|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The debate over Ukraine is less about the actual country and more about Europe’s role. The meeting with Zelensky was a wake-up call that business as usual was over. And Europe is reacting by doing what President Trump had spent years urging them to do.
France’s Macron has said that France will aim 5% of its GDP at defense spending, the number that Trump had previously urged, and proposed that the rest of Europe should aim at 3% to 3.5%. The EU is proposing an $839 billion defense spending package as part of a ReArm Europe plan that will spend on “air and missile defence, artillery systems, missiles and ammunition drones and anti-drone systems.”
And it’s to be paid for by boosting by an average of 1.5% GDP up from the current 2% or so. That will hit the 3.5% number Macron suggested and likely the real number that Trump had in mind.
All of this means that Europe will potentially step up and take some of the burden off our shoulders. And that is much more important than whatever does or doesn’t happen with Ukraine.
The Russia – Ukraine war is not, despite the people who have been pushing this stuff for years, World War III. It’s not a vast conspiracy and mostly it has very little to do with us apart from the money we’re spending on it. But it is an opportunity to shift gears.
And Europe is at least indicating a readiness to do so. This is good news for us and for Europe.
As I’ve been saying all along, ignore the hysterics and bedwetters and focus on the bigger picture. This is the bigger picture.
I hope the froggies are ready for the tariffs President Trump is set to impose on the EU. China, Mexico and Canada were just first on the list.
And if Trump’s America leaves NATO, Macron will have to rent out the Élysée Palace to pay his defense bill.
Surprisingly, the French have a history of designing good weapons. I wonder if they still have it in them.
I’m reading a book by a French Jewish military expert and it’s quite good. I don’t know too much about French military history since I don’t read French and not many of their books have been translated into English.
Of course they wouldn’t be translated into English. Since France managed to lose two world wars in a little over 30 years who wants to read about the Lebel 1886 rifle
Yes, the Frenchies invented trebuchets better than the Roman catapults and even smokeless gunpowder, which we take for granted nowadays.
I remember a story about a handful of cowboys pinned down among some boulders who were able to blow away a bunch of marauding Indians and drive the rest of because the Indians couldn’t pinpoint their locations from gunsmoke. Western history is very cool.
French wine is good too but not as good as California wine. 🙂
Excellent points. Smokeless powder was a big thing. I come across that sometimes in my reading 🙂
Must have been Teddy Roosevelt complaining about having to use black powder (smoke generating) in the Spanish American War, where the regular Spanish troops were using smokeless powder.