A large number of EU resolutions on Ukraine are being blocked by Hungary, said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
Hungary is digging in and refusing to wave through billions in military aid for Ukraine, prompting growing dismay among other EU countries.
"I have to calm myself [when] I talk about this issue, because it’s getting really ridiculous now,” a senior EU diplomat said of the standoff with Hungary, speaking before Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers. “What’s happening is outrageous.”
Diplomats had hoped to have a new €6.6 billion package ready ahead of this week’s meetings of foreign and defense ministers in Brussels. The deal included €860 million for arms procurement, reported by POLITICO last week.
Most of Mankind is not American and even in a perfect Democracy (which the US is not, not even in the same universe as one) the leaders only ever have a duty towards the citizens of that Democracy - i.e. the voters - not the rest of Mankind.
Basically, for any person who lives outside a big and military powerful country, that country is just as bad being a Democracy as it is being an Authoritarian regime because both kinds of regimes don’t give a rat’s arse about outsiders. I mean, the leaders in the Democracy will naturally use beautifull words and say they “really do care” - because they’re politicians trained to talk a pretty talk in order to win elections - but when it comes what they actually think and do they care just as little as the Authoritarian ones.
The only reason why Democracies are a bit safer to be around of is because, if they’re real Democracies (i.e. have the interests of all of their citizens as top priority rather than being “vote for which agent of the oligarchs you would like to have” like America) they’re way less likelly to initiate wars without significant upsides because it’s not in the interest of that country’s citizens to suffer due to War, whilst Authoritarian regimes will happilly sacrifice their population in a War if that is good for the leader(s).
So the reality is that for Mankind it’s unclear if the end of Pax Americana will be a good thing, a bad thing or just a change of assholes.
There are 3 great military powers on this earth: China, Russia, and NATO. Of those, the only one whose expansion involves voluntary action from the joining member is NATO. Of those, the only one that doesn’t aggressively consume neighboring nations is NATO.
Without NATO, the other two would begin moving to conquer the Earth. We have only experienced less than a century of peace solely due to a very carefully balanced scale of military might. That time of peace will end the moment NATO falls. Hundreds of Millions will die in the resulting decades, entire ecosystems will be destroyed in fire.
The threat to Democracy isn’t the loss of America, if you ever thought that was the point then you’re a moron. The threat to Democracy is the rise of Russia and China.
You original argument wasn’t about what’s good for “Democracy”, it was about what’s good for “Mankind” - they’re quite different things: as I pointed out, Democracy somewhere, even if perfect, isn’t good for people elsewhere (because it doesn’t represent them at all), and that’s without going into the whole point of “Is a Democracy which is deeply subverted (like in the US at the moment) actually a good thing even for the locals?” or maybe “How subverted must a Democracy be before it turns into a bad thing even for locals?”.
I think your NATO point is indirectly largelly about America because most of the military power in NATO is that of the US and if NATO collapsed without an American power collapse (or just America turning isolationist), America would still be a major military power in its own right, and the EU (which does have a mutual defense part in its treaties, but which not really used ATM because NATO exists and works) would be as well (and a NATO collapse would force strengthening EU internal military cooperation, something which people like Macron have already been pushing for) and they would be facing the likes of Russia and China with parity and would likely align as two big blocks when need just like China aligns with Russia because of convenience, not mutual love.
The other alternative NATO collapse scenario, what I call the nasty scenario, would be a total collapse of whatever is left of Democracy in America (in turn leading to a collapse of NATO) or at least extreme isolationism, which would leave EU vs China (+Russia as its poodle) and America in “splenderous” isolationism or worse. However in that scenario my point still stands that for all the unalligned nations in the World it wouldn’t really matter if dominance was of “Democratic” nations or “Authoritarian” ones because neither regime represents foreigners.
I do however agree that the secret for stability for Mankind is a multipolar world, not because one side is “Democratic” but because when there are more than one dominant side, attacks against unalligned little guys by one of the sides tend to pull in support from other sides of the multi-pollar world, making them far more risky than they would be in a World with a single dominant power.