As readers may remember, I am a big fan of Denys Davydov, the Ukrainian podcaster. Almost every day since US aid to Ukraine was turned off by Congress, Denys has been slagging off President Trump. Some of the language! His claim is that Trump is behind this block and that he wills a Russian victory. A couple of months ago, I checked on a Trump speech and although he wasn’t clearcut in what he intended to do it was clear that the Trump-is-a-Putin-pawn narrative was just nonsense.
Today he posted this (helpfully re-posted by Ukraine detractors.)
Look at what he is actually bloody-well saying! “…a Country in desperate need.” “…Ukrainian Survival and Strength…” Does that sound like someone who is indifferent to Ukraine’s fate?
“Why can’t Europe equalize or match the money put in by the United States of America…”
Assuming that European aid is indeed less than America’s, well, why can’t Europe match America’s expenditure? If Europeans don’t think Ukraine is worth defending why should the US pick up the slack?
Assuming Trump gets elected this is what I think he’ll do. He will make some offer to Putin. Something along the lines of, keep Crimea, lose the Donbass. Putin will reject it and then Trump will kick the living covfefe out of the bastard.
Most of what’s attributed to Trump is a tissue of lies about the man. He was the darling of the New York NAACP set back in the day… You want me to believe that they got him wrong, and he’s always been this racist bastard?
The funny thing is, were you to go back and have Donald Trump run against John F. Kennedy? Ya know who’d be the “conservative”, in that contest? Yep; Kennedy.
Suuuuuuuure… Tell me allllll about how Trump is some rabid, right-wing reactionary Hitler wannabe. He’s not the one talking about packing the Supreme Court, is he?
The reason people are blaming Trump for the impasse in the House of Representatives is because it is his supporters there that are holding everything up. If instead of this message he had said “Ukraine needs our help, and I’m calling on my Republican colleagues to help pass needed assistance” a package would be on Biden’s desk by Monday morning.
This is the key question, and the answer is: the Europeans do think Ukraine is worth defending; they just believe (correctly, based on long past experience) that they can free ride on the expenditures of the United States.
This not only allows them to save a lot of money, but also allows them to adopt an air of moral superiority – their political chattering class can refer to the United States as warmongerers while still enjoying the security benefits of said “warmongering”.
mkent: If Trump called Europe’s bluff, and said (in effect) “if you want Russia knocking on your front door in 10 years, by all means go ahead”, Europe would suddenly find their pocketbooks.
Whereas Biden couldn’t possibly summon the testicular fortitude to take a hard stance for the benefit of the United States.
Actually Europe *is* sending more aid to Ukraine than USA is at this point. Maybe that point should feature in this discussion.
Don’t know whether this is true, but if it is, that’s thanks to Trump and like-minded Republicans in Congress, innit?
There is also the issue that US States do not choose independently whether to contribute or not, whereas European States do decide independently, and vary widely in their contributions.
Even the EU contribution is decided by inter-governmental negotiations, not by Brussels.
As recently as one year ago I shared the view that if only Trump was President he would speak softly (well, maybe not) and wield a big stick, Putin would agree to a deal that allowed him to save face.
Now, I think there are a few problems with this plan:
I’m really not sure the US could win this fight.
If Trump does win the election he won’t be sworn in until January next year.
Ferox,
Can we please stop with this nonsensical idea that the US garrisons western Europe out of the kindness of its heart? If you want Europeans to defend themselves, you could start by getting your tanks off their lawn.
In any event, given the fact that western European governments have delivered their citizens bound into the hands of the Muslim horde, Russians would probably be regarded as liberators.
That would be fine by me. Can we please stop with the nonsensical idea that if Europe falls to foreign military adventure the United States will somehow collapse?
Post-WW2, the United States was the big man on campus, and tragically became infected with this idea of noblesse oblige toward the world. The Marshall plan, the rebuilding of Japan, and the stationing of millions of troops (at US expense) in order to defend western Europe from the Soviet Union. This was a stupid idea.
And now that the European economies have recovered from said war, and especially now that their favorite sport is to dog on the US for being a warmongering nation, we absolutely should pull all of our troops and materiel out of Europe. We should withdraw from NATO and wish them all well. They are perfectly capable of defending themselves.
We simply can’t afford it anymore.
They are perfectly capable of defending themselves.
That’s in theory. In practice – the military capabilities of Europe are ZERO.
They haven’t got no air force, no navy, no Missiles. And the few pieces they have are broken down.
They should be perfectly capable of defending themselves but they aren’t.
What will Trump do about Ukraine? Probably nothing. He’ll pour more money down the drain or, maybe reduce the money flow. It does not matter. The US does not have the ability to determine how this war ends. Nothing it does will help. More money will only prolong the agony.
Talking about money from Europe doesn’t address the real problem. Europe has mostly de-industrialized and simply doesn’t have the factories to produce weapons in the volumes Ukraine needs even if they cared to open their treasuries for the cause.
We’re more than two years into a war where we’re constantly told Russia will roll over Europe if they’re not stopped in Ukraine. Well, two years in how is the UK war production going? What’s the monthly production of artillery pieces, tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery shells? And how does that compare to 1941 or 1916?
Oh, your factories aren’t producing much of anything? Yeah, spare us the Churchill lectures.
First President Trump has to escape the clutches of the corrupt American “Justice” system – then he has to defeat the election rigging.
In short first there has to be the Rule of Law and Honest Elections in the United States – before America can support these things in the Ukraine – or anywhere else.
As for the idea that the war is not about the Rule of Law, Liberty (allowing dissenting media, religious freedom – and-so-on) and Democracy – but is solely about the National Independence of Ukraine.
I support the independence of Ukraine – including from international bodies such as the European Court, which now mandates energy policy (and-so-on), the World Health Organisation (which seeks to control all aspects of life) and all other international bodies (obviously including the European Union).
Mr Putin is an obvious threat to the independence of Ukraine – but he most certainly is not the only threat.
Rour le Jour – America did protect Western Europe out of the kindness of its heart, and carry on making statements about how this is a “nonsensical idea” and Western Europe will indeed find “American tanks off its lawn” – then Western Europe will collapse.
However, it is NOT military spending that is destroying America – on the contrary military spending has been a FALLING share of both the American economy and the government budget for 60 years (sixty years).
What is destroying America is the Welfare State schemes mostly created in the 1960s (although one, old age pensions, goes back to the 1930s) – the spending on which has grown and grown and is now utterly unsustainable.
The real problem is that he will do nothing about the out of control American Welfare State (which fools, who can not read a balance sheet, pretend does not exist) – not because he believes in it (he, at the tender age of 18 – too young to vote under the laws of the time, and his father supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 – the Trump family were against creating this suicidal mess) – but because he believes it is politically impossible to do anything about it.
And the horrible thing is that President Trump may well be correct – it may well be politically impossible to do anything about it.
Indeed the lunatic establishment (even down in Harris County, Houston, Texas) want to add a “guaranteed income” or “citizens income” (although it would go to non citizens as well – the endless illegal immigrants from the Third World).
Such a scheme, which is being pushed by the international establishment all over the Western world, would turn decline into swift collapse.
Most of the progress in the human condition has taken place under the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana, and it is foolish to take for granted that progress will continue if the latter collapses.
The prudent assumption is that there will be some regress. That includes our pension funds.
Then there will be muddling through until the next vaguely-classical-liberal superpower comes along.
That has nothing to do with whether Germany et al should pay their fair share, btw.
@Jacob
The US does not have the ability to determine how this war ends.
Of course it does. The war is floated on US and European aid, without it Ukraine’s ability to fight would collapse in days. And on the flip side, Biden’s insane anti-oil policy has driven the price of oil through the ceiling, and so the Russian economy and Russian military are floated on the massive commodity prices produced by insane American energy policy.
The US Government can change these things with the stroke of a pen. This war will end when America wants it to end. And it will end with Russia controlling Crimea and a large chunk of eastern Ukraine. The only question is — how many more people have to die before they settle down to that particular detente?
The idea that the situation will be resolved with anti-bellum borders or with Putin overthrown is a fantasy. The idea that Russia will not defend its position in Crimea with nuclear weapons is a genocidal fantasy.
I wouldn’t recommend saying that aloud in most of eastern or central Europe as you’ll either find yourself facing robust criticism, or perhaps dragged off to a lunatic asylum.
Paul,
What made sense eighty years ago doesn’t necessarily make sense now. Europe has three times the population and ten times the GDP of Russia. At what point might it be expected to stand on its own two feet? In any case, nothing will prevent western Europe’s collapse at this point and Russia will have nothing to do with it.
Ofnir,
Black humour. The Muslim whip or the Russian boot. Hmmn, let me think a minute.
It has seemed pretty obvious to me since the war started that not only was the claim that Putin favored Trump obvious bullshit, it was 100% backwards-ass wrong: Putin was waiting for Trump to be out of office before he invaded Ukraine.
Almost twenty thousand Americans were killed in our streets and houses last year. No one knows how many, but some million, foreigners walked into the country unlawfully.
$80 billion would have gone a long way toward fixing those problems.
I don’t care what flag flies over Donbass, or Odessa, or Kiev. It is a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing. Let Ukraine and Russia kill their own snakes.
Laughable. If the US has wanted Ukraine to win & turned on the taps at the start, Ukraine would have won by the end of the first year & Russia would be in the process of internal political implosion. The problem was lack of political will to do what was needed when Russia’s window of vulnerability was widest.
It’s still not too late but it will be harder now.
In all this talk of who ‘should’ or ‘should not’ be aiding Ukraine, many people lose sight of the fact that you can’t load an artillery piece with $100 bills, or fire £1 coins from a FAL. It doesn’t matter how much money you have to throw at the issue if you don’t have the facilities to make arms in massive, wartime quantities.
In the last week, major, critical facilities for making and filling 155mm artillery shells in the US and the UK have suffered major fires and their production capabilities have been degraded. Before the fire, the US plant was producing a grand total of less than 1,000 shells a day – not even enough to keep up with domestic training requirements on a busy day. Top-priority plans are in place to restore production in a matter of months! Other major producers have announced bold and agressive plans to increase production – in as little as 2 years! Other US and overseas facilities, which produce the vast majority of small-arms ammunition for this part of the world, are already running beyond capacity and unable to keep up with current demand, never mind increase production further. You can talk all you like about supporting Ukraine, or not, but the fact is unalterable that the West no longer has the production capacity to supply the arms and ammunition required to sustain a ground war, no plans to meaningfully increase that capacity, and no political will to do so.
But Russia does.
Shooting wars are not won by political posturing, but by logistics. If your supply chain of materiel is empty, and cannot be filled, no amount of posturing in Congress, and no amount of cash, will put munitions downrange. The Western barrel is rapidly approaching empty. Sorry, but this war is lost already. I wish it were otherwise.
llater,
llamas
@llamas
Sorry, but this war is lost already. I wish it were otherwise.
Yes, but that’s no reason to stop throwing good money after bad. Especially when you are throwing it to people who kick it back to you in campaign donations.
“Laughable. If the US has wanted Ukraine to win & turned on the taps at the start, Ukraine would have won by the end of the first year & Russia would be in the process of internal political implosion. The problem was lack of political will to do what was needed when Russia’s window of vulnerability was widest.”
Er, how? F16s? I thought they took a long time to master. HIMARS? Well, they were sent. ATACAMS? A bigger, better HIMARS but really a game changer? More ammo? Tanks? Something I’ve missed?
Maybe, we’re talking about a time before the Surovikin Line was established?
I wondered why Winchester-brand 5.56 and 7.62 ammunition was suddenly so cheap and plentiful.
And a more clued-in shooter than I told me “Easy. The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant is run on contract to the Army by Winchester-Olin. It is the principal plant for rifle and MG ammunition for all US forces. But it is operated on a contract where the military ammunition production is subsidized by production for the civilian market. If the US wants more small-arms ammunition to give to Ukraine, or Israel, or whoever – they can only get it if the plant also makes more ammunition for civilian use.”
This flabbergasted me, but I looked it up and it’s quite true. Virtually-all small-arms ammunition for the US government comes out of a single plant, which is incapable of making any more, and which is contractually-committed to sell the majority of its production to the public, in order to make what the Gummint wants at the contract price.
Some major in the Pentagon probably got his bump to LTC by negotiating this particular piece of peacetime-efficiency-business-school magic. But it’s not the way to think about warfare – is it?
llater,
llamas
”I’m really not sure the US could win this fight.”
Oh, brother. If the U. S. entered the fight, it would roll up the entire Russian army in a month. If Russia drafted a million men, pulled every Soviet-era weapon out of storage, and sent the whole kit and kaboodle into Ukraine, it might take three or four months for the Americans to blow it all up, but blow it all up they would. The Russian and American militaries aren’t even in the same league.
”…the Europeans do think Ukraine is worth defending; they just believe…that they can free ride on the expenditures of the United States.”
The Europeans are not free riding on the United States. They are spending billions of Euros a month providing services to Ukrainian refugees. They are spending billions more to keep the Ukrainian government afloat. They are providing Ukraine millions of artillery shells and dozens of F-16s. They are providing tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, cruise missiles, and ATGMs. They are training Ukrainian soldiers and pilots. They are providing air and missile defense systems. In fact, they’ve been providing far more aid than the Americans for almost a year now, maybe longer.
Roue le Jour – “GDP” measures spending, not the production of commodities, food or manufactured goods. However, you are CORRECT – in spite of the efforts of its terrible government Germany still has a lot of industry, and so do some other European countries.
However there is very little chance of Western Europe turning rolling back the Welfare State to build up the military – indeed the European Union, after lying about controlling immigration, is demanding that E.U. countries provide benefits and services to endless immigrants from the Third World – the United Kingdom follows this policy already, and even Japan is being pushed in this direction.
As for Ukraine – “the taps were turned on”, by Britain and the United States at the start – which is why the war did not end in February-March 2022. And after 100 Billion Dollars of spending (financed by money created, from nothing, by the Federal Reserve) there has been just been a vote for still more spending – the American government proudly saying that “90%” of this money will not even go to Ukraine – it will go to certain American Corporations (campaign donations all round – for the people who voted the right way).
Will the new 60 Billion Dollars of spending (on top of the 100 Billion Dollars from America – and the many Billions for European and other countries – see what mkent) win the war?
I have no idea – but I suspect that winning the war is the last thing the lobbyists in Washington D.C. want to do – “90% of the money stays in America” remember.
This utterly corrupt system (and the American Welfare State costs vastly MORE than the Warfare State – and the really poor do NOT get this money) will collapse – the only question is when?
There will indeed be a “political implosion” – but, sadly, I do not think this means the end of the dictatorship in Russia or China, no the “political implosion” will be in the West – it it can be called the West any more (forget the relatively free market West of the 19th century – even compared to 1989 modern Britain and America have been “fundamentally transformed”).
As Kipling put it, the “Gods of the Copybook Headings” always get the last word – and the insane, and institutionally corrupt, economic (endless spending and endless IMPORTS – financed by “money” created from nothing) and cultural (transvestite “Admirals” gloating about how they plan to sexually mutilate children) policies will lead, is leading, to collapse. There is a small (small) chance of reform if President Trump return to office – but I would not bet on reform even if he does escape the clutches of the corrupt courts and defeats the election rigging.
“We could roll up the Russian army in a month” – if the plan is world wide thermonuclear war, and perhaps that is the plan – NOT of mkent, but of a few lunatics who want the population of the world to be “half a billion” rather than seven billion people (the Bill Gates types – or people more extreme even than him) – but hopefully there are few of such people and they will NOT be making the decisions.
As recently as the 1980s Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, and William Casey was Director of the CIA.
The West was not, even then, a free market capitalist society (far from it – nothing like a free market capitalist society) – but it was still a society (or societies) worth caring about, it was still possible to talk about “the West” in the present tense, not the past tense.
It was not yet a “Western world” dominated by Black Rock, State Street and Vanguard (and the Credit Bubble banks) pushing “Critical Theory” doctrine (transvestite “Admirals”, in charge of health policy, and all) and indifferent to the production of goods and services that ordinary customers want (indifferent because they believe that credit money, created from nothing, is real wealth).
“There is still a chance of reform – of rolling back the advance of evil in Britain, America and-so-on” – yes, I have to admit that, but it is a small chance.
Still – a small chance is better than no chance at all.
mkent wrote :
“If the U. S. entered the fight, it would roll up the entire Russian army in a month.”
I’m sorry, but this statement is simply delusional.
The US does not possess the materiel, the manpower or the sea- or air-lift capability for any sort of land war in Europe without at least a year of planning, preparation, manufacture and movement. Since the US Navy is too-busy colliding its warships with each other, and the Air Force is fully-engaged with towing obsolete aircraft out from the scrapyard to restore its fleets, and no arm of the military can meet anything approaching its recruitment goals, sabre-rattling statements like this amount to little more than black humour. The US military was fought to a standstill by a rag-tag collection of peasants in Afghanistan, armed with Bulgarian rifles and date-expired Yogoslav RPGs, and forced to withdraw in ignominy and abandon their hard-won allies because the poltroons who lead the US had mid-terms to worry about – and you think they could trounce the Russian bear in a month? It would take longer than that just to plan the trans awareness training for the troops.
As to European military support, meaning actual bang-going stuff – you’ve bought into the stories they’re selling you. The European powers haven’t sent “millions of artillery rounds” to Ukraine – they’ve announced plans and forecasts and projections to do that, if the budgets are approved, and the South Koreans can manufacture on schedule, and ship in time to the Czechs, so that the plausibly-deniable cutoff is maintained, and if the dollar does this, and the oil price does that, and the economy does the other thing. And what nobody’s mentioning is that you can ship the Ukrainians a zillion artillery shells if you like, but artillery tubes wear out, and if you’re not shipping them new tubes, you might as well send cotton balls for all the good you’ll do them. And nobody’s shipping them new tubes any time soon – the Western barrel is all-but empty, and it will be years before new artillery pieces are available in meaningful numbers. Most of the guff about European and US support for Ukraine is empty political posturing, designed for domestic consumption, which does virtually-nothing for the PBI on the ground. As we see in the latest round of US promises – it’s 90%-domestic spending, that has nothing to do with Ukraine but everything to do with November in the US.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m with staghounds, I don’t see any US strategic interest in war in Ukraine and if the desire is to put the Russian bear back in his cage, there are 163 better ways to do that which don’t involve thousands of young men being killed and trillions of dollars of waste and destruction. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t care that tens millions of tax-paying people on both sides of the pond are being sold a bill of goods.
llater,
llamas
Send more. They had an amazing effect with just 20.
Yes, absolutely. USA has 1,200 ‘expired’ ATACAMS in stock. A game changer if sent at scale, forces rotary wing basing so far back that they are barely worth the effort to fly. It was helicopters/ATGMs that made Ukrainian vehicle losses prohibitive during their failed offensive. Also a great way to kill S-400 batteries, as demonstrated a couple days ago.
Yes, makes a huge difference.
Yes. To quote a US general whose name I forget “why are we sending 30 when we should be sending 300 at a time?”
Indeed. Quantity matters. The gear exists, it was just sent to Ukraine in a trickle. Send it faster.
That would indeed have been the best time by far (most likely the war would have been pretty much decided by now). But better late than never. Before, we could have seen another Kupyansk blitz, now it would have to be a series of bite-and-hold offensives whilst using deep logistic strikes with more HIMARS/ATACMS, and pushing Russian airpower over the supportable loss ratio (which they are already close to doing).
@ PdH, who wrote:
‘Yes. To quote a US general whose name I forget “why are we sending 30 when we should be sending 300 at a time?”’
Ah, something I know aomething about.
The general you quote was either a) hyperbolizing for effect or b) a flaming idiot. I hope it was a).
The US has a grand total of about 2500 M1 Abrams tanks in service, of which 8-10% are not combat-ready at any one time, due to repairs, upgrades, etc, etc.
It’s hard for me to believe that a US Army general seriously advocated for sending 15% of the entire active-duty tank strength of the US to a foreign nation, from whence they would surely never return.
Actually, I jest – seeing what gets promoted to general these days, it’s not hard for me to believe At All.
Ah, but I hear you cry, what about the 3,000-odd M1’s in mothballs? Brush ’em off and ship ’em out! Obviously, you’ve never seen a mothballed M1. The only facility in the US that’s equipped to return a mothballed M1 to service (the Lima tank plant in Ohio) can refurbish 4 or 5 a week, if you’re lucky and the engines and the guns and all the other 1,001 things required to put the tank back in service show up on time – and fit.
That’s what I mean when I say the US no longer has the ability to support a ground war.
llater,
llamas
Just for S&G, I checked the situation with M1 tanks in the Ukraine, and spoke with a buddy who knows more about this than I do.
President Biden promised 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine the third week of January 2023. These were not to be taken from the active-duty inventory, but were to be M1A2 models taken from mothballs and refurbished at Lima. All these hulls were ex-USMC, the newest in the mothball inventory, and had been in active service as recently as 2021.
The first units, a batch of 10, arrived in Ukraine 9 months later, and the last of the promised delivery of 31 arrived almost 11 months after they were first promised. This should give some idea of the capacity of the Lima facility. But I suppose we should be impressed with their speed – at the time that President Biden made the commitment, the Deputy Assistant Under-Secretary for Giving Shit Away estimated that it might take up to 2 years to complete delivery.
Since delivery was completed, it has been reported that a number between 4 and 7 of these tanks have been destroyed in combat.
So calls for “300 tanks! At a time!” are simply delusional. The US simply doesn’t have the ability to deliver anything like this, and it won’t have for years – if ever.
llater,
llamas
The UK sent twelve (12) Challenger tanks. Canada sent eight (8) Leopards. More than two years in how is the production and delivery of Challengers going? Getting ready to meet that Russian offensive into Western Europe yet?
More than a year ago Canada made a big announcement of air defence donations to Ukraine. Of course this wasn’t actually delivery of an air defence system, it was a funding announcement. More than a year later it’s working its way through the military procurement process and we should have a contract signed soon so that the supplier can put the request into the production queue and if all goes well the system will be delivered sometime in 2025-2026. Maybe.
The cheerleaders don’t understand the west hasn’t been prepared to fight a high intensity land war across a large front since the 1980s. We’ve de-industrialized to the point we simply don’t have the capacity of mass production of simple heavy weapons. The industries are all about very long procurement cycles of fancy, high tech stuff that should work well on short engagements against less developed adversaries, like we’ve been doing since 1990.
Jon Mors at 10:05am, “If Trump does win the election he won’t be sworn in until January next year.” I think you could leave off “until January next year” and the sentence would be more prescient!