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‘They’ve Bankrupted Themselves’: Europe Gutted Own Security to Funnel Kiev Weapons, Expert Says_我的网站

A | Scott Ritter, a military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, told Sputnik on Thursday that NATO’s policy of giving Ukraine billions of dollars in weapons that so quickly get destroyed is “inefficient and counterproductive” from both a political and a national security point of view.,“The more Europe invests its military capacity into Ukraine, the weaker Europe gets,” Ritter said.,Proxy Wars Are Expensive,“I think there's a couple of things at play here. One, and I think first and foremost, is that Europe has bankrupted its own military capacity by transferring military equipment to Ukraine in an unconstrained manner. It's becoming clear to all that Ukraine is facing a very difficult time on the battlefield. Weaponry is being provided by Europe, by the United States, by NATO, and this weaponry is not being absorbed in a coherent manner by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Instead, it's being received and rushed to the front where it is not being used effectively and increasingly it's being destroyed by the Russians. This is very expensive, very inefficient. It's detrimental not only to Ukraine's military capability but also the nations providing the equipment. They're literally stripping bare their own inventories to support Ukraine in a losing cause,” Ritter explained.,“The second part of this equation is, not only is this inefficient and counterproductive from a national security standpoint, but it's expensive and counterproductive from a political standpoint,” he said. “I think the political cost of supporting Ukraine is about to become very, very high.”,“Many political leaders in Europe now are going to be facing an increasingly hostile constituency, demanding answers as to why their leaders committed: a) economic suicide by joining in on a failed sanctions effort; b) are further bankrupting the nation by stripping bare their own arsenals, requiring them to expend money to restock. This is an expensive proposition. And c), supporting what is increasingly being documented as a very corrupt and, frankly speaking, vile regime in Kiev.”,Kiev’s Mask is Slipping,Ritter noted how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is no longer seen as the savior” by Westerners. “More and more, he's being seen as what he has always been, an incompetent politician operating way above his capabilities.”,In particular, he recalled how a damning CBS documentary about the conflict was partially retracted earlier this month after it revealed that some 70% of equipment given to Ukraine never reaches the battlefield, either because the Russians destroy them or because they’re sold off on the black market. Forthcoming trials in Mariupol can also be expected to further peel back the Western myths about the Azov Regiment and other neo-Nazi units being anything but fascists.,© AP Photo / Alexander ZemlianichenkoRussian soldiers walk inside the Ukraine's Azov Regiment base adorned with the unit's emblems in Yuriivka resort settlement on the coast of Azov Sea not far from Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, May 18, 2022Russian soldiers walk inside the Ukraine's Azov Regiment base adorned with the unit's emblems in Yuriivka resort settlement on the coast of Azov Sea not far from Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, May 18, 2022© AP Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko,“It's a horribly corrupt regime. It's also a regime that is being linked to an odious ideology, the old ideology of Stepan Bandera - a neo-Nazi, right wing, ultra-nationalistic ideology responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of people in the years of World War II and the decade afterwards, people who terrorized, murdered, raped ethnic Russians in the aftermath of the Maidan coup that took place in 2014,” Ritter noted.,“I think you're seeing Europeans starting to recoil from this and saying ‘This is not what we want to be seen as supporting.’ All of this, when you bring it together, explains why people aren't willing to continue to dispatch military equipment to Ukraine.”,Ritter dismissed the idea that Berlin and Paris could continue to send weapons to Kiev at the same pace that they have been. In this area, too, they will soon be eclipsed by Washington.,“Military equipment is not produced with the snap of a finger. And it requires a budgetary process. It requires careful coordination with the industrial base, and equipment is procured over the course of several years. What Europe has done by providing this equipment to Ukraine is in one fell swoop, in a matter of months, they've taken decades of military procurement and transferred it to Ukraine with no plan on how to replace it. You can't just simply pick up the phone and say, ‘give me a hundred more tanks,’ ‘give me a hundred more artillery pieces.’ It doesn't work that way. They have literally destroyed the very fabric of their national security by stripping bare their coverage with no means of replacing this. They've already bankrupted themselves. There's really not that much left they can give to Ukraine,” he explained.,‘This Can Only Be Resolved Politically’,Ritter said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is “out of his competency level” in commenting on military affairs, especially in making claims like “This war will be won on the battlefield.”,“You weren't going to see a general talking about that in that way,” he noted. “Fact is, most military people said that this can only be resolved politically, this being the conflict in Ukraine. Borrell is way off base. He's out of his competency level and he's just playing wrong. Who's going to solve this on the battlefield? What military in Europe today is capable of standing toe to toe with the Russian military in Ukraine and beating them? And the answer is none. There's nobody that can do this.”,Ritter said Germany and France, the two powerhouse NATO nations in continental Europe, are “paying a horrific economic price” and political price for their efforts to bring the US back firmly into the NATO fold, following four years of vacillation by former US President Donald Trump.,© AP Photo / BelTA, Andrei StasevichNormandy format talksNormandy format talks© AP Photo / BelTA, Andrei Stasevich,“[N]ow the United States has committed to NATO and has committed NATO to this horrendous mistake: that is the expansion into Ukraine, the confrontation with Russia, and this very expensive proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, that NATO is losing and losing decisively,” Ritter said. “But there's a lot of politics at play here. And it's not as a matter of just simply snapping your fingers and saying, ‘Okay, we've made a mistake, we're done, we're going to now reexamine a new European security framework.’”,Ritter recalled Berlin and Paris were also key guarantors of the Minsk Accords, which were supposed to settle the Donbass conflict in the context of autonomy for the Russian-speaking regions.,“It's not only that they failed to pressure Ukraine. It appears, according to [Petro] Poroshenko, the former president of Ukraine, that they were complicit in a scheme that used the Minsk Accords as a sham method to extend the negotiations, knowing they would never be finalized, to buy time so that NATO could train Ukrainian Armed Forces so that they would be in a position to be able to retake all of the Donbass and perhaps Crimea,” Ritter noted.,“Germany and France were part and parcel of this effort, so they need to be careful. They're very exposed here in terms of the politics of that. But reality is reality. And the reality is that the current European security framework, dominated as it is by American national security interests, is unsustainable for Europe,” he said. “They are paying a horrific economic price and they will probably pay a political price. Some of these leaders that are in power today won't be in power in the coming months as their citizens rise up through the democratic process and remove them for incompetence and for pursuing bad policies.”,“The last problem is Russia sort of owns the notion of European security framework having defined it, and their needs and their requirements in December of last year, through two draft treaties shared with NATO and the United States. For Germany and France to pursue a new European security framework would mean that they are stepping away from the United States and stepping toward Russia. That's very politically difficult to do, no matter how justified it might be.”,© Sputnik / Sergei AverinEight years of conflict have left a mark: it will take decades to demine the territory of the republics. Photo: A warning sign at a position near the line of contact with Ukrainian forces near Spartak village in the Donetsk region. Eight years of conflict have left a mark: it will take decades to demine the territory of the republics. Photo: A warning sign at a position near the line of contact with Ukrainian forces near Spartak village in the Donetsk region. © Sputnik / Sergei Averin,‘Somebody Else is Going to Have to Seek Peace for Them’,Ritter said that, like World War II after the Battle of Kursk, everyone knows that Ukraine has lost. The question is whether or not the government in Kiev is capable of making peace; he predicts not.,“It's going to be a victory in accordance with all of the prerequisites accomplished - demilitarization, de-Nazification and NATO removed from Ukraine. Russia has also now appeared to put some territorial requirements,” Ritter said.,“The key question is, how does this end at some point?” he asked. “There's going to be a need for a political collapse in Kiev, where the current cadre of warmongers and nationalists have to be removed. They will not seek peace. Somebody else is going to have to seek peace for them.”,“I think it's becoming clear that the current regime in Ukraine cannot be entrusted to govern in a responsible fashion, and I think Russia's taken it as part of their policy that they will protect ethnic Russians going forward, which means that they will probably acquire additional territory in Ukraine where ethnic Russians live. This takes time. It's not going to happen overnight. As much as Russia is winning the war, there's still a very strong Ukrainian military on the field that's receiving military assistance from the United States and NATO. So there's a lot of work left to be done.”。韩国芯片巨头三星电子与SK海力士业绩引发了美国方面的关注。在半导体超级周期的提振下，近期三星电子与SK海力士均交出亮眼业绩。公开数据显示，三星电子2026年第二季度营业利润预估约‌89.4万亿韩元‌，第一季度实际营业利润达57.2万亿韩元，同比暴增756%；SK海力士一季度营业利润‌37.61万亿韩元‌，营业利润率高达72%，连续四个季度创新高。目前，SK海力士尚未公布今年二季度业绩，预计将在7月下旬公布相关财报。近日，美国助理贸易代表（USTR）里克·斯威策（Rick Switzer）向韩国贸易部长表达了一个想法：美国企业大量采购了韩国的半导体产品，尤其是内存、HBM、AI芯片等，对三星及SK海力士的惊人业绩作出了巨大贡献。因此，美国认为他们也有权分享三星、SK海力士的超额利润。当前，两家芯片巨头如何分配这笔超额利润已经在韩国国内引发不小争议。

B | 有声音认为，在两家企业供应链上扮演承包商角色的企业应该优先分享利润，也有声音认为，这笔红利必须惠及韩国普通民众。

C | 密切关注此事的韩国学者金允俊告诉第一财经，如今随着美方也要来“插一脚”，大概率不会得到韩方企业的同意，但后续要观望特朗普政府是否会祭出关税等手段进行所谓的“报复”。

D | 特朗普也要“分一杯羹”？目前，美方的这一表态已在韩国业界和政府层面引发关注。美方这一表态的背后有何逻辑？金允俊分析认为，在美方看来，如果韩国本土合作伙伴因贡献了部分利润而有权获得分成，那么美国企业也应享有同等权利，“比如微软、英伟达、苹果这些美国科技行业的巨头持续采购韩国相关的存储芯片，在美方看来，这些美国企业对于韩国芯片行业的出口贡献重大。” 韩方数据显示，韩国今年上半年出口总额达到创纪录的1924.3亿美元，同比增长162.5%。其中对美出口增长91.3%，达264亿美元。6月韩国出口额同比增长70.9%，达到1022.5亿美元，首次突破1000亿美元大关；其中半导体出口同比飙升199.5%，贡献了448.2亿美元。目前，对于韩国今年下半年出口的预测也持续看好。比如，韩国智库韩国产业研究院（KIET）发布的《2026年下半年经济与产业展望》报告预计，受AI基础设施建设带动的半导体及ICT产品需求激增，韩国今年出口总额将同比增长30.3%，达到创纪录的9244亿美元，年度贸易顺差有望创下2190亿美元的历史新高。市场预计，三星电子与SK海力士今年的合计利润将超2700亿美元（约合2万亿元人民币）。 “在这些数据的‘刺激’下，不难理解美方的‘眼红’。”金允俊说道。

E | 不过，他强调，其实以三星电子与SK海力士为代表的韩国半导体企业，已经在近些年加大对美国的投资布局了，可谓“响应”了特朗普的号召，“但目前看来美方并不满足于现状。” 就在本月上旬，美国商务部部长霍华德·卢特尼克在美光科技纽约州克莱镇新工厂奠基仪式上就公开点名三星电子和SK海力士，要求两家韩企赴美新建存储芯片生产设施。

F | 卢特尼克承认，美光科技或许并不乐见其竞争对手在美国拓展业务，但他强调了增强美国芯片供应链韧性的必要性。如何平衡对美以及本土投资公开信息显示，三星电子和SK海力士目前均已在美国投资，只是尚未在当地直接生产DRAM或NAND闪存。比如，三星电子目前正在得克萨斯州泰勒市建设一座晶圆代工厂，投资额高达440亿美元；SK海力士则投入40亿美元，在印第安纳州西拉法叶建造人工智能芯片先进封装工厂。两家公司现有在美项目主要集中于晶圆代工和先进封装。金允俊分析认为，面对美方的喊话，两家韩国企业要不要继续加大对美投资，其实是个“两难”局面。他解释道，近期韩国政府官宣加大对半导体产业的投资，力争成为这一产业的强国，比如6月底公布了史上最大规模半导体投资计划，要在韩国打造新的半导体产业集群，投资金额将达2000万亿韩元，“如果加大对美投资，势必会影响在韩国的布局，毕竟企业的人力、物力和资本总量有限，摊子铺得过大，会直接分散企业的投资密度和研发资源投入。” 金允俊还强调，如果不响应美方要求，不仅会错失美国《通胀削减法案》《芯片与科学法案》提供的补贴支持，还可能在未来面临美方的各类贸易限制，影响企业在美国市场的长期布局。“这种两头挤压的局面，让两家企业很难作出干脆的决策，只能在两边诉求之间反复权衡博弈。