{"id":129206,"date":"2024-05-20T12:17:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T16:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=129206"},"modified":"2024-05-20T17:34:13","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T21:34:13","slug":"bloomberg-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=129206","title":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) Niall Ferguson–Biden Can\u2019t Pay His Way Out of Fighting Cold War II"},"content":{"rendered":"

The problem of being a poor paymaster is equally evident in the case of Ukraine. For reasons that future historians will struggle to understand, the US suspended its aid to Ukraine in late 2023. Europeans did not fill the gap, with the result that Ukraine\u2019s military capacity was diminished and Russia\u2019s hopes of victory revived. According to the latest\u00a0Ukraine Support Tracker<\/a>\u00a0published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, between the beginning of the war and this March, the European Union plus its individual members together allocated a total of \u20ac89.9 billion in military, humanitarian and financial aid to Ukraine. The US pledged less, \u20ac67 billion.<\/p>\n

The result is that Kyiv listens much less to Washington than it did in 2022 and 2023 \u2014 hence the recent spate of deep drone strikes aimed at Russia\u2019s energy infrastructure, operations that cannot possibly have been\u00a0approved by Team Biden<\/a>, which it seems will (to quote John F. Kennedy) \u201cpay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship \u2026 to assure the survival and success of liberty\u201d \u2014 except for higher gasoline prices in an election year.<\/p>\n

This has been a horrible failure of American policy. Turning off aid to Ukraine has unquestionably encouraged Putin to believe that victory can be achieved in a relatively short time frame. Thanks to\u00a0Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko<\/a>, we know now that, when their invasion was going badly in early 2022, the Russians were ready to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine. The compromise would have ruled out North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership for Kyiv but provided it with multilateral security guarantees to protect its neutrality, and paved the way to EU membership.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Biden administration wants other countries to do its fighting in Cold War II, but that approach is economically crippling and rarely achieves victory https:\/\/t.co\/ogeTcnGAkk<\/a> via @opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

— Robert Burgess (@BobOnMarkets) May 20, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n