Will the 100 fighter jets that French President Emmanuel Macron has just promised Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky arrive in time to kick off World War III?

Europe’s favorite girlfriend, Zelensky, arrived in Paris on Monday, in the wake of the city lighting up its annual Christmas decorations on the Champs Elysees. Guess he heard that Santa Claus was coming and wanted to take an early spin on his lap.

Cast in the role is Macron, who pulled out a “letter of intention” to supply Kiev with up to 100 French Rafale fighter jets. Both signed it. Rafales are the second-most expensive fighter jets in the world, and to date, this many have never been sold to a single buyer before.

The agreement so far is not binding as to any eventual sale, but letters of intention can contain binding exclusivity or “no-shop” clauses, the breach of which can lead to damages being awarded for the loss of pre-contract expenses. These don’t amount to very much, relatively speaking. But the real value in it for Zelensky and Macron is to stick it to Donald Trump. Because Trump keeps saying that he’ll supply weapons to Ukraine by basically turning the EU into a franchise for the US defense industry: they’d purchase American weapons for Kiev and then hand them over.

This move makes it clear that the EU will instead be buying European weapons for Ukraine. Which is a huge middle finger to Trump’s obvious self-serving strategy of hiking NATO country spending demands to 5% of GDP so they have more cash to spend on US weapons under the guise of needing to protect themselves from their obsession over Vladimir Putin arriving in 2035. (The specific date conveniently gives them enough of a fiscal runway to thoroughly rinse out the pockets of their own taxpayers for........

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