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Comment by sergiosgc | Hacker News Reader

The article is baseless and at odds with what I see as publicly stated political opinion and, more importantly, public (EU population) opinion. The article is baseless because it echoes unnamed sources. "Top EU officials", but not one name underwrites the citations about bickering, with the notable exception about gas price negotiation discourse, which is natural and expected.

Now, let's assume the article is true: Europe is suffering because of the Russia-Ukraine war, and top officials resent US profiteering. The solution is obvious: arm Ukraine. The stronger Ukraine is, the quicker this war ends. The whole narrative around USA creating this war, and USA prolonging this war makes no sense. Russia created this war, and the EU can end the war this winter: just provide as many weapons as USA does.

Note: I'm European and living in Europe.

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I'm European as well and the article is not far off. On the Internet the U.S. opinion is always amplified. Perhaps 50% of the population accepts it, but not more.

The opinion has been there for a long time (e.g., https://www.ft.com/content/cd7270a6-f72b-4b40-8195-1a796f748...).

It seems to me that Europe is doing quite well in providing arms:

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

I wish that the U.S. and the U.K. would now take the millions of refugees from Poland and Germany in order to demonstrate their unwavering solidarity. Refugees cost money, as opposed to the MIC getting rich.

Well, so far it's rather obvious that the war in Ukraine has been rather bad for Europe and rather good for the US.

In many ways, it's been bad for Europe because of Europe's own decisions and policies over the past years and decades, and it's been good for the US for the same reasons. Additionally it's always 'better' to be far away than next door to an active war. Of course the US have used the situation to further their interests, as any country would.

I don't see anything baseless or at odds with public opinion. I think any European can see that this is the case. The article does not claim or imply that the US created the war, by the way.

The key is that Europe should stop whining or see the US as a 'friend' here to subsidise them, and start looking after itself by itself.

> I don't see anything baseless or at odds with public opinion.

"Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West."

This is baseless and at odds with public opinion. It is also the lede of the article.

You said first that “The article is baseless because it echoes unnamed sources” and the parent responded to that.

Now that you’ve learned that top German and French politicians have complained about this very thing you’re moving goalposts.

I'm not moving anything. Re-read my comments, they are clear.

It's almost like war in Europe is always bad for Europe and good for the US. The US owes its status as a superpower primarily to most of Europe wearing itself out in the two world wars. This time the damage of the war is mostly economic because it's largely a war by proxy, but by geography alone Europe is naturally more impacted than the US.

I think it's baseless to say to the US "you did this, so pay up" but it seems that the main accusation is "you're our ally, so stop trying to profit from this to our detriment". The US has always been more of an abusive spouse than an "ally" by virtue of being powerful enough to bully everyone else around with implied threats alone. You can argue this is just politics but then we Europeans should stop allowing ourselves to be deluded about any pretense of being in the same boat just because we're on the same side in a given conflict or on a given issue. You say Europe should start "looking after itself by itself" and stop seeing the US as a "friend" but this is exactly how the US has been portrayed in Europe for over a century and this hardly went against the US's interests.

FWIW this is another manifestation of the same problem I see within the EU. The EU is largely a trade organization and its politics are primarily shaped by the business interests of its member nations. But because that sounds boring and evil, we've come up with glorifying narratives about a shared European identity and common history and culture and whatnot and always bring up "European values" whenever we feel like it. But while e.g. Germany and France may have a shared history and culture, this doesn't manifest throughout all regions of both countries the same way (e.g. the Rhineland or Alsace naturally link both countries due to their histories but the same isn't true for Brittany or Schleswig-Holstein), and it certainly doesn't transfer to relationships between e.g. Portugal and Bulgaria.

I think Brexit should have been the wake-up call that ultimately we're all isolated countries and any appeal to "friendship" or "allyship" is primarily performative, not material. The EU is fine to the extent that it serves "our" (i.e. whatever country we live in) economic interests but it's not a "shared heritage" or even a precursor to a federal body like the US federal government (which evolved very differently and carries its own undesirable flaws). Given the nature of the EU it would make sense to formalize a similar body to the NATO as an EU member alliance (alongside the many other mostly overlapping organizations the EU consists of) and re-evaluate our place in NATO from then on, but again that would require moving away from the kind of talk where this is portrayed as a "United State of Europe" military and rather a "European Treaty Organization".

>The US owes its status as a superpower primarily to most of Europe wearing itself out in the two world wars.

Sure, but US did not start WW1 or WW2, but European powers did. In fact, US were mostly neutral for a long time in both wars, only entering last minute. Don't forget that European powers also tried to capitalize on the US civil war way back when. It's just business, nothing personal.

The EU cold have also been better prepared for this by investing more into local defense and energy sector starving Russia of any leverage.

But EU chose instead to rely on idealistic hippie dreams by halting nuclear development, lowering defense spending and suckling on the sweet Russian gas teat, letting its former leaders become highly paid lobbyists for Russian oil and gas companies when their terms were over. The situation the EU finds itself in is entirely of its own making, like that meme with the cyclist who shoves a stick in the front wheel of his bicycle while he rides it and then blames someone else for his fall. The US is not at fault here, in fact, they even warned the EU several times of over reliance on Russia for energy and Germany scoffed it off. And I say this as an European.

EU needs to snap back to reality and get its act together tackling pressing issues (Russia, China, energy, debt, housing, tech, environment, illegal migration) based on what's happening in the real world around them, not based on some hippie ideologies of the far left who live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

We would have done Ukraine a huge favor if we hadn’t involved ourselves in their internal politics at all. No funding of NGOs, no attempts to integrate them in EU or NATO. It is too late now, but the way that this had become a literal cottage industry of Ukraine think tanks even before this year, all the way back to the “Orange revolution”, did never correspond to the enthusiasm the average European have for Ukraine.

Ukraine wanted to join the EU for quite a long time. There's a quote from Putin from years ago saying it's their choice if they do, guess he changed his mind.

People in eastern Europe have been generally keen to join the EU. It's not meddling if a country wants to join your club, I mean are you suggesting the EU just ignores the request?

The US was the one that doing the meddling primarily, they used the EU as one of the carrots. Victoria Newland famously was recorded saying “fuck the EU”. Germany for example deliberately moved to cut out Ukraine as a transfer country for their gas supply by going for Nordstream 1&2. One reason was that Ukraine tried to use that dependence as leverage on multiple occasions. It is a long and complicated story starting sometime after the collapse of the Soviet Union but in many ways even connected to WW1. I feel sympathy for the Russian and Ukrainian people, that they had consistently some of the worst politicians and rulers imaginable.

Isn’t it amazing how you get down voted for pointing out simple facts? I even had an article submission flagged the other day because the Russiagate crowd can’t handle information that threatens their fragile worldview.

Not saying that it should be done, let me state it before. But the obvious solution to the current crisis would be actually to stop arming Ukraine... It might just cause a larger more serious crisis later though

Also european living in Europe

It's like saying the solution to climate change is to turn on the air conditioning. Why even say something so stupid.

Why is it stupid? Please I am too stupid to understand why what I said is stupid

Russia doesn't give gas to Europe as retaliation for arming Ukraine, stop arming Ukraine and they will give gas to Europe.

I also said that this is not what I would do, because I think you should stand up to bullies.

Now, please enlighten me with all your wisdom, why what I said is stupid? And what does it have to do with climate change? That comparison IS stupid

It's stupid because the justifications Russia has named for its "special military operation" could easily apply to many other neighboring countries, including NATO members.

The best course of action would probably have been trying to bring Russia into NATO in the 1990s or very early 2000s, but that ship has long sailed. In order to stop Russian expansionism we either need Russia to wear itself out to the point of declaring the war in Ukraine over in order to cut their losses, or to directly attack Russia and force it to surrender. Given the existence of nuclear weapons, I'm sure you agree the latter option is off the table.

I'm not a fan of NATO and I don't like the US military. My country has historically been an economic ally to Russia and is not at direct risk of invasion if Russia were to take Ukraine and insist on expanding beyond that. But in this conflict, we need to have Ukraine's back. You can say this is a proxy war between Russia and NATO or the EU, but then it has always been one and a Russian victory would mean a defeat for all of NATO and the EU.

Please, read again what i said, and my other comments you inferred wrong conclusions about my position

You're also volunteering to live in Ukraine for the next decade of reconstruction?

Nope, I volunteer for nothing, and maybe I didn't state it clearly enough: I think that arming Ukraine is the right thing to do.

What I cannot stand is that from given premises, one goes to the completely opposite implication. I was just pointing that out.

Let me state it again, I am in favor of trying to support Ukraine in current conflict in any possible way (I hope I said it clearly enough now)

That is an option that regularly pops up but, as you say, it will cause a more serious crisis later on. Russia is very clearly an expansionist state. If allowed to expand to Ukraine, it will expand further. The Baltic states would be next on the slate, and on a two-decade horizon consolidation over the Black Sea (Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria). Much much better to avoid that timeline altogether and stop Russia now.

Unchecked aggression tends to lead to more aggression if you just glance at history. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Spanish invading the Americas, US pushing out the Natives, Roman Empire into Europe, Genghis Khan. It stands to reason that if there was an equal or greater opposing force for the acts of aggression and expansion all throughout history, the rate of expansion would be severely limited. I don’t know much about the Crusades but that seems like a candidate for a stronger force stopping a weaker force from invading parts of the Middle East.

> The article is baseless and at odds with what I see as publicly stated political opinion and, more importantly, public (EU population) opinion.

Interesting bubble you must live in. Most Europeans I know are livid with the US proxy war and there have been massive demonstrations in the streets in several countries.

So, a US-Russian proxy war over control of Caspian Sea trade routes decimates Ukraine, and Europe is in collective agreement on who it would rather (not) have to do business with.

In light of more than €52B in aid being supplied to Ukraine by the US this FY, do you still stand by your assessment that increasing armament supply will lead to a swifter and less costly resolution?

Indeed. I can't comment on gas prices (it would be immoral to raise prices artificially to exploit those in need, if that were the case), but where weapons are concerned, all things remaining the same, it is cheaper for everyone to give Ukraine weapons for free than having NATO enter the war, which would, by all reasonable accounts, be catastrophic. The notion that US corporations are profiting from selling weapons is so preposterously boneheaded. OBVIOUSLY, if there's a war, governments will buy weapons from defense companies, and therefore OBVIOUSLY, these corporations will make profits. The US didn't start this war, much less to profit from it, even if it shares in the responsibility of giving Russia all sorts of incentives to do so.

What I think is that this "moralizing" reflects a general fear of Western Europe's plummeting position in Europe and the loss of American favor. Their true colors and interests (including those involving Russia) have been exposed, and they don't like the geopolitical shift of power eastward toward the center (one which will, as it had historically for centuries, act to stabilize Europe). The war is merely hastening their decline, so they're grasping at straws and whining.

Loss of American favor? Since the cold war Eastern European immigrants have had an outsized influence on U.S. foreign policy.

Th U.S. has been playing off the Eastern European countries against the Western since the fall of the Soviet Union.

This is not exactly new. If Eastern European countries are so unhappy, perhaps France/Germany/Austria/Italy should form a new EU. We are tired of paying while being bashed for it.

> Loss of American favor? Since the cold war Eastern European immigrants have had an outsized influence on U.S. foreign policy.

Who are these immigrants? Jewish immigrants from EE? That would sooner mean negotiating favorable terms for Israel and US-Israel relations. Aside from Zbigniew Brzezinski, I don't see any of this "outsized" Eastern European influence on Cold War US foreign policy that you seem to be insinuating. Indeed, the insufficiency of influence has historically been a conspicuous concern in Polish foreign policy and diplomatic circles (recall how Radek Sikorski was caught on tape complaining about Poland giving the US proverbial blowjobs like some third rate vassal). At best, during the Cold War, the oppressed people of Central/Eastern Europe had a common foe in the Soviets. It was W. Europe that received a massive influx of US capital and investment for reconstruction and defense because it had an interest in doing so (feel free to call this sort of "favor" an imperialist power move; the fact remains).

> If Eastern European countries are so unhappy, perhaps France/Germany/Austria/Italy should form a new EU. We are tired of paying while being bashed for it.

What a strange evasive maneuver. Crying out in pain as you beat down someone else? Who is getting bashed here? It's one thing to criticize political developments in a fellow member EU country, it is another to misrepresent what's actually happening to justify coercive policies. I can smell the patronizing presuppositions already. "Why, those ungrateful, uppity C/E Europeans!"

If those countries want to form a new EU instead of doing a little bit of reflection or self-criticism, so be it (I wouldn't bet too much on the common unity of that motley crew of countries, though: Austria has signaled a greater, and I would say historical interest in the East with its membership in the TSI, and Italy isn't exactly in love with Germany, either).

> it is cheaper for everyone to give Ukraine weapons for free than having NATO enter the war, which would, by all reasonable accounts, be catastrophic. The notion that US corporations are profiting from selling weapons is so preposterously boneheaded.

I don't think the US as a country is profiting. Yes, the defense companies are...but at the same time...how many people in Congress or in decision making positions are shareholders of defense companies? And what about the defense company's lobbying efforts and campaign contributions?

I'm not quite sure how catastrophic it would have been for NATO to enter the war. Catastrophic for Russia. Not catastrophic for civilians in Ukraine who were mass murdered.

You think that World War 3 starting in Ukraine would have been less catastrophic for the civilians of Ukraine?

If NATO starts openly fighting Russia, do you imagine there is even one shred of a chance that Ukraine doesn't get nuked?

I don't believe it would start ww3, Russia's military isn't capable enough for that. And I do not believe they would use a nuke, especial against NATO troops on the ground. If you believe Russian doctrine, which they've quoted several times, they would only use nukes if Russia itself is under existential threat. Not that I do believe that, but do you think those who can authorise a nuke really want to end the world and die over not getting to change the government of Ukraine?

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