Day: February 26, 2024
By Dylan Allman
Why are some people so upset about the new generative AI models?
To put it simply: AI damages their ego.
On the surface, the thought of radically democratizing a skill that they spent so much time, money, and energy developing and knowing that it can now be accessed by anybody, anytime, almost instantly is frustrating for them.
You can observe a similar sentiment among people who spent tens-of-thousands of dollars on a college degree that they didn’t need.
The sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy for a reason.
To go even deeper, at the heart of the modern aversion to AI-generated creativity is naked, existential fear.
As AI technologies rapidly advance, expanding their reach into domains traditionally dominated by human intelligence and creativity, a corrosive sense of insecurity has gripped these people. It’s a deeply embedded dread, one that whispers in their ears the disturbing question, “Are you necessary?”
The fear is understandable; for millennia, human identities have been intrinsically tied to their roles as creators and innovators. From the earliest cave paintings to the most recent scientific breakthroughs, human civilization has been a testament to their creative capabilities. To have this core aspect of their identity challenged by machines is a psychological jolt that they’re struggling to come to terms with. They feel, on some instinctual level, that if machines can do what they do—only better, faster, and more efficiently—then what value do they hold?
But here’s the hard pill to swallow: Your insecurities should not hold back the tide of innovation. The ego’s fragility should never be the yardstick by which societal progress is measured. When you subordinate technological and creative advancement to the preservation of your own self-importance, you engage in a form of collective narcissism that serves no one.
Many people experience a sort of existential crisis when they realize that automation or a new technology could potentially do their job—and possibly do it better. But instead of adapting or improving, some choose to fight progress, using political mechanisms or social outcry to stifle innovation. A tale as old as time…
When you react defensively to technological advancements that challenge your skill set, you are acting out of a false sense of self-interest at the expense of broader societal progress that would ultimately benefit you, along with everyone else. You’re hurting everyone, including yourself, because you don’t want your ego damaged. It is rather awful. If you can’t win in the marketplace, you are not a victim. You deserve to lose.
Let’s be brutally candid—the quality of work that advanced AI can produce is often higher than that of its human counterparts, and it’s only improving. It can write more persuasively, compose more complex musical scores, generate compelling images and videos, and analyze more data points than any single human ever could. It does so faster, more accurately, and, often, more innovatively. We ought to celebrate this, not stymie it.
Why? Because quality matters. In a world drowning in information and starved for meaning, the quality of the content we consume is paramount. If an AI can write a more compelling story, compose a more moving symphony, or solve a complex problem more efficiently, that benefits us all. The collective elevation of quality enriches society as a whole, serving as a catalyst for further human achievement and well-being.
High-quality, efficient production is the beating heart of a vibrant marketplace. If your concern is the protection of the so-called “human element” in the face of better, cheaper, and faster AI creations, it’s time to confront the egocentric motivations behind such an attitude.
Now, before you say it… No. The AI isn’t stealing your work. When AI generates content based on a vast dataset of human-created content, it isn’t “stealing” any more than a novelist steals by reading a variety of books to fuel their imagination. AI models are doing precisely what human brains have done for millennia—absorbing, synthesizing, and regenerating ideas. The difference is that they do it faster, more efficiently, and unburdened by ego or the illusion of originality.
The insistence that human intelligence is sacred while AI intelligence is profane is not just naive; it’s fundamentally hypocritical. The difference between human and artificial intelligence is not a matter of kind but of degree—of processing speed, of efficiency, and, ironically enough, of impartiality.
AI is not the enemy of human creativity; it’s the next chapter in its evolution. What’s threatened by AI is not our purpose or our ability to create but our ego. And in the grand scheme of things, that’s a small price to pay for a world enriched by higher quality, more innovative, and more efficient creative works.
- About the author: Dylan Allman is a husband and writer, deeply passionate about liberty, a conscientious objector, techno-optimist, and a Hazlitt Apprentice at FEE.
- Source: This article was published by FEE
Russia’s stunning victory in the battle of Avdeevka and the rout of the Ukrainian military, boosts the credibility of Russia as provider of security for the Central Asian region. The point is not lost on the erudite Central Asian mind that Russia has single-handedly put the NATO on the back foot.
This becomes a defining moment, as it complements the comfort level stemming out of the new normalcy in Afghanistan, thanks to Russia’s effective diplomatic engagement with the Taliban.
Yet another vicious cycle of western propaganda is petering out — predicated on the false assumptions that Russia’s influence in Central Asia is in “decline” (Wilson Centre); that the Central Asian states are “are emerging from Russia’s shadow and asserting their independence in ways not seen since the collapse of communism in 1991” (Financial Times); that in the wake of the war in Ukraine, Central Asian leaders “might well be now considering how long Putin will be able to remain in power in Russia” (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty).
In reality, the economic performance of the region in 2023 registered an impressive GDP growth of 4.8%. And Russia contributed to this success story. The Ukraine war led to the vacation of western firms from the Russian market, which created new opportunities for regional states. At the same time, the conditions under sanctions prompted Russian firms and capital and Russian citizens to relocate their businesses to the Central Asian region.
Central Asian entrepreneurs haven’t missed the lucrative opportunities to source Western goods and technology for the Russian market — walking a very tight rope by ensuring compliance with Western sanctions, while also nurturing their interdependence and integration with Russian markets. The recovery of the Russian economy and its 3.6% growth last year created business opportunities for Central Asian countries.
Moscow’s policies aim at a ‘Renaissance’ in the region’s relations with Russia. The new thinking in Moscow meant that Putin took a hands-on role to maintain a high momentum of contacts with the Central Asian leaderships at a personal level, making use of all available formats of interaction bilateral as well as regional. The Russian approach allowed space for the regional states to adopt a ‘neutral’ stance on the war.
A comprehension problem for outsiders is very often that the Central Asian attitudes are seldom in overt mode, and under specific circumstances (such as Ukraine war), they need to be discerned in terms of preferences. Thus, the political message out of the May 9 parade in Moscow last year when all the Central Asian presidents joined Putin at the ceremonies on the Red Square was a massive gesture of support for Russia — and for Putin personally.
Throughout 2023, the Central Asian states found themselves targeted in an unprecedented diplomatic effort by the West to uphold the sanctions against Russia. The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and French President Emmanuel Macron visited the region. Two historic summits in the ‘C5+1’ format were hosted by President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz respectively in Washington and Berlin.
But the western interlocutors refused to see the writing on the wall. Blinken’s Kazakh counterpart told him that Astana ‘does not feel any threats or risks from the Russian Federation.’ The joint statements issued after the two ‘C5+1’ summits did not even mention Ukraine!
Putin’s new thinking puts the great game on the back burner and instead prioritises the accretion of content in Russia’s relations with the Central Asian states, especially in economic and humanitarian spheres. This approach has palpably dissipated the ‘Big Brother’ syndrome. Putin’s meetings with his counterparts from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in Kazan on Wednesday took place in a palpably relaxed atmosphere. (here, here and here)
Interestingly, Emomali Rahmon, Tajik president, wished not only Putin’s success “in everything you do” but his “nerves of steel” as well. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kazakh president underscored meaningfully that “under your (Putin’s) distinguished leadership, Russia has achieved notable, impressive successes. In fact, your statements and actions are shaping the global agenda.” Tokayev’s remark is particularly noteworthy, as western analysts had spotted him as a potential mutineer against Putin in the steppes!
However, in the final analysis, if Russia’s security relationship with the Central Asian region has transformed during the past couple of years, it is because Moscow’s coordinated efforts to forge ties with the Taliban has gained traction lately. They helped diminish the threat perceptions regarding Afghanistan in the Central Asian region.
If the traditional pattern of addressing the threat perceptions was to resort to military means and by sequestering the region from Afghanistan, Russian diplomacy switched to a radically different approach by constructively engaging with the Taliban (although Taliban continues to be a proscribed organisation under Russian law) and strove to make the latter a stakeholder in building cooperative ties within a matrix of mutual interests. It paid off.
Moscow estimated that Taliban rule has stabilised the Afghan situation significantly and it is in Russian interests to help the Kabul administration to effectively counter the extremist elements in the country (especially the Islamic State, which is known to be a legacy of the US occupation of Afghanistan.) Russia leveraged its influence with the Central Asian states to ensure that western-backed anti-Taliban ‘resistance’ forces did not get sanctuaries.
Of course, the strategic objective is that the western intelligence will not be able to manipulate free-wheeling Afghan elements to destabilise the Central Asian region or the Caucasus all over again.
Taliban has been most receptive to the Russian overtures aimed at strengthening the Afghan statehood. Recently, Taliban went to the extent of boycotting a UN-sponsored conference on Afghanistan on February 18-19 in Qatar, which was, in reality, an invidious attempt by the US to re-engage the Taliban on the pretext of promoting “intra-Afghan dialogue” (which essentially meant the return of the West’s Afghan proxies living in exile in Europe and America.)
To be sure, the Taliban saw through the western game plan to rebuild their intelligence network in Afghanistan and countered it by setting conditions for its participation in the Doha conference, including that it be the sole representative of Afghanistan at the meeting. The Taliban also opposed the appointment of a UN special envoy to Afghanistan, whose main task would be to promote “intra-Afghan dialogue”.
The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement ahead of the Doha meeting, accused the international community of “unilateral impositions, accusations, and pressurisation.” The most interesting part of the pantomime playing out in Doha was that at the Taliban’s request, the Russian delegation that participated in the Doha meeting refused to meet the so-called ‘civil society representatives’ from Afghanistan. It signalled that Russia has begun working with the Taliban as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan.
Indeed, the Central Asian states heartily welcome this brilliant diplomatic initiative by Russia to strengthen regional security and stability. The region’s confidence level vis-a-vis the Taliban rulers has already reached a point that at the meeting with Putin in Kazan on Wednesday, Uzbek president Mirziyoyev raised the “important question” of Uzbekistan and Russia moving ahead with the construction of a new railway via Afghanistan connecting Central Asia with the adjacent regions and the world market.
This article was published by Indian Punchline
By Roger McKinney
Christianity Today magazine, founded by Billy Graham, chose Christopher Watkin’s book, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, as one of its 2024 Book Awards and the book most likely “to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.” Other Christian organizations promote the book too.
Nonreligious readers won’t care, but they need to keep in mind that most people won’t take a class or read a book on economics. I can clear a crowded room just by mentioning economics. But they do read books like this one or listen to pastors who do. Evangelicals make up about 25 percent of voters. So, any plan to change the direction of the country’s economic policies requires reaching them.
Watkin, a lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, trudges through the Bible applying his interpretations to his perception of modern Western culture. He calls his method “diagonalization,” in which he identifies extreme cultural views and places biblical principles in the middle.
But his diagonalization forces him to see only extremes, many of which don’t exist. Much of what he writes is reasonable, but his train derails when writing about the market:
“The market paradigm constructs us as producers and consumers of tradable commodities, each with its calculable price. This is, after all, how many religions in the world work.
“[Michael] Sandel argues that we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society because now everything is negotiated, bought, and sold, including love, security, and identity. . . . Our relationships with our families, with our partners and with the world we live in are all business deals calculated to bring us profit. . . . We compete for finite resources . . . and those with nothing to exchange or no discretionary time to build up capital or networks are left behind.“
Is the “market” the grocery market, the stock market, or the convenience store? Those aren’t frightening and the “market” must be terrifying. But no creature called “the market” exists. The market is merely the process by which buyers and sellers find each other and negotiate prices. But that doesn’t terrify anyone. And if Watkin would read his Bible, he would learn that most of the evils he finds the market making us commit are detailed in the book written sixteen hundred years before the advent of capitalism.
Following the Marxist portrayal of capitalism, Watkin wrote,
“The market paradigm of excess, by contrast, is a surplus of overproduction, overconsumption, and limitless profit that become necessary for the maintenance of economic growth and that issue in increasing wealth for some and increasing inequality between all. . . . [It] contents itself to scratch around in the broken cisterns of limitless accumulations.“
Had Watkin read any economics book by good economists, meaning Austrian, he would know that general overproduction of all goods and services is impossible. It happens in specific industries just before a recession, due to earlier money printing by central banks, and is temporary. But what does overconsumption look like? Some claim it destroys the environment, but the environment in the West has never been cleaner, not counting the hysteria over carbon dioxide. General overproduction and overconsumption don’t exist.
Given the biblical emphasis on relieving poverty, one would think Watkin would see “overconsumption” as a good thing, far better than starving. Reducing production and consumption means becoming poorer. What standard of living does he prefer? Does he admire the Amish? Or should we return to the natural standard of living the world suffered from prehistory until the advent of capitalism in which millions died of starvation in frequent famines?
Inequality measured by the Gini coefficient is about the same level today as it was 150 years ago, around 50. From 1950 until the 1980s, it averaged around 40. There are many reasons for the rise since 1980. One is that confiscatory taxes on the wealthiest between 1950 and 1980 forced them to take less of their wealth in taxable income by sheltering it in tax-free investments, such as municipal bonds. The rise in the Gini coefficient since then is largely the result of lower marginal tax rates that encourage wealthy people to report more taxable income.
A second cause is the aging of the population. Older people have more wealth and higher incomes than younger people. Another cause is the explosion of poor fatherless households due to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society socialism that increased the likelihood that homes would not have both parents. Finally, increased immigration adds to the ranks of the poor. In sum, the slight ascent of the Gini coefficient is due to changing tax laws, an aging population, a growing number of poor households due to single-parent homes, and immigration, not the market.
In another section, Watkin assaults the labor market, going far beyond the Marxist straw man of wage “slaves”:
“Modern humanity sacrifices to machinic efficiency using the currency of its labor, just as the ancient Carthaginians sacrificed to Moloch using the currency of their children. The Moloch Machine shapes and figures the bodily movements of workers that tend it, just as our own habits, attitudes, and movements are increasingly molded by the human-shaping power of smartphones and social media.“
Socialists compete to invent the most outrageous descriptions of capitalism. Watkin wins a prize with his comparison of working for wages to burning children alive on an altar to a pagan god. But how does he want people to exchange services? Would he have us go back to feudalism or actual slavery, which the ancient Greeks thought imperative for a good society?
Had Watkin read Frédéric Bastiat, he would know that when a businessman pays a worker his wages, he isn’t buying the worker’s body and soul. The manager is paying the worker only for the services he renders for a period. Paying him for doing nothing would be theft by the worker. Not paying him would be theft by the businessman.
Finally, Watkin dredges up the ghost of the tyranny of markets without laws:
“The right fails to acknowledge that when freed from regulation and government, individuals and institutions become prey to the harsh, brutal lordship of the market. As John Milbank argues, the market imperative breaks down and co-opts any spaces of resistance to its logic such as families and local associations based on trust, and leads not to a new egalitarian freedom but to “a far worse hierarchy than in the past,” namely “a hierarchy of sheer money, force and spectacle; a hierarchy without even any pretensions to virtue.”“
No advocate for free markets has promoted a society without laws prohibiting theft, fraud, murder, and kidnapping, not even Murray Rothbard’s anarchocapitalism. From the theologians at the University of Salamanca during the Reformation, who distilled the principles of capitalism, until today, all capitalists have insisted on the rule of law and punishment of those who violate the rights of others to life, liberty, and property.
What Watkin is concerned about is greed. But Adam Smith demonstrated that competition in free markets suppresses greed better than any government regulations. Why? Because greedy businessmen can buy politicians cheaply to write regulations that satiate their greed. But competition in free markets forces greedy businessmen to supply the wants of their customers or risk losing them to a competitor.
Does Watkin offer any evidence that markets have created the world he describes? No, he merely quotes another socialist making that assertion. The US and the West are nowhere near as horrible places as Watkin and other theologians and philosophers claim. How do I know? One reason is the number of people coming here legally and illegally. Another is the US’s record of charity. These countries led the world in charity from 2009 through 2018: United States, Myanmar, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Except for Myanmar, those are Western countries.
Most of Watkin’s book doesn’t deal with markets and makes some valid points. But his egregiously sloppy sections on markets destroy any confidence in the rest of the book.
- About the author: Roger McKinney is an analyst for an HMO and teaches economics for a small private college. He has authored two books, Financial Bull Riding and God is a Capitalist: Markets from Moses to Marx.
- Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute
By EAF Editors
If re-elected, Donald Trump has promised a 10 per cent tariff on all goods coming into the United States — a tax on imports — and a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods.
That’s not quite the shock to the system of the US Smoot-Hawley tariffs of close to 20 per cent that exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression in the 1930s, but it’s very close. What made things worse in the 1930s was the retaliation from much of the rest of the world, ratcheting up tariffs and restrictions on global trade.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which later became the World Trade Organization (WTO), was created in the aftermath of the Second World War to avoid a repeat of this beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism that fed rivalry and conflict in the lead up to war.
To date, that system has avoided what is called a prisoner’s dilemma outcome — where every nation acts in its narrow self-interest to produce collectively worse outcomes for everybody. But the system is under threat and international trade rules are grossly outdated.
Basic international economics tells us that tit-for-tat retaliation compounds the damage from predatory trade measures, but governments are driven by nationalist instincts that give no prizes for looking weak. The Chinese government bought into Trump’s trade war in 2019, retaliating in kind even though staying out of it would have left the country better off despite the punishment of US tariffs.
Trump 2.0 is likely to deliver what he now promises on the trade front. As president the first time around, apart from withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership on day one of his presidency, Trump 1.0 took some time to launch his trade war and the sabotage of international institutions. Those who hung in there in the White House and cabinet to limit the damage in the first Trump administration won’t be there next year if Trump is re-elected.
From day one, we can be sure that Trump 2.0 will rock the international trading system to its foundations.
Trump is as much a symptom as a cause of the US withdrawal from global trade leadership. The Biden administration has done nothing to reverse the castration of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism when the US vetoed the appointment of Appellate Body judges in 2019, making the global trade rules unenforceable. Biden’s Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, trashed a WTO ruling against Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium in the name of national security. Late last year Tai withdrew the United States from key provisions in the WTO’s e-commerce agreement and the negotiation of multilateral rules for the digital economy, including in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).
The domestic problems bedevilling the United States are deep and structural. A large proportion of the population has missed out on decades of gains from globalisation and innovation, even as the country became richer and richer. Trump will exacerbate the consequences of this American malaise for the international trading system. But irrespective of who is elected as the next US President in November, the United States will continue to play spoiler in the WTO for the foreseeable future. Trump will be less polite and more extreme but the American direction on trade is locked in.
The question is what the global community does about the United States playing rough and dirty with trade.
Defending the rules-based trading system will need collective action. Isolation, not imitation, of America’s protectionism is in the collective strategic interest of the rest of the world.
The WTO may be on the ropes, but the many bilateral and regional free trade agreements will not keep global trade open without the multilateral reference point. The alternative to the rule of law in international commerce is rule by might and retreat to closed markets to protect against the weaponisation of trade.
The rules need to be updated. There’s a chance to make some progress this week in Abu Dhabi when trade ministers meet for the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13). But as Ken Heydon observes in this week’s lead article, there are ‘relatively modest expectations’ for MC13 after a rare success in MC12 in 2022.
We can expect ‘a deal providing transparency and predictability in electronic commerce’ and progress on a deal for investment facilitation for development. Facilitating investment for development is hardly controversial but with all 164 members having to agree to everything, one or two usually play politics to try to squeeze out more concessions.
Progress on transparency and predictability in e-commerce is welcome. The digital economy is growing at two and a half times that of the physical economy and trade in physical goods and services is now dependent on optimisation and innovation in data generated by digital flows. That’s before we factor in artificial intelligence, which is turbocharging the digital economy.
National and regulatory borders are even less relevant for AI than they are for the digital economy. Developments in AI anywhere affect those on the other side of the planet — that’s the nature of cyberspace. The negative spillovers and risks need to be managed while not cutting off the potential of the new technology, which can solve problems previously unimaginable. That will require cooperation.
MC13 will not solve the world’s trade problems but it can provide much needed momentum. Momentum in multilateral trade cooperation can help with the necessary domestic advocacy against entrenched protectionist sentiment, a strategy which Heydon reminds us has worked in the past and must not be passed up now.
East Asia has largely avoided the backlash against globalisation that has raged in Trump’s America and post-Brexit Britain. There are always going to be losers from trade and technological advancement, but forgetting about them or shielding them from international competition and change has never resulted in prosperity.
Despite the setbacks, the centre of global economic gravity continues to shift towards Asia. Asia got rich joining the rules-based system and becoming an exemplary system-taker. It’s now Asia’s time to step up as a system-maker.
Bolstering the trading system at MC13 is just the start in preparing for Trump 2.0.
- About the author: The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.
- Source: This article was published by East Asia Forum
By Alexandra Brzozowski
(EurActiv) — As Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its third year, Europeans face difficult questions about how to approach the next twelve months and sustain their support to give Kyiv the tools it needs to drive back Russian forces.
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two years ago in response when asked to evacuate Kyiv at the behest of Washington.
As Russia’s war against the country enters its third year, Ukraine’s request remains the same.
Over the past months, Ukraine has stepped up warnings that its troops are increasingly outgunned and outmanned, with a shortage of ammunition hampering its armed forces’ ability to push back at Russian troops.
Ukraine’s forces last weekend pulled back from the embattled eastern city of Avdiivka in the face of the latest Russian advances.
The withdrawal seemed to be Moscow’s first big battlefield win and territorial grab since its destruction and capture of the city of Bakhmut in May 2023.
Kyiv is on the defensive after a year of stalemate.
Ukrainian defence officials have requested more air defence systems., and long-rage missiles while expecting a delivery of F-16 fighter planes that could help them regain their airspace. But the wound point remains artillery shells.
“This is a dangerous moment for Ukraine and European security,” Oana Lungescu, Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Euractiv.
“The loss of Avdiivka shows the real impact that delays in delivering Western ammunition and weapons have on the ground,” Lungescu said.
“NATO and EU member states have done a lot to support Ukraine, including with contracts for ammunition worth $1.2 billion concluded by NATO in January – but it’s not enough and not fast enough,” Lungescu said.
Missing shells
Arguably most important among those questions: How long can Europe practically sustain support for Ukraine?
The EU and its top leaders have made it repeatedly clear they intend to continue backing Kyiv, but artillery ammunition deliveries have slowed.
“[Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro] Kuleba has put it well – the fall of Avdiivka is the result of us not providing ammunition,” an EU official told Euractiv, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“They [the Ukrainians] really feel – and we know that they feel – the stage when supplies are drying out, and we really need to feel the urgency to provide them with all we can,” they added.
In late January, the EU publicly acknowledged that the bloc would fall far short of its target of sending one million artillery shells to Ukraine by March this year, saying that about half of that amount would be delivered by that deadline.
The bloc collectively has so far donated 355,000 rounds since February 2023, according to EU estimates. By the end of March, it aimed to donate about 524,000 rounds, with 1,155,000 rounds expected by the end of the year.
EU member states should find ways to increase support to Ukraine, particularly the delivery of badly needed ammunition, the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell on Thursday (22 February) urged his counterparts in a letter first reported by Euractiv.
Borrell said the options were “digging further into your stock”, placing more orders with European industry, buying ammunition wherever available or funding the Ukrainian sector.
“What is needed is immediate financial liquidity. Doing nothing is not an option,” he said.
Among EU diplomats and officials in Brussels, there remains the sense that the EU still has a long way to go to convert its economic heft into military might.
“Everybody believed this war would be short, so why build a [weapons] factory? But the war is going to last long, we should get used to the thought,” one senior EU official told Euractiv.
“If we know that the European industry can’t provide, then we will buy outside [the bloc], I’m certain of that,” they added.
EU diplomats expect that by the EU summit in March, the bloc’s leaders will have taken stock of the current situation and come up with a plan.
“With the final approval of the EU’s €50 billion Ukraine Facility, financial aid to Ukraine seems assured. This is much less clear about military aid, where the dynamics have slowed,” Christoph Trebesch, head of the Ukraine Support Tracker and Research Director at the Kiel Institute, told reporters in Munich last weekend.
The EU and its 27 members have pledged €49.7 billion of military aid since the start of the war but have delivered or earmarked some €35.2 billion to date.
Efforts are primarily driven by a few big donors, such as Germany, the Nordic countries or the UK, while most past donors have promised little or nothing new, the report stated.
Urgency is added by US aid tied up in Washington’s pre-election squabbles. Should the need arise to replace US military assistance this year, Europe must double its current level and pace of arms assistance.
Senior EU officials are saying the bloc needs to show Russia that it will not abandon Ukraine, whatever happens in Washington. But for that, it would need to fill the funding gap.
European officials also believe Putin is digging in and trying to wait out the West, which makes the next 12 months decisive.
“Everybody believed this war would be short, so why build a [weapons] factory? But the war is going to last long, we should get used to the thought,” one senior EU official told Euractiv.
“If we know that the European industry can’t provide, then we will buy outside, I’m certain,” they added.
But the same officials say it is crucial that whatever happens across the Atlantic, Europeans keep spending, however hard it seems.
“As US Congress continues to hold up the next US aid package, Europeans can make a difference – but only if they put their money where their mouth is, put aside ideological arguments that they should only ‘buy European,” and shift from peacetime to war production and mindsets,” Lungescu said.
“Ukrainians are paying for our delays with their blood and their territory, and ultimately we will all pay a much bigger price,” Lungescu said.
National interests
An increasing number of EU diplomats and officials over the past weeks, in conversations with Euractiv, has vented their anger at the slow pace and delayed decisions.
Uncertainty over the next military aid package from Brussels is added with the bloc’s European Peace Facility (EPF) bogged down in national interests.
The increase in financing has been held up by Germany, which had wanted its bilateral support to Kyiv offset against new contributions to EU funds, while France has insisted on buying arms inside rather than outside the bloc.
“In Brussels, what is interesting is our reluctance or inability to learn from mistakes,” one EU diplomat said, adding that “national interests are still being considered before Ukrainian – and to some extent – European interests”.
“We were bogged down in the “buy European”-discussions a year ago, which led to us missing our artillery target, and now we have the same problem with the EPF as the French, more intent on improving the defence industry than helping Ukraine,” they said.
Western European diplomats remain optimistic that arming Ukraine fits perfectly with a much-needed European drive to reduce its reliance on the US.
A second EU diplomat said: “If you’re dying of a heart attack, you’re not asking the nationality of the person doing a heart massage, you want help as quickly as possible.”
It does not help that in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Paris isn’t seen at the forefront of Ukraine support.
Based on the rankings of the Kiel Institute, which has been used as a benchmark since the start of the war, France would come in 15th place regarding bilateral military support to Ukraine, with transfers and financial support valued at €540 million.
It would still come ahead of Spain (19th with €340 million), but behind Italy (13th with €690 million), and above all far behind Germany (2nd with €17.1 billion), the UK (3rd with €6.6 billion) and Poland (6th with €3 billion).
In a new push, French President Emmanuel Macron next Monday (26 February) is expected to host “several heads of state and government” for a conference on supporting Ukraine and called for a “collective leap forward”.
Keeping faith
European leaders now see their hands increasingly tied by internal politics, both with the US presidential election and potential re-election of former US President Donald Trump and the threat that the June EU elections could see a rise of right-wing forces led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
There is growing pessimism across Europe about Ukraine’s ability to secure a battlefield victory, according to a recent poll by the European Council of Foreign Relations (ECFR).
With a deepening sense of gloom and resignation, leaders in European countries most exposed to Russia’s flank are preparing for scenarios that would have been deemed impossible just 25 months ago.
Most Europeans support Ukraine in its war against Russia, but only 1 in 10 think Ukraine can win, according to a survey, with most seeing a “compromise settlement” as necessary to end the war.
While the survey overall paints a bleak picture, most of those asked still favour supporting Ukraine.
“In order to make the case for continued European support for Ukraine, EU leaders will need to change how they talk about the war,” said Mark Leonard, a survey co-author.
“Our poll shows that most Europeans are desperate to prevent a Russian victory. But they also don’t believe that Ukraine will be able to recover all of its territory.”
“The most persuasive case for a sceptical public is that military support for Ukraine could lead to a durable, negotiated peace favouring Kyiv rather than a victory for Putin,” said Leonard.
European leaders and diplomats have indeed stepped up their rhetoric in the past weeks, with an eye towards a gearing up EU election campaign that could see the far right trying to exploit the topic.
A defeat of Ukraine would put European values at risk, which is why there is no alternative but for Europe’s support to continue, European Council President Charles Michel told a group of media, including Euractiv, in an interview.
“There is one Plan A – and only a Plan A – and that is support for Ukraine,” Michel said.
“We need to explain to people that when we invest and spend money for supporting Ukraine, this investment is also an investment for ourselves because it is an investment for peace and stability in the EU,” he added.
French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné in Le Monde advocated for more Ukraine support by stressing that the price of non-action would be higher.
“Today’s efforts in Ukraine are nothing compared to the efforts we would have to make against a Russia that feels victorious. Let us retain control over energy and food prices, over our freedom and our destiny,” he wrote.
Between there being no end to the war in sight, competition for crisis management attention in the Middle East, and domestic concerns from inflation-led cost-of-living crises worldwide, spending large sums on Ukraine could become politically harder to defend for some EU member states.
“On a positive note, day to day we tend to get lost in discussions what part of our support is not good enough, but it is not only doom and gloom,” a third EU diplomat said.
“Politically, the sanctions regime was impossible to imagine in February 2022, the enlargement discussion impossible to imagine in May 2022, the frozen assets were impossible to imagine even last year, and then with the EU budget review, we gave 10 times to Ukraine than we gave to ourselves,” they said.
“When you take a step back and look at the trend – we are doing a shit ton of things,” they added.
But the mood on Ukraine’s prospects in the West, however, remains grim, with most Western officials at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, pointing towards the need to ‘keep faith’, both in Europe and Ukraine.
“We’re in a boxing match, where both sides are retired, but one side is very clear about what it is fighting for – that’s where this war is at,” Ben Hodges, former commander of the US Army in Europe, told Euractiv in Munich.
Hodges stressed that with more Western military aid on its way, especially Western F-16 fighter jets,
“The [Russians] have lost half a million troops, the Black Sea Fleet is getting worse by the day, and their air force is unable to get air superiority even with the Ukrainians having nothing to fly with at the moment,” Hodges said.
“Russia actually is in worse shape than we think,” he said.
“What is needed is a clear commitment from leaders that we will see this though with them [the Ukrainians] until the end, which is their victory,” Hodges concluded.
How will it end?
While Ukrainians expect to fight until the bitter end, the Kremlin has made it abundantly clear that he only negotiated the end it will accept Ukraine’s surrender.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Munich last weekend gave a glimpse of how some European leaders and diplomats are quietly shifting language on war aims in Ukraine.
Rather than say, “Ukraine will win” or “Russia must leave Ukraine,” Scholz argued that Putin should not be allowed to dictate the terms of peace in Ukraine.
“There will be no dictated peace. Ukraine will not accept this, and neither will we,” Reuters quoted Scholz as having said.
While European leaders insist only Ukraine will decide the terms of any future negotiated peace, Ukrainians have made it equally clear they will continue to resist or likely face destruction.
“The only place we plan to speak with [Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin is The Hague,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Euractiv late last year when asked whether Ukraine would be ready to sit down with Putin.
“We can get our land back, and Putin can lose,” Zelenskyy told security leaders last weekend in Munich, adding: “We should not be afraid of Putin‘s defeat and the destruction of his regime. It is his fate to lose — not the fate of the rules-based order to vanish.”
“We don’t lack capacity, we lack the political will and urgency necessary to support Ukraine and maintain our collective security,” Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told Euractiv.
“Some people would, in principle, support Ukraine but are too worried about what will happen if Ukraine defeats Russia,” he added.
Asked by Euractiv whether he agreed with Zelenskyy’s plea not to fear a defeat of Russia, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a top contender to be the next NATO chief, said:
“But when that happens, we will also have to sit down with the US, within NATO, [and] collectively with the Russians to talk about the future security arrangements between us and the Russians.”
“It could be like when the German unification took place in 1990 because, at the same time, the discussion was going on the security guarantees for the whole of Europe,” he added.
EU diplomats acknowledge that such negotiations have failed in the past, especially with the Minsk Agreements, which many by now believe have led to the full-scale invasion being made possible in the first place by having previously frozen the so-called ‘contact line’.
Many fear a repeat of the situation in the future, only buying Putin time to prepare for the next offensive.
“Putin has no intention of stopping [and] those who think that Minsk III would be the end of this war are showing gross naivité, to say it in polite terms,” Lithuania’s Landsbergis said.
“The only way is Ukrainian victory,” he added.