Originally Posted by
Bbtengineer
When you say it’s “your” fault, you are addressing the country of Europe, which doesn’t exist.
Sorry, you are off the mark. You and your behave as both singular and plural pronouns and thus handle collectives well enough. We don't have to resort to
Usted and
Ustedes.
EU is certainly a You, and most of our NATO allies were/are in the EU (though the Brits bailed out a few years back).
To avoid visual clutter, amplification is in the spoiler. It's for you - the usual short-attention-span audience can't be bothered.
During the 90's the Schengen and Euro initiatives grew in momentum. There was unending rhetoric and posturing about the EU being a "United States of Europe" which was to somehow act as a counter to America being the sole super power. Yeah, that's an explicitly anti American posture. Go figure.
This rhetoric grew legs, and yet we see that it is a lot of cheap talk when it comes to collective security. They want a government and a union but don't what to have to Pay For It, instead leaching off of American security postures. They make lots of rules, though.
At the same time for most of the 21st century the never ending griping about how much (too much) America spends on defense, yadda yadda while the EU nations, and the EU as a collective, reduce or don't. (A few of the Visigrad states excepted)
It didn't have to be that way. This self inflicted lack of capability is due to CHOICES MADE by the collective and the individuals.
I worked with some WEU folks in the 90's. There was a germ of an idea at one point to actually forge an EU complementary defensive capability. I thought it was a great idea.
They chose not to, and then chose to self eviscerate.
Ukraine's current state of play is a direct, and indirect, consequence of those choices made since the beginning of the 21st century by all of you, where you is the EU and each nation in it.
As to Greene, she's not my district so go and bitch to someone else about her.
The
good news (thank you Uberteknik) is that the grid lock seems to be breaking, unless some other skulduggery arises.
As it's in the realm of politics, there's a chance something else will come up but I am betting that it won't.
Patriots for Ukraine: there's a nice play on words in there, maybe I need to start making T-Shirts.