Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10013170
The war in Ukraine is “existential for our Europe and for France”, Mr Macron said in the interview on France 2 and TF1.
“Do you think that the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Estonians, the Romanians and the Bulgarians could remain at peace for a second [in the event of a Russian victory in Ukraine]?” he asked. “If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility would be reduced to zero.”
U.S. conservatives are champing at the bit to see Europe fall to Russia. Action needs to happen now, or the U.S. could have a conservative government that backs Putin. That would be the end of Europe.
We need to join Europe right now in a full-scale defense of Ukraine. Otherwise we are allowing Putin to take Europe simply by threat of nuclear action. We need to strike first, disarm the dictator and repel the Russian invasion. And we need to do it now. The clock is ticking.
We need to destroy Russias ability to threaten the EU and remove Putin and any other similar leader from power in Russia. That should be the goal of the EU and not to go into a full scale war with Russia. Seriously Putin is not winning that war. The Russian civilian economy is shrinking fast, Russias war reserves are depleting, oil income is falling, soldiers are being lost on a massive scale with a demogrophics, which does not allow for that, and Russias weapons reserves from Soviet times are falling. Russia has two or three years of full scale war in it. The only thing we need to do is to keep Ukraine in the fight, while destroying as much of Russia as possible.
The one thing Russia has able to successfully ramp up production on is basic artillery shells. Analysts are putting their production numbers at something like 3x what Europe is putting out. It’s starting to become a problem.
And that little spineless shitfuck Johnson is doing precisely what Putin wants in this scenario. There is a direct causal relationship between Johnson + the GOP refusing to give anything to Ukraine for months and Ukraine’s recent strategic difficulties. I sincerely hope Johnson is able to experience the tender mercies of Russian captivity someday.
Nope, Russia is firing three times as many shells as Europe produces in 155mm. However that includes North Korean shells and smaller artillery calibers. The EU also produces some 152mm and 120mm. Even more importantly the shells are much more accurate.
I’m not sure you understood the gist of my comment. I know the calibers are different, and that the shells the Russians are cranking out are very basic. They’re going for the Soviet approach (just make TONS of shitty-to-mediocre weapons).
Exactly right. Quantity has a quality of its own. Russia tried a US-style rapid combined arms shock-and-awe invasion of Ukraine and fucked it up, so they’ve reverted to the old school Soviet strategy: throw huge masses of men and materiel into the fight, be relentless and willing to endure huge losses.
The interesting thing is that this is the strategy NATO expected throughout the Cold War, so we should be prepared for it. Granted, NATO was preparing for a Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap and then across the North German plain, but still, the strategy is the same. NATO always intended to use superior technology and tactics to trade space for time while we mobilized to meet the massed Soviet forces.
The fact that we have allowed Russia to continue this all-out war for two years and STILL haven’t adequately mobilized is pretty bad. Macron is right: Europe, particularly western Europe, has lost a hell of a lot of credibility.
France and the UK have lost the most credibility, I think. They were the two main victorious European powers after WW2, as well as being large, rich countries, permanent Security Council members, and nuclear powers in their own right. Germany gets a pass because they are not supposed to have a large military, for obvious historical reasons.
Europe has been too heavily relying on the US to save the day, despite obvious signs that the US is suffering from war weariness, corruption, and very serious internal social divisions.
The German Bundeswehr has been a quite lacking army with lots of problems with non functional equipment. I wonder if the DDR and BRD had well trained and equipped armies respectively. I’m too young to know about that.
Yes both sides of the fence were armed to the teeth. TBF though the criteria of how big of an issue a piece of equipment needs to have to be considered inoperational was probably more lax back then
NATO without the US can easily easily easily take on Russia. Russia couldn’t even invade one of the poorest countries in Europe. UK and France have nuclear weapons. And haven’t we already seen what preemptive wars end up as? (And that was when they had no nukes.) Defensive wars suck in a lot of ways, but that’s what we’re left with.
Credibility is not the only thing Europe is bound to lose if Russia is victorious.
Second moment in recent history when the french end up being the tellers of uncomfortable truths
Don’t forget about Charles de Gaulle warning Kennedy against a war in Vietnam
You will find that intervention in this area will be an endless entanglement.
Maybe they should start supporting Ukraine a bit more then, so far they are lacking in comparison to the rest of europe
Yeah, sadly I see Macron’s statement about french troops in Ukraine as nothing more than hot air. The last I heard, France was blocking buying artillery shells from non-EU sources, even though those shells could be shipped right now.
The French have always been the heroes we need but don’t deserve.
Wasn’t Macron like “I talked to Putin, he wouldn’t do this”… And then he did it.
The same French whose intelligence organization completely missed the boat on that?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60938538
Why is anyone taking this guy seriously?
That was Putin just lying though
Lying dup’s one man. But there was an entire intelligence org that should have been able to prove those words right and wrong. Macron has little credibility by himself – he loves big, broad gestures – and he has no apparatus to back up his claims for, or against, anything.
He’s prone to magical thinking
He’s still in denial that climate change can’t wait. Same vein.
We should have admitted Ukraine into NATO a long time ago.
Reminder that all that bullshit about “territorial disputes” means nothing if the signatories agree to ignore it, or if they decide to live in the real world and acknowledge that an attack on a prospective member is still an attack on the alliance.
That said…
They really did have quite the corruption problem.
Citing the same interview, the U.S. magazine Newsweek published an article with Macron saying that Ukraine must reclaim Crimea to achieve real peace
We need to start defining what a win and what a loss is. I feel that this could vary on some parts
It’s very simple. Make the occupiers fuck off behind Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.
As if Europe or the „Western“ world in general would still have any credibility with the Gaza genocide.
I truly feel sorry for Ukrainians as the support for the resistance was never about actual solidarity or values.
@bolzolol
As if Europe or the „Western“ world in general would still have any credibility with the Gaza genocide.
I truly feel sorry for Ukrainians as the support for the resistance was never about actual solidarity or values.
Aren’t you getting tired of this?
Ah yeah the typical whataboutism accusation. Whataboutism is certainly a problem when trolls try to derail debates.
In this case though the statement that Europe would lose all credibility if Ukraine loses relies on the premise that there’s any credibility left to begin with. I’m challenging that premise.
It’s blatantly obvious that the support for Ukraine was always just about geopolitics, and never about moral or values. Now, the geopolitical interest seems to have shifted, hence no more support for Ukraine. See e.g. Scholz not even giving any reasons for denying support, except that he says so.
I think all of this is terrible and I want Ukraine to be supported, but our dear Western leaders are morally bankrupt so I’m afraid it may not happen.
They’re arabs! Who cares
We are talking about white people here.
We helped Arabs in the same way we helped the Ukrainians, back when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Watch in wonder as we abandon Ukraine just as quickly as we did Afghanistan.
As someone who lives 60km away from the Russian border, this but unironically.
Sorry, I got carried away for a second. I think there were some white doctors there or something at some point so that confused me
I have a feeling that it’s mainly about power. Russia having more power will be catastrophic to the world
It’s not like the West is any more humane, we’re just committing all the atrocities far away from ourselves. It’s objectively better for almost anyone to live in a Western country than in the places we oppress. And I wouldn’t want to live in Russia or China either.
I totally agree that Russia shouldn’t have power. But how much does the Western power help middle easterners? Or how much did it help in Korea, Vietnam, …
So it’s fighting Russia’s power isn’t based on a consistent moral framework. It’s just done because our own quality of life is better if Russia has less power.
You realize that there’s a genocide happening in Ukraine too that is much more intentional than Gaza right? I’ve read Putin’s papers on Ukrainian identity, or rather lack thereof. The Russians are abducting all of the Ukrainian children and turning them into Russians by forcing them to speak Russian and indoctrinating them. They have stripped the occupied territory of young Ukrainian men to kill off families there.
I guess that because we’re slow to provide aid to Gaza, we’re supposed to ignore the Ukrainian genocide and European security threat that is Russia.
Good news is that we’re now dropping food aid and the Americans are putting floating docks there to deliver aid. Maybe next time the Gazan militias will distribute the food aid for free instead of selling it to the people.
I’m not sure if you understand the politics of Gaza, Israel, Hamas, the PNA, Egypt or Iran. You have to understand all of the players before you can make a good opinion. You also have to understand what is and isn’t a war crime. And what exactly Genocide is.
Go read UN reports and their definitions of war crimes. Learn to recognize deception in war footage. Read about the politics of each faction. And maybe then, you can have a decent opinion
I find it very strange to tell someone you know nothing about that they have no clue what they’re talking about simply because they disagree with you.
The mental gymnastics you’re doing to assert that the situation in Ukraine and Gaza would be different is either driven by racism (which I don’t want to accuse you of) or ignorance out of a geopolitical interest.
First of all, intention is central to the legal definition of genocide. You cannot accidentally commit genocide. Both Russia and Israel are very open about their intentions and it’s clear that they want to eradicate the Ukrainians/Palestinians as a people and claim the land for themselves.
The only difference is that we’re arming the victim in the case of Ukraine and the perpetrators in the case of Israel. If you’re interested in UN reports then feel free to read their assessments on the war crimes, ethnic cleansings, Apartheid, illegal occupation, indefinite mass imprisonments without charge, torture, sexual abuse during said imprisonment, and most recently on the genocide. Feel free to also read the ICJ case by South Africa.
If your empathy extends only to some people it’s up to you to figure out why. It only proves my point that Europe has no credibility to begin with. Our support for Ukraine is purely driven by our own interest to fight back against Russia. Ukrainians are nothing but a pawn for us, although it’s a convenient narrative that they’re the victims and we’re doing it for a greater cause.
Maybe I’m just salty that this war is going so well for Hamas and Netenyahou both. Nenenyahou gets to satisfy his conservative base by way of ethnic cleansing and Hamas has gathered so much international sympathy that it makes ISIS look like a school fundraiser. Terrorism works, and that was Hamas’ goal at the start.
I know that under the UN statute, many Israeli officials are likely guilty of genocide. The ICC is going to have to decide that like they have for Russia. Netenyahou is chief among them. To excuse Ukranian Genocide by saying that we aren’t doing enough about Gaza is the main thing that I’m angry about.
As a side note, I see the echoes of the Battle of Mosul where ISIS used many of the same tactics to cause as much suffering as possible to the civilian population. Maybe that’s what put me off from Hamas
Unfortunately, we can’t afford to intervene in every genocide that’s happening, whether in Armenia, Myanmar, Xinjiang or Sudan. We are complicit in the genocide of Uighurs for cheap goods. I’m so tired
I totally get your stance on Hamas and I think most of us feel this way. Hamas are not the good guys. I don’t think Hamas has gathered a lot of sympathy at least in the Western world, e.g. in German media they’re still always called either terrorists or radical islamists/jihadists. But it’s also mind-boggling to me how much legitimacy they have gained through October 7. The world shouldn’t work like this but it keeps rewarding ruthless violence.
And I think another part of the problem is seeing global conflicts like football matches. Like in this conflict someone is team Ukraine and in this other conflict they‘re actually team Russia/Iran/China/… because ABC. But how can people think like that? We should always be on the side of humanity & the principle that every person on this planet has a right to live in safety, freedom & dignity.
I’m just really really dreading the double standards applied to people based on whether or not they’re useful to us. Of course we can’t intervene everywhere, it would already be big if we would stop sending weapons and ammo, and if we would stop providing rhetoric cover for this genocide. Or if we would stop being partners with the genocidal Azerbaijani government. Like we could just stop supporting genocidal regimes but because of money and power we ignore or even excuse what they do.
Another thing I saw is Russian trolls are hijacking the Gaza war to destabilize Western countries. I think this contributes to the distrust in someone calling out the West‘s hypocrisy. It became so Russian propaganda tool to do so, and naturally those propagandists will also be extremely pro-Russian. Like wtf.
Anyway, thanks for exchange, I totally feel and share your frustration. I would like to end this with some positive or encouraging note but honestly wouldn’t know what that would be, politics is so fucked.
Are there elections coming in France?
We are hearing big words from Macron over and over in the last few weeks to support Ukraine - yet France is far behind when in comes to supporting Ukraine financially or with military equipment. And please don’t bring that Reddit meme ‘France is doing everything secretly and nobody knows about it’. Democratic financing in billions of Euros is public and not a high toilet paper bill like in Hollywood movies from the 80s. There is of course a lot of proportionate support by France within the EU-assistance, as France is a big economy and paying into the EU budget. It’s a similar situation with Italy, as they are another big economy within the EU. Both EU ‘power houses’ are far behind when it comes to direct support for Ukraine.
Macron has been telling us just last week, that the local EU arms industry needs more orders to enable low and competitive prices. He also told us support for Ukraine should only receive subsidies for EU-made products. And last week we saw statistics that the arm industry/exports from the USA and France profited the most from the Russian invasion in Ukraine, as everyone is getting their military up to date and ordering a lot. So everything plays in his hands and France is reaping in big profits and getting support for its huge arms industry. Yet, the country is far behind in supporting Ukraine and Macron keeps calling other countries to support Ukraine more - or here that ‘Europe will lose all credibility’.
What is going on here? Elections?
You could’ve googled that they will be in 2027 instead of writing all that :|
Current government is just stingy. They pushed the pension reform remember? Far right (which is pro-russian) has 30+% of the voters, they don’t have the balls to take the fallout once they pay for a news-worthy weapon package after pushing for cost-cuttings in every department
Or I did just web search for 2024 and there are indeed ‘European Parliament election in France’ as a result.
But you probably understood very well what was saying and why I was writing it. Do you have an explanation for his behaviour?
Are you under the impression that Macron is running for the European Parliament?
His party sure is
There’s always elections going on in France
Explanation yes I wrote one
But as you can tell I don’t like him very much either
European elections are ongoing, and that’s definitely a move to tell to pro-European to not vote for “certain parties”.
You’re absolutely right that if we look at the material given, for once Germany is leading the “European defence”. And that realistically, moving “troops” to Ukraine will impact other front where french troops are fighting. So I am not sure which part of it is just word and whether it’ll change much the big picture. That said, I can see how even non combat soldier could be a drastic change. If you send military mechanics with the tanks you let Ukraine having more combat troops and avoid long retraining of support staff.
Why would any of this have to do with elections?
Just Macron things, talk a lot before elections (European ones currently) to gather sympathy, then do nothing and be surprised when people call him out for not following up, blame someone or something else for his failures
Can somebody explain how not admitting Ukraine to NATO and ceding Crimea and the Donbas means “the end of Europe”? The alternative seems to be endless bloodshed and the complete destruction of the country.
Appeasement won’t stop it. Is that what you’re advocating?
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If Russia wins, the next country that will experience what Ukraine is experiencing is Moldova and Taiwan. Then maybe Georgia and the Baltics.
It would be the end of the period of relative peace since the end of the Cold War in Europe.
This is where Macron is wrong, Europe and the West already lost all credibility when they chose to be complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
How can ukraine even win? Like there is no venue left other than NATO troops… oh…
They are evenly matched with Russia with regard to quality troops. It doesn’t matter how many randos you’ve in your back country, both countries have a sizeable enough population.
The thing that matters is how many cohesive units can you train and get to the frontlines. That is around 50k troops per half a year. If Russia loses more than that, it will start to have problems replacing troops, like it had when all those videos came out with guys armed with Mosins, or even unarmed, trying to fill in units that sustained hard losses. OTOH Russia is suffering casualties of around 3:1, which it absolutely cannot sustain. If it keeps “winning” as it did in Avdiivka, by the way they get a third of the way to Kyiv, there is no Russian army.
Even with artillery, while they are great at shell production, their quality of guns have declined sharply. They went from 80% self-propelled to 80% towed since the start of the war, and a significant portion of that is WWII D-10s with an effective range of 10 km. Some FPV drones can do more than that.
Point is, Ukraine can totally win if the West keeps up its current level of support. The question is whether it will do that, especially with the US elections that are coming up.
Also to be kept in mind is what winning is for Ukraine.
That is for Ukraine to decide, but it is decidedly not conquering Russia.
The point being, Ukraine doesn’t need to be supplied to the level of razing Moscow and St. Petersburg to the ground; simply enough to defend their borders/land, push back Russian troops, and causing some long range strategic damage behind Russian borders.
It feels like the cited statement actually lacks causality. If Ukraine falls, nobody will remain at peace, that’s true. But how does that change the credibility of Europe except for showing that maybe help was not large enough (even that might be a wrong assumption) is what I fail to see.
If anything, the credibility of Europe could be questioned over the efficiency of sanctions and over how those sanctions actually affect Putin’s war
how does that change the credibility of Europe except for showing that maybe help was not large enough
I think that’s exactly it tbh. The amount of decent hardware delivered hasn’t been even nearly enough and the ramp up of artillery production has been shamefully slow. Why is Ukraine being heavily outgunned with the collective might of the West behind it?
We should have given Ukraine everything they needed on day one. It’s so painfully obvious that if they lose we’re all going to war. All of us.
The appeasement attempted by not giving the really good kit and honestly fuck all air defence (the US has something like 1100 patriot systems) was utter folly.
“Oh, we’d better not escalate”. FUCK. THAT. He tried hard to take Kyiv and kill Zelensky and only absolutely laughable logistics prevented it. That goal is still there.
Putin’s “logic” for Ukraine being part of Russia already applies to the Baltics. If Ukraine falls, he’ll bide his time, rebuild with their new war economy then trundle into all 3 of them via Kaliningrad, Northwest Russia and Belarus all while claiming that if anyone sets foot in Kaliningrad he’ll press the red button causing untold pearl clutching in the West. Unless NATO has significantly built up their presence in the Baltics, they will fall and he’ll lob in a load of defensive positions before you have time to take a piss then be off down south towards what he probably sees as “softer” targets in Moldova, Slovakia etc.
We should have given Ukraine everything they needed on day one
In that case the credibility of Europe is long gone because nothing will change the history of how poor the response was. Well, except for writing history books about how Ukraine only prevailed because of Europe’s immediate and plentiful help, but those will take some time to overwrite what people actually saw
Yeah, I fully agree. The dithering response has already done untold damage to future credibility.
It’s the credibility as an ally. If the EU fails to supply Ukraine, even though the EU shares a land border with Ukraine, Taiwan, Armenia and other nations currently threatened will not rely on the EU’s support, but rather just surrender to aggressors. Especially with Taiwan, any conflict there would blow up world-wide trade, as everyone and everything is dependent on taiwanese microchips. It would also mean that many Ukrainians feeling betrayed by the West would flood into the EU (or are already here), which would lead to a lot of strife. Lastly, every dictator will feel emboldened, as precedent shows that you only have to keep your offensive going until the public loses interest. When the current world order is upset, many conflicts will form and grow. Any power vacuum left by a retreating power will be fought over and filled.
I’d argue that nobody relied on the EU for defense in the first place. Prior to the war in Ukraine, Europe was not exactly known for getting militarily involved in conflicts or as a defensive ally, quite the opposite. See all the “strongly worded letter” jokes. I don’t think Taiwan is under any illusions about getting major military support from Europe, no European country (except Vatican) even recognizes it. The EU and Ukraine were never formally allied prior to the war, so if anything, the amount of support was/is larger than expected.
Noone relied on the EU for protection, because the EU was largely unaffected by wars in the past. However with the war in Ukraine, the EU is directly affected. And a war over Taiwan would affect the EU in a similar gravity. A war over Albania less so, but a NATO member and a (former) candidate to join the EU, Turkey, is likely to be directly involved in such a war. If the EU shows that it is unwilling to push back against aggression, even if the EU is directly affected, then the EU will lose a lot ofinfluence with other regional powers.
I’d say the Chinese salivated a bit then aggresively moved up their Taiwan timeframe after looking at the shit show of a response that Ukraine got.
Given that the purpose of the EU was to dramatically reduce the conflicts that plagued Europe for thousands of years, culminating in WWII, through ever greater cooperation, the credibility of the project may come into question if Europe is unable to cooperate enough to see off Russian aggression in neighbouring terrain.
Relative to many of the issues which the EU & closely aligned neighbours must agree upon if they are to act, responses to a military threat ought to be easier to arrive at, and yet here we are.
maybe the first time that i agree with macron
Not a big loss. Still much better than the rebel north American colonies.
*has lost
