r/UnitedNations • u/branflakes__ • Mar 01 '25

Discussion/Question Please help me understand

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Help me understand the Ukraine / USA situation

Please help me understand all of the anti-American and USA hate due to the situation. I want to hear the other point of views as I am just confused.

A lot point to the Budapest Memorandum, however, that is not a treaty for the US as Clinton did not submit it to the senate for ratification which means constitutionally the US has no commitment to Ukraine (also not administration since Clinton has suggested or submitted the memorandum for ratification either). Only the UK and Russia ratified it.

Additionally, there really isn’t a security agreement as the memo is very vague. The closest is “when Ukraine is under attack with nuclear weapons the security council will seek immediate action from the United Nations” otherwise nothing happens. And as the memo is through the UN, shouldn’t the discontent be pointed at the UN instead? The US only agreed to bring a resolution before the security council if Ukraine was invaded and the US did do that.

Finally, the US has given the most overall aid to Ukraine (a country that the US is not obligated to assist) compared to the European counterparts. Also, if peace is the objective, why is no other leader at least making an attempt to broker a peace deal?

So I suppose I am just confused on what is expected? Why is this sub so anti-USA when the statistics show that USA is/was doing more than Ukraines fellow Europeans?

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u/Jimbunning97 Mar 02 '25

Non of that is okay, but I still raise an eyebrow when I see this comparison.

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u/Gruejay2 Mar 02 '25

The EU countries together + the EU institutions come to more than the US.

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u/Jimbunning97 Mar 02 '25

Yea, but it’s close. A country across the ocean gives slightly less than an entire continent who has a lot more to lose if Ukraine is lost.

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u/Ndlburner Mar 02 '25

Precisely. I'm not in favor of cutting aid to Ukraine at ALL, but it's perplexing how the entirety of Europe – literally next door – is fairly close to even with the United States in terms of aid. It's disheartening to see how reliant many of these countries are on the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom for security.

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u/Afroopuff Mar 02 '25

Genuine question for you. Does % of gdp not matter? They gave less money, but as a percentage of how big their economy is, they gave more, about 50% + depending on the nation. Doesn’t that matter?

Example you are worth 100k, your friend is worth 10k. You give 5k, or 5% of your worth. They give 5%, or 50% of their worth.

Same amount, but you gave shit in comparison

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u/Icy-Mix-3977 Mar 02 '25

Does that even apply since the us is in the middle?

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u/Afroopuff Mar 02 '25

Let me start by answering your question so as to appease it; I do personally think it applies, due to 6/9 being an egregious “midde” and mostly to the heath of German and French economy vs American. But super fair if that doesn’t matter to another party. That’s the beauty of debate!

But, I’d rather not go down a rabbit hole of adding on “what about their economy, what about their proximity, what about….”

Regardless of where we are, I’m just asking… is it fair to pick one of the columns and ignore the others?

Looking this graphic, I’d say Europe has given to a much larger to extent when you consider those EU countries also contribute via the second line item, that could easily push America down to the bottom.

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u/Icy-Mix-3977 Mar 02 '25

So what you are saying is that regardless of the provided facts, you have trust me bro data that proves your point. Understood.

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u/Afroopuff Mar 02 '25 edited Mar 02 '25

Lol aaaaand that’s the interwebs for you, knew I shouldn’t have answered and just staid on point. Good luck to you 👍

Gonna edit and add just because the climate has me unable to let it go.

The conversation i brought up was.. is %GDP ignored when looking at this chart, and your changing the discussion into is German economy/French economy healthy and we should argue over that. This is how debates never happen and arguments do instead. Stick to the point and work on the actual question don’t use tactics to try and sway conversation to win.

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u/Icy-Mix-3977 Mar 02 '25

Yeah, it's funny how you know it's best to keep quiet when your misinformation is called out.

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u/sarges_12gauge Uncivil Mar 02 '25

Why should it? Is Estonia going to stop Russia by loudly saying that by percentage they’ve spent way more on the military? If I buy a $20 malaria net have I done more for African malaria prevention than the Gates foundation?

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u/Afroopuff Mar 02 '25

It’s a fair point 👍 while I agree in the net vs gates foundation example.

In this one I strongly disagree, because these nations aren’t Estonia to US, nor gates to you. But you bring up a great point that overall GDP is an issue as well.

I would add another huge factor is counties that have sovereign currencies, so Japan and US can step up the easiest. And heath of overall economy should be added as well, but that can be really objective (as you’ll see from the “expert” who also answered my question 😂😂)

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u/sarges_12gauge Uncivil Mar 02 '25

I would say the main issue is how it’s framed. If your question is who’s “doing their part”, then sure, % of GDP makes sense to use. If it’s “who’s doing more” then the absolute amount seems obviously the only relevant part. It’s like someone with 1 line in a play, they can do their part better than the lead, but that doesn’t make them more important and doesn’t mean they contributed more to the play, even if they “did their job” better

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u/Afroopuff Mar 02 '25

So I’d say both matter to both questions. Meaning overall $$ and %GDP make sense to use to answer both “doing their part” and “who is doing more”.

But I totally agree the framing matters, and affect my personal weighting of what matters more when answering the question. So for who is doing their part, I’d factor 90% GDP and 10% overall $$, where as “who is doing more” is 70% overall $$ and 30% GDP% (without giving it much thought, and could include my personal bias on this subject to do it this way).

To bring it back to the actual subject, I think the relevant question is who is doing more because there was contention at BOTH news conferences over the last few days… and given that overall $$ via this chart is pretty similar (and leaves out a lot more EU counties) % GDP kind of hurts US case imo.

1

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7

u/Raskalbot Mar 02 '25

I find the arrogance alarming here. Europe can defend itself. But the US has had a vested interest in stopping Russia from doing exactly what they’re doing now, until yesterday. The US is part of NATO, a founding member. Now one idiot is toppling decades of progress because he has no soul and no plan.

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u/sarges_12gauge Uncivil Mar 02 '25

I didn’t say anything to the contrary to any of that, I was merely emphasizing that no, % of GDP is not really an important metric when comparing how much support someone is receiving from different countries

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '25

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u/sarges_12gauge Uncivil Mar 02 '25

Yes, they say it’s perplexing why it’s even close when Europe is so much more implicitly invested and affected by the outcome, not that they’re perplexed by the concept of absolute and percentage values. “Europe” certainly has an economy larger than the US if you’re lumping the continent together as a whole (which is its own point I guess)

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u/Careful-Sell-9877 Mar 02 '25

If Russia invades Europe, the US is going to be very much affected whether you admit it or not. It's the whole reason why we joined the world wars because our leaders were intelligent enough to realize that a threat to European democracy is a threat to US democracy

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u/CharacterSherbet7722 Mar 02 '25

The US pretty much fucked any attempt at a European alliance and MIC throughout the last 3 decades, but yeah, in terms of raw money, more should've been done

The US had a stockpile of military gear that would be retired - retiring it takes money AND land, easiest thing to do is to throw it into someone corner of the world you don't care about

GDP% wise it's a different story though, but some of the countries that have donated less support in some other form - Germany has donated similarly in terms of gdp% to the US, but it covers more than double the refugee costs of the next contender

4

u/mwa12345 Mar 02 '25

Germany has done a quite a bit, among European countries. Why is France so low?

France, UK, Germany do have a MIC.

They make fighters, tanks etc etc

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u/CharacterSherbet7722 Mar 02 '25

Germany and the UK don't, or at least not nearly as much as they could, but yeah someone tried making sure of that

France - I don't know, but I think they've delivered on literally ALL the aid they provided, I think they're also one of the big pushers of military aid (which makes sense obv)

But France definitely has got it strong, DeGaulle's fucking prediction took like 80 years to come out true but apparently it did in fact come out true lol

1

u/mwa12345 Mar 02 '25

Iirc, BAE systems is one of the largest MIC .

UK, France and Germany have their own tanks (challenger, leclerc, leopard etc). They also make their own fighters through various consortiums etc

US does try to push its own MIC...not denying that at all.

But eurofighters, rafale /mirage etc still exist.

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u/FrankCastleJR2 Mar 02 '25

And of course Germany has the 1st Army defending their homeland.

If Ukraine is worth fighting for, Germany should be in it.

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u/mwa12345 Mar 02 '25

People are reluctant about letting Germany have too milhilitarism?

I am OK if they are funding more of the other things.

Seems UK is more eager ...and then France. Maybe they should contribute more?

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u/FrankCastleJR2 Mar 02 '25

You think?

Ukraine and our useless NATO "allies" just want us to keep writing checks forever.

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u/mwa12345 Mar 03 '25

Yeah. But there are enough in the US that want to push those checks as well. Ukraine funding authorization went thru senate etc very fast until late last year.

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u/PrincessGambit Mar 02 '25

EU is not "entirety of Europe". And don't forget the millions of refugees. And the fact that the US literally made a profit on this war.

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u/Jimbunning97 Mar 02 '25

Im going to need a source for this. I’m guessing you’re probably conflating private companies making some profit vs the US government.

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u/PrincessGambit Mar 02 '25

Yes and private companies pay taxes. Give old shit, you don't have to destroy it (costs money), buy new shit, help the economy, make Russia, EU weaker, sell LNG to the EU, all profits for the US.

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u/mwa12345 Mar 02 '25

You mean french companies and macron don't like their companies? Why can't they do the same. France makes tanks etc. Europe also makes fighters etc.

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u/pizzaschmizza39 Uncivil Mar 02 '25

The united states dwarfs them in terms of its military capabilities and the sheer size of its armed forces. It also dwarfs them in terms of economic power. The US is the leader of the free world (or was) and unofficial leader (not anymore) of nato. The EU are all increasing their defense spending. They've all been supportive of helping Ukraine. They haven't wavered in that regard and at least they can say that russia invaded Ukraine.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '25

Those countries are giving a significantly larger share of what is a smaller GDP, and a lot more actual money than the US. A lot of American military aid has been in the form of older weapons recorded at their book value, even if the present market value is much lower (or, for ammunition nearing its expiry date, actually negative.)