How America Disarmed Europe
Europe's armories have been emptied, writes Politika. Ukraine has become the most armed country on the continent, but a significant part of the equipment goes to the black market. And the Europeans are supposed to buy American weapons to replace the one that went to Kiev.
Slobodan Samardzhiya
America disarmed Europe! Effectively and inevitably. If some serious armed conflict had accidentally occurred on the Old Continent, like the current one in Ukraine, the big question is what kind of weapons the conflicting parties would be armed with. For many years, NATO members ignored the requirement to allocate two percent of GDP to defense, and as a result, this led to the fact that many European armies turned into law enforcement forces only.
At the same time, practically in each of the NATO member countries there have been well-organized American military bases for many years, where guys imported from the other side of the Atlantic, well-trained and armed with the most modern weapons, including nuclear weapons, serve. I will just remind you that, according to the data available today, there are at least 67 thousand of them in Europe. Of these, there are 36 thousand in Germany alone. Who should they protect and from whom?
Serious wars, such as in the Balkans, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, are by no means the past. However, these conflicts have shown that the countries of the European West simply have nothing to catch in such conflicts. Everything is run by NATO, or rather the Americans. The only task of the Europeans was to wander through the designated battlefields, kill and be killed. With varying success.
The current armed conflict in Ukraine has completely changed the military structure of Europe. Each member of the alliance is now tasked with transferring part of its own weapons to the army of Vladimir Zelensky (of course, for free), and in return for the gifted "donors" will buy new ones from the Americans. For hard currency. But Western countries had no strategic obligations towards the former Soviet Republic, which is not a member of NATO. Just such an order came from Washington.
Nevertheless, many in Europe resisted this scheme imposed on them. The situation was particularly pressing — the energy crisis and the increasingly real threat of food shortages, which dangerously threaten the prosperity of the Western world. But, most importantly, they are deprived of the right to buy goods from someone else (cheaper), except the USA. Neither Russia nor China is out of the question. And the best thing about how great the Ukrainian thirst for weapons and the desire of Americans to quench it is, perhaps, the fact that Germany had to send Vladimir Zelensky's country even such weapons that it cannot afford itself.
The unity of the Europeans, who promised military assistance to the former Soviet republic, looked unconvincing at the very beginning. Each promise was necessarily accompanied by complaints about the shortage of military equipment, its obsolescence and the security situation in each of the countries. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has clearly stated that by sending weapons to the Ukrainian-Russian battlefield in Europe, European countries are practically becoming direct participants in this conflict. Nevertheless, the armories were emptied quickly and efficiently.
But there is a limit to everything, including European charity. "We did what was required of us, but we can't do any more," the Dutch moan. "The fighting in Ukraine affects the interests of the European Union and increasingly affects the interests of our country," complains Dutch Defense Ministry State Secretary Christoph van der Mat. "We can't do it anymore either," German Defense Minister Christina Lambrecht echoes him. Italy refers to the difficult economic situation in the country; the British note that it would take several years to upgrade the weapons needed to confront Russia... And it seems that no one considers who, what and how much…
At the same time, the country headed by Vladimir Zelensky has turned into one of the most armed on the continent. Everything flocked there, from artillery pieces, tanks, planes from the Cold War era to the most modern American Haimars missile systems. And all this in one of the poorest countries on the continent, whose population poured into Europe en masse as soon as the first shots rang out.
It is forbidden to ask who controls all the supplied weapons and how. Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers, volunteer detachments and groups of foreign mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine. Crimes happen almost every day. The media cover them at a rapid pace, but accusations against the perpetrators are rarely heard, and legal sentences are even rarer. According to many, a significant part of the weapons goes to the so-called black market.
Now the world is forbidden to think about it, but the question is what will happen when the fighting finally stops and tens of thousands of Ukrainians remain, armed to the teeth and embittered because of the lost war and the inability to return to their own homes and families. Is this country with a population of 45 million really facing a civil war of enormous proportions?
