Europe just succeeded where the US is failing
Europe comes through for Ukraine ... will the US be next? |
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Night-time footage shared by Ukraine's Defense Intelligence shows seaborne drones racing towards a military vessel before exploding on impact. (Ukraine Defense Intelligence (Telegram @DIUkraine)) |
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Europe just succeeded where the US is failing. EU leaders overcame a blocking maneuver by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — Vladimir Putin's friend in Budapest — and agreed on a funding deal worth more than $50 billion for Ukraine. The lifeline won't do much to tip the balance of the war with Russia. But the aid and favorable loans that will spool out over three years are meant to shore up the economy and smooth Ukraine's path toward EU membership. "The EU is taking leadership & responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake," the EU Council's President Charles Michel wrote on X. The package represents a rare ray of light from abroad for President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose magic touch at charming foreigners into bankrolling the resistance against Russia has faded in recent months — as Ukraine fatigue grows among some Western voters. Ukraine still has a huge problem — despite its apparent success in sinking a Russian corvette in Crimea with killer drones on Thursday. It's running out of arms and ammunition and, in some cases, is having to ration their use on the World War I-style trench warfare frontlines into which the war has degenerated. Only a swift restoration of US assistance will alleviate the shortages that are threatening the war effort. But President Joe Biden's $60 billion military aid plan is stuck in Congress, which even by its own dysfunctional standards has lost the capacity to govern. Supporters of Ukraine aid believed that by attaching the package to a hardline immigration bill, it would be more palatable for Republicans to cast what for many would be a hard vote to keep the lifeline alive. But the immigration compromise seems about to collapse, largely because Republican front-runner Donald Trump opposes any effort to fix the crisis at the US border with Mexico so that he can spend the next nine months blaming Biden for it. Trump and his followers in the House also oppose more Ukraine aid, so the possibility is growing that Washington could turn its back on a European democracy that a Russian dictator is seeking to wipe off the map. There probably is a majority for passing the package in the House — but if House Speaker Mike Johnson, who increasingly looks like a Trump puppet — tried to pass it by using some Democratic votes, he might lose his job. No wonder Ukraine's military chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who might also be about to lose his job, wrote in a CNN opinion piece Thursday that Ukraine's fate is increasingly in its own hands and that it must rely on its own technology — like its air and sea drones – for survival. |
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2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks in Columbia, South Carolina, on Thursday. |
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One of the most fateful questions about a potential Trump second term is whether he would try to withdraw the US from NATO. The Republican leader in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, no friend of Trump, fired a rhetorical warning shot across the bows of the ex-President on Thursday by voicing strong support for the alliance. "When the most successful military alliance in history stands together, it represents fully half of the world's military power and of its economic power," McConnell said. "NATO is a formidable force that inspires competence and collaboration among an even wider circle of allies and partners, particularly in the Indo-Pacific." McConnell said that NATO "in many ways is now more united than during the Cold War" but warned that "progress is not a given." He also tackled the idea that America's real national security priority is now confronting China rather than worrying about its historical ties to Europe, arguing that NATO was critical to global American leadership and prestige that could help it fulfill that mission. "It depends on American leadership. And it is quite capable of unravelling. President Xi would like nothing more. There's really no quicker way to make sure we'll be distracted from necessary competition with China than by letting Russian aggression in Europe fester. There's no surer path to dividing America from our closest allies than by shredding our credibility and abandoning Ukraine," McConnell said. "Deterring China means defeating Russian aggression, degrading Russia's military means, weakening Beijing's friendship-without-limits with Moscow, equipping Ukraine to defend itself." |
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Haley attacks Trump's morals, age and wealth |
Nikki Haley now says Donald Trump is too old, too confused, too chaotic and too tantrum-prone to be president — and in a jab likely to especially infuriate her rival, warns he even lacks the money to mount a proper White House run. The former South Carolina governor — the former president's last opponent standing in the GOP nominating race — is turning up the heat as she battles to prevent a career-besmirching shellacking in her home state primary. Haley laid out a stinging character study of the former president in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday. Grouping Trump with President Joe Biden, she said it was "absurd" that the country would be stuck with two 80-year-old candidates. (Biden is 81 and Trump is 77.) She warned that Trump has had some "confused moments" in recent days, and she rebuked the ex-president for a "temper tantrum." And she is seizing on campaign finance filings that show that fundraising committees tsupporting Trump have splashed $50 million on his legal costs – that she says shows he doesn't have enough cash to mount campaign rallies. Her harsh turn against the boss she once served as US ambassador to the United Nations begs the question of why, after months of dancing around Trump's character issues, legal quagmire and assault on democracy, she's finally getting tough. Has Haley found her voice, located a sweet spot where she can target the former president or decided to commit to a new hardline strategy that she thinks might bring down the overwhelming favorite for his third straight nomination? Or is Haley simply joining the long and inglorious tradition of Republican candidates who lash out at Trump only when they've already been effectively crushed by him , including the unhappy Florida trio of former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016 and current Gov. Ron DeSantis at the end of his 2024 misfire? |
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