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“predictable military assistance - Right now its predictably very slow”

The extended process of fumbling for the wallet, hoping that someone else will pick up the bill...

Now that the long term agreements are being signed however, Ukraine aid and Defense Industrial Base expansion are becoming embedded budget lines, with lives of their own - across many diversified countries, including several that each have bigger economies than Russia.

It was slow to get it started, but it is becoming more reliable, as more countries commit to it long term.

Nine bilateral support agreements have been signed already; with Latvia, Finland, the U.K., Germany, France, Denmark, Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands - USA, Sweden and Norway reportedly nearing completion (May/June). Czechia and Portugal have teams actively working on theirs.

These agreements were the fruit of last Summer’s G-7 meeting and the NATO Summit in Vilnius. I anticipate that this Summer, strategies will be updated and new commitments agreed to at the NATO Summit in DC this July (75th Anniversary of NATO).

The threat of a Trump presidency also has many NATO countries scrambling to catch up on their obligations, in a way we have not seen in a long time. Art of the Deal.

But ultimately, Putin gets the prize for NATO fundraiser of the decade. From NATO’s website:

“In 2024, two thirds of (US) Allies are expected to meet or exceed the target of investing at least 2% of GDP in defence, compared to only three Allies in 2014. Over the past decade (since Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine, and a resulting revised commitment strategy in NATO), NATO Allies in Europe have steadily increased their collective investment in defence – from 1.47% of their combined GDP in 2014, to 2% in 2024.”

On Average, the Europeans are finally meeting their 2% of GDP NATO commitment this year. Hard core new members Sweden and Finland did more than their share, but all members are stepping up to some degree.

That trend of increasing Defense spending is accelerating, both within NATO, and among major non-NATO allies like Japan.

The June G-7 Summit in sunny Southern Italy will likely indicate what degree of additional commitment might be expected at the July NATO Summit (they will have roughly the same as Intelligence analysis as the NATO summit a few weeks later).

Whatever documents and guidance emerge from the NATO Summit will grind through the bowels of the Pentagon and Allied Defense Ministries, as well as NATO itself, embedding those decisions in their budgets and programs, for years to come.

A big chess piece moved with the US aid package, and now the players will be re-assessing the board for the coming year as conditions change, and preparing for the epochal depletion of the old Soviet arsenals, coming into view more clearly during 2025.