It never fails – well, never except when Donald Trump was President.
When money is needed to protect/defend a country that is far more significant to Europe than it is to the United States, Europe, as an entity, is happy to stand by and allow Uncle Sap to pay the lion’s share.
The war in The Ukraine is no exception.
From Christopher Wolf’s article for U.S. News:
Since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, support for Ukraine has poured in from across the world.
As many took to social media to make posts in support of Ukraine at the onset of the invasion, governments got to work figuring out how to send assistance. That aid has reached a staggering 144 billion euros as of Jan. 15, or about $150 billion, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The group is trying to keep up with all of the commitments in its Ukraine Support Tracker, which keeps tabs on government-to-government transfers of military, financial and humanitarian aid into Ukraine.
The majority of that support has come from the United States, whose aid is valued at 73.2 billion euros, or around $77 billion. Much of that is the U.S. flexing its military might, providing weapons and equipment valued at 44.3 billion euros ($47 billion) – nine times as much as the United Kingdom, the next highest military aid contributor, has sent.
Meanwhile, European institutions and countries have committed a combined 54.9 billion euros in aid to Ukraine, with Germany providing the highest amount.
Tell me: if Russia takes over The Ukraine – a country in Eastern Europe – which other countries does it threaten the most? Where are they located? On which side of the Atlantic Ocean? And, thinking about your answer, who should be paying the most to keep this from happening?
When Donald Trump became President he noted that the United States, which was committed to protecting European countries through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was paying almost 3/4 of the organization’s budget. That, of the then-28 nations of NATO, 23 were in arrears.
What did Trump do? He announced that we were leaving NATO because we were being played for suckers.
And all of a sudden, magically, billions and billions of Euros were being rushed in from those countries.
If we had a functioning President today, one with any sense of right and wrong, he would be doing the same regarding The Ukraine. He would note that we are being taken for a ride. He might even note that we are paying dramatically more to protect The Ukraine’s border than we are to protect our own border from our “friend”, Mexico – that nice country that allows millions of illegals to come in….as long as they keep going until they wind up in the USA.
But we don’t have a functioning President. And even if we did, it is an excellent bet he wouldn’t be doing a thing about this. Joe Biden is a blithering, cognitively challenged joke. In the words of Barack Obama – at least as it has been reported for years, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up”.
So Uncle Sam has become Uncle Sap again. And Uncle Sap we will remain for the foreseeable future.
