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| ▲ | overfeed 9 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > like Afghanistan was for Biden wut? It was Trump[1] who invited the Taliban to Camp David, negotiated with them sans-Afghan governenment, and started the process of withdrawal with troop reductions, a deadline and everything. 1. https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal... | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 8 days ago | parent [-] | | Absolutely, and it was Bush who started it. But Biden oversaw the retreat and it was our biggest failure since Vietnam, and so it will always be his loss. This is also why LBJ is 'LBJ's war' even though he, too, did not start it. Trump's well aware of this reality which is why every interview he does he tries to stress that Ukraine was Biden's war, but he knows that in the end he inherited this disaster and so, in the end, he'll be the one associated with it, so he wants to 'cleanly' wash his hands of it as quickly as possible. And since Zelensky seems increasingly delusional, it's likely that giving it to Europe is his only real out. |
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| ▲ | WJW 9 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If I were to summarize: - Europe chooses to fight a war it wants to fight; - with the weapons it has decided are the best choice available at the moment (even though many of those are not yet produced domestically and so need to be imported); - while hugely increasing its own weapons manufacturing; - paid for by its own money. (aka the factories built and new weapon systems introduced will not be controlled by the US) You seem to argue (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this is somehow a huge win for the USA and proves the European states have barely any sovereignty as in your previous post. But the more logical result of all this would be that the European countries come out of this war with a significantly larger defense-industrial base. In addition this bigger DIB will be used to shift away the composition of EU armed forces away from American systems and towards domestically produced systems. Like you mention the USA will not pay for anything anymore, but as the saying goes "the one who pays is the one who gets to decide". Pulling support also means you no longer get a say in decision making. Finally, the USA not helping in Ukraine makes it much easier for politicians to say "no thank you" when the US wants help in a future Taiwan conflict. None of these things improve US influence over Europe. Tariffs are completely separate and are mainly a US thing being paid for by US importers to the US government. Natural gas imports are Trump overstating his dealmaking skills: countries do not buy gas but companies do, and the global energy companies are not bound to this trade deal. Finally this: > Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want. Yes he did. He proposed a peace deal to Putin in which Ukraine would basically surrender, then tried to pressure Zelensky and the EU leaders into going along with this. This very much included Ukraine giving up the fight and EU halting support. Obviously, this didn't happen and now Trump tries to pretend he meant this occur all along. | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 9 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Your entire argument hinges on the claim that Europe is choosing to do these things which I think can be plainly falsified by looking at what they're agreeing to. Here are the notes [1] on the recent trade "agreement" with the US. ------ US gets: - EU investment of $600 billion in the US, invested at Trump's sole discretion - guaranteed sales of $750 billion in US energy resources at a nice fat premium - guarantee sales of an unstated other than "significant" amount of US military equipment - elimination of all EU tariffs in many sectors, including on all US industrial goods EU gets: - Pay new and increased tariffs to the US, ranging from 15-50%. ------ Claiming anybody is choosing this is simply unbelievable. [1] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-th... | | |
| ▲ | WJW 9 days ago | parent [-] | | Picking a White House publication is going to give you the rosiest picture imaginable. Let's pick some claims apart a little bit to see how it might not be as rosy as you seem to imagine: - The mentioned EU investment is not at the discretion of Trump. Not even the White House statement says that. In addition, for one party to invest the other has to be selling. It's not a gift. The EU buying factories etc in the US (and shipping the profits back home) is hardly being dominated. Neither is it guaranteed: there are hundreds of ways to delay or cancel such investments. In most US places, just encouraging the local NIMBYs will be enough. - Energy imports from the USA over the last 2 years already stood at ~30 billion per month. The 750 billion is over the remaining term of Trump, so very roughly 3.5 more years. That means the EU committed to spend ~215 billion per year, which is actually less than it has been spending on average anyway over the past two years. No premium was agreed in regards to energy prices. Don't know where you get that from, the linked publication does not mention anything like that. - As stated before there are plenty of things we'd actually want to buy from the US, such as weapons for which we're still building our own factories. The Patriot missile factory under construction in Germany is one such example. While it is not yet done, we want to buy missiles to send to Ukraine. So this is a "concession" to do what we were already going to do. Also note that almost any amount can be construed as "significant" if you're a politician. - The EU commits to "work to address a range of U.S. concerns" regarding tariffs. Quoting from that White House publication, we'll even provide "meaningful quotas". What does that mean? Which timescale? How high will the quotas be? Does "supporting high-quality American jobs" mean 5 jobs or millions of jobs? This is just a thing negotiators stuck in there so both parties could claim victory. Finally tariffs are a big nothing burger when it comes to this discussion. It clearly has nothing to do with the EU being a US vassal because every country in the world is being tariffed, up to and including those poor penguins in the pacific. Unless you claim that China and Russia are also not sovereign countries? They have tariffs too. The phrasing of "Pay new and increased tariffs to the US" is also incomplete. The importer of the goods pays the tariffs, and most big companies have already indicated they will raise prices in the US to compensate. In effect US consumers will simply be paying an extra tax to their own government for the privilege of buying goods produced abroad. In short, the EU negotiators got some of the lowest tariffs in the world in exchange for things they were already doing, were going to do anyway, or will not have to do. The negotiators did a rather splendid job I'd say. |
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| ▲ | chrisco255 9 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm with you all the way up to the last paragraph. There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia. You do realize that EU support and weaponry is completely insufficient to fight Russia, right? Their military is far stronger than anything you've got. The only reason Ukraine has been doing as well as it has is because of American training, intel, weaponry, drones, etc. If America walked away, Ukraine would collapse quite quickly, regardless of empty pledges by the EU. | | |
| ▲ | WJW 9 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Interesting statement, and I think this shows how different the viewpoints are on both sides of the pond. First off obviously, the EU absolutely doesn't see its pledges as "empty". If anything, the amount of weapons being used in Ukraine are by now 80+% produced either in Ukraine itself or somewhere in Europe. Artillery shell production has increased fourfold over 2022 and will double again this year. US weapons deliveries are nice and everything is welcome, but it's mostly (Patriot) air defenses that Europe cannot yet produce at sufficient scale. There are huge training missions for Ukrainian soldiers in eg France and the UK where the US has basically zero input. American drones are crap compared to what the Ukrainians build themselves, to the point that the US is importing drone knowledge from there these days. All new fighter jets for Ukraine have been donated from EU countries, not a single one by the US. The Ukraine collapsing without the US is simply not true, and that is why so many of Trumps diplomatic advances have failed so far: he doesn't hold the leverage he thinks he does. The relative strength of the combined armies in Europe is also something that we apparently think very different about. There are certainly strategic deficiencies: we'd prefer to have a more robust domestic nuclear umbrella for example, and the US has an advantage in things like intel satellites. In terms of regular weaponry though, we have more than enough "stuff" to win, especially with Russia severely depleted by several years of attritional warfare in Ukraine. The numbers gap is already big enough, but most of the Russian stuff is decades old by now while the European countries are mostly rocking up with extremely modern equipment. | |
| ▲ | withinboredom 9 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia. I think you've been watching US propaganda? This "deal" explicitely happened, there was a lot of "wtf" moments at that. It was a thing that sparked protests. |
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