Europe Shooting Itself in the Foot (Again and Again)
The Importance of US Aid to Ukraine
Another (relatively) quiet 24 hours, so far as I can make out, with the important exception that credible US and Ukrainian sources are saying that the flow of weapons from the US to Ukraine has come to a halt.
If this is indeed the case then of course the pressure is on for European leaders to fulful their promises of continuing aid, and to increase the percentage of their GDPs that they commit to NATO. I notice that Lithuania is particularly keen on this but then Lithuania is a small country and the total amount of the resulting increase in payments to NATO is going to be considerably less than for most other European countries.
So far as I know there has been no move by the US, yet, to reduce the 68% of NATO costs that it currently sustains although I presume that a great deal of this money returns to the US in the form of payments to US arms manufacturers and other components of the military-industrial complex (or its broader MICIMATT formulation). I do not know for sure whether the money that the US gives to NATO covers for all the aid it has been providing over the past three years. I doubt it.
A CNN investigation ((CNN) published in March 2024, has shown that of all military aid that had been sent to Ukraine to that point of the war, the US had provided 41% of it. Did that money go direct to Ukraine? Or is it simply that weapons sent to Ukraine from the US have been valued at 41% of total aid. A BBC report from February 17 this year (BBC) says that when all types of aid are included - military, humanitarian and other financial aid - data shows the US has spent about $120bn. That is 43% of total support to Ukraine since the start of 2022. Trump’s recent figure of $330 billion could possiby be jusfied if one stretches the counting period back to the real start of the conflict in 2014 or even earlier. US support far outstrips that of any single NATO member:
We can note that the next biggest spender after the US, although a very long way behind, is Germany which is today suffering a prolonged recession, has deindustrialized, and is paying far higher prices for energy than it did before 2022 and before Chancellor Scholz stood sheepishly beside Biden when Biden told the world he would destroy Nord Stream - a property jointly owned by Germany and Russia for the transport of cheap Russian oil and gas to German industry and households.
Germany has just told its European colleagues that it wants no part of the proposals for a peace-keeping force (numbers varying from 30,000 to 50,000) promoted by UK’s Starmer and French Macron even though they both acknowledge that it will be pointless without US guarantees to come to the rescue when British and French soldiers are slaughtered on Ukrainian battlefields.
The enthusiasm for increasing military aid to Ukraine that is demonstrated by those European countries most committed to the war cannot in itself explain (1) why they think that trying to make good any reduction in US aid will help them win the conflict against Ukraine given that Russia, despite the enormous aid provided up until now by the US is by all counts that I take seriously, winning the war and is likely to continue to make advances westwards at least to the Dnieper; (2) why they are so stubbornly supportive of a narrative for how the war began that gets weaker and less convincing by the day; (3) where is the evidence that supports regular European claims that Russia has the faintest interest in conquering further territory in Europe; (4) why it is so abhorrent to European leaders that in a future multipolar world European countries would have to goive about the same kind of attention to what are Russian security interests as they today give to US security interests.
Starlink
Interesting rumors that Musk may disconnect Starlink from the Ukrainian military. That could bring the war to an end regardless of continuing US and European weapons in Ukraine.
I note an interesting discussion on the Substack column Institutional War Theory on the problems of estimating casuaties.
“Based on the current figures from Mediazona and UALosses, we have a casualty exchange ratio of 1:1.7 in Russia’s favor given that have definitely been 75,631 Russian soldiers killed in action and there have probably been 127,290 Ukrainian soldiers killed in action. For all we know, the Russian MIA could be equally substantial, reducing this figure back to 1:1, but this is unlikely for the reasoned stated above. My conclusion is the real casualty exchange ratio is somewhere between 1:1 and 1:1.5 in Russia’s favor.”
This does confirm the view of most analysts that I follow and who are generally skeptical of the mainstream western narrative that Ukrainian losses are significantly higher than Russian. But the estimate for Ukrainian losses appears so much lower than those I have encountered elsewhere, including, of course, the Russian Ministry of Defense, that I am not persuaded by them, although I agree that most available estimates at this point deserve our skepticism - some more than others.
The Krasnador Folly
At his press conference on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin addressed a question concerning a Ukrainian drone attack on an oil station in the Krasnador territory (the north Caucasian area of Southern Russia) which I found very interesting.
I found it interesting because (1) Putin argues that the attack had to have been directed by satellite data from enemy sources (i.e. the West); (2) that Western energy interests, including several US oil companies, had a considerable ownership interest in both the facility and the oil; (3) that the impact, for what is was worth (not considerable) would be to push up energy prices on global markets and increase Russian revenues from energy sales; (4) the attack coincides with a new package of European sanctions that will impact the availability of western-manufactured parts that are needed to repair the damaged facility: in other words, Europe is making it more difficult for western energy companies to repair a facility and to control otherwise inflationary pressure from rising energy prices that impact the west, first and foremost; (5) we should also note that Europe’s stubborn persistence in the application of sanctions not ony hurts Europe probably more than it hurts Russia but flies in the face of evidence both that western sanctions have actually led to an improvement of the Russian economy and that President Trump is giving indications of his desire to urgently remove US sanctions on Russia in order to progress US-Russian business ties.
Question: Drones have attacked an oil station in the Krasnodar Territory. Does this event reflect Zelensky’s reaction to the improving relations between Russia and the United States and the ongoing process?
Vladimir Putin: I cannot say for certain, and it is difficult for me to assess what has happened, but we must try to explain it. Many questions arise, and it is very difficult to answer them at this time.
First, what I say may seem unexpected: such attacks are impossible without space reconnaissance. Ukraine receives highly accurate reconnaissance data on specific targets from its Western allies. I do not know who provided the information and satellite images of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium facilities, but I can confidently say that the Ukrainian Armed Forces cannot achieve this independently; they lack the necessary satellite capabilities. This is the first point.
Second, this facility did not have any Russian air defence systems, and none are currently deployed there. This is understandable: we believed this facility would not be attacked because, technically, it is not a Russian facility; it is part of the international energy infrastructure. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium is owned by US companies, I believe it is Chevron, European companies, including ENI, and Russian companies, such as LUKOIL.
We hardly get any money from this transit – figuratively speaking, just a few pennies. It holds no economic significance for us. We simply provide a service to our Kazakhstani friends and partners operating in Kazakhstan. The oil being extracted falls under a production sharing agreement, which essentially means that it belongs to the companies extracting it, primarily American and European firms. While not a critical volume, it is still a notable quantity on global markets.
Naturally, the attack on such a facility – carried out using six drones – has already had, and will continue to have, an impact on global energy markets. The main reason for this is that, unfortunately, restoring the facility quickly is impossible because it primarily relies on Western equipment, which was damaged in the attack.
Incidentally, I was just informed that Europeans countries have extended their sanctions against Russia, specifically prohibiting the supply of Western oil and gas production equipment to us. What does this mean? It means that just two days after the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out the attack, European leaders announced that repairing this facility would be impossible – because it mostly features European-made equipment, including components manufactured by the Germany company Siemens. Even if the necessary equipment were delivered tomorrow or the day after, repairs would still take 45 to 60 days. But now, the equipment will not be supplied at all.
Strictly speaking, this looks like coordinated action. But I do not want to believe that. I think this is just a coincidence. The Europeans are simply following their own path without paying attention to what is happening. However, when you put the pieces together, it does look coordinated.
Why would they do this? It is unclear. These actions only contribute to persistently high energy prices on global markets – something energy consumers, including European companies, are certainly not interested in.
By the way, the current US administration has repeatedly stated its goal of stabilising or even lowering energy prices. But such actions clearly work against the very objectives they claim to pursue.
End of the Bromance
As things stand on this Friday, February 21st, it is clear to me that relations between the US and Ukraine are now thoroughly broken. Zelenskiy continues to behave as though what he really wants is a continuation of the war. The failed talks between Kellogg and Zelenskiy this week merely confirm this, but the main proof is in the angry exchanges of insults during the week between Trump and Zelenskiy.
As I argued in my post yesterday, the signs at the moment are that Zelenskiy and Europe together want to put a spoke in the wheels of progress towards normalization of relations between Russia and the US; that they want to entrap the US in Europe even though it is obvious that Trump wants to get out of the Ukraine conflict and out of Europe - both because of his desire to concentrate on the crisis of the US losing out in the competition with China, and also, surely, because he underststands better than anyone that the US is lurching at speed towards a national debt of $150 trillion by 2050. Wars do not help reduce national debt, no matter how much of Ukraine’s rare mineral wealth Trump can persuade Zelenskiy to give up in reparations for US aid to Ukraine. (By the way, estimates of this wealth vary very greatly and there is a lot of skepticism both about how easy it would be to work around the current ownership stakes in this wealth, but also it would be to actually mine the stuff).
Zelenskiy cannot hold out in the war. He has to go: whether quietly, following elections, or by his simply escaping from Ukraine with his head covered in a balaclava, or as the result of violence from internal putsch or western intelligence assassination.
He is loser number 1.
Europe cannot win the war. Its stubborn persistence with the war is gravely impoverishing Europe and has crippled it as a meaningful competitor with the US, let alone China.
Europe is loser number 2.
The US faces a cripping national debt that it cannot hope to resolve however hard DOGE may try and however many workers it flings to the rubbish heap (I know, a lot of us are fed up with government bureaucracy and government waste but my personal view is that cruelty is best avoided).
The US military, wasteful though it is, is already significantly attrited and will not catch up with the pace of expansion of Russian and Chinese military and weaponry, not least because these things are far cheaper for Russia and China than they are for the US, and it cannot keep pace economically against the growing collective expansion of the BRICS and what this entails for the future of the dollar.
The US is loser number 3.
This may help explain some of the more extreme statements that Trump has been making about Panama, Greenland, Canada and Mexico. Of these four, I consider the biggest threat to both the US and Mexico is Trump’s reckless thrust at Mexico by designating the cartels as terrorist organizations.
I dont like the cartels, and I think they are terrorist, but the point of the formal designation is that it will become the pretext for an invasion of Mexico and that, in turn, may be the beginning of serious conflict between the US and Mexico that could blight Trump’s otherwise saner attempts to reconfigure the global order into some model of multipolarity (albeit one that is based on an all-or-nothing competition between great powers rather than one that binds the globe together in confrontation with threats to the species from nuclear weapons and climate change.
It does begin to seem as though Trump is ready to rethink the nuclear threat in a manner that could be revolutionary. On climate change, absolutely no hope.