Your concept of a “trickle” is interesting. The US has contributed nearly as much to Ukraine as every other country combined. (As of September, that was about $92 billion from the US versus about $112 billion from all other countries).
Yes, it does add up to a lot, but it always came in just enough to keep Russia at bay. Also the permissions around where and how which weapons could be used.
When Russia invaded, Putin had no idea how corrupt, weak and inefficient his forces were.
This trickle allowed Russia enough time to turn around much of that, getting us to the point where they are now severely threatening Ukraine.
If the military aid was more decisive, Russia could have been defeated early on, and the total spend could have been less than where it is now.
As I mentioned to the other commenter, all countries proceeded with discretion. We also didn’t realize how bad of shape Russia’s infrastructure was in, so that demanded a slow approach to try and prevent a nuclear retaliation. Now we know that’s not going to happen, thus lifting the restrictions on attacking within Russian territory.
It’s funny how the opinion on the US’s role in this war over the last two years has gone from “WTF are we doing risking a nuclear war with Russia” to today where folks seem to be saying “why didn’t we stomp Russia from the very beginning?”. The answer in both cases was obvious, I don’t know why anyone has forgotten the reason for that initial caution.
I do understand those arguments, and the US has been a true ally to Ukraine - much more than the Europeans who generally didn’t spend as much as they should have, and sometimes added additional layers of caution (Olaf Scholz in particular).
But if you take a “don’t criticize us” attitude, you won’t be open to any lessons that might be learned. The lesson I hope the West, Europe in particular, would learn is that timidity and weakness invites aggression from someone like Putin.
Most of that money was wasted on domestic corruption.
Essentially Us cleared its stock piles of what they had and dod was severally overcharged on these purchases because stock pile was no in demand.
So Ukraine was getting 1 item for price of 3.
Deliveries were delayed, stuff that was needed was not provided.
Also arbitrary restrictions lifted two years too late.
You do realize no country is going to give up their best military secrets? And the pricing is likely true of every contributing country.
The restrictions were in no way arbitrary. This whole thing has been a game of chicken with Putin. Would you rather that other countries immediately escalated to scare Putin into launching his nukes? Frankly I’m happy it hasn’t come to that, and with multiple countries now giving the go-ahead to launch attacks inside of Russian territory, maybe the Russian people will start questioning the motivations behind this war that Putin started.
You do realize no country is going to give up their best military secrets?
WTF are you talking about? Ukraine needed artillery shells and missles. Planes. None of this shit is “secret”
The restrictions were in no way arbitrary
Biden doing it now clearly shows that they were.
You are not providing a rebuttal to my thesis here but merely execusing poor performance with corruption is normal and Putin got nukes lol
Aka US didn’t care for Ukraine to win, the goal is to weakem Russia so US provided just enough aid to Ukraine to do this while Ukraine lost initiative so it is now forced to negotiate on US terms.
None of this is to excuse EU behavior as it is their war and we keep 40k troops in Germany alone to defend it against Russia lol
