As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags on, Pres. Joe Biden has found a new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons they need to defend their country.

As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.

It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.

Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.

All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.

  • darkstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    9 months ago

    I think your question is misguided. Democracy doesn’t mean a two-party system race to the bottom. Democracy can see democratically elected politicians that better resonate with each individual voter by eliminating first past the post voting and using ranked choice voting instead. The problem isn’t that “half the country disagrees”. You can’t please everyone. The problem is that we’ve been divided and weaponized against each other, so the tribalism keeps us from finding common ground we may have. I doubt anyone votes FOR a candidate anymore. They seem to just vote AGAINST another candidate. Democracy works. It’s our implementation of it that’s failing.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      9 months ago

      Ranked choice voting isn’t a game changer. Almost every problem in US politics can be traced back to the hundred year old cap on the size of the house of representatives.

        • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          9 months ago

          By having more reps their power is diffused, and a single lobbyist can’t meet meaningfully with twice the members they are now. The increased size would make lobbying more expensive and put a higher demand on campaign contributions, which is another expense. It also changes district size, which is important because a company may need more locations to have a meaningful impact on those districts.

          While it’s possible the percentage of corrupt representatives stays the same, the increase in absolute number should make it easier to expose some of them. This could serve as a small check on corruption.

          The biggest thing is that it’s more than twice as hard to get 20 people in agreement than 10.