Trump’s senseless capitulation to Putin is a betrayal of Ukraine – and terrible dealmaking | Timothy Garton Ash
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It's a betrayal of Ukraine, Europe, NATO, the western world and America.
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He is a traitor by definition.
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The United States is a second world country.
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How dare you! We are third world at best! And looking at creating fourth and fifth as well.
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I'm assuming you mean this Krasnov.
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He is simply doing whatever will make him the most money, same as always. Musk, Zuckerberg etc who are in boot-step with Trump are doing the same. Capitalism moment.
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It's not necessarily terrible deal making, we might not be privy to what Putin has offered to trump personally in return. Maybe a dacha here, or a casino in Crimea?
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Nah, what he promised him is exactly what we see: $500B in rare earths, every year. Trump's always been a terrible dealer, and this is no exception: he doesn't do back-and-forth, he just tosses his entire hand on the table and says "here's what I want", then bullies you into accepting. If you don't, he'll either harass you, or back out saying YOU sabotaged the deal because you didn't give him what he wanted immediately.
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I accept that the dirty rock I was thinking about voting for would have made a bad deal too by asking for nothing. I admit it. But every once in the entire history of a people, there comes someone who is more idiotic than a dumb rock could ever wish it could have. That's us right there. Best country in the world.... Worst asshole president a country could ever have. We're at 3 years and 10 months to go.
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I’m starting to think European leaders are relived Trump is putting an end to the war as it hit European economies hard, especially in terms of access to cheap energy. They are happy to let Trump take the blame and maintain a facade of moral superiority.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong and the European leaders really believe Russia is an existential threat to Europe, in which case they will now dramatically ramp up support and actually join Ukraine to fight the war against Russia?
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That would be a correct assumption about 3 months into that invasion.
All it takes to disprove that idea right now is to listen to what Macron has been saying, and the guy is a Hard-right Neoliberal whose government is supported by the French Front-Nationale (France's main Far Right party).
By now most of the energetic transition in Europe is either done or the money for it is already invested (with temporary measures in place until the things being built with that money come online), and Europe is already over the peak economic impact point of weaning itself from Russian fossil fuels.
Further, a lot of the forced transition away from Russian fossil fuels was to energy sources which are cheaper or well on their way to become cheaper than fossil fuels, such as electricity from renewable sources. That transition just hadn't happenned before because it costs a good amount money to merelly do the change and people, companies and governments were content to keep on paying just a bit more for Russian gas than for Renewables to avoid paying a big one off amount to transition, but by now that cost is sunk and large parts the Economy have made changes needed to transition (for example, look at how Germans have been replacing their gas house warming systems with things like heat pumps).
At this point there is very little to gain in going back to the suckling from Russia's fossil fuel tit (except perhaps for a handful of Chemical Industry Conglomerates in Germany who had massive profits from using that as inputs for many processes) and in a lot of cases it would actually be a net loss in pure Financial terms (so, if not counting the geostrategical and military risks of giving money to Russia) because the energy sources they use post-transition are already cheaper that even Russian gas and getting cheaper by the year.
Also, lets after 2 years of pretty much all of Eastern Europe as well as the likes of Finland reminding us of what Russia did to them while Russia is trying to do the same to Ukraine, Russian government politicials themselves talking about invading the rest of Europe ("from Vladivostok to Lisbon") and continued coverage of Russian missiles killing civilians in Ukraine who to Europeans "look like us", the idea of Russia as a dangerous out of control beast that Ukraine is holding off from attacking the rest of us is in the minds of the European Public in general, not just politicians, plus like in Canada, European nationalism and anti-Americanism have started ticking up in Europe in response to Trump, so just bending over to Trump and Putin and giving Russia a win in Ukraine wouldn't be a good career move for mainstream European politicians and those who might go for it - Far-Right parties in Europe - mainly get stuck at just over 20%, even in countries like The Netherlands and France where they've been present for decades, so they're not going to be in a position to work in the interests of Russia and Trump's America and if they tried to do it via public pressure, they would open themselves to accusations of being Traitors To The Nation from their very own natural supporters, fragmenting the Far-Right.
Then there's also all the extra military investment all over Europe that was started with Ukraine as a justification, which makes going back on the justification for all the money already spent and all the pro-military talk a pretty dangerous career move for any politician that did it.
But yeah, as I said at the start, had this happenned in the very beginning of the war, I agree with you that European politicians would have been relieved and just concede more of Ukrainian Sovereignty to Russia, same as they did back when Russia invaded and took Crimea from Ukraine.
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I do not agree with you that European countries have replaced Russian energy with cheap energies. You said some are on their way to become cheaper, which might not be anytime soon.
Germany is heavily reliant on cheap energy. The country has been in recession since the war started. I would not be surprised if it goes back to cheap Russian gas soon.
There were peace talks in March April 2022 that were reportedly close to find an agreement to stop the war but Boris Johnson encouraged Zelenskyy to give up the negotiations and fight instead, promising him lots of support.
Now, let’s say you are right, why aren’t the European countries ramping up support for Ukraine and joining them in the war?
