And those European countries have done nothing independent of the USA for 80 years. In fact that is the entire point of NATO.
Quite right. The US never left Europe after WW2 and stayed to occupy Germany as well as to confront Russian communism (USSR). Europe was a shambles. She never recovered as a region of independent nations. What we have is a band of handicaps hanging onto the US for support till today.
@sree251 Yep. The very first Secretary General of NATO said it was created to "Keep America in, Germany down, and Russia out." And with the Marshall Plan the US effectively felt they had literally bought Europe.
The feeling at the time was that European countries could not be trusted with sovereignty after starting 2 world wars in 20 years.
The same reason Epstein should not have had a central role in US politics - but did.
Epstein? Since when? How do you connect the dots?
Europe and Ukraine both did a lot of illegal things up to, and during the war. Europe has stolen something like $100 billion in Russian assets, and imprisoned and/or kicked out hundreds of Russians from various posts.
Russian assets cannot be stolen. Most of these are held in depositories all over the west including Singapore. Russia has a detailed account of what and where they are.
But the US has not directly attacked Russia, nor stolen from Russia. The Russians don't negotiate with thieves or traitors, so the US is the lesser of three evils.
The OP question is why is Trump playing power broker over the Ukraine mess? The Europeans want conflict with Russia. The US is dragged into it by Americans with ties to Europe. They hold dual citizenship. They should be stripped of American citizenship and shipped back to their countries of origin. Trump needs to close down all US military bases in Europe.
NATO is threatening Russia through its proxy, Ukraine and has already attacked Europe- including severing the Nordstrom two pipeline and cutting the EU off from Russia. The USA is the only actual power in NATO. Russia is the target. Europe might want to help the USA break up Russia, but they're too weak to matter.
Instead some European nations are genuinely afraid of Russia attacking them, as indeed she is already doing covertly by sabotage, assassinations of Russians on W. European countries, and Internet-based interference.
Some European nations? Which ones? Name them and let's discuss what their fears are and the Russian motive for attacking them.
@Roundandroundwego Starmer and his series of predecessors think it is the 1700s and they are fighting the Crimean War again, France thinks this is a rematch of the Napoleonic Wars, Lithuania and Poland probably still have delusions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I have personally met such Polish nationalist lunatics.
Basically anyone who has ever lost a war with Russia sees this as a do-over.
@VeronicaJane oh...I don't think you have issues with disagreement. Pretty easy to find the info on Trump's peace deals, though I'm sure you won't have any difficulties finding politicians and media who'll disagree and spin it in the other direction.
In Gaza, he threatened to obliterate it.
After Trump had Iran's nuclear facility destroyed, he said he'd let Israel obliterate Hamas if they didn't release hostages. They caved at the last minute, of course.
In Ukraine he's threatening to withhold intelligence and military weapons if Ukraine doesn't give up land Putin invaded.
Oh...do you mean the area of Donbas, where the citizens speak Russian and who were attacked and shelled in a civil war led by the western Ukrainian gov't shortly after Obama's assistant SoS, Victoria Nuland engineered a coup. Gee...I can't imagine why these citizens want their region annexed to Russia 🙄. Funny thing about peace deals...unless one side flat out wins the war, there will be compromises made by both sides. The US has no business being involved in the conflict except that it made people (including politicians) connected to the military industrial complex very wealthy.
I've not been a fan of Donald since he dissed Sen John McCain
John McCain was a traitor to the nation. Lemme guess...you probably referred to him as John McLame, when he ran against Obama. McCain later opposed Obamacare, to get himself re-elected, and then, when he was on his death bed, he finally told the truth, and said he voted in favor of Obamacare. Now our healthcare premiums and deductibles have skyrocketed. And best of all, Arizona is now a hot bed of election fraud, thanks to the McCain Mafia.
his (Trump's comments about the American dead in European cemeteries as 'suckers and losers'.
Right...and it came from an article out of The Atlantic a well known leftist media outlet with a penchant for lying. Note: anonymous sources, right out of the Adam Schiff playbook.
Oh, did I neglect to mention the Jan 6th insurrection? Or publicly claiming US Senators as being guilty of sedition punishable by death for saying that the military swears an oath to the Constitution and not to any person; and that the military is obligated to resist unlawful orders?
Did you forget that the BBC altered the video of Trump's statements on J6, and are now being sued for billions? Did you forget that the FBI refused to answer the question of the number of assets they had in the crowd on J6? We now know it was at least 275. Why wasn't Ray Epps prosecuted since he's on video telling people to storm the Capitol building? Did you forget they found and prosecuted grandmother's who technically trespassed on Capitol grounds, but the same experts couldn't figure out who the pipe bomber was or the guy with the noose and gallows. We now know the pipe bomber is a forensic match to Capitol police officer, Shauni Rae Kerkhoff, who has munitions expertise. Of course, the left is quick to deny it was her, but has zero exculpatory evidence. The documented Capitol Police timeline begins on December 16th, and each update warned of the potential for escalating violence. Never forget that Chief Sund requested Nat Guard forces on Jan 4th, but Pelosi and McConnell turned it down. I can go on, but J6 was a leftwing operation to cover up the election theft.
But now you bring up the Senators and Congressman who are openly telling the military to disobey direct orders. It's not the job of the military to decide what order is and isn't lawful. That is up to the Pentagon lawyers. Anyone who is in the military understands the importance of chain of command. Soldiers don't question orders, except if it's something obvious thing like shooting innocent citizens. This stunt cones right out of the CIA playbook. Far more dangerous than thugs vandalizing the Capitol building. Yeah...those six members of Congress are seditious traitors.
Maybe you forgot what happened to military personnel who refused the jab?
Maybe you hate to disagree because you're so wrong about all this?
Hmmm, "peace deals"... as in deals when there was no war, or "deals" that have fallen through? Are you going to call the BBC anti-trump? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3599gx4qo
I guess you wouldn't call former Trump chief of staff John Kelly who said years later that it was true credible? https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/politics/john-kelly-donald-trump-us-service-members-veterans/
Ursula is not capable of being a defence minister, according to her own countrymen. She is not capable of negotiating a trade agreement with the US, as shown by backing down in areas that were previously not negotiable with any other country.
The EU cannot negotiate with Putin they don’t have the ability.
@sree251 I don't use the term "fan" when talking about politicians. I prefer to judge their political views, policies and abilities; and the organisations they represent.
I don't know enough about Ursula Von der Leyen, nor Germany's domestic politics, to judge them, but I am very critical of the European Union in which Germany is a major contributor, thinking it a good idea gone wrong.
(Germany, Italy and France are the main financial contributors to the EU, as was the UK until we left it.)
I don't use the term "fan" when talking about politicians. I prefer to judge their political views, policies and abilities; and the organisations they represent.
It's their political views that define the politicians. We are not interested in them as private individuals. Who cares if they collect butterflies and like same sex marriage. So, what is it that you don't fancy about Ursula von der Leyen?
I don't know enough about her work to be fair about her. She is just one in a far larger institution, and in most European nations it is the institutions as a whole that count.
Because it’s a proxy war, between America ( NATO ) and Russia, it just happens it’s America and the rest of NATO providing all the weapons and money, the Ukrainians are doing the dying, and it’s been fought in Ukraine, and America are pretending they are the peace makers
Putin has offered to invest $300 billion in frozen Russian assets in the US, and tRump insiders are lining up to make their claims.
At his waterfront estate, billionaire developer-turned-special envoy Steve Witkoff was hosting Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and Vladimir Putin’s handpicked negotiator, who had largely shaped the document they were revising on the screen. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had arrived from his nearby home on an island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.”
Dmitriev was pushing a plan for U.S. companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic. There were no limits to what two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued for months: Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.
You don't think a few smart engineers could figure out another way to trigger some of those bombs? Particularly those 4000 "tactical" nukes fired from an artillery piece?? You have absolute faith in Soviet era safeguards??? Seriously????
A few smart engineers? I definitely don't think a few smart engineers can figure out a way to trigger nuclear bombs in the US arsenal or even that in India or Pakistan. It's not a matter of safeguards. It just cannot be done the way you blow up a propane tank in your backyard.
@sree251 H-bombs are tricky; A-bombs are not. I majored in physics, and when we studied the equation for mean free paths we learned, qualitatively, how an A-bomb is built. The movie Oppenheimer even covered it qualitatively. Here is the basic design: a radioactive core (U235 or Pu239) surrounded by a high explosive shell.
A reduced version of this (4000 copies) is what the Soviets left behind in Ukraine. In 3D, the thing looks a bit like a soccer ball. The 32 detonators are distributed one per soccer ball facet. All of that, fully assembled, is what the smart engineer starts with.
The job of the smart engineer is simply to get an electrical pulse to each detonator at the same time. Equal length wiring is already built into the detonation wiring harness. It needs a battery power supply capable of delivering the right detonation pulse; that will probably be stored separately. It also needs a trigger device to decide at what altitude or time to send the pulse.
The only job of the smart engineer is to get a strong enough electrical pulse to the detonation wiring harness at the right time. Most people with an electrical engineering degree can manage that.
@Khenpal1 It is quite obvious you don't care about anyone over there since you are in a hurry to have them fight to the death for your virtue signaling.
A bunch of powerless countries still living under the delusion that they are colonial empires with the armies to match.
And these idiots have no domestic support.
Macron is competing with Trump for lowest approval rating in the world. Starmer is probably the most unpopular Labour PM in years, and Germany is not looking good.
Trump is making the decisions because Ukraine is a proxy of the USA and has been for a decade. What the EU wants is totally irrelevant and has been since 2014.
To quote Victoria Neuland "Fuck the EU."
The opinions of a bunch of European aristocrats who still think it is the 1700s don't matter.
Even various EU members and the Brits recognize on some level they have no power. They want to keep the war going but demand "American backstopping" which is a euphemism for they need the Americans to fight their war for them.
@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I'd not realised China has already overtaken the USA but it does not surprise me.
By "Cold War" I mean that between the USSR and NATO. There is now a far less clear-cut situation, with many different interests and factions; so yes, perhaps we are in a sort of "cold war", but even if not I fear the world is much less stable and safe than it was then.
@ArishMell The only thing that matters here is the 30 year march towards Russia's border by NATO a hostile offensive military alliance that literally exists to be antagonistic to Russia (and Germany but everyone memory holed that one). The only thing that has substantially changed is Russia is no longer an economically destroyed country run by an alcoholic managed by the White House.
@Khenpal1 This is what America and the "free world " has stood for for a century at least. Gangsters for capital.
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
