Ukraine and anti-Americanism | The Press

It is fashionable, in certain chapels in Quebec, to overcharge the United States with all the geopolitical vices, an analysis filtered to anti-Americanism.

Posture a tad fake ass.

Despite the enormous faults that I attribute to this country, like many people, I have fortunately never been affected by this anti virus.

And a bit cowardly, this feeling, knowing that our neighbors would be the first to defend us if we touched even one of our hairs. They would be with us at two hours notice…

Yes, I understood that our permanent protection is largely explained by the insolence of the Americans, in whose eyes, in a way, we are not really a separate country, but part of America .

America, the term that puts them in a trance.

But it is clear that without American intervention to arm Ukraine, this country would already be on its knees, smashed by Russia, or “denazified”, as Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin so ignobly claims.

I was analyzing, again on Wednesday, the “Ukrainian Assistance Tracking Data” from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy¹ which counts the aid provided by the various countries of the world to Ukraine since the beginning of the war, until November 20th.

The first conclusion, as big as a bus, is that the US, until recently, had committed more financially to Ukraine than virtually all of the countries in the world combined. We are talking about military, financial and humanitarian aid.

In military aid, they are practically alone, at 23 billion euros, followed very, very far by the United Kingdom, at 4 billion.

A recent additional commitment from the European Union took this institution and all of its member countries to nearly 52 billion euros committed in total, slightly ahead of the USA, to just under 48 billion.

But the data clearly excludes the additional aid included in the last American budget voted at the end of December, which would place the United States, by far, in the rank of the first benefactor of Ukraine.

Canada’s share is recorded at 2.14 billion euros. Not too bothersome.

And it was brave neighbors like the Baltics, Poland and the Czech Republic that contributed the most as a percentage of their GDP, between 1 and 1.5%, which includes the costs of hosting refugees. Outstanding.

So, no matter what you think of the “Americans”, they are the ones who pay out.

I also know very well that all these investments by the USA, to inflict a serious defeat on Russia, will perhaps cost them less than investing in means of defense or attack, in the long term, to counter or challenge.

We can also claim that it would thus be profitable for them to continue to exercise their hegemony on the planet. But that will become less easy with the current strength of China, India which is gaining momentum, and the presence of the euro zone.

Even if he seems weak to many people, including the author of this column, we must salute the experience of international affairs and the guts of President Joe Biden in this conflict.

I dare not imagine a Trump in charge in this situation. Misery !

The weak Western response did not scare Russia during its attack on Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in Donbass in recent years. Not to mention her action alongside President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where she participated in the massacre of Syrians.

Biden had that courage, to say enough was enough. Without his action, the European countries, taken by the balls as big consumers of Russian fossil fuels, would perhaps not have federated nor would they have succeeded in the current agreement on a ceiling price per barrel to be paid to the Russians and on the diversification of sources of supply.

Consensus that holds until further notice, but we’ll see, arms have been twisted hard to get there, with exceptions…

In another order of ideas, but in the same vein, among essayists, the fashion is black books.

Thereby, Vladimir Putin’s Black Booke².

I believed that enough was enough, that I had read enough about the guy. Hey no! I succumbed, once again, and the book is very, very good!

I allow myself to leave a couple of paragraphs, to screw up the mess in the discussions with some of my friends, on the notion of nationalism in the era of mixed communities.

Describing and qualifying Putin’s remarks on Ukraine, two of the authors, Mykola Riabtchouk and Iryna Dmytrychyn, write this:

“His diatribe revolved around a fundamental lie that often went unnoticed: an archaic notion, dating from the 19^e century, defining the nation as a community united by a common ethnicity, language and religion, as well as a strongly mythologized past, rather than by political culture, civic loyalty, equal rights and a shared vision of common future.

“Ukraine did not correspond to this archaic model, since it was engaged, from the beginning, in a laborious construction of the political nation where language, ethnicity or religion played a secondary role and were not considered as the key determinants of loyalty and civic behavior. »

AIE Aie Aie ! It will brew at the next supper!