right" or not, it's the consensus opinion in the American foreign policy apparatus. The hope is that it can be Europe's responsibility and the US can "pivot to China."
I am well aware of Ukraine's geography and its consequences for Europe. You all have been fighting over that area quite viciously for the last 1000 years.
Question and I ask this honestly. What if Americans no longer care about global hegemony or the fate of Europe? As an American I am tired of the continual idea that we have to care about what happens in Europe and if anything bad happens there it is egg on our face. What about egg on Europe's face? They choose not to spend money on their defense and keep their end of the NATO agreement. I have no appetite to keep up our end of the NATO treaty in wartime if the other parties couldn't keep up their end in peacetime.
This was a book written by a British about continental Europe. I don't think it holds much value to America. It definitely would impact Europe, Britain, the ME, and North Africa. But honestly it will not have much of an impact on America in terms of our security. There will be impacts to global markets but none that would destroy or really hammer ours. This was written from the view point of European power, which hasn't existed since the end of WW2.
It is the consensus view of the foreign establishment. You can argue for an isolationist foreign policy. We do have a "big beautiful ocean" separating us from the problems of the world. But global powers have a way of competing with each other on a global scale. I'm partial to arguments against global empire because the metropole tends to become just another territory to administer (a kind of home colony). You can see this especially in Britain today. The problems of immigration and border controls at home are hard to separate from foreign policy. Look at a country with extreme border controls like North Korea and see they still need allies to survive. Hence North Korean soldiers dying on the battlefields of Ukraine.
If you want to argue for a renewed commitment to the Monroe Doctrine, I'm with you. Heck, I'm even there for Manifest Destiny (Canada as the 51st state, as Benjamin Franklin would have had it). But the downsides of a multipolar world are legitimate. Ideally we can maintain our global dominance without oppressing/degrading our own and allied populations.
I get what you’re saying, and I appreciate the thoughtful take. It's enjoyable to engage in an actual discussion about this instead of the usual knee-jerk reactions so thank you!
But here’s the thing. Great powers compete globally, but the real question isn’t whether America competes. It’s how, where, and at what cost. If we’re keeping influence by stretching ourselves too thin, ignoring our own problems, and paying Europe’s defense bill forever, then we’re setting ourselves up for failure just like Britain did.
Ukraine matters to Europe, not really to us. Losing Ukraine isn’t a crisis for America, but losing focus on our own borders, economy, and the Pacific definitely is.
I get that multipolarity has risks, but so does trying to be everywhere all the time. If European security is that important, then Europe should handle it. If they won’t, that’s on them.
If we don’t start prioritizing where America actually needs to be strong, we’re going to wake up one day and realize we’ve spent decades managing other people’s problems while letting our own pile up.
I agree with your take. We are stretched too thin and our "allies" have become frenemies. We need to fix our domestic problems or we won't have a country worth preserving. Certainly, at this rate we won't be strong enough to compete with a rising China.
I only point out the foreign policy consensus inherited from the Cold War is still operational among Atlanticists and other Ukraine war hawks. Stripping away the hysteria, we can accept there will be a cost to Russian dominance of Ukraine, if allowed. I expect the foreign policy establishment in State, CIA, and DoD will continue to try to torpedo Trump. But the China hawks are ascendant at the moment. The recent debacle with Zelensky at the WH is maybe the nail in the coffin for overt "Ukraine uber Alles" war hawks. (They say Personnel is policy. Remember that key architects and actors of Atlanticist policy have personal ties to Ukraine. Nuland is second generation Ukrainian-American. The Vindmanns are Ukrainian nationals. Personally, I would not be surprised if Ukraine saboteurs were implicated in the Trump assassination attempt in Butler. They feel, perhaps correctly, that Trump is an existential threat. Doesn't necessarily mean their problems should be our problems.)
I tend to agree that Russia, China, and Iran are our global competitors, that India and Brazil are dark horses, and that transnational Islam (supported by our foreign adversaries) is another wild card. Abandoning the liberal pieties of Pax Americana and retrenching along nationalist sovereignty lines appears to be the way forward with regard to the very real domestic problems you mention. Unconstrained international labor migration is a failure for domestic populations and needs to be largely reversed. Border security and foreign influence need to be addressed. These are civilizational problems as old as civilization itself. The pendulum is swinging back. Some people get it.
I also appreciate the occasional encounter with sensible HN readers who eschew the vitriolic rhetoric and try to argue objectively. Looking at your other recent comments I see you are in a similar boat as I am on HN. Good luck!
The US just fought a 20 year war and shed quite a bit of blood and treasure. It also appears the US military has been "in country" in Ukraine under special non-uniformed deployments (read "on loan officially as mercenaries"). When was the last war fought by a Western European "power"? Europe fights, if at all, wearing blue helmets, or sometimes fighting "from the rear" behind US military might.
1. The US has shed blood for far less serious reasons. Less than 5 years ago we were "shedding blood" for opium farms in the middle east.
2. As it stands today, the US comes out on top. They paid a measly sum to throw Russia in the meat grinder and it will take decades until Russia is threat to the US again.
3. Our military hawks now get to focus on China. EU still has to worry about Russia
> Frankly, the EU is only able to "think long and hard" but never to actually do anything. They have no warfighters anymore and it will take years for the member states of the EU to rebuild anything resembling military capability, if the EU even allows it.
What are you on about? EU countries + UK have over a million professional military personnel.
> Brussels is the equivalent to the Deep State in the US but with official status, instead of being a shadow government.
The EU parliament has members elected from each country in the EU, there's no deep state conspiracy there.
> The member states of the EU are soon going to realize they are "a peninsula at the tip of Eurasia" and their best interests lie in close ties to the US.
This is the complete opposite of what's actually going on, EU countries are realizing we need a stronger EU and we need to fend for ourselves and will be moving away from US ties.
"Professional military personnel" are not warfighters. How many of those "personnel" (did you mean "troops") have been deployed in a non UN peacekeeping capacity or as troop liasons? Very few. Meanwhile, the US just concluded a 20 year adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq. And has been waving a "big stick" standing behind little brothers in other conflicts. Ukraine's military (what's left of it) is actually battle-hardened and could probably turn around and beat Europe if Russia let up and they were so inclined (I jest, but maybe not).
The "deep state" is not a "conspiracy". It's a form of parallel government. Nothing unique about that in history. (The Roman Catholic Church should be familiar to all Europeans.) The comparison is to point out that there are two "sovereignties" in play (member states and EU) making laws. And when you have two, you have none.
You weren’t alone in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, fighting against talibans and Iraqi rebels is a bit different compared to the war in Ukraine so I’m not so sure your US troops are more “warfighters” than the European troops.
How many non-US combat troops do you think were involved in Iraq and Afghanistan? How many troops do you think European NATO members will commit to a hot war in Ukraine? I agree that the Ukrainians are battle-hardened in a way few other countries are now (besides Russia of course). Ukrainian soldiers also have valuable experience in drone warfare and will have much to teach the US and its allies about 21st century conflict. US military is going to have to modernize some of its personnel and capabilities for new technology, but at this moment, I'd pit the US military against any other in the world. And it's not close.
But for how long will you be able to have the strongest and most modern military in the world if you start losing money because of trade wars and/or other countries stop buying US weapons and so on? I believe it won’t be good for your economy, or ours, if we stop being friends and allies.
This is why Europe must remilitarize and police its own neighborhood on behalf of western security. Probably not going to happen under the EU, which has no ability to assert muscular sovereign leadership. There is no unified Europe at the moment. Better for Europeans to ditch the EU and double down on NATO as a military alliance of sovereign states.
Russia has 1.5 million active military personnel. So you're basically saying that the entire EU+UK is militarily smaller than a country (Russia) that has a GDP less than Texas.
EU+UK aren't conscripting at this time and also have much better training and equipment than Russia, so the comparison isn't apples to apples, I was just saying that we do in fact have "warfighters".
EU+UK don't/can't/won't "conscript". They will have a volunteer military (or possibly deals with mercenary armies, or foreign recruits in exchange for citizenship) unless and until something catastrophic happens. If it comes conscription, it will have been a unconscionable failure of leadership.
Literally not the definition of a dictatorship. Elections alone do not guarantee a government not run by a dictator. Not having elections during wartime doesn't mean a dictator is in charge. There is still a parliament.
> edit: not sure by which part of the world this is downvoted ;)
It's downvoted because of this:
> Well most of the nations of the world didn't do anything for Ukraine, or supported Russia one way or the other.
Most of the world supports Ukraine or at least is not pro Russia, as you can see in UN votes. In latest vote, USA voted like Russia, North Korea and Israel, China abstained.
Most countries can't afford funding a war on this magnitude even if they wanted to. And this war still squarely concerns solely the West, which the US is a part of, even if Trump overestimates the size of that pond.
I'm sorry, I don't care who you are or what the history between your country and the US is, you don't come and be disrespectful like that and get away with it.
All he had to do was was smile and wave, but Zelensky made it into a dick measuring contest which he was always going to lose.
He is a terrible leader and this is just more proof of it.
They increased their defense spending because of Russia invading Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. It didn't have anything to do with US bullying. The biden administration certainly wasn't going around bullying Europe between 2021 and 2024.
Trumps talks of NATO problems go back to his last term. Foreign leaders showed fear of reduced US cooperation then [1], some directly attributing increased spending to that [2]. It was very widely reported back then, with similar fervor.
But boy, will the nations of the world remember this -- how quickly the US can turn from ally to bully. A really bad day for US foreign policy.
The EU is going to be thinking long and hard about the future of NATO now.