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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

The Ukraine bit may have absolutely devastating Europe-wide side effects.

The EU can't let Russia "win" as it would set a precedent. If the US withdraws their support, the EU will have no choice but to ramp up theirs, meaning funneling money to the military complex. Double or triple that if Trump goes through with his NATO defunding/withdrawl threats. This could easily destabilize the EU economy, cause internal friction, provide fertile ground for nationalism and, ultimately, lead to the fracture of the EU. Now recall Trump's cordial alignment with Putin, which will undoubtedly encourage this sort of development, and it all starts to look outright scary.

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The EU will do nothing if it falls outside of the US imperial mantle because it’s not a proper political entity, it never was, it never will. Maybe individual countries like Poland will try to do something, but they’re too small in the great scheme of things.

If Germany had any strategic autonomy left (which they don’t, they’re just a US vassal through and through) they would do a second Rapallo, maybe this time also involving China, at that point they’d still have a chance to put their economy back on track.

No one (great majority of people) in the EU wanted/wants this war. It was a dish put on the stove put by the hawks in Obama administration. But I think it is way too naive to think US can just pull out. They are far too financially invested. The question is, ia Ukraine too big to fail for US imperialism

Nobody ever wants a war.

However the world let the annexation of Crimea slide in 2014 and that emboldened Russia. Let them chop off a piece of Ukraine now and that will embolden them even more. After all Finland was a province of the Russian Empire before the revolution of 1917 and parts of Poland were under Soviet's control prior to 1941. And that's without going back into middle ages. Lots of places to take back.

You (and people like you) are way too bold to allow yourself to speak for "the world" or for "the EU". As a member of the world and the EU, I'll say that I personally never wanted for my taxes to be spent to prolong this war. Moreover, if it turns out, as you suspect, it all can change on a whim of a president of the USA, it logically follows it never in fact was "the world" or "the EU" who decided that in the first place. It definitely wasn't mine decision, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't yours.

In fact, it won't even really be the voting citizens of the USA who make any decisions, because when red/blue splits 50/50 it isn't "tyranny of the majority" anymore, it's tyranny of luck.

I was nowhere close to "speaking for the world". I merely stated an obvious fact - one country chopped off a piece of another and it got off scot-free.

Re: your taxes - it'd be prudent to look beyond short-term effects and consider what different scenarios would lead to in the long-term. The EU had no choice but to help Ukraine to resist. Consider where things would've been now if they didn't.

The EU begrudgingly gives assistance to Ukraine, because the US forces them to

EU does not have money to spare. Their economies are on the brink of collapse. They have committed harakiri by sabotaging their own energy security and industrial might. EU do not have they any clout on world stage and will decline. Without US - ukraine is sitting duck.

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