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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

It was the same in Russia, until West pulled the plug. Well, not exactly the same, there are good clouds in the Russia, but dependency on western services was huge. Now they migrate to Chinese suppliers even for things which could be produced domestically. People never learn.

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> It was the same in Russia, until West pulled the plug

The thing is that the EU is not a political monolith, just look at Poland which has just elected a pro-US and anti-EU president. The anti-US policy comes mostly from France, part of Germany (I'm pretty sure a big chunk of the CDU still sides with the Americans out of the public eye) and from the Nordics, maybe the Dutch, too, but I don't follow them all that closely. Also, Italy has got Meloni who's a lot more buddy-buddy with Trump than with any bureaucrat in Brussels.

People here in Eastern- and Central-Europe are fully aware that if push were to come to the proverbial stove and a hot-war against Russia were to start then none of the Western-Euros would do anything consequential to make it go our (Eastern Europeans' way), just look at Poland in '39, for the simple reason that said Western-Europeans don't have the means of doing that anymore and will probably never be able to do it ever again. So the Americans are the only reliable counter-weight against Russia.

If you look at the amount of support given to Ukraine relative to the economy size, then West Europe dwarfs America's.

I think it is a very good thing for us to be supporting Ukraine and East Europe, but respect and gratitude for it seems to be in very short supply. Especially since East Europe's rapid economic growth has only been possible with untold billions poured into it unselfishly by.. West Europe.

And how much brain drain had EE?

I can't blame them, I'm myself too wanting to live in Germany, but keep in mind that this is the price we paid.

> If you look at the amount of support given to Ukraine relative to the economy size, then West Europe dwarfs America's.

And yet Ukraine is still doomed, if only due to demography and people that fled west.

The interest of western powers was never really to save Ukraine, but to use it as a tool with which to grind the Russian army to a pulp till it no longer is a threat and can be brought to be complacent to western demands (providing cheap gas and rare earths again), similar to how the western powers used the Soviets to grind down the Wehrmacht even if they didn't actually like or cared for the Soviets at all.

Ukrainian youth and oligarchs with money moving west to raise birth rates and property prices is just the icing on the cake for the western economies.

A depopulated Ukraine is also good for them. More places to mine for rare earth without NIMBYs getting in the way.

>just look at Poland which has just elected a pro-US and anti-EU president

Same with Romania, and why wouldn't they be? The US ensures our defense from Russia, not France, not Germany, not the EU. Their nuclear shield, troops, land and air bases in our country ensured our defense even before we joined the EU so of course we'd grateful for that. The US companies opening well paid tech jobs here is another icing on the cake making us wealthier and also giving the US some assets they might want to defend.

We're too small and poor to have armies that can compete with Russia and we saw how weak and toothless the western European powers are when push comes to shove, ever since they threw us under the Soviet bus in WW2. Polish people know what I'm talking about.

What help would western EU countries be to us in an actual war when in the not too distant past, under Ursula v.d. Leyen, German military couldn't even provide underwear and dog tags to their own conscripts? And besides the sorry state of their military, Germans aren't patriotic enough to stand up for their own people, how can we expect them to care about some Slavs and Eastern Europeans, when they could gladly just cut a deal with Russia for cheap gas to throw us under the bus again?

So of course we're gonna support the US.

>People here in Eastern- and Central-Europe are fully aware that if push were to come to the proverbial stove and a hot-war against Russia were to start then none of the Western-Euros would do anything consequential to make it go our (Eastern Europeans' way), just look at Poland in '39, for the simple reason that said Western-Europeans don't have the means of doing that anymore and will probably never be able to do it ever again. So the Americans are the only reliable counter-weight against Russia.

What? Do you seriously believe that europe would not intervene in a hot war against Europe?

For the part of USA being counter weight to Russia, they're single handedly alienating themselves from Europe

They aren't intervening in the current hot war against Europe

> What? Do you seriously believe that europe would not intervene in a hot war against Europe?

With thoughts and prayers, yes, because they have pretty much nothing else remaining. See September 3rd 1939, when on paper Britain was still a super-power. It wasn't, it hadn't been for some time, probably since Passchendaele or since Jutland demonstrated that being a Naval Superpower does absolutely nothing when it comes to a big European land-war. Also, and a lot more recently, see the joke that was their (Britain's and France's) intervention in Libya, the Americans had to come to rescue them up. Pathetic.

The UK has tripwire forces in Estonia, this ship has already sailed my friend.

And what would UK do if Russia would trip over it?

I would have agreed with you up until Trump reelection. Western Europe will abandon us.

But, frankly, America won't come to help either :|

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