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That's true but apart from Poland, all large EU countries have anaemic weapon production and diverted all their military spending into social programs decades ago, which they cannot reverse. They are at their budget deficit limits and are all in territory where if they increase tax rates, tax proceeds go down (along with growth and employment). So the reality is that I don't think there is any chance the EU is a substitute for the US in term of ukraine support.

The question becomes one of politics: how much does each EU member care? I'm reminded about the old joke about the difference between ham and eggs being that the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states are "committed" in that they regard the risk of a Russian invasion as real, and have seen occasional incursions by Russian flights and even missiles. If it comes to a fight between self-defence and the deficit limit, they're just going to have to break the limit.

Germany, on the other hand, has been very comfortable taking Russian bribes and gas, as well as being uncomfortable with re-arming, so they've been lagging behind on the project.

Maybe there will be another "incident". France has already been reporting attempts of sabotage against their railway network.

The politics of Ukraine war is extremely complicate. After WW2 Ukraine got territories from Hungary (and they are still very mad because of this), Slovakia, Poland and Romania. Then Ukraine had very aggressive policies against the people from these territories and they mostly failed, these minorities speak Russian as the second language, not Ukrainian. This is not something that it is easily forgotten, people in the countries listed above still have family in Ukraine and have first hand experience of the situation.

> Then Ukraine had very aggressive policies against the people from these territories.

Let's call it for what it really was: Ukrainians commited genocide against Poles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia...

Even so I assume the vast majority of Polish people would prefer a border with Ukraine rather than a larger one with Russia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...

I don't think that is an option of any sort. Wild guess is Putin bet was on Russia getting some territories opening the door for Hungary and Poland to do the same. No idea what is the atmosphere in Slovakia, but the recent surprise in the Romanian politics makes any prediction impossible. Well, he was wrong :)

I don't think that is an option of any sort.

That's insane. Of course it's an "option". No one in these countries (outside of a very tiny portion of wackos) cares about the current borders, or dreams of starting a war to move them.

No, full occupation of Ukraine is not an option that NATO will ever accept. With the current state of Russian military and economy, it is a very easy line to draw.

Not sure how we got to this, and it seems I may have misread you.

All apologies.

The politics of Ukraine war is extremely complicated.

They aren't actually. And none of that history relates to the current war.

Which is all about Russia's internal politics and ideology. And not about the after-effects of post-WW2 territorial transfers at all.

Those transfers in turn were in turn the work of the Allied powers, not Ukraine.

> That's true but apart from Poland, all large EU countries have anaemic weapon production and diverted all their military spending into social programs decades ago, which they cannot reverse.

I would say that is a half-truth. You are right that Poland is an outlier in the EU with regards to its military expenditure and preparation. However, the idea that it is because military spending in other countries was "diverted into social programmes" is a politically charged red herring. Social expenditure and military expenditure are different by an order of magnitude and are not negatively correlated.

Poland's expenses on social programs are within the EU average, and Poland has not made any sacrifices in that regard to maintain its military expenditure. Conversely, the country with the highest social spending in the EU by a large margin (France) is also the 8th in terms of military spending. Meanwhile, some of the countries with the lowest military expenditure (e.g. Ireland or Luxembourg) are also some of the ones with the lowest social expenditure.

No the transfer of defense spending to social spending was an explicit policy in the 80s/90s, that was refered at the time as "the peace dividends".

And the fact that it is diverted into social spendings is also significant, because it is a kind of public spending that is politically impossible to cut back. Even Trump doesn't want to touch that third rail in the US.

France's military spending, though not as low as many other european countries, is still a fraction of what it was during the cold war [1] and so is its military capability. It has big shortfalls of amunitions (a couple of weeks worth in a Ukraine-style conflict), and even though it has in theory advanced techs, it has it in numbers that wouldn't help in an intense conflict like a war with Russia (the number of operational tanks, cannons and planes is just too low and it would be overwhelmed). It is a military that has been downsized to basically two missions: nuclear deterence, and small operations in the middle east and africa against terrorist groups and milicia. That military is completely inadequate to face a threat like Russia.

[1] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/France/mil_spend_gdp/

> No the transfer of defense spending to social spending was an explicit policy in the 80s/90s, that was refered at the time as "the peace dividends".

The idea of "Peace dividend" at no point implied a dichotomy between social spending and military spending. It was referring to the purported trade-off between military spending and the economy as a whole, in all of its aspects: the taxation or public debt needed to maintain a strong military, civilian workforce vs military manpower, civilian industry vs military industry, and yes, military vs civilian government expenditure — of which "social" spending is just one of many.

Note that the idea of the "Peace dividend" was popularised by George H.W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher, hardly proponents of increased social spending.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend

> If 20% of your economy is busy throwing ordnance at someone else sounds pretty unsustainable, then you are probably right.

The bigger harm Russia is putting onto itself is its inability to take part in the AI race. They've left the battle over to the US and China, while the EU at least isn't idling.

If they wouldn't have started the war and have at least pretended to be good friends, they could have used their vast amounts of energy resources to run huge datacenters (which they could then have used to start a war). Worst move ever made by a ruler.

The US and China are both profiting from this war.

We’re discussing a literal war, with all the death and destruction that entails, and your claim is “the bigger harm” is not wasting more money on a power hungry subpar parrot that is accelerating the dissemination of disinformation and making it harder to fight climate change with its energy consumption.

We’re all doomed. Anyone who believes AI will kill us is delusional, humans are greedy and stupid enough that we’ll do it ourselves.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

> a power hungry subpar parrot

You may yet live to be bitten in the gluteus maximus by said parrot.

If that happens it will not be because it became sentient and decided to cause me harm, but because some developer somewhere decided it was a good idea to tab-tab-tab their code completion without fully understanding the solution and the resulting security hole caused the system to be exploited.

no, it'll be because it's aligned with rich people's interests. robot police holding back the unwashed masses is in our near future.

Same difference. The point is that it won’t be the AI’s choice, it will be caused by human misuse of it, whether by incompetence or malice.

you'll still be bitten by the parrot.

Whatever. The point was clear in the first message; if you refuse to understand the idea even after multiple explanations, that’s your prerogative. Your nitpick is unproductive and boring and doesn’t advance the conversation either way, it’s just contrarian for the sake of contrarianism. I have no desire to fuel a conversation whose replies amounts to nothing more than “no, you”.

that makes sense, thank you for explaining. you win.

“It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.” - T-800, 1995

Bigger harm than "20% of your economy is busy throwing ordnance at someone else". That comment was focusing on the economy, not on the deaths.

Regarding AI, it could lead to solutions to the problems we've been creating through the industrialization.

Russia is no stranger to the relationship between the economy and death. Both wars and economic mismanagement have led to famine in Russia. As for AI, we have no proof that it will work out for the benefit of humanity. Even if we did have such proof, it would also depend upon people heeding its advice.

United states mainly provides quality weapons to the Ukraine which EU does not have. EU provides humanitarian aid. Which is also important but without American help Ukraine will lose the war against Russia

And a lot of European weapon systems have US components, so if Americans want they can certainly freeze and prohibit supply of military aid to the point where it won't be sustainable to resist Russian assaults.

I'm optimistic in the sense that I believe that if the EU offered to pay for the weapons, then the Trump government won't mind supplying them. The issue is that it would be difficult for the EU to reach an internal agreement.

> if the EU offered to pay for the weapons

It's a bit like if Mexico offered to pay for the wall at some point... Europe should not be a carpet, it has more than enough weapons manufacturers and any additional funding should be directed to them.

The war in Ukraine has so far been good for the US and bad for Europe so it's bonkers to suggest that Europe should make things even 'worse' for itself.

> it has more than enough weapons manufacturers and any additional funding should be directed to them.

Sure, but that won't buy us the ammunition that Ukraine needs right now. For a period of time you'd need to buy Patriot missiles, 155mm shells and a ton of other stuff from the US. Then you can slowly shift to sending shells made in the EU, IRIS-T or NASMS air defence, Marders and CV90 IFVs, and Gripen fighters over time.

I want to share your optimism regarding the EU (countries) continuing the support for Ukraine. Still, if the US drops its support and its moral and (material) persuasion to the EU, I'm not sure that the EU won't pull the plug as well, considering the wavering and indecision shown by several countries regarding the approval of aids.

> So even if you drop the US, only the EU should be sufficient.

So the US has a more robust arms industry, so they are certainly more helpful in that regard, but monetarily the EU as a whole seems to have given more:

* https://www.statista.com/chart/28489/ukrainian-military-huma...

* https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...

GDP is imaginary. It is not how much money you have or how much wealth you have. It's not how much weapons or how much fuel or steel you have. It is only a measurement of how fast imaginary money is traded between people within an economic zone. And Europe has a lot of such economic "activity" with very little real world results.

A lot of the western GDP is stuff like marketing, ads, accountants - none of these are useful when the bullets are flying - ask the CEOs.

The war will stop on the current lines, and Russia will use the 4 years of respite to re-arm and take the rest of Ukraine in 2028.

The war in Ukraine is rarely analysed in the media, which cover focusses public opinion on superficial and emotional readings (one might say this is organised propaganda).

Why are the different players acting the way they are and what are their interests? These are the interesing questions.

So far the war seems to have served US interests quite well with the US appearing to be the one clear winner. Perhaps a way to estimate next moves is to guess how things can eveolve from now and which scenarios serve the US' interests best. If they don't see further gains they might decide to freeze the situation but I doubt they would want anything to be seem as a Russian victory (though it'd be hard not to at this point).

Anders Puck Nielsen has some very good (and directly to the point) videos about this, including Russia's plan for victory (which isn't land area).

He is a military analyst working for the Royal Danish Defence College.

https://www.youtube.com/@anderspuck/videos