The US saves a lot of money on military spending because our greatest rivals would have to go through our allies and partners to seriously get to us. Without those allies and partners, those rivals could more easily reach out and touch the US, which would require greater military spending.
“Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has long sought close ties to the Trump administration in its quest for powerful international allies and an end to its political isolation at home.
But as public sentiment in Germany increasingly turns against U.S. President Donald Trump and his foreign interventionism — in particular his talk of taking control of Greenland and his seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — AfD leaders are recalibrating, putting distance between their party and a U.S. president they previously embraced.
“He has violated a fundamental election promise, namely not to interfere in other countries, and he has to explain that to his own voters,” Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s national leaders, said earlier this week.”
The French and Germans have turned into little bitches.
“In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support
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The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy.
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Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S.
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“In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical.
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The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war.”
In Hitler’s Germany, many Christians sought out Hitler and offered their support as Christians. Other Christians stood by while Hitler took over and did and said nothing, sometimes making excuses for Hitler.
“Vladimir Putin’s desire to grab Ukraine’s key defensive lines echoes how Adolf Hitler secured Czechoslovakia’s fortifications.
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“Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure in and around these cities,” the institute said.
If that happens, Russia would move its frontline roughly 80 kilometers further west, while Ukraine would be forced to build new defenses on flat and open terrain in neighboring Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk — far harder to hold than the fortified cities it controls now.
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In September 1938, Adolf Hitler argued that handing over the ethnic-German majority Sudetenland region to the Reich would satisfy his ambitions and end the threat of war in Europe. France and Britain agreed, and browbeat Prague into accepting. Hitler — whose word was as reliable as Putin’s — said he had no further territorial ambitions.”
Historically, business leaders were key to strengthening facism. Companies focus more on how they can use a leader to make money, rather than on what that leader and their cooperation is doing to democracy, society, and people.
“If Washington truly abandons its role as the world’s police officer, Europe would struggle to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army, at least in that time frame. Many European countries, especially Germany, have neglected their own military in recent decades. While Russia has converted everything to a war economy, parts of Europe have only just woken up from the dream of a peaceful world. Military experts proclaim that it will take more than four years to manufacture an arsenal of conventional weapons of the size needed to counter a Russian invasion. While most observers consider a Russian attack on Germany unlikely, even this is not an impossible scenario.
That’s why, to deter Russia, Germany and Europe need their own nuclear shield.”
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“relying solely on France seems risky especially with French nationalist Marine Le Pen, a known Russia sympathizer, or another figure from her nationalist party potentially taking over the Élysée Palace in the near future. A broader European solution also involving Britain’s nuclear capabilities — and possibly Poland as a front-line state — would be far more prudent.”
“Trump has been obsessed with preventing a nuclear holocaust since he was a bumptious boy builder back in the 1980s. Back then Trump reportedly proposed, with typical grandiosity, that if President Ronald Reagan appointed him “plenipotentiary ambassador” he would end the Cold War “within one hour.””
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“the nations considering going nuclear are longtime U.S. allies, from Germany to South Korea, Japan to Saudi Arabia. Faced with the threat of U.S. withdrawal from its defense commitments, more and more countries are now openly talking about embracing the bomb — and just as worrisome, actually deploying nukes if hostilities break out.”