Now, maybe Putin would have gone into Ukraine regardless. Maybe not. Biden sure didn’t help stop the invasion in the least, and hasn’t helped since, so
The War Is Reshaping How Europe Spends
Nicolae Ciuca spent a lifetime on the battlefield before being voted in as prime minister of Romania four months ago. Yet even he did not imagine the need to spend millions of dollars for emergency production of iodine pills to help block radiation poisoning in case of a nuclear blast, or to raise military spending 25% in a single year.
“We never thought we’d need to go back to the Cold War and consider potassium iodine again,” Ciuca, a retired general, said through a translator at Victoria Palace, the government’s headquarters in Bucharest. “We never expected this kind of war in the 21st century.”
Across the European Union and Britain, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reshaping spending priorities and forcing governments to prepare for threats thought to have been long buried — from a flood of European refugees to the possible use of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons by a Russian leader who may feel backed into a corner.
That whole off the cuff regime change think sure helped, right?
The result is a sudden reshuffling of budgets as military spending, essentials like agriculture and energy, and humanitarian assistance are shoved to the front of the line, with other pressing needs like education and social services likely to be downgraded.
The most significant shift is in military spending. Germany’s turnabout is the most dramatic, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s promise to raise spending above 2% of the country’s economic output, a level not reached in more than three decades. The pledge included an immediate injection of 100 billion euros ($113 billion) into the country’s notoriously threadbare armed forces. As Scholz put it in his speech last month, “We need planes that fly, ships that sail and soldiers who are optimally equipped.”
It’s a pretty long NY Times piece, showing the problems going on in Europe. Refugees, high energy prices, food stocks, you name it, spending priorities are all change.
The pledge includes countries that have fallen below NATO’s goal to spend a minimum of 2% of national output as well as countries that have exceeded the threshold. (The 27 members of the EU and the 30 NATO members overlap but are not identical.)
Hey, I remember when all the Democrats and pundits, including Europeans, give someone a lot of guff over demanding European NATO members pay more for their own defense. Who was that again?
So, Vladimir Putin’s invasion is pushing the Europeans to start doing what President Trump said they should be doing?
An interesting side effect of Biden is that the major players of Russia’s nuclear team were rushed to nuclear-hardened bunkers that control Russia’s nuclear forces. Of course, Russia would know that the USA and its allies would see this as they keep tabs on the bunkers which are used to hopscotch their nuclear forces around.
Since Putin has not been seen for several days it is assumed he has been escorted to one of these bunkers and later joined by the command and control of his nuclear forces team. The unfortunate thing about this is letting Joe Biden even speak at all off the cuff. I think Putin understands that Biden is incoherent, but one of the things about dementia is that your filters disappear and as a result, you will say what you know or believe to be true.
In this case, Mr. Joe claims that Putin should not be allowed to stay in office. A US senator, Republican, by the way, said Putin should be assassinated. How would the US respond if China or Russia was saying these same things about Biden? Say a few days after the November election?
The USA is playing with fire by even letting Biden speak off the cuff or answer reporters’ questions. I am not saying Biden should not make prepared statements or hold meetings in private where his advisers can make clarifications to other leaders from the quite obviously demented president. But private meetings are one thing, speaking after a NATO gathering saying Putin should be removed from his country is something beyond the pale in a war in which NATO and the USA have no active part at the moment.