I am once again and eternally embarrassed to be Dutch. A country filled with naive, pearl-clutching, know-it-all's with a massive superiority complex.

My new cope theory is that Macron is talking about sending troops to increase Ukrainian morale.

The Ukrainian army needs manpower but there's a lot of internal resistance to lowering the age of conscription and Zelensky dares not openly press the issue. Companies don't want to lose their younger workforce and people aren't feeling good about Ukraine's performance on the front right now. They need something to point to so they can make the population more amenable to conscription.

They can't achieve success on the front right now so Macron steps in and offers a (seemingly) strong commitment that they are willing to go all-in. Then the regime in Kiev can push through new waves of conscription. The French announce they are standing back and standing by now that the manpower issue has been resolved.

I don't know, I think the French would, out of all the European states, understand that it is not a good idea to send forces into Ukraine. I feel similar about the idea of France sending troops to how I felt before Russia invaded: I thought they wouldn't do it because it wasn't a smart idea. So I could definitely be wrong.

When it comes to Europe and Ukraine, I think it really comes down to moral indignation. They think Russia invading Ukraine is a unique moral crime. Ukraine should win because they are the good guys. Any sense of reality is almost entirely overruled by this moral indignation.

A lot of people in Europe can't even fathom that the West has any responsibility for this war. It must be Russian propaganda because the West is free and democratic and Russia is evil.

Even the people in my country that are at least sometimes better in realistically understanding this war seem to be dumbfounded by the idea that regular people show a greater willingness to protest the genocide in Palestine and not against Russia.

I truly feel it doesn't go much deeper than moral indignation for Europe. They can't conceive the possibility that anything they are doing for Ukraine could ultimately end up hurting Europe more than Russia. It is heresy to suggest that maybe if they went about sanctions a bit smarter, they could've probably helped Ukraine more.

I'd guess this is a corruption thing and not offical policy. Not paying your mercenaries when you're already having manpower issues seems like a bad idea.

China has gone woke, now they will go broke. The Chinese economy is going to collapse from this.

In the Netherlands, if the right-wing parties can get their act together and form a coalition government, they will have 88 seats in parliament.👁️

Can't stop thinking about the mad lads in Yemen and how much respect I have for them.

One funny wrinkle to recent events in Isreal that I haven't seen mentionied much is that back at the G20 meeting the India-Middle-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), meant to counter China's BRI, was inaugurated. The idea being to facilitate the constructing of things like rail networks and hydrogen pipelines. This initiative finds its origins in the I2U2 group, consisting of India, Isreal, UAE and the US. Notably, Israel proposed the idea of increased interconnectivity through rail.

The inevitable reliance on risk-averse private companies makes the financing of such projects hard for the West under normal circumstances. But with Isreal's genocidal policies flaring up tensions in the whole region, it seems dead in the water.

This whole thing is such a massive strategic failure for the US. They wanted to pivot to East Asia, pull back from West Asia, improve relations in Africa, focus on containing China. But instead they are overextending themselves with Ukraine and Isreal. Their focus completely opposite of where they wanted it it be.

I suspect a some of the other players in the region that are taking the position of intervention if Israel starts a ground offensive in Gaza are doing so because they hope or believe it is unlikely the IOF will want to go into Gaza.

Obviously such a scenario would be terrible for the Palestinians and it is good that it is clear such an act would come at a high cost to the zionists. But realistically, the IOF would suffer heavy casualties regardless of the involvement of anyone other than the Palestinians. Israel has to understand that, one would think.

What's more, the addition 'if Isreal starts a ground offensive into Gaza' allows for Arab nations and groupings to not get involved further if Israel is content to just bomb the shit out of Gaza.

What I'm getting at is that I wouldn't be surprised if these countries, while genuinely sympathetic towards Palestinians, would very much prefer not to get involved directly and will look for excuses not to if things escalate. Ofcourse this is all speculation over things that still feel up in the air.

God I fucking hate westoids so much. Living ccomfortably in their sheltered little lives, built over the backs of the global south, pontificating over how they are not anti-Palestine, just anti-violence.

As much as people like to mythologise resistance to the Nazi occupation in WW2, I am once again reminded that most of my fellow countrymen, almost especially the so-called progressives, would rather collaborate than offer resistance, as did their grandparents.

I go in at night and upvote everything, but by the next day they've redownvoted the whole field again, sometimes stacking their downvotes on top of eachother.

Supposedly training will take 6 months. So maybe somewhere next year, but not unlikely near the end of that year, or the beginning of the year after.

Doesn't seem likely that the war will be over by then. I still feel that it is a possibility the US will try for some sort of ceasefire and make Ukraine receiving F16s conditional on a ceasefire. At the same time, the problem remains of how to maintain an F16 fleet for Ukraine. Where are they going to fly from? Is NATO going to try for allowing Ukrainian F16s to take off in NATO territory and drop their payload in Ukrainian airspace? Especially if neither Russia or Ukraine feel much for negotiations.

My sense of the mood in Europe is that Russia has failed to escalate when Ukraine attacked Crimea, started droning Moscow, and now when it comes to testing the Russian blockade in the Black Sea. They are slowly escalating because they think Russia is unwilling or unable to respond.

Although there is more talk of a failed Ukrainian offensive, there is still an ambient sense that Ukraine is on the winning hand. Because they believe that Russia is running out of options.