Summary
European officials are preparing a multibillion-dollar defense package to bolster regional security and support Ukraine, announced by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the Munich Security Conference.
The package, potentially valued up to 700 billion euros, will fund military training, arms deliveries, and security guarantees amid concerns over Russian aggression and diminishing U.S. contributions to NATO.
The move follows calls for Europe to boost its own defense spending while U.S.-Russian talks, which exclude Ukraine and Europe, on ending the Ukraine conflict continue.
Remember how it took like two days to overturn 70 years of precedence of “no weapons delivery into crisis regions”? Without us actually having a debate about it because there was an overwhelming majority for it from the get-go? Those 5000 helmets were part of the initial “find what we have and what we can legally send” order, which then arrived in Ukraine in the same shipment as the first actual weapons.
The, say, tank situation is ambiguous, I don’t have enough insider information to actually make a judgement. Either Germany said “only if the US says it’s ok” or Germany said “let’s put some political pressure on the US to get into the game, to commit”. Ultimately, Germany shipped everything but Taurus. I think we should – and much of the parliament agrees. Majority, actually, but not the governing majority so as is tradition parties voted against their own actual position. I guess that it’s being held back so something is being held back so that certain peacenik SPD parliamentarians can be assuaged.
FDP is probably out and with that ideological (instead of merely populist) sentiment against spending money, Black-Green looks quite likely and in case anyone is confused yes the Greens are hawkish AF about this one. The discussions around Yugoslavia turned them from singing kumba ya into liberal interventionists and I haven’t heard “olive-green” used as an insult in quite a while.
Oh, thanks. Yeah, now I remember making that jump, too, although it took me more than two days. Wild times.
Hofreiter (Greens) put it quite well … something like … not our ideals have changed, but the world has changed, brutally so.
I think you did well in dialing back my comment and adding more context, although I still think there was truth in it.
Now that’s the kind of Greens I like to see.
Just curious, how can a right wing-green coalition be viable? Don’t they clash on many major issues? Or to they succeed at walking the narrow tightrope of compromise?
The Greens in Baden-Württemberg are to the right of the CDU in Schleswig-Holstein. The Greens aren’t a left-wing party as such, they’re liberals. Not neolibs but soclibs but liberals nontheless, and the CDU is perfectly capable of getting into coalitions with the SPD which is to the left of that. Well, at least on paper.