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Ukraine: US Takes the Worst Possible Position on NATO [1]
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Date: 2025-02-19
Hello DK,
Salutations, and congratulations on surviving 4 whole weeks of Orange 2. Hope you’re all someplace warm, bullet-resistant, and devoid of angry people in red hats.
So America just isn’t that into Europe, apparently.
American Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently explained to them that America can’t be primarily focused on European security anymore because of “strategic realities.” Whatever that means.
President Orange already had a long history of threatening to withdraw from NATO on the pretext that various countries in the alliance weren’t paying their NATO ‘fees’ that don’t exist and no one is required to pay. More recently, he has indicated that he would allow Russia to do whatever the hell they want to Europe if NATO members do not increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. For comparison, the United States currently spends roughly 3.3% of its GDP on defense.
Is Orange planning to withdraw the US from NATO in the future? Is the United States even any real part of NATO at this point right now? Specifically, if Russia invades a NATO member in eastern Europe, and that country invokes Article 5 (requiring all NATO members to come to its defense) will the US answer the call? No one knows for sure.
And this puts European countries in a horrible position: either (1) increase defense spending dramatically for an as-yet unrealized threat from Russia; or (2) risk an actual invasion by Russia with an undeveloped military and questionable security guarantees from the other NATO members.
If it seems like the first option is the obviously superior option, and would be better for Europe anyway, consider what happens domestically when a country goes from let’s say 1.5% of GDP to 5% of its GDP. That money is going to have to come from somewhere, either tax increases, cuts to domestic spending, or both. Again, for comparison, in the US that would be a combination of tax increases or spending cuts in the amount of roughly $800 billion. Real money, in other words, and thus real pain. To whatever extent the pain of those measures falls on ordinary individuals in those countries, it gives Vladimir Putin an opportunity to sow dissension in those countries. That dissension can then be turned into support for a pro-Russian, pro-oligarch, pro-Nazi, and anti-liberal movement and/or party in that country.
And I think that’s the point of Orange’s threats to NATO. Set Europe up for absorption by Russia either through military force or electoral manipulation. I certainly don’t think Orange is clever enough to think this through, but Putin is probably clever enough. Orange just made it clear he works for Putin when he blamed Ukraine for starting the war. I think this theory also explains VP Vance’s recent comments to the EU as to his ‘concerns’ that the EU is voiding and might continue to void elections tainted by Russian propaganda.
One thing we do know about Orange, though, is that he is transactional. So what is he getting out of this? My best guess is that the US and Russia are trading spheres of influence. Russia gets Europe, and the US gets North America at least. Russia having more or less brought the European continent down to its moral and economic level, there will be no one left to complain or resist when Orange turns the US military on Greenland, Canada, Panama, California, and New York etc. Global apathy would be the short version of that story.
And yes, I am reaching a bit here, but consider that the US could have just definitively quit NATO. There are two problems with this from the Orange-Putin perspective. One, this would give Europeans a clear understanding that they need to increase their defense spending, and blunt the effect of any anti-government propaganda directed at officials who were advocating that position. Two, it would send a clear message to Americans (or, yet another message) that something is going terribly wrong with their government. As of now, I would guess most Americans have no idea that the post-war alliances we’ve always taken for granted are being destroyed by Orange.
The immediate victim of all this is of course Ukraine. A cursory review of Russia’s history of violating peace and/or cease fire agreements with Ukraine (see Budapest Memorandum, Friendship Agreement, Minsk I, Minsk II) indicate clearly that they can’t be trusted and the only real guarantee of Ukraine’s security is NATO membership. As long as the United States remains formally (but not actually) in NATO, Putin has a firm veto on Ukraine’s membership in NATO via the US acting as his proxy. This effectively takes NATO membership for Ukraine off the table before negotiations have even begun.
All of that said, it does look like European leaders (Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas etc.) are thankfully going in the direction of Europe ‘doing more’. We’ll see what that translates to specifically as events unfold. Hopefully it results in an independent Ukraine, and a weakened and embarrassed Orange-Putin alliance.
And that’s my theory. Let me know what you think in the comments below. And stay safe.
Love,
Zero
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