President Trump said that “the war in Ukraine is not my problem.” This is true in the sense that the war started in 2014 with the Maidan Square coup led by President Obama’s Administration, with Biden as Vice President. But it is also true that President Trump, who campaigned on a promise to end the war by negotiating directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has failed to do so. Instead, he has continued to supply arms to Kiev after the agreement allowing the US to exploit Ukraine’s natural resources. Meanwhile, NATO continues to escalate the war against Russia with the US in key command.
This is the framework in which the European Union is operating. It has introduced the 17th package of sanctions against Russia and is preparing the 18th. At the same time, the EU is providing Kyiv with increasing financial support to fuel the war against Russia. So far, this has amounted to €148 billion. More than €50 billion of this has been used for direct military purposes to buy weapons and train troops. This is in addition to the increasing military spending of the European member states of NATO.
Italy’s annual military expenditure will be EUR 35,400 million in 2025, an average of about EUR 97 million per day. It will soon have to rise to an average of EUR 124 million per day under the NATO commitment. In addition to the current military spending of more than €35 billion per year, there is the expenditure on the acquisition of new weapons. This has now exceeded €70 billion and is still rising. This is a huge amount of public money that is being diverted from social spending, while sanctions against Russia are having a boomerang effect, hitting small and medium-sized enterprises and households in general by raising energy prices.
The arms race concerns not only ‘conventional’ (non-nuclear) weapons, but also nuclear weapons. France and Poland have concluded a ‘nuclear defence’ agreement allowing France to transfer nuclear weapons to Poland and Poland to use them under French command. It cannot be ruled out that Poland already has on its territory the new B61-12 nuclear bombs already deployed by the United States in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. President Macron is offering the French “nuclear umbrella” to all EU countries, just as he did to Poland.
At the same time, President Trump announced the imminent construction of a $175 billion ‘space shield ‘capable of intercepting missiles launched from other parts of the world. It is not just a defensive tool: a country equipped with a ‘shield’ can attack another country first, relying on the ability of the ‘shield’ to neutralise enemy retaliation. It is no coincidence that the announcement of the Space Shield project coincided with Washington’s announcement of the early production of the first B61-13 nuclear bomb. 24 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, it is a first-strike weapon capable of penetrating the ground and destroying enemy command bunkers with its explosion. Russia and China will undoubtedly take countermeasures. This will accelerate the nuclear arms race.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Grandangolo, Byoblu TV.
Manlio Dinucci, award-winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
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