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.
Pro-any other country than your own, and that you were elected to serve is traitorous. I'm not big on nation-states and all that stuff personally. And these folks very much are, so by their own definitions they are traitors. I am kind of amused by Sister City agreements, where cities share solutions, without any way to force the other to comply. It's down right friendly anarchism.
The middle men, so to speak. But not really the same, though in the same dodge the issue situation. The biggest difference being Reagan sent weapons illegally via a known declared enemy.
The Republicans are falling in line with disgraced ex-president Donald Trump’s personal hatred of Ukraine—and equally personal fondness for authoritarian Russia. The Republicans’ allegiance to Trump—and therefore to dictators and military aggressors—wasn’t an issue for Ukraine until they narrowly gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the November 2022 elections. When earlier funding for Ukraine ran out in late December, Rep. Mike Johnson—the extremist House speaker—refused to put additional aid to a vote.
The direct language is a pleasant surprise, and honestly more than I expected from FORBES. Have they always been this willing to call out Trump and his enablers?
Remember when Republicans used to yell "better dead than red!" to show their hostility to the USSR and communism?
Now too many of them are preoccupied with twerking for the authoritarian roach that emerged from the USSR's corpse (and which still has a lot in common with it).
Also, the Republican party is now the red party, which is pretty funny.
Nothing surprising for everyone who already knew that what they disliked about the USSR wasn't really the totalitarianism, just the lower wealth unequality.
More so that sort loved the USSR: it provided the ultimate boogyman they could use to justify just about anything.
Accuse your political foes of being commies, and "investigate" them. Advance Christian nationalism by pointing at the "godless Soviets". Need to get your political donors want some sweet defense contracts? -- well we need weapons to fight the reds.
The USSR did the same thing with the "decadent west".
I don't get what's strange about this. They didn't like commies, Russia is no longer even calling itself socialist, so why would they still be hostile to the Russians?
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.
For most of my lifetime, any American screeching about the President arming NATO allies in order to prevent Russian expansion into Europe would have been seen as a traitor.
You think Biden closing the border as soon as he's able is a good thing?
Like, you understand that wouldn't just be a one time thing right? Future presidents could do it to, and Republicans actually do out things in motion in their first days.
I mean, Biden went from saying the border wasn't an issue to saying we need that literally over night.
Or the fact that he can just bypass congress to give weapons to Israel, or the record oil extraction during his first term? Dems pretending their party isn't actively destroying the world is wild.
These comments look so much like the comments from a sports team sub.
Biden totally should have ran the ball there at the end, then Trump wouldn't have enough clock left before the end to win! It's like reducing politics down to it's absolute dumbest, I can't imagine why more and more people are choosing not to participate.
Turkey and Greece got beef going back to the bronze age. Two of the best armed members of the EU, with those guns pointed at each other. This isn't the first time Ukraine has benefited from that situation.
I've got no love for the guy, he's a borderline dictator, but he does have a say in who gets into NATO, which is kind of important if you want to keep Russia in Russia.
Cunt wrangling is an important part of diplomacy. I'm sure they have another name for it.
And as I said, I don't know how their relations are with Greece (wasn't good when I was a kid, and visiting one of them would stop you visiting the other when they checked the stamps in your passport), but there's still a huge sticking point over Cyprus that's stopping them ever being an EU member.
US also just sold a bunch of F16 to Turkey and a whole bunch of upgrades to their existing F16s. It was part of a deal (blackmail) when turkey didn't want to allow Sweden into nato. After they agreed, they got their planes and upgrades.
The sale to Turkey includes 40 Lockheed Martin F-16s and equipment to modernise 79 of its existing F-16 fleet. Greece will get 40 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters and related equipment.
Politically I want Ukraine to have aid but can we at least admit that the president using a weird tradesies loophole to provide aid that Congress has explicitly rejected...kinda sucks?
Sucked when Reagan did it, sucks when Biden does it.
What really sucks is that the Republicans are all towing the Trump line because it's an election year and Trump will make or break their campaign. Trump loves a good dictator and thinks he's buddies with Putin.
Reagan did it through bad regimes - at least Biden is doing through democratic governments. AND they are weapons we'd have to decommission anyway. BIG DIFFERENCE between this and Reagan. Stop being disingenuous.
Because if russia finally wins its invasion of Ukraine, they won't stop there, but we won't let them conquer the rest of Europe peacefully.
Besides, it's a well known fact, the context never matters, that's why we have dumb robots applying the laws to everyone without any context or interpretation rather than a complete, complex judicial system.
That way, if someone tries and commits suicide, lands on your car, killing themselves and making you paraplegic, you get charged with death penalty for killing them, the exact same way the driver of an armored SUV, charging in a crowd, blinded by hate, would get charged with death penalty.
I'm agreeing with you on wanting to help Ukraine, but think about what this power does. If Trump takes over he could make an agreement to give military equipment to Turkey so that Turkey arms Russia. He could give Mexico enough military equipment to pay for The Wall. He could give Saudi Arabia military equipment for nothing and then "unrelatedly" his son in law gets another few billion dollars to manage. It's just structurally not good to give the president this power, Congress has to have the power of the purse.
The ends don't justify the means because this isn't the ends. This will keep happening under all presidents for all sorts of reasons. And this isn't the only way to get money to Ukraine so the moral weight isn't just on this. He could get to a deal with House Republicans, or he could push other countries to fund Ukraine more unrelated to using the loophole. There are options.
I also disagree with your "oh sure, let's focus on this instead of the REAL stuff"... I'm not saying to ignore Ukraine funding. We can talk about two things at the same time. You're the one saying to ignore the loophole because something you like is happening right now.
While I 100% agree with you that it is good that Ukraine is getting its weapons again, I really doubt that Russia would do anything if they won.
If all support for Ukraine stopped today the Russian military would still have been absolutely devastated by this war and winning won't help them. And I highly doubt that the population would just sit back and accept the new state of affairs, the Russians would be dealing with constant resistance basically forever.
It would be like Germany trying to occupy France in the second world war except with basically no personnel, no equipment, and with people who are highly subject to corruption and a very high tendency for randomly defecting. And then with all that going on they're going to attack NATO, no chance.
The president giving away military hardware your tax dollars paid for is certainly your business. The fact that Greece is sending other equipment to Ukraine is the best part of this haha.
Imagine a future President Trump sending military hardware for free to Saudi Arabia and Hungary and not mentioning the US getting anything back for it. Is it still not your business?
Even if you like the outcome here the mechanism sucks.
But wouldn't this be the second time in six months Biden is doing arms deals without congressional approval?
I just don't see why everyone is excited to see Biden acting like a Republican on this stuff, but when it's time for Biden to help Americans, he still can't do anything without Congress
It's like people honestly believe Dems only have to aim a smidge higher than the current Republican.
There's no standards other than that, and that's a huge danger to America, we can't let whatever idiot Republicans run dictating what kind of president we'll have for half a decade.
Except, this explicitly does have congressional approval. Congress has long ago authorized the President to get rid of obsolete, outdated, surplus tech.
'federal law allows...' -- congress (not this moronic majority in the house) previously passed legislation that was signed into law that allows the president to give this stuff away
when it's time for Biden to help Americans, he still can't do anything without Congress
The whole appropriations stuff really puts a crimp on executive power when it comes to expenditures. It’s fundamentally different from moving stuff around.
It was always a white lie to claim the US was sending Ukraine billions in aid. The Democrats liked to pump up the numbers, because supporting Ukraine was and is politically popular. And the spending bills also contained nice pork for the military industrial complex.
But it has almost exclusively been old stock being sent. Stuff that is very valuable, since no other Ukrainian ally has the huge stockpiles that the USA has, but it was always worth much less than it was being billed for.
Now Biden is following a more boring, but more honest (in accounting terms) procedure.
Similar to what the Germans did.
As for helping Americans, he has also explored every possibility to reduce debt and prescription drug costs and to invest in infrastructure.
For example, much more has been spent on student loan forgiveness than on Ukraine.
For student loan forgiveness, I believe the tally is $137B. And that is real cash. For Ukraine the total is $75B, but a lot of that is pumped up valuations of old military stock. The actual value of what Ukraine received is closer to $40B
He has literal campaign promises he can fulfill without congress...
He's been "looking into" them since assuming office, because he's doesn't really want to do them.
Cannabis can be descheduled in a day if he wanted too. Instead he pardons people but leaves it federally illegal.
While saying that forgiving student debt without fixing the cost of college wouldn't fix anything.
Even tho that's what he's doing with cannabis users.
There's no consistent logic to Bidens actions, he just does whatever he wants to do, and if he doesn't want to do it, he says a president has no power and can't do anything.
If people believe him, then it depresses turnout because the literal president keeps telling voters the president doesn't matter. If they don't, it still depresses turnout because people think Biden specifically won't do anything.
The solution is the same it's been since before FDR:
I just don't see why everyone is excited to see Biden acting like a Republican on this stuff
Their preferred network news program doesn't report on anything other than war, so they think it's a top priority, even though their fellow Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't access health care.
Hey, no - let's actually let Ukraine fall and allow the Putim regime this one because... the alternative is better for us? (the US and our allies, the rest of Europe and the fucking world...)
I'm idealistic, but some people just don't have any damn common sense.
I don't care what the talking head have to say. as for the elected people, I think it's hard to call their statements pro-russia. at least, if these are the most damning, I would not conclude they are pro-russia.
I'd like to hear what they have to say about Russia, not just Russia's relationship with Ukraine.
I think your question is misguided. Democracy doesn't mean a two-party system race to the bottom. Democracy can see democratically elected politicians that better resonate with each individual voter by eliminating first past the post voting and using ranked choice voting instead. The problem isn't that "half the country disagrees". You can't please everyone. The problem is that we've been divided and weaponized against each other, so the tribalism keeps us from finding common ground we may have. I doubt anyone votes FOR a candidate anymore. They seem to just vote AGAINST another candidate. Democracy works. It's our implementation of it that's failing.
Ranked choice voting isn't a game changer. Almost every problem in US politics can be traced back to the hundred year old cap on the size of the house of representatives.
Greece is gonna pay 4 or 8 billion dollars for the F-35(depending on whether it buys 20 or 40 of them). The US is just giving old surplus crap to Greece so that Greece will give its even older surplus crap to Ukraine.
And while i am not the biggest supporter of the current conservative government, i think Greece will continue having elections, wont use chemical weapons on any minorities or invade a tiny neighbour. So i dont see how Greece is comparable to Iraq.
It will be if Ukraine falls, I guarantee it. We pay now, or we pay more later having left them to suffer and die while China watches the West clutch pearls. There is no not paying. Putin made that decision for us.
It's not debt at all because it isn't new hardware. The program is literally giving old surplus hardware to allies and then they give their old hardware away to Ukraine.