Summary
European officials are preparing a multibillion-dollar defense package to bolster regional security and support Ukraine, announced by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the Munich Security Conference.
The package, potentially valued up to 700 billion euros, will fund military training, arms deliveries, and security guarantees amid concerns over Russian aggression and diminishing U.S. contributions to NATO.
The move follows calls for Europe to boost its own defense spending while U.S.-Russian talks, which exclude Ukraine and Europe, on ending the Ukraine conflict continue.
But why did Europe wait for America to bail before suddenly pulling a trillion dollars out of their pocket?
If Ukraine was supposed to win Europe should have thought about ponying up that cash a bit sooner.
Because as soon as you propose spending billions of dollars on defending another country, people will generally say “but I don’t wanna pay more taxes or lose out on any comforts”, which causes you to lose your position of power in case of a democracy. It all comes down to selfishness in the end.
Because they didn’t need to. As long as the United States was spending money on their truly vast military and was using that military capacity to defend Ukraine there was no requirement for any other the country do anything.
Now that the US has decided to become a pawn of Russia, it has become important.
They did need to. Ukraine is losing the war bigtime. They needed more weapons at the start before Russia ramped up production.
If Europe sent the weapons at the start they could have broken the stalemate. Filling the American deficit does nothing to help Ukraine win.