As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags on, Pres. Joe Biden has found a new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons they need to defend their country.

As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.

It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.

Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.

All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
    2·
    11 months ago

    Yeah definitely there is PR push. All the mainstream articles are written in a way that maximizes these viewpoints. I don’t know where exactly it comes from but besides military industrial complex there is still oil and extraction of resources and general empire stuff there are a lot of business interest tied to maintaining hegemony.

    For Ukraine specifically I also speculate that it’s because Ukraine is a breadbasket. With climate change, food prices are going to become unstable so having control of that region is not just good business, for the empire it’s an important strategic goal. West-Ukraine will mostly be owned by EU and US because of the incredible debt.

    The other goal here is that we’ll see like a billion climate refugees in a few decades which will lead to wars. And Russia has tons of borders that could be corridors. So it’s good to destabilize and isolate Russia in advance of these climate wars so that the worst chaos isn’t happening in Europe. Similar with China. They’d want to encircle their geopolitical rivals so they don’t have that much room to maneuver.

    This is all speculation and I’m really not sure if “they” think this strategically. But Nato baiting Ukraine was imho a definite trap to “force” Russia into this conflict. Fuck Stoltenberg for example. Not that I don’t blame Russia!

    • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
      12·
      11 months ago

      Interesting, I would guess that you are probably right, but I have been at an utter loss as to what happened to these people that they went from reasonable to completely unreasonable.

      I dont even try to share the part where NATO/US were the main pressure at to why this war is happening, I think it would make their heads explode. I just try to point out how with the median (or maybe mean) age of the Ukrainian troops is 43, the war is going to be over soon.

      • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
        41·
        11 months ago

        @[email protected], I’m an admin on lemmy.ml, and we’re getting complaints of you trolling this post. After dozens of comments, maybe you’ve had your say and it’s time to stop threadsitting on the conversation. I approved your account request this week, please don’t make me regret it.

        • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
          13·
          11 months ago

          If I am responding to people that are responding to me how is that a problem? Maybe the people claiming I am a troll are the problem not me.

          • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
            31·
            11 months ago

            Maybe you don’t know how to take a hint and want your account to be temporarily banned.

            • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
              13·
              11 months ago

              I suppose you can do what you want, but I would think it would be fair to directly tell me what I did that was wrong if you expect my behavior to change.

              • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
                21·
                11 months ago

                It is not, as you said, that you’re dissenting from the standard narrative, at least not to me. It is threadsitting and making rather rude comments.

                You may or may not have noticed that lemmy.world mods/admins have removed some of your comments already: https://lemmy.ml/u/CableMonster That is often a precursor to them banning you from the [email protected] community or even the entire lemmy.world instance.

                As an aside, most Lemmy instances consist predominantly of imperial core liberals, and lemmy.world is no exception. It’s a tough crowd over there in terms of this proxy war.

                • JonsJava@lemmy.worldMEnglish
                  3·
                  11 months ago

                  Much appreciated. The mods here at [email protected] prefer civil discourse. If we see someone not displaying civility (attacking the person, not the argument), trolling, being racist, sexist, or being a bigot, we will remove a comment.

                  We try not to let our views skew our moderation, and will reverse removals if we feel we or other mods were acting heavy-handed.

                  With that said, we appreciate admins of other members of the Lemmy federation stepping in to police users of their instance.

                  With that said, yes, we have received other complaints about this user, but did not find all the complaints warranted. Some were, and we handled those comments as they were brought to our attention.

                  We may not agree with all the comments here, but if they follow our rules, they stay.

                • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
                  12·
                  11 months ago

                  I respond flippantly in comments in response to rude comments, I am ALWAYS respectful to people that are not rude.

                  I dont mind taking direct action and following rules, but I need to know what is expected. What am I supposed to do about an unprovoked comment such as “Then I’d call you a complete liar with a weak grasp on reality, and a poor understanding of where and when you ought to open your ill-informed mouth, before I walked off and continued with my day, secure in the knowledge that you’re as wrong about something as it’s physically possible to be.” ? A comment that I would note is not deleted (unless I am using this site incorrectly).

      • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
        11·
        11 months ago

        If you haven’t, read Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”. Just as applicable today, just the science on how to manipulate people got more advanced. Newspapers are full of bias, and it made me feel isolated until I understood the mechanisms (see propaganda model) of why this is so. But I’m at a bit of a loss too why reddit has been “taken over” this rabidly. Pacifist notions are now buried in “controversial”.

        And 43, wow. I would have thought that as long as the US and Europe are pumping weapons into Ukraine the war will keep going.

        • CableMonster@lemmy.ml
          13·
          11 months ago

          Social media is even more of bias. Literally the last comment is that I need to leave this thread because “and we’re getting complaints of you trolling this post. After dozens of comments, maybe you’ve had your say and it’s time to stop threadsitting on the conversation. I approved your account request this week, please don’t make me regret it.” Literally you cant dissent from the standard narrative.

          • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
            11·
            11 months ago

            Well, one can get a bit frustrated and shitpostery among all this warmongering. It’s a kind of gaslighting. “Oh you want peace? Compromise? You fascist!” :D