Germany has allocated 500 billion Euros (on top of the 100 billion from the previous government) in special funding for military. The plan is to essentially double the overall military budget within 5 years. Might not be enough, might not be quick enough, but it’s not nothing either
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Some thoughts on the the path that the US is taking.
- This is not something that the Don has whipped out of his back side
- This trajectory was likely envisioned as a possibility as far back as the mid/late 70s and Don has decided to cash in the chips now for a cheap shot at legacy rather than any sense of morality or conscious…
- The bursting bubble being Europe banking on the special (and the UK on the very special) relationship with the US
We are where we are… hohumm
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…
I think you’re second point in a later post partly covers the first. It’s only been a year of Trump/Ukraine for European nation to react to. I think some may have been clinging to the hope of waiting it out and a return to the way things were. It’s only really just being accepted that this will perhaps go on longer and they need to start make meaningful changes now.
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Since Putin started with his territorial ambitions it has looked pretty clear his ambitions far exceeded Crimea and now the rest of Ukraine.
At that point countries should have woken up and started preparing, but no, seems the idea the the US will protect them all, regardless,was,and still is, the common train of thought.
How else can the conga line of suckholes crawling to the WH be explained?
Beyond me me,Trump 2.0 is all about Trump and money, it may be a little late but why the spineless politicians in many countries refuse to accept that their people are the ones to suffer, while they get another set of kneepads, themselves.
The US,has proven to be an untrustworthy ally a lot of the time…and now it is all different with the Orange ratbag in charge,give us all a break.
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I actually think that was more true of his first term. Once the unthinkable had actually happened (his re-election) , the realisation of a new reality quickly set in. I don’t think anyone believes now that the US can still be a reliable ally with the vagaries in foreign policy dependent now on which party is in power. Vance’s european foray earlier this year and last week’s security strategy document spells out just where the Republican Party is going to be in the future , Trump or no Trump.
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It won’t amount to anything if AfD comes to power. Or Reform in the UK, or Le Pen’s party in France. There’s a real danger that the European democracies fall from within just like the US.
There’s a strong current of wannabe Putinists/Trumpists throughout the continent and the people are desperate and moronic enough to vote for them.
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Russia has been waging a hybrid non military war that the West has been blinded to. They’ve targeted the very basics of human nature and tapped into human greed as weapon. Building a military that is capable of taking on a united West is impossible; they tried it during the Cold War and capitulated as result. Subversion operations then didn’t have the same scope or traction as it does now as the tools for mass propaganda direct to an individual and bypassing another nations controlled medial didn’t exist then as it does now.
To a military trying to compete with a peer, $50 million dollars is peanuts. It’s not even close to enough for the RnD of an advanced weapons system and could get you maybe two tank platoons or one advanced fighter jet and perhaps a 10% deposit on a modern destroyer. $50 million to an individual who can influence millions of other people though is another story. He, or she, is rich beyond what they would have dreamt of and voila, he or she is accomplishing more than a couple of tank platoons ever could and certainly more value than a measly 10% deposit on a warship that might never be launched.
Social media has increased the ability of unfiltered propaganda to be able to reach out and touch every individual Western Countries. Hell, its not just increased it, we’ve given it the unrestricted access; X, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube TikTok and whatever else the fuck is out there. Boom, in the palm of your hand and accessible 24/7. Go have a shit and take your device, eating your cornflakes with a device in your hand, watching a movie with your device in your hand and fuck, who wanks without a device anymore?? Social media has infiltrated society completely and with that access, Russian influence has gone into overdrive. Trump part 1, or someone like him, might have been unavoidable at some point however some of the propaganda was already evident by then. Trump part 2 is impossible without the complicity of social media, it’s tech bros and it’s grubby influencers who all live glittering lives while spewing out poison designed to divide along every line that can be possible; party politics, race, religion, sexual orientation, affluence and you name it all with one goal; have neighbor hate neighbor and family hate family, ally against ally. As I would describe them from Steven King’s works, low men and women wearing a mask of humanity.
On every level, some sort of subversion is taking place with observers often looking and asking themselves what actual point it serves. The point is to keep everything divided so that nothing functions properly. A paroxysm of self doubt and loathing, a viper striking itself with its own fangs. Money flows in to Europe, the US, Australia, South Africa (yes, here too) to keep these societies on edge. I do not think any of these countries or Unions are untouched. Europe looks on in alarm but is sleep walking it’s way to disaster while the US flails away at it itself while Trump gleefully destroys any vestige, or hope, of normalcy and to the man on the street, ‘wow look at the World Cup, that chick on TikTok is trending, I must check out that new viral video and oh, fuck these immigrants taking our jobs’. Tired, distracted, angry, led by the nose and with a complete lack of common sense, most of the West is just… ‘bleeergh’, living in a bile of Islamaphobia, racism and just seething resentment of… ‘something’ and all the while, the churn continues to be spewed out.
That isn’t to say that Russian policy is a winning one yet. The outlier to what I feel their long term goals were is the Ukraine. I think they genuinely banked on the ‘in Kiev in three days thing’ and that by now, they would have this stranglehold over Eastern Europe again with all their equipment, men and more still intact. That didn’t happen, they’ve been ravaged with men and material and any sort of continued military effort West is improbable for a long time. I believe this led to the events of Oct 6 in Israel and the subsequent events into Gaza that divided huge portions of the West and influenced Trump’s return to a large extent. The Democratic Party was held to a much higher standard than Trump who basically lied anyway and contributed to the defeat (in my opinion). Russia has since left Iran out to dry and Iran, Hezbollah in it’s turn but their goals were achieved so I think they’re happy enough with the return.
To an extent, one can understand European apathy. The continent has been ravaged by endless wars over the centuries and they’ve finally found a Union and a relative peace that is hard to believe won’t last forever and they are loathe to invest in a war machine that will result in the deaths of many of them should it ever need to be used. The thing is and this has never been more true, if you want to have peace, have a strong army. I just hope that they figure that out as the more I see it, the more I feel that the US will fragment during my lifetime and there will be global shift, or at least an attempt, to authoritarianism and the one bulwark to that is a united and powerful Europe.
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I want to respond to a couple of the comments above, but I don’t have time to write now for more than a very few min, so that must wait.
I do want to share with you wonderful human beings this transcript though !
Read it if you wish. It is… something ! I mulled copy pasting it, but it’s a bit long and I would have to manually put the name of the reporter and Trump in bold a bit too many times. So I am posting it instead.
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I couldn’t disagree more with this. That’s what the likes of Trump and Putin would like you to believe. The truth is that the EU harbours the most integrative and successful model in the world. Despite all the problems and all the cultural varieties, this is a vast continent where people agree to talk together within an institutionalised frame, instead of going to war with each other like they used to do beforehand. The result is much improved prosperity for most.
Compare this with any other country in the world, US included. The US remain an economical and military heavyweight of course, but for how long with such idiots in charge? And how many people there are left out in the cold, even when business is soaring?
Please reflect on this: why do people from all over the world want to migrate towards the EU? The idea of individual and collective freedom is strong for so many, and there are jobs to take. So they come. The MAGA boys and Putin aren’t happy at all about that, but Europe is slowly taking over the mantle from the US as the main place in the world where you must go if you don’t want to be oppressed. That makes them nervous.
The idea of a Europe unified in peace and prosperity, although still at its beginning, is a strong one, and it’s there to stay imo.
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The only thing I disagree with is maybe the last sentence. It is this thinking that is dangerous and maybe encapsulates the conundrum. People in Europe (and the US) are so far up their own self interests that they neglect a simple truth - nothing last for ever (not even the cold novermber rain..). Every empire that has come about has gone. Every border that has existed has been redrawn. If we want to keep the status quo we have to fight for it and not take it for granted.
p.s. my perspective is maybe we, Europe, lack (or don’t want to develop) the vocabulary to talk to entities such as current US or Russia.
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Yeah, here I agree with you. Nothing is ever set in stone. But the course which was set up by the EU is still incredibly fresh, and comes with all kinds of ‘newborn’-problems: the rapid integration of Eastern Europe states for instance. We don’t have a vocabulary for the time being, because we haven’t had the time yet to develop the means to develop that common language. It needs time. Meanwhile Putin and the MAGA boys will try to unsettle the apple cart because they can see the potential unfolding there. And of course, the EU and European governments need to relentlessly work on the main idea at the base of it. The project will only fail if they themselves give up on it.
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It is the people giving up that worries me.
Edit - I live in southern France and don’t talk much politics in general but what little I have done had a “what is Europe good for other than rules”, “anti-immigration” and “what is caring for Ukraine going to bring me” vibe that permeates just below the surface or openly. It is quite self centred and lacks perspective - symptomatic of the Western world?
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might be a blessing in disguise for the US to pull out of NATO,
Trump-et would only drag every country in the alliance down with him.
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BBC news reporting Zelensky plans to hold elections in the next 30-90 days
Hope he wins with 87.8% of the vote,
the same as Putin won by in his last election
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Short answer..OMFG!
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I haven’t read all of it yet however it’s sort of fascinating. Not that we didn’t know it already, it sounds like a narcissistic, control freak with unhealthy obsessions. Surely provoked by Biden, Biden … Obama, Obama … Uh Obama. 
Why should they give up on the idea? They can disagree with the way it’s done, and point out the numerous flaws, fair enough. It’s far from perfect. But the idea itself of a prosperous continent, in which you can travel and change home freely, and in which cultural exchanges and business supplant the eternal wars, is surely something to behold? Even for people wanting to vote for RN?
No matter what the nationalists say, everyone and his dog has benefitted from an improved situation since around thirty years thanks to a stabilised European continent without nationalist components making everyday’s life difficult. If I’m not wrong, not even Le Pen dares considering doing a Frexit anymore? Brexit is surely a frightening counter-example for many now.
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