The U.S. economy is $30 trillion. Totality of EU is $20 trillion. That makes the baseline 60-40 if the agreement is GDP based, which is what the whole goal-setting has been about on NATO members “paying their fair share”. Obviously we are under no obligation to spend or give aid in Ukraine, but neither is any other European country. Yet, the common interest is all the same so the same obligation split is acceptable imo. Your 80-20 I take it is arbitrary. Of course during a war countries immediately on the border with Russia or Ukraine might rationally want to go well beyond whatever is deemed a minimum baseline.
Trump not as stupid as his detractors think … Russia launches massive attacks; Trump backtracks from suggestion Ukraine should target Moscow
Point being that as Ukraine was not part of NATO, getting NATO to increase spending was not a deterrence to Russia invading Ukraine. It’s a separate, albeit adjacent issue. It also isn’t necessarily rational to do “war time” spending during “peace time”. That is not to excuse the countries that were slow rolling or failing to meet those agreed upon %GDP defense spending goals - but presumably some countries are easily blowing past those numbers now in the short term because they are pouring money in Ukraine aid. This isn’t some paradoxical situation, if the Russians are expelled the Europeans will probably come back down to more normal defense spending rates. If Russia were to capture Ukraine it would likely require many countries to re-harden and militarize borders which would require perpetually increased defense spending.
Have to disagree with some of that. One way or another, Russia invaded Ukraine on account of a failure to deter Russia. Deterrence comes down to two things: belief that the enemy has the ability to stop you, and belief that the enemy has the will to stop you. Russia assessed the situation after August 2021 and concluded that the U.S. might have the ability to intervene but clearly lacked the will. Further, the combined nations of Europe might have the will but clearly lacked the ability. I would argue that lack of European ability was a function of decades of ignoring its collective armed forces and lazily just expecting (usually correctly) that the U.S. would always bail them out. That might have been an understandable attitude in the early 2000s, but I just can't explain why Europe did not rearm after the Russian aggressions against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. And Russia, too, might have had some difficulty explaining it, but Russia certainly took advantage of it.
Trump is simply brilliant! Instead of engaging Russia directly, he's proposing a plan whereby we--along with Europe--arm Ukraine, and they fight Russia! Bloody brilliant!
Because of that itty bitty little thangy you neglected to factor in for: NATO. Whatever Russia did east of NATO, was mostly noise. As long as the invisible wall of NATO remains intact, Europe was and remains, comfortably behind the skirt of Lady Liberty. (Do they really fear very scary Russia's keystone cop rust bucket antiquated military??? (NM that other itty bitty lil' no big deal thingy, known as MAD)) ....seems something else is in play..... Has "MAD" been repealed or something???
Well I’m not sure the conclusion that NATO countries couldn’t capably defend against Russia is proving out, considering Russia’s inability to dispatch Ukraine. I’m not the military expert you are, but it seems the biggest failure was overestimation of Russian forces. If Ukraine had more quickly been brought into NATO/EU and out of the Russian sphere of corruption without fear of Russian “response”, that may have been a much stronger deterrent for Ukraine. With hindsight that’s obvious, but the concern was “triggering WW3”. The main calculation Russia made was that Ukraine was “outside the club” - since invading them did not trigger article 5. That’s true regardless of whether NATO members are paying 2% or 3% GDP or {insert % here} towards their own defense. Russia correctly calculated that lack of an on the ground WW3 intervention to defend Ukraine, but I think it’s similarly obvious they overestimated the ability of their own forces to quickly topple Ukraine. None of this is a discussion if Russia succeeded early. We are talking about it because they are bogged down.
That conclusion is most certainly not proving out, a fact for which most of us here are grateful. But that is outside of my point. I was discussing Russia's pre-war assumptions, why deterrence failed, and how the European partners' consistent failure to contribute to the collective defense impacted these. Glad as I am to watch Russia fumble toward one million or more casualties and economic ruin, given the choice, most of us (Ukraine especially) would have preferred for the war to have never happened at all because Russia had legitimate concerns about what NATO would have done in response.
I’ll say it again, I have no problem with Trump holding them accountable for meeting their agreed upon thresholds. I can’t say whether I would have held them accountable in his shoes, but I’d like to think I would have since it’s a good idea. Regardless, I’m not sure what the action of others has to do with me anyway. Trump wasn’t demonized for asking them to meet their commitments. He was criticized for the manner in which he did so including saying he would allow, and even encourage, Putin to do whatever the hell Putin wanted to do to NATO members that didn’t meet the thresholds. Further, Trump was criticized for not understanding how the contribution agreement worked (no NATO member owed the US money). Regardless of how much other members contributed it didn’t lessen our obligations nor result in a credit owed.
The U.S. absolutely has the resources to prevent Russia from achieving its military aims. In fact, we've been doing just that, and we've been doing it on the cheap (maybe too cheap). We've sent a fraction of the weapons that we could have sent. Abrams tanks? We've sent 31 out of 10,000 in our warehouses, or 0.31%. We've sent two out of about 67 Patriot missile systems, or 3%. We've sent 0 out of 838 F-16 planes, or 0.0%. It doesn't make you a Russophile, it makes you ignorant of facts. And, no, it is not similar to a flood in the western Carolinas. A flood is a force of nature, and Russia is weak country run by barbarians, trying to bully a smaller neighbor. Russia has lost essentially every significant war its ever been in, with the exception of one where they were supplied extensively by the United States.
The U.S. is considering sending Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a potential range of 1,000-1500 miles, to Ukraine. Moscow is only 470 miles from Kiev. About 75-80% of Russia's population lives west of the Ural Mountains and could be within range of the missiles. It sure would be nice to see Ukraine blowing up Russian weapons factories further away from the border. https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/15...hat-will-kyiv-receive-and-who-will-pay-for-it
