The editors of the Washington Post take time to criticize our NATO allies:
With friends like these, who needs enemies? “There is a chance that the U.S. will betray Ukraine on territory without clarity on security guarantees,” French President Emmanuel Macron warned Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz during a conference call, according to Der Spiegel. Macron warned of “a big danger” as the Trump administration continues its mission to bring the war to an end and negotiate concessions between Russia and Ukraine.
European leaders should make sure they are without sin before casting such heavy stones. How does Macron explain, for example, France’s ranking as the third largest buyer of Russian energy in Europe? That’s not pre-2022 or pre-2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his illegal invasions of Ukraine. That’s as of August.
This is a Europe-wide problem. Leaders offer up their “unwavering commitment and solidarity with Ukraine.” In theory. In practice, the continent often cannot agree, let alone act, to make the choices and sacrifices required to help its neighbor.
Netherlands is fourth and Belgium is fifth. Both are spending a higher percentage of GDP on oil and gas imported from Russia than France. Furthermore, there’s a certain amount of sophistry involved as well. Netherlands is Germany’s second-largest supplier of refined petroleum products and Netherlands is importing a substantial amount of the petroleum it refines from India which in turn gets it from Russia.
Shorter: Europe is financing Russia’s war against Ukraine.
BTW, the United States isn’t entirely off the hook. We continue to buy oil, gas, and refined petroleum products from India which is importing from Russia so we’re financing Russia, too.
Everyone is patting Germany on the back (especially the Germans) for spending 2% (maybe 2.4%) of its GDP on defense. The flip side of that coin is that they’re spending that much for the first time in 30 years. At that rate of spending when will Germany’s military reach the highest level of preparedness? My back-of-the-envelope guess is “never”. To the best of my knowledge the only European country whose military is at the highest level of preparedness is France. Maybe. That’s the best case scenario.
As I’ve said before I think that the most obvious explanation for our European allies’ relative nonchalance is that they don’t really believe that Russia poses a threat to them and they’ll spend just enough to convince Uncle Sugar to provide their security for them anyway.
