US Politics |OT|

[Bofferbrauer2]

Ryuu96 said:

Also, the USA announced a $250m package today with negotiations to resume on the larger Ukraine aid in the 2nd week of January, it is not the "USA" which would be abandoning Ukraine but the asshole Republicans who are tying Ukraine's aid to the border, as the border is literally the only talking point Republicans have nowadays and they're desperate for a win at the cost of Ukrainian lives.

So we'll either have a scenario where Democrats backdown and give Republicans their border win, Republicans backdown or we continue this nonsense for weeks or months more to come. Ukraine has lend-lease as a backup option but that comes with heavy debt. Just shows that Europe needs to step up massively as we can't keep relying on America as long as Republicans have some sort of considerable power and influence.

Republicans are not a reliable ally to Europe.

The US Election will likely be vital for Ukraine, if Trump wins then you can guarantee support will stop and I don't believe Ukraine can win without American support unless Europe MASSIVELY steps up. Lately Germany is doing exactly that and really stepping up to the plate in light of America's shaky situation but other countries in Europe must do the same and as nice as Germany's recent efforts have been, it won't be enough.

This election will fill me with dread Tbh.

Europe's military industry is all private, unlike in the US where the government can command the defense companies to build stuff (which accelerates production but also makes the equipment much more expensive as the companies can basically ask whatever they want for this service). Since the European countries had largely demobilized, their defnse companies also did as they didn't get enough orders to maintain large production lines. That's why it takes so long to produce stuff right now, the production lines had been athrophied.

This is changing quickly however, with most Europeqn countries strongly increasing their defense budgets and, more importantly for this context, their acquisitions in military equipment. This led to the military industry to reactivate production lines that laid bare for decades now, so production is gradually ramping up. While this won't be enough to fully compensate the loss of US support due to the latter having more specialized equipment that Europe lacks (drones and mine-clearing robots in particular), there could still be the roundabout way of giving Ukraine the necessary financial support to simply buy the American equipment that the US won't send otherwise anymore. I doubt that the Republicans would block those exports as it would hurt their defense industry and their credibility too much if they did.