Interesting read, thanks!

If 3 years ago someone told you that Trump would give Elon Musk the mandate to dismantle the US government and RFK would be secretary of health, you would have called him a lunatic.

The article you cite talks about military spending, not industrial capacity. Russia is running on a war economy, Europe isn’t; this large difference in spending is to be expected. Surely Europe realises it cannot rely on the US for defense anymore, so there’s a possibility they choose to dramatically increase its defense spending. If Ukraine loses the war, a lot of European countries won’t have too much trouble convincing their citizens it needs to be done. The reason Europe has no “concrete solution”, like you said, is because they won’t accept the kind of compromise Putin would want. Now that the US decided not to be an ally anymore, I don’t think they’ll just stay there doing nothing.

Right now I can’t find any reason to exclude this possibility honestly

So what happens if Zelensky sides with Europe on this one? How does the US apply its peace plan if it’s been negotiated solely with Russia? The only way I see this working is the US sending troops to fight along with Russia…