Pavel Jechort 🇺🇦

For years, Europe was told it was weak. Frightened. A continent of museums, long lunches and people who needed an American to open a particularly intimidating jar. An interesting assessment of the continent that produced Roman legions, Vikings and enough military history to fill several libraries with reasons never to do it again. We know what strength looks like. We also know what happens when it becomes stupidity. Our history contains rather extensive documentation of both. Now the orange clown wants to leave? Fine. There’s the door. Try negotiating a tariff with it on the way out. Trump’s America sells invincibility with the confidence of a second-hand car dealer standing in front of a smoking engine. Meanwhile, Iranian strikes have damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures at US bases across the Middle East. A humiliating discrepancy between the sales brochure and the actual vehicle. Europe should stop waiting for the next reassurance from Washington and start placing orders. Build the factories. Make the ammunition, drones, missiles and air defences. Invest in engineers, energy, intelligence and logistics. Create skilled jobs in European towns instead of purchasing another decade of dependence. Our security should come with European production lines and European pay packets. The principle is simple: an attack on one is an attack on all. Take the collective-defence principle behind Article 5 and give Europe the military capacity to uphold it, whoever occupies the White House. We do not need an American-sized carrier fleet to defend our continent. Nor must we audition for the role of global sheriff in the Pacific. We need the means to make attacking Europe a catastrophically bad decision. Hundreds of millions of people can organise that. But it requires contracts, common procurement and working factories. Preferably before another committee commissions a report about commissioning a report. MAGA Washington can marinate in its own corruption and obsess over Venezuela. Europe has a future to build. Russia is a serious threat. Meeting it requires serious European power, with Ukraine central to the effort. Let the clown leave. Build something that lasts.

Here is your Diesel! Putin and Trump! 😡