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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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One point that I think bears mentioning more often is that there is a back-channel game at play here: the US probably could fund or supply this war itself, but has been trying to pressure (Western) Europe into properly funding it's own defense.

I wish this was the case, but everything I've read and heard from people in the USFG is that US military planners are genuinely worried about preparedness against China, which makes sense since the US defense-industrial base has been a smoldering crater for the past decade or so. That, and polarization makes it hard to get stuff through Congress now.

Really, Europe should be shouldering the vast majority of the burden for Ukraine. It's more important to them than it is to us for reasons of simple proximity. On the flip side, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that Europe will be completely irrelevant (beyond mostly toothless sanctions) if a hot war breaks out over Taiwan, so the US will basically be forced to play the primary role there. Europe certainly has the potential to shoulder the Ukraine issue themselves, and it wouldn't even be that difficult. Yet it's been nearly two years and the entirety of the EU is getting lapped by North Korea in terms of artillery shells contributed. It's farcical.