“After all, he was a KGB Agent.”
There’s the appearance Putin is no different than a CIA operative. Appearing to do one thing, saying something totally different about it, creating a cover story for it, while actually doing something else. It all boils down to lies and distractions to cover up something illegal.
Wars are no different. Afghanistan being a perfect example.
Back to the Uke war. Russia appears to have no interest in a peace agreement. With that said, it’s now more important than ever for those slimy EU countries to step up to the plate and start funding and supplying their own war, which is the Ukraine war. And with Russian escalation, there is still no reason for us to fund it or to deplete our own arsenal just so the Europeans can kill themselves.
Trump is going to have to point that out to the Europeans. It's likely that they'll have to buy the weapons from the Americans.
Ukraine has enough from their stockpile to continue fighting until this summer. Then they'll have to ask the Americans for another round of arms shipment.
Putin may believe that he'll be able to take all of Ukraine. All he has to do is to continue to feed his troops to the meat grinder. He's willing to do that.
The Euros have been funding Ukraine at a higher level than the US, and have additional very large future monies set aside. The problem is the weapons supply, as Europe’s ability to manufacture weapons greatly atrophied over the last 30+ years AND they disposed of almost all their reserve stocks.
US weapons manufacturing capacity is badly atrophied too, but we had more substantial reserve stocks. Much was near decommissioning anyway*, so, sending it to Ukraine and having Congress fund new replacements made sense — but new stuff always costs more, so we get shorted on quantity in the end, plus replacement falls behind due to that atrophied manufacturing capacity.
*To be fair, also quite a bit of weaponry sent was NOT due for scrapping, so we’ve ended up “short” in some categories and types. But in many others we still have huge reserves of - like F-16’s.
In any event, ramping up new capacity takes time, and evidently nobody even had it as a contingency plan. I recall the 60 Minutes interview of the manager(?) of the Raytheon plant making (I think it was) HIMARS short range rockets. Cranking up production by ~20% was not a problem, and 40% could be done given a little time. Double? Are you kidding? The guy literally said something to the effect of “We’d have to study it.” I nearly passed out.
The Germans, for one, HAVE increased artillery shell production by ~3x. But the problem is that if they really want to put the whammy on Pooty, they need to make that 10x, and to do that they need to cut through the bureaucracy. Maybe this new guy Merz can do it? The money seems to be there.
It would make huge sense for the Euro’s to purchase a couple hundred F-16’s for Ukraine. Training pilots should have started 3 years ago, and, the US can spare the planes. The question is why this hasn’t happened. Cowardice on our part seems to be part of the answer, but, then again, who in Europe has proposed such a thing? We produced around 100 HIMARS launchers last year for delivery to US stocks, which should give us around 600 total. These would not be used in anywhere near such numbers in any likely scenario involving China (mostly an air-sea battle), so, why did Ukraine only get a handful in 2024, instead of, say, 60 purchased by the Euro’s?
Why have the Euro’s not turned to South Korea for arms, as Poland has? Just to not spend money they’ve already set aside? Internal politics?
A last thought: Outside of revenge (a legit but not “complete” reason), Afghanistan was primarily about Iran. So was Iraq, really. But of course few ever discussed THAT.