Fair enough so far.


Last I checked, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan weren't Europeans - you've been railing so hard and so long at past US administrations about their Ukraine policy that it's rather bizarre to see you now talk as if it's really Europe that was responsible for all that. I think we've debated the Ukraine topic enough in the past that we more or less know where the other stands - and for the purposes of this discussion, we do agree on quite a bit in terms of how Russian-speaking Ukrainians had very legitimate grievances and how there is no way the war could end with Ukraine reclaiming all of its pre-2014 territory.

Nevertheless, it's Putin who started this foolish war and is responsible for the casualties, not the Biden administration nor the European countries in NATO. And while as mentioned we agree that Ukraine will inevitably have to give up the Crimea and Donbas, it's also clear that any serious peace will need to provide Ukraine and the rest of Europe security guarantees. Otherwise, if it's just supposed to serve as a recovery period for Russia before it attacks Ukraine again, or the Baltics, then it may be better to not stop the war at all.

Fair enough that Europe has no serious plan at this point, yet. And if the US walks away from NATO, whether officially or just in practice, then obviously it's dead and Europe would have to arrange its own defense against Russia through some new setup, in which no doubt Ukraine would have a significant role to play, yes.

This is just factually wrong. In purchasing power parity terms, the EU is only slightly behind the US and ahead of it when combined with the UK. In nominal terms, the gap is bigger but still the EU is at something like two thirds of the US economy, not half.

In per capita terms, the gap is bigger as the EU has roughly 100 million more inhabitants, but in this context the total numbers seem more relevant. And as for 'aging and dying', the US isn't exactly in a much better position - and is spending far more on healthcare for worse results, on average. Same with unaffordable social programs, the US hardly has its house in order to preach at others. Perhaps you do actually want to seriously reform the ones in the US and get the federal budget in order again, but as you might have noticed by now, after all the failed attempts to do that in the past decades, your current president couldn't care less and just bullies any dissenting Republicans until they either cave in or get primaried out of Congress.

That is rather hilarious, coming after all the preceding parts about Europe needing to pull its weight in NATO and how the US would leave otherwise. So instead of pulling back from foreign entanglements as Trump claims to want - sometimes - and certainly many of his voters want, your own preference would be to go hit your allies with nukes, huh?