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Can the EU muster political capital to fill the void that the US will leave in Ukraine?

I am most worried about East Asia, really hoping Taiwan survives the next 4 years.

Theoretically, yes. It's pretty unlikely.

The US alone currently has more than 2x the military expenditure of the entire EU. The US also has a larger GDP than the entire EU.

The US supplies the main bulk of Ukrainian military aid. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...

The EU would have to make some very serious budgeting changes if they wanted to fill that void. A bunch of EU politicians would need to make the case for deep budget cuts, tax increases, war bonds, or some combination of those.

I just want to mention that EU has around €200 billion in frozen Russian assets. On top of that the various countries will contribute.

Even if it turned out that Trump has some backroom deal with Putin, and pushes hard for Ukraine to surrender - he'd be an absolute fool to not take that kind of money, and sell arms to European allies, and Ukraine.

That's money in the pocket for the US arms industry.

€200 billion is the US defense budget for 3 months (the budget is about $900 billion annually). So I don't think it's as big a number as it seems.

It's around 1 year worth of aid. Since the beginning of the invasion (February 2022) Ukraine has received approximately €400 billion in aid.

The silver lining is that the war costs much more to Russia - and that economic damage is accelerating as long as the sanctions are up. Russian interest rates being over 20% is a sign that things are starting to turn dire.

Whatever booming economy they're reporting, is a economy cannibalizing itself.

So, if Ukraine has the means to keep fighting, that will weaken Russia financially.

Why don't they? Isolationist USA is not ideal, but USA spending way more defending Ukraine than the combined EU is also stupid. Russia is literally knocking on their doorsteps, they should be the first to push back.

They will have to when Russia knocks against their borders.

I really hope too. If Taiwan falls, what message does it send to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines? Are the US willing to lose their influence there and give a free pass to China?

This tracks with some of the models we have been dealing with in the defense industry. Big reason why a lot of our national security types did not want to see Trump reelected.

I don’t think your average US citizen realizes how expensive and difficult things are going to get as US global influence eventually hits an “unrecoverable dive”

There are American right-wing commentators who are praising "de-dollarization" and the rise of BRICS. It's a combination of having half your lifesavings in crypto and letting anti-LGBT/immigrant identity politics override the geopolitical interests of your own country.

US global influence, at least militarily, hit an all-time low when Biden twice said to Iran "don't", then Iran did, and Biden did not respond. Decades of investing in a Navy that is literally one of the most expensive enterprises in human history have been eroded as Biden demonstrated to the US's enemies that American deterrence means literally nothing.

This is incredibly ahistorical.

What is ahistorical here? This is the video of Biden stressing "don't":

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aWFefjhPtQk

That this is "an all-time low".

I see, and yes I agree. I should have said "all time low since the second world war". I did carefully state "at least militarily".

The point is that US enemies are now openly mocking the US for stating "don't" so blazingly, then doing nothing. They see that the US will not use real force, so they openly defy the US now.

I don't think that's right either, but it's closer.

The US will back Taiwan once musk tells trump that's where the AI chips come from. After that there will be no guarantees.

Biden's Chips Act attempts to onshore chip production, arguably so that we wouldn't have to protect Taiwan in the future (or mitigate against it's eventual capture). However, were Trump to allow China to take Taiwan it would make him look incredibly weak - he won't do that.

If it happens, it happens this year.

I doubt we see the same isolationism w.r.t. China, who remain Trump's main bogeyman (other than immigrants). The policy will probably make less sense, since as you mentioned his tariffs and transactional diplomacy may confound US efforts to build an anti-China alliance in the Pacific.

It would probably be a poor move for China to blockade Taiwan (an act of war). If the US decides to intervene, it would be very painful for China without a pre-emptive strike on US bases in the region. For all the talk of Trump as an anti-war candidate, he didn't seem to say no to many military strikes as POTUS, and this hypothetical would represent the US' best possible entry into a war over Taiwan.

China has repeatedly demonstrated 2 things WRT Taiwan. They're patient and they're serious about their red lines.

I can't recall a single instance where China announced anything about Taiwan that wasn't reactive. They just keep repeating the "one China" policy.

Their official stance is that there's no need to invade Taiwan because Taiwan is already part of China and they reserve the right to use force to enforce their territorial integrity.

The practical manifestation of that policy has been that China and the US both get to pretend that their view on Taiwan is the reality and nobody will do anything if the other side doesn't rock the boat.

Their red line is a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan. As near as I can tell, all but one of their "military exercises" has been in response to actions that get close to that line in diplomatic terms https://globaltaiwan.org/2024/10/chinas-military-exercises-a...

During many of those exercises effectively blockaded Taiwan. They did that for a week after Pelosi's visit and they experienced no pain in response.

I draw 3 conclusions from these observations:

  1) China will not invade Taiwan without some external stimulus  
  2) China is prepared to blockade Taiwan in the event of any attempts at secession  
  3) China has established that secessionist behavior is casus belli for a blockade in the eyes of the international community

> Israel's wars: US support continues.

This means US soldiers dying in Iran if the escalation continues. I’d hardly call that “generally isolationist”.

Israel has no chance of fighting Iran without US troops. Trump received a hefty amount of Zionist money this time around (Bill Ackman swinging right is crazy) and is cozy with pompeo et al. The writing is on the wall.