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Credibility is not the only thing Europe is bound to lose if Russia is victorious.
Second moment in recent history when the french end up being the tellers of uncomfortable truths
Don't forget about Charles de Gaulle warning Kennedy against a war in Vietnam
You will find that intervention in this area will be an endless entanglement.
Maybe they should start supporting Ukraine a bit more then, so far they are lacking in comparison to the rest of europe
Citing the same interview, the U.S. magazine Newsweek published an article with Macron saying that Ukraine must reclaim Crimea to achieve real peace
We should have admitted Ukraine into NATO a long time ago.
Reminder that all that bullshit about "territorial disputes" means nothing if the signatories agree to ignore it, or if they decide to live in the real world and acknowledge that an attack on a prospective member is still an attack on the alliance.
That said...
They really did have quite the corruption problem.
Are there elections coming in France?
We are hearing big words from Macron over and over in the last few weeks to support Ukraine - yet France is far behind when in comes to supporting Ukraine financially or with military equipment. And please don't bring that Reddit meme 'France is doing everything secretly and nobody knows about it'. Democratic financing in billions of Euros is public and not a high toilet paper bill like in Hollywood movies from the 80s. There is of course a lot of proportionate support by France within the EU-assistance, as France is a big economy and paying into the EU budget. It's a similar situation with Italy, as they are another big economy within the EU. Both EU 'power houses' are far behind when it comes to direct support for Ukraine.
Macron has been telling us just last week, that the local EU arms industry needs more orders to enable low and competitive prices. He also told us support for Ukraine should only receive subsidies for EU-made products. And last week we saw statistics that the arm industry/exports from the USA and France profited the most from the Russian invasion in Ukraine, as everyone is getting their military up to date and ordering a lot. So everything plays in his hands and France is reaping in big profits and getting support for its huge arms industry. Yet, the country is far behind in supporting Ukraine and Macron keeps calling other countries to support Ukraine more - or here that 'Europe will lose all credibility'.
What is going on here? Elections?
You could've googled that they will be in 2027 instead of writing all that :|
Current government is just stingy. They pushed the pension reform remember? Far right (which is pro-russian) has 30+% of the voters, they don't have the balls to take the fallout once they pay for a news-worthy weapon package after pushing for cost-cuttings in every department
Or I did just web search for 2024 and there are indeed 'European Parliament election in France' as a result.
But you probably understood very well what was saying and why I was writing it. Do you have an explanation for his behaviour?
Are you under the impression that Macron is running for the European Parliament?
His party sure is
There's always elections going on in France
Explanation yes I wrote one
But as you can tell I don't like him very much either
Why would any of this have to do with elections?
Just Macron things, talk a lot before elections (European ones currently) to gather sympathy, then do nothing and be surprised when people call him out for not following up, blame someone or something else for his failures
As if Europe or the „Western“ world in general would still have any credibility with the Gaza genocide.
I truly feel sorry for Ukrainians as the support for the resistance was never about actual solidarity or values.
@bolzolol
As if Europe or the „Western“ world in general would still have any credibility with the Gaza genocide.
I truly feel sorry for Ukrainians as the support for the resistance was never about actual solidarity or values.
Aren't you getting tired of this?
Ah yeah the typical whataboutism accusation. Whataboutism is certainly a problem when trolls try to derail debates.
In this case though the statement that Europe would lose all credibility if Ukraine loses relies on the premise that there’s any credibility left to begin with. I’m challenging that premise.
It’s blatantly obvious that the support for Ukraine was always just about geopolitics, and never about moral or values. Now, the geopolitical interest seems to have shifted, hence no more support for Ukraine. See e.g. Scholz not even giving any reasons for denying support, except that he says so.
I think all of this is terrible and I want Ukraine to be supported, but our dear Western leaders are morally bankrupt so I’m afraid it may not happen.
maybe the first time that i agree with macron
How can ukraine even win? Like there is no venue left other than NATO troops... oh..
They are evenly matched with Russia with regard to quality troops. It doesn't matter how many randos you've in your back country, both countries have a sizeable enough population.
The thing that matters is how many cohesive units can you train and get to the frontlines. That is around 50k troops per half a year. If Russia loses more than that, it will start to have problems replacing troops, like it had when all those videos came out with guys armed with Mosins, or even unarmed, trying to fill in units that sustained hard losses. OTOH Russia is suffering casualties of around 3:1, which it absolutely cannot sustain. If it keeps "winning" as it did in Avdiivka, by the way they get a third of the way to Kyiv, there is no Russian army.
Even with artillery, while they are great at shell production, their quality of guns have declined sharply. They went from 80% self-propelled to 80% towed since the start of the war, and a significant portion of that is WWII D-10s with an effective range of 10 km. Some FPV drones can do more than that.
Point is, Ukraine can totally win if the West keeps up its current level of support. The question is whether it will do that, especially with the US elections that are coming up.
Also to be kept in mind is what winning is for Ukraine.
That is for Ukraine to decide, but it is decidedly not conquering Russia.
The point being, Ukraine doesn't need to be supplied to the level of razing Moscow and St. Petersburg to the ground; simply enough to defend their borders/land, push back Russian troops, and causing some long range strategic damage behind Russian borders.
*has lost
It feels like the cited statement actually lacks causality. If Ukraine falls, nobody will remain at peace, that's true. But how does that change the credibility of Europe except for showing that maybe help was not large enough (even that might be a wrong assumption) is what I fail to see.
If anything, the credibility of Europe could be questioned over the efficiency of sanctions and over how those sanctions actually affect Putin's war
Given that the purpose of the EU was to dramatically reduce the conflicts that plagued Europe for thousands of years, culminating in WWII, through ever greater cooperation, the credibility of the project may come into question if Europe is unable to cooperate enough to see off Russian aggression in neighbouring terrain.
Relative to many of the issues which the EU & closely aligned neighbours must agree upon if they are to act, responses to a military threat ought to be easier to arrive at, and yet here we are.