#czech presidential election

[black-rose-writings]

Doing my Tumblr citizen duty by voting in the Tumblr Sexyman Poll and tomorrow my Czech citizen duty by voting for the president.

#tumblr sexymen poll #tumblr #čumblr #czech presidential election #which is like... basically a real life virgin vs. chad meme #and the virgin has a real chance of winning #which can't happen #go vote #in both the tumblr sexyman poll #and the election #slyšíš čumblre? mazejte volit

[deetherusalka]

2023 so far has truly zero chill

#like quatargate #turkey hamerring over syria #Czech presidential election #battle of Scottish independence #etc etx #it's just 19 January the fuck #this is shitstorm

[leona-florianova]

Můj tatín jde volit Pavla, ale vsadil si na Babiše.. že prej jestli Babiš vyhraje, tak ho aspoň trochu utěší ty prachy..A když vyhraje Pavel, tak to bude taková úleva, že mu ty prohraný prachy ani nebudou vadit. 

#volby #babitch #vs #ten pán křestním jménem generál #čumblr #text post #aneb proč by jeden neměl úplně dát na předpovědi sázkových kanceláří #česky #prezidentské volby 2023 #czech presidential elections 2023 #czech republic #suffering

[tarakau]

Tak jo, baes. Tenhle tejden bude hotovo. Minulý a předminulý volby se na druhý kolo lidi MEGA VYSRALI a účast byla slabá. Myslím, že ale teď je všem jasný, že ten čurák prostě nesmí vyhrát. Snad nemusím říkat, že když by vyhrál, a zvládnul by si dosadit na všechny posty svoje lidi, zanedlouho bysme žili pěkně oligarchicky jak v Maďarsku, nebo Rusku. Takže prosím. PROSÍM.

Běžte volit.

Udělejte vše pro to, aby šli volit i vaši rodiče, sourozenci, prarodiče, známí, kolegové v práci. Použijte všechny přesvědčovací metody, který umíte.

To že se Babiš teď chová jako šílenec neznamená, že nemá podporu lidí. Spousta lidí má pocit, že nemůže vyhrát a že "to je jasný". To si lidi mysleli i u Drahoše. Takže prosím. Vemte za pačesy budoucnost týhle země a konejte svoji povinnost.

Pokud se Vám Pavel příčí, ok, ale vyloženě neexistuje kloudnej argument k tomu preferovat Babiše. A nebo nejít k volbám. Protože vám to může bejt jedno, nebo volit nechcete, ale Pepovi z hospody kterej věří, že Babiš Will Make Czechia Great Again, to jedno není a k těm volbám půjde, protože má dost času. Stejně jako většina lidí poblazněná dezinformacema, qAnonem a Babišovou kampaní.

Tak se na to nevyserte a neposerte to.

#Čumblr #Prezidentské volby 2023 #Czech presidential elections 2023 #Česky

[mezimraky]

So what on earth is happening with the Czech election right now? Who is this general? Do people actually want Babiš? How does this vote work?

it's complicated! essentially, what is happening in czech rep right now is the third ever direct presidential election. meaning, every citizen over the age of 18 gets a vote. the last two elections ended with miloš zeman as the winner. miloš zeman is a bitter old man who is a rude drunk but people felt represented by him, and so elected him twice.

the second time around there was a big wave of dislike for zeman but the voters did not manage to pool in to one other candidate but instead spread to at least three fractions, making it impossible to beat zeman. this is not the case this year, with this election.

the first round of the election ended with two favourites. generál petr pavel and andrej babiš. they both had around 30something% of votes and ended within less than a percent to each other.

andrej babiš, the poplusist oligarch, is the head of the biggest political party in the country, ANO. andrej babiš is also a businessman who first went into politics in cca 2011 and his main positive was that "as a rich businessman he would not need to steal from the people as a politician." and "as a successful businessman he can run the country like he runs his company". they essentially built their popularity on populist policies that range the whole political spectrum without much of a system or reliability. they would form alliance with anyone who allowed them to be in the position of power.

the prominence of ANO has indirectly caused a crisis in democracy. the two sides of the political spectrum are out of balance. ANO's populist policies have replaced the political left almost entirely. if you'd watched the last government election last year, you'd see that the fight was no longer between the left and the right but between populism and democracy. the democratic right has won at the cost of forming a giant coalition made out of five different parties. they really needed that many in order to beat the ever so popular ANO, and babiš himself.

and this appears to be happening again. the choice of the second round of the presidential election is between babiš and generál pavel. babiš being a populist who will say just about anything to win (including pointing at the general's millitary past and claiming that he will drag our country into the war, take your kids away and whatever else). generál pavel being a guy with diplomatic experience in NATO, who mostly bases his campaign on his unshakeable calm and order. which, to be fair, following the many years with miloš zeman does seem like a very alluring concept.

both babiš and pavel also have a communist past, much like most people their age in this country. while pavel was a regular party member (and gained part of his millitary training under the old regime), andrej babiš has been proven to cooperate with the secret police at the time, being their secret agent of sorts. the cynics would tell you that there its not a real choice, that its between a communist and an agent, that they both suck. but.

it's not just the choice between two people. it's once again between a real diplomat and a liar. they are many poignant arguments concerning these two, but let me just focus on this one, as it is the most important one to me. babiš as a person does not stand for anything. he will say anything to get what he wants. he contradicts himself on the regular and does not cope well with being called out. he makes himself out to be an underdog but he was the prime minister until last year, and as a prime minister proved himself to be both completely spineless and worthless. and yet, his loyal fans seem to forget. they seem to have a weird sort of parasocial relationship with the kind grandpa in a turtleneck that he presents himself as on the social networks. they don't care what he did or didn't do. they like him as a person. they don't care what he would do to the image or political orientation of our country. they don't care. they care that he baked a delicious vánočka the other day, just like they do, every christmas!!!!

generál pavel has his own minuses, one of the ones that get thrown around a lot-- having millitary past, it's not all clear what he's done while in the millitary. having had diplomatic affiliations before, they say we can't know for sure where all his allegiances lay. and he was a communist after all. but. the thing is. he's the only other option we've got. and he's not all bad. he speaks well, he's consistent in his opinions, and he's willing to listen to marginalised groups for reasons other than to make himself look good.

and he's decent. and unaffiliated with a particular political party. insistent on democratic values. it's a low bar, i know. but it's the best hope we've got...

#under the sun with kai #what i failed to mention is that there is a two week gap between first and second round of the election #and this time is so far getting used mostly by babiš to throw dirt on generál pavel and spread misinformation #which. makes generál pavel keep repeating the same shit every debate just defending himself. #this kind of past-based and fear-based campaign moreover sidelines the important issues. #such as actual presidential power. diplomatic relations. concepts for The Future of The Fucking Country. #i have a lot of thoughts. i hope i voiced them in at least a semi-understandable manner. #there is also a lot of memes made abt these elections if you're interested in those too hmu #i just didnt wanna mix up the serious and the funny because the serious already got so long #also for the record im not a politics student im an art student so this is my very basic assessment of the situation feel free to add to it #czech

[tomorrowusa]

A billionaire populist friendly to Vladimir Putin lost a race for president. 🎆

No, not THAT billionaire. But former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš lost in a landslide in the second round of the presidential election in the Czech Republic on Saturday. Babiš was defeated by Petr Pavel – a former general and NATO commander.

With nearly all the votes counted, returns showed Pavel prevailing by the emphatic margin of 58.3% to 41.68%, the largest ever recorded in a Czech presidential poll and reflecting an advantage of more than 958,000 votes nationwide.

Pavel’s supporters immediately hailed the result as a victory for liberal democracy over oligarchic populism, which they believe Babiš represents.

As the scale of his triumph became clear, Pavel, 61, a former army chief of staff and Nato second-in-command, was greeted by ecstatic chants of “president, president” from champagne-drinking supporters as he mounted the podium at his campaign headquarters in Prague’s Karlín district.

In a very unusual move, Zuzana Čaputová the anti-populist president of nearby Slovakia dropped by at Pavel’s election night celebration.

In a highly symbolic moment, he then received the congratulations on stage of Zuzana Čaputová, Slovakia’s president, who – like Pavel – has spoken out against populism and invoked the values of Václav Havel, the one-time dissident who was the first post-communist president of the former Czechoslovakia.

In recent years Russia has attempted to manipulate the Czech media. It’s certainly possible Russia may have had something to do with a false report of Pavel’s death.

The outcome represented a personal vindication for the pro-western Pavel, who was forced to deny false eve-of-poll reports of his own death announced on a counterfeit version of his campaign website, sparking allegations of dirty tricks and a police investigation.

In countries which have both a president and prime minister there is a great deal of difference in the powers of the president.

In France, the president is preeminent. In Germany, where the prime minister has the title chancellor (Kanzler), the president is mostly a symbolic figurehead. The Czech presidency falls in the middle – somewhat like Portugal. So this is more than a token victory for pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian forces.

In the first round of voting, Pavel ended up just narrowly ahead of Babiš.

In the second round on Saturday with over a 70% turnout, Pavel picked up the support of most of the eliminated candidates and decisively defeated Babiš.

Unity and high turnout are necessary ingredients to defeat pro-authoritarian populists.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did Babiš no favors. It reminded Czechs of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia which repressed the pro-democracy “Prague Spring”. The Czech Republic has strongly supported Ukraine and has taken in many Ukrainian refugees.

Last autumn Prague renamed a street at the entrance of the Russian Embassy “Ukrajinských hrdinů” (Ukrainian Heroes Street). 

Petr Pavel’s election is the latest sign of Russia’s plummeting influence in Eastern Europe. The moderate Prime Minister Petr Fiala defeated Andrej Babiš in the 2021 parliamentary elections even before Russia’s war against Ukraine.

@everypublictransitstopinprague​

#czech republic #presidential election #petr pavel #andrej babiš #česko #česká republika #prezident #nato #zuzana čaputová #volby #russia #rusko #russia's fading influence #eastern europe #vladimir putin #invasion of ukraine #ulice ukrajinských hrdinů #владимир путин #путин хуйло #руки прочь от украины! #україна переможе #слава україні!

[mandlovapusinka]

WE FUCKING DID IT!

#volby 2023 #czech republic #presidential elections #doprdelepráce já mám TAKOVOU radost! #čumblr

[eastern-lights]

I promise to give myself a presidential detox one of these days, but this is an actual exchange from an interview a famous czech youtuber did with Pavel before the elections:

And I smell a meme template

(here’s the blank, please tag me in your creations, I wanna see them:)

#čumblr #ment #petr pavel #they also played CoD and our future president got schooled on how to peel a banana properly #oh and they ate meatloaf stuck between two halves of a jam doughnut #and we have learned that Pavel will eat anything up to and including sun-dried worms #but draws the line at the bottom part of a banana #meme template

[mapsontheweb]

A map of the Czech presidential 2023 election results by municipalities with highlighted borders that existed as a result of the 1938 Munich Pact agreement and the establishment of German's controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

#maps #czechia #elections #2023

[starvrat]

love seeing people talking about how they keep checking the sexyman poll as if it were the presidential elections cause im czech and yesterday we in fact had presidential elections so i basically felt double that

#cecilsweep #sexymanotd

[mariacallous]

The second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on February 24th, and the continuing menace Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, presents to Europe, were always going to overshadow this year’s Munich Security Conference. But as the annual gathering of bigwigs got under way, a series of additional blows fell. First came the death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s foremost opposition leader, in a Siberian gulag on February 16th. The next day Ukraine’s army withdrew from the town of Avdiivka, handing Mr Putin his first military victory in almost a year. America’s Congress, meanwhile, showed no sign of passing a bill to dispense more military aid to Ukraine, which is starved of ammunition and therefore likely to suffer more setbacks on the battlefield. The auguries could scarcely have been more awful.

The deadlock in Congress reflects the baleful influence of Donald Trump, whose opposition to aid for Ukraine has cowed Republican lawmakers. It was the spectre of Mr Trump’s potential return to office in November’s presidential election that cast the darkest pall over Munich. A week earlier Mr Trump had explained what he would say to an ally in nato that had not spent as much as the alliance urges on defence and then suffered an invasion: “You’re delinquent? No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [the invaders] to do whatever the hell they want.”

Combined harms

Russia’s ever-deepening belligerence, Ukraine’s deteriorating position and Mr Trump’s possible return to the White House have brought Europe to its most dangerous juncture in decades. The question is not just whether America will abandon Ukraine, but whether it might abandon Europe. For Europe to fill the space left by America’s absence would require much more than increased defence spending. It would have to revitalise its arms industry, design a new nuclear umbrella and come up with a new command structure.

In Munich the mood was fearful, but determined rather than panicked. American and European officials remain hopeful that more American munitions will eventually get to Ukraine, but they are also making contingencies. On February 17th Petr Pavel, the Czech president, said his country had “found” 800,000 shells that could be shipped within weeks. In an interview with The Economist Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, insisted that European arms production was increasing “as fast as possible” and said he was “very optimistic” that Europe could plug any gaps left by America.

Not everyone is so sanguine. If American aid were to evaporate entirely, Ukraine would probably lose, an American official tells The Economist. Mr Pistorius is correct that European arms production is rising fast; the continent should be able to produce shells at an annual rate of 1m-2m late this year, potentially outstripping America. But that may come too late for Ukraine, which needs some 1.5m per year according to Rheinmetall, a European arms manufacturer. A sense of wartime urgency is still lacking. European shell-makers export 40% of their production to non-EU countries other than Ukraine; when the European Commission proposed that Ukraine should be prioritised by law, member states refused. The continent’s arms firms complain that their order books remain too thin to warrant big investments in production lines.

A Ukrainian defeat would inflict a psychological blow on the West while emboldening Mr Putin. That does not mean he could take advantage right away. “There is no immediate threat to NATO,” says Admiral Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s international military committee. Allies disagree over how long Russia would need to rebuild its forces to a pre-war standard, he says, and the timing depends in part on Western sanctions, but three to seven years is the range “a lot of people talk about”. The direction of travel is clear. “We can expect that within the next decade, NATO will face a Soviet-style mass army,” warned Estonia’s annual intelligence report, published on February 13th. The threat is not just a Russian invasion, but attacks and provocations which might test the limits of Article 5, NATO’s mutual-defence clause. “It cannot be ruled out that within a three- to five-year period, Russia will test Article 5 and NATO’s solidarity,” Denmark’s defence minister recently warned. But the concern is less the timing than the prospect of confronting Russia alone.

Change of station

Europe has thought about such a moment for years. In 2019 Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, told this newspaper that allies needed to “reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the commitment of the United States”. Mr Trump’s first term in office, in which he flirted with withdrawing from NATO and publicly sided with Mr Putin over his own intelligence agencies, served as a catalyst. The idea of European “strategic autonomy”, once pushed only by France, was embraced by other countries. Defence spending, which began rising after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, has increased dramatically. That year just three members of NATO met the alliance’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. Last year 11 countries did, ten of them in Europe (see chart 1). This year at least 18 of NATO’s 28 European members will hit the target. Europe’s total defence spending will reach around $380bn—about the same as Russia’s, after adjusting for Europe’s higher prices.

Those numbers flatter Europe, however. Its defence spending yields disproportionately little combat power, and its armed forces are less than the sum of their parts. The continent is years away from being able to defend itself from attack by a reconstituted Russian force. At last year’s summit, NATO leaders approved their first comprehensive national defence plans since the cold war. NATO officials say those plans require Europe to increase its existing (and unmet) targets for military capability by about a third. That, in turn, means Europe would have to spend around 50% more on defence than today, or about 3% of GDP. The only European members of NATO that currently reach that level are Poland and Greece, the latter flattered by bloated military pensions.

Anyway, more money is not enough. Almost all European armies are struggling to meet their recruitment targets, as is America’s. Moreover the rise in spending after 2014 delivered alarmingly little growth in combat capability. A recent paper by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), a think-tank in London, found that the number of combat battalions had barely increased since 2015 (France and Germany each added just one) or had even fallen, in Britain by five battalions. At a conference last year, an American general lamented that most European countries could field just one full-strength brigade (a formation of a few thousand troops), if that. Germany’s bold decision to deploy a full brigade to Lithuania, for instance, is likely to stretch its army severely.

Even when Europe can produce combat forces, they often lack the things needed to fight effectively for long periods: command-and-control capabilities, such as staff officers trained to run large headquarters; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, such as drones and satellites; logistics capabilities, including airlift; and ammunition to last for longer than a week or so. “The things that European militaries can do, they can do really well,” says Michael Kofman, a military expert, “but they typically can’t do a lot of them, they can’t do them for very long and they’re configured for the initial period of a war that the United States would lead.”

Poland is an instructive case. It is the poster boy for European rearmament. It will spend 4% of its GDP on defence this year, and splurges more than half of that money on equipment, far above NATO’s target of 20%. It is buying huge numbers of tanks, helicopters, howitzers and HIMARS rocket artillery—on the face of it, just what Europe needs. But under the previous government, says Konrad Muzyka, a defence analyst, it did so with little coherent planning and utter neglect of how to crew and sustain the equipment, with personnel numbers falling. Poland’s HIMARS launchers can hit targets 300km away, but its intelligence platforms cannot see that far. It relies on America for that.

One option would be for Europeans to pool their resources. For the past 16 years, for instance, a group of 12 European countries have jointly bought and operated a fleet of three long-range cargo aircraft—essentially a timeshare programme for airlift. In January Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain teamed up to order 1,000 of the missiles used in the Patriot air-defence system, diving down the cost through bulk. The same approach could be taken in other areas, such as reconnaissance satellites.

The hitch is that countries with big defence industries—France, Germany, Italy and Spain—often fail to agree on how contracts should be split among their national arms-makers. There is also a trade-off between plugging holes quickly and building up the continent’s own defence industry. France is irked by a recent German-led scheme, the European Sky Shield Initiative, in which 21 European countries jointly buy air-defence systems, in part because it involves buying American and Israeli launchers alongside German ones. When Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, recently called for Europe to adopt a “war economy”, Benjamin Haddad, a French lawmaker in Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, retorted, “It’s not by buying American equipment that we’re going to get there.” European arms-makers, he argued, will not hire workers and build production lines if they do not get orders.

These twin challenges—building up military capability and revitalising arms production—are formidable. Europe’s defence industry is less fragmented than many assume, says Jan Joel Andersson of the EU Institute for Security Studies in a recent paper: the continent makes fewer types of fighter jets and airborne radar planes than America, for instance. But there are inefficiencies. Countries often have different design priorities. France wants carrier-capable jets and lighter armoured vehicles; Germany prefers longer-range aircraft and heavier tanks. Europe-wide co-operation on tanks has consistently failed, writes Mr Andersson, and an ongoing Franco-German effort is in doubt.

The scale of the required changes raises broader economic, social and political questions. Germany’s military renaissance will be unaffordable without cutting other government spending or junking the country’s “debt brake”, which would require a constitutional amendment. Mr Pistorius says he is convinced that German society backs higher defence expenditure, but acknowledges, “We have to convince people that this might have an impact on other spending.” Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner in charge of defence, has proposed a €100bn ($108bn) defence fund to boost arms production. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s prime minister, backed by Mr Macron and other leaders, has proposed that the EU fund such defence spending with joint borrowing, as it did the recovery fund it established during the covid-19 pandemic—a controversial idea among the thriftiest member-states.

Perhaps the hardest capability for Europe to replace is the one everyone hopes will never be needed. America is committed to using its nuclear weapons to defend European allies. That includes both its “strategic” nuclear forces, those in submarines, silos and bombers, and the smaller, shorter-range “non-strategic” B61 gravity bombs stored in bases across Europe, which can be dropped by several European air forces. Those weapons have served as the ultimate guarantee against Russian invasion. Yet an American president who declined to risk American troops to defend a European ally would hardly be likely to risk American cities in a nuclear exchange.

During Mr Trump’s first spell in office, that fear revived an old debate over how Europe might compensate for the loss of the American umbrella. Britain and France both possess nuclear weapons. But they have only 500 warheads between them, compared with America’s 5,000 and Russia’s nearly 6,000 (see chart 2 ). For advocates of “minimum” deterrence, that makes little difference: they think a few hundred warheads, more than enough to wipe out Moscow and other cities, will dissuade Mr Putin from any reckless adventure. Analysts of a more macabre bent think such lopsided megatonnage, and the disproportionate damage which Britain and France would suffer, give Mr Putin an advantage.

Nuclear posturing

This is not just a numerical problem. British nuclear weapons are assigned to NATO, whose Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) shapes policy on how nuclear weapons should be used. The deterrent is operationally independent: Britain can launch as it pleases. But it depends on America for the design of future warheads and draws from a common pool of missiles, which is kept on the other side of the Atlantic. If America were to sever all co-operation, British nuclear forces “would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years”, according to an assessment published ten years ago. In contrast, France’s deterrent is entirely home-grown and more aloof from NATO: uniquely among NATO’s members, France does not participate in the NPG, though it has long said that its arsenal, “by its existence”, contributes to the alliance’s security.

Within NATO, nuclear issues were long on the “back burner”, says Admiral Bauer. That has changed in the past two years, with more and wider discussions on nuclear planning and deterrence. But NATO’s plans hinge on American forces; they do not say what should happen if America leaves. The question of how Britain and France might fill that gap is now percolating. On February 13th Christian Lindner, Germany’s finance minister and head of the pro-business Free Democratic Party, called in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper, for a “rethink” of European nuclear arrangements. “Under what political and financial conditions would Paris and London be prepared to maintain or expand their own strategic capabilities for collective security?” he asked. “And vice versa, what contribution are we willing to make?”

Such musings have a long history. In the 1960s America and Europe pondered a “multilateral” nuclear force under joint control. Today, the idea that Britain or France would “share” the decision to use nuclear weapons is a non-starter, writes Bruno Tertrais, a French expert involved in the debate for decades, in a recent paper. Nor is France likely to join the NPG or assign its air-launched nuclear forces to NATO, he says. One option would be for the two countries to affirm more forcefully that their deterrents would, or at least could, protect allies. In 2020 Mr Macron stated that France’s “vital interests”—the issues over which it would contemplate nuclear use—“now have a European dimension” and offered a “strategic dialogue” with allies on this topic, a position he reiterated last year.

The question is how this would be made credible. In deterrence, the crucial issue is how to make adversaries (and allies) believe that a commitment is real, rather than a cheap diplomatic gesture that would be abandoned when the stakes become apocalyptic. Mr Tertrais proposes a range of options. At the tame end, France could simply promise to consult on nuclear use with its partners, time permitting. More radically, if the American umbrella had gone entirely, France could invite European partners to participate in nuclear operations, such as providing escort aircraft for bombers, joining a task force with the eventual successor to the Charles de Gaulle aircraft-carrier, which can host nukes, or even basing a few missiles in Germany. Such options might ultimately require “a common nuclear planning mechanism”, he says.

Mr Lindner’s talk of a European deterrent was largely dismissed by German officials who spoke to The Economist in Munich. But the nuclear question, involving as it does the deepest questions of sovereignty, identity and national survival, points to the vacuum that would be left if America abandons Europe. “There will be a European nuclear doctrine, a European deterrent, only when there are vital European interests, considered as such by the Europeans, and understood as such by others,” pronounced François Mitterrand, France’s president, in 1994. “We are far away from there.” Today Europe is closer, but not close enough. The same doubt that drove France to develop its own nuclear forces in the 1950s—would an American president sacrifice New York for Paris?—is replicated within Europe: would Mr Macron risk Toulouse for Tallinn?

The seemingly dry question of military command and control brings such issues to the fore. NATO is a political and diplomatic body. It is also a formidable bureaucracy that spends €3.3bn annually and operates a complex network of headquarters: a Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium, three big joint commands in America, the Netherlands and Italy, and a series of smaller ones below. These are the brains that would run any war with Russia. If Mr Trump withdrew from NATO overnight, Europeans would have to decide how to replace them.

An “EU-only” option would not work, says Daniel Fiott of the Elcano Royal Institute, a Spanish think-tank. In part that is because the EU’s own military headquarters is still small, inexperienced and incapable of overseeing high-intensity war. In part it is because this would exclude Britain, Europe’s largest defence spender, as well as other non-EU NATO members such as Canada, Norway and Turkey. An alternative would be for Europeans to inherit the rump NATO structures and keep the alliance alive without America. Whatever institution was chosen, it would have to be filled with skilled officers. Officials at SHAPE acknowledge that much of the serious planning falls on just a few countries. Among Europeans, says Olivier Schmitt, a professor at the Centre for War Studies in Denmark, only “the French, the Brits and maybe the Germans on a good day can send officers able to plan operations at the division and corps level”, precisely those needed in the event of a serious Russian attack.

The question of command is also intrinsically political. Mr Fiott doubts that EU member states could agree on a figure equivalent to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the alliance’s top general and, by custom, always an American. That epitomises how American dominance in Europe has suppressed intra-European disputes for decades, as captured in the cold-war quip that NATO’s purpose was to keep “the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down”. Sophia Besch of the Carnegie Endowment observes caustically that Europeans still defer to America on the biggest questions of European security: “My impression is that Americans often think more strategically about EU membership for Ukraine than many Europeans.” She sees little hope that Europe will bring bold new ideas to this year’s NATO summit in Washington in July, which will mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary.

It is certainly possible that the shock to European security will be less dramatic than feared. Perhaps America will pass an aid package. Perhaps Europe will scrape together enough shells to keep Ukraine solvent. Perhaps, even if Mr Trump wins, he will keep America in NATO, claiming credit for the fact that a majority of its members—and all of those along the eastern front, and thus most in need of protection—are no longer “delinquent”. Some European officials even muse that Mr Trump, who is fond of nuclear weapons, might take drastic steps such as meeting Poland’s demand to be included in nuclear-sharing arrangements. For the moment, there are still intense debates over how far Europe should hedge against American abandonment. Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of NATO, has repeatedly warned that the idea is futile. “The European Union cannot defend Europe,” he said on February 14th. “Eighty per cent of NATO’s defence expenditures come from non-EU NATO allies.”

Forward-operating haste

Advocates of European self-sufficiency retort that building up a “European pillar” within NATO serves a triple purpose. It strengthens NATO as long as America remains, shows that Europe is committed to share the burden of collective defence and, if necessary, lays the groundwork in case of a future rupture. Higher defence spending, more arms production and more combat-capable forces will be necessary even if America remains in the alliance and under current war plans. Moreover, even the most Europhile of presidents could be forced to divert forces away from Europe if, for instance, America were to be pulled into a big war in Asia.

The difficult questions around command and control, and its implications for political leadership, are probably here to stay. In the worst case of a complete American exit from NATO, a “messy” solution would be needed, says Mr Fiott, perhaps one that would bring Europe’s overlapping institutions into greater alignment. He suggests some radical options, such as giving the EU a seat on the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s main decision-making body, or even a fusion of the posts of NATO secretary-general and president of the European Commission. Such notions still seem otherworldly. But less so with every passing week.

[rvps2001]

Russia-Ukraine Daily Briefing

🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Friday Briefing:

- Bulgaria confirms long-awaited armored personnel carriers headed to Ukraine - France's Macron says Europe must be ready if Russia escalates - Sweden pledges €30M, Portugal - €100M to Czech ammo initiative for Ukraine - EU Parliament calls for return of Romanian gold sent to Russia during WWI - US envoy warns over Hungary's 'close and expanding' links with Russia - German defence firm Rheinmetall plans Ukraine arms factories - EU moves towards using €27bn in profit from frozen Russian assets for Ukraine - Russia believed to have jammed signal on UK defence minister's plane - 20 Foreign Affairs Committees denounce Russia’s presidential ‘elections’

📨 Daily newsletter: https://russia-ukraine-newsletter.beehiiv.com/

💬 Telegram: https://t.me/russiaukrainedaily Socials: https://linktr.ee/rvps2001

#russia ukraine war #ukraine russia war #ukraine war #russian army #russian war crimes #news #newsletter #russia #ukraine

[mezimraky]

'europeans are more accepting of ukrainian refugees because they are white' WRONG the same people spouting vitriol against brown people are spouting it now.

#under the sun with kai #i feel sick reading fb comment abt any refugee topic in czech because our local paper is just full of hateful little people #the kind that throw around the phrase 'why do they get to go to the zoo for free if i cant' a whole lot #at least our government is not following that rhetoric. at least they are standing their ground in terms of solidarity. #then again it is a centrist-right government so the people already feel like the government does not care about them #so in a way some of that anger is justified but completely wrongly aimed at people fleeing their homes because of war. #its exhausting. the way this is a tangled up sort of cycle. #the elites dont talk to the poorer people because they are deemed stupid and hateful. creating more of a divide. making them angrier and #not teaching them anything. not having discussions that could help bring people together. #the poorer people in turn take it out on whoever is even below them on the social hierarchy at the moment. #the government sees that it is the right thing to do to help refugees. the government ignores the housing and energy crisis encroaching. #the bittersweet feelings from after the last elections are back. #yes. woo. democratic parties won. but also. there is literally zero leftists in the government. zero. #the opposition is filled with populists and extremists. who play at being socially oriented when it benefits them. #there is no liberal left to speak of in our politics at all actually. the pirate party vaguely touched on it and they got fucked last time. #im sorry for this rant im sorting my thoughts. what i know. and its looking more and more dire. #also there are newspapers coming up with statistics that babiš is more likely to win first round of presidential elections. #and i do not know whether to trust them because i can NOT for the life of me keep track of all the media he owns :) #everything is fucked and we will all die here (by words of a podcaster on my fave leftist liberal news site :)) )

[hidden-but]

American internet: oh, so they’re going camping! *amused smile*

Czech internet, on this fortnight between round 1 and round 2 of presidential elections: flanel you say, star trek votes for Pavel you say, space sees through Babiš’s lies you say, *five minutes of hysterical laughter*

#čumblr

[mandlovapusinka]

volby 2023 in a nutshell

#volby 2023 #presidential elections #czech republic #čumblr #odpusťte #je mi mentálně třináct #řehtám se u toho posledních sedm minut jako vraný kůň

[tomorrowusa]

Good for the Czechs! 🇨🇿 All Russian state property and assets held by pro-Putin oligarchs around the world should be impounded and given to Ukraine.

The Czech government said on Wednesday it froze Russian state-owned properties in the Czech Republic, expanding a sanctions list set up in retaliation for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The government press office said the EU country widened its national sanctions list to include a Russian company, which is controlled by the Russian presidential administration, and is in charge of managing Russian assets abroad. It did not name the company in the statement. "Its income from operations serves directly for financing of the Putin regime," the government said in a statement. "The company's commercial activities are as of today illegal, as well as circumventing and violating this sanction, and its entire assets in the Czech Republic have been frozen," it said. In the Czech Republic, the Russian company manages a number of real estate properties, the Czech government said.

Of course that's not the only recent Ukraine news item. Ukraine has arrested a crony of Rudy Giuliani with ties to Russia.

Ukraine charges Rudy Giuliani’s top local ally with Moscow-linked treason

A Ukrainian MP who in 2019 helped former U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in his search for dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden has been charged with treason. Oleksandr Dubinsky, together with ex-Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach and ex-prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulyk, had joined an organization formed by chiefs of Russia’s Military Intelligence (GRU), Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said in a statement on Monday. Although SBU did not name the MP in the statement, the photos and video materials attached to it identify Dubinsky, whose alias, “Buratino,” was taken from a 1930s Soviet “Pinocchio” knockoff.

It seems appropriate that somebody linked to the Trump crime family would have a code name related to Pinocchio – a mythological liar. 😆

Dubinsky met Giuliani during his visit to Kyiv in December 2019 while the former New York City mayor and failed U.S. presidential candidate was filming a documentary aimed at discrediting an impeachment probe into Trump. [ ... ] According to SBU, Dubinsky, guided by GRU, spread fake news about Ukraine’s military and political leadership, including claims that high-ranking Ukrainian officials were interfering in U.S. presidential elections. SBU said the Ukraine group was run by GRU deputy head Vladimir Alekseyev and his deputy Oleksiy Savin. If found guilty, Dubinsky faces up to 15 years in prison and forfeiture of his assets, SBU added.

This clearly smacks of Putin. He wanted to boost the chances of his stooge Donald "Pee Tapes" Trump while trying to undermine Ukraine – something he had actively been doing since 2004.

#invasion of ukraine #stand with ukraine #česko #czech republic #russian assets frozen in czech republic #rudy giuliani #oleksandr dubinsky #pinocchio #donald trump #election 2020 #vladimir putin #буратино #олександр дубінський #владимир путин #путин хуйло #бей путина #путлер #путина в гаагу! #дональд трамп #трамп хуйло #руки прочь от украины! #геть з україни #вторгнення оркостану в україну #чехія #сбу #деокупація #разом – до перемоги! #слава україні! #героям слава!