Quote (Black XistenZ @ 18 Mar 2022 16:08)
Obama refused to send javelins and similar arms to Ukraine. Trump approved these weapons sales and they were indeed shipped to Ukraine early in his presidency. This should not be confused with another round of military aid that he later withheld for selfish political reasons in 2019.
Ukraine proves that Trump was right about Western Europe needing to take military threats more serious and to become more proactive in ensuring their ability for self-defense instead of leaning too heavily on NATO (read: the US military) for its protection.
holy mother of shill, if that isn't the most generous possible spin you could have come up with. amazing you didn't break your spine twisting yourself like that. oh right, you don't have one.
in reality, he never said anything remotely along those lines. he just looked at NATO spending like he looked at trade balances: with the ignorance expected from a person clearly out of their depth, and the selfish inclination expected from a pathological narcissist. he saw that the US (first and foremost because it's in the interest of their own military industrial complex) spends a shitload of money, and did what his donors demanded from him: tell the pesky europeans to also spend even more on american arms. unsurprisingly, that's literally what he did, and again, he wasn't particularly subtle about it.
spinning this as some kind of political insight or even foresight is hilarious, especially against the background of trump repeatedly snubbing his western allies, questioning NATO, and again, making some key decisions that predictably weakened ukraine against russian aggression (funny how you keep ignoring trump's unilateral withdrawal from the open skies treaty, something the ukrainians begged him not to do).
regarding the knee-jerk reactions to russia's war (especially the german one, about as dumb, emotion-driven, and short-sighted as the premature phasing out of nuclear power - i wish we had a competent government one day...), i maintain that it's bullshit and largely useless. the aid to ukraine is easily within our current budgets, i see no reason to start yet another arms race - especially since multiple nations / military blocks already have the capacity to destroy this little planet of ours many times over.