It's still baffling to see the US loose so much face in so short a time.
There is definitely truth that Europe has relied on US defense for too long, but what the US got in return is hard to put into words and economic terms.
We bought your tech, culture, defense and so much other stuff.
They're laughing all the way to the bank, the US has locked Europe into so many long-term petrochem supply contracts courtesy of two energy crises, and the US have stated point-blank that the supplies (of LNG, in this case) are tied to the US-EU trade treaty plus whatever changes the US wants to make.
Same protection racket plus a foot on the brake of the EU's push to renewables.
* making everyone to use natural gas for heating by making it much cheaper than electricity
* slowing down the EV rollout by keeping to subsidize gas and diesel
could definitely be seen as a scheme to make the fossil fuel gravy train last as long as possible.
And that's not even talking about the absolutely out there schemes that didn't succeed like hydrogen powered vehicles (with most of hydrogen coming from fossil fuels and you can theoretically switch to zero emission one but you never would have because the fossil one is always going to be cheaper because making hydrogen is difficult).
I'm going to guess if net energy use goes up, due to a glut of renewable energy, the gaps on cloudy, windless days will result in greater fossil fuel use than before.
There need to be assurances renewables are replacing fossil fuels rather than just adding capacity.
> Alas, it is exactly the intermittent renewables that create a dependency on fossil fuels.
First of all, this is an insane statement.
> Unless you have nuclear
Second of all, with nuclear most countries will still be dependent on other countries for their fuel needs. So it doesn't solve the problem discussed here at all.
And this is a good for EU. In past decades EU lost energy independence and good part of nuclear because croocked politicians that took dictatorships money while feeding same dictator with oil and gas money.
At the same time EU had no proper army to defend itself because dependance on US or a way to supply said army.
Europe sans Russia does not produce uranium - why people constantly paint this as an independent energy source is beyond me. Of all Russian energy companies, it was Rosatom that could not be sanctioned.
You’re right that European nuclear is not "independent" if that means "mined entirely inside Europe". But the dependency profile is not the same for Russian pipeline gas. Uranium is globally traded, compact, cheap to stockpile relative to the energy it contains, and available from several non-Russian suppliers (Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia...). The harder choke points are conversion, enrichment, and reactor-specific fuel fabrication.
Europe does have uranium resources, for instance the Salamanca/Retortillo project, but the constraint is permitting, environmental acceptance, waste handling, and political legitimacy rather than geology. So the honest claim is not "nuclear makes Europe autarkic". It is "nuclear gives Europe a more diversifiable and stockpilable dependency than gas, provided Europe also invests in mining, conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication capacity".
> There is definitely truth that Europe has relied on US defense for too long,
That wasn't the problem for the USA, on the contrary.
«The U.S. is lobbying against SAFE because it mandates contractors from the EU/EFTA/Ukraine. One reason why Tusk is speaking candidly about how shaky the U.S. is as an ally: Washington says it wants Europe to arm itself and take its security into its own hands, but then it demands Europe rely on American hardware. You can't have it both ways.
The U.S. said: "Take over Ukraine's war needs." So Europe did so. Now PURL purchases are being slowed down or are on hold because of America's prioritization of its own requirements for the war with Iran. Talking out of both sides of one's mouth doesn't work anymore, and if Trump wants anyone to blame here, he should look in the mirror. Forfeiting America's security patronage always meant forfeiting our ability to bully and coerce.»
src: https://xcancel.com/michaeldweiss/status/2047689018683408593
Even before Trump, and the invasion of Ukraine, it was transparently obvious that the idea of minimum spending commitment to NATO was intended to prop up the US arms industry rather than actually achieve anything military.
To a certain extent the US occupation of Germany was intended to prevent Germany rearming on its own.
> The US is teetering on the edge of a financial abyss.
Do you say this because of the outstanding debt? Otherwise, just their top 10 publicly traded companies earn more than all but 2 countries. Just the US defense budget ($1T and estimated $1.5T next year), which exports US foreign policy globally, absolutely dwarfs every other country's.
Debt, rather the lack of any via ble means for the US to pay back even a fraction of its debt without having the world's reserve currency.
Yes, theoretically they can always print their way out, but that's just default through inflation and bond yields will correct immediately to account for it.
> just their top 10 publicly traded companies earn more than all but 2 countries
Are not European countries trying to reduce dependency on American tech giants? China was very successful in this regard. Russia is also independent but in the most incompetent way possible. The EU could do it quite well.
The USA is not a reliable partner. To send data to the USA from the EU is a fatal mistake that needs to be corrected. The risk was acceptable in the past, but not anymore.
The USA comes from a very privileged position thanks to many factors. The government is making sure that non of the conditions hold anymore.
All of these financial 'privileges' are based on the US having the world reserve currency and petro dollar. The US in the unique position of being able to 1. Print Money. 2. Externalise inflation. 3. Ensure a base load demand for it's currency based off a worlds need of oil.
These privileges were supported wholeheartedly by all the worlds 'middle' powers e.g. Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Spain, Sweden etc. Thus establishing a world order.
The US has seemingly turned on all these middle powers for no reason, decided the world order needed to change when it was already #1. The US will of course still be a superpower but it is going to lose it hegemony.
The issue is that there's a complete collapse in it's ability to pick good leadership, or at least leadership that can meet the bar of 'doesn't piss on the floor', and no path for course-correction from it. It's in the 'everyone plunder as much as you can carry' stage, and nobody cares.
(Which also means that whatever that debt will be buying will more likely than not, be incredibly stupid, and likely self-destructive.)
And what is that worth, when they failed to properly protect their allies in a war they initiated against something that was obvious and expected ? The attack on Iran has been absolutely terrible for the US's image as an absolute military power
The world's rules were written by them, for them, and their allies notably european countries were willing to go along for the ride for all the side benefit of said safety and stability, both pretended it was a gift out of niceness while it was actually massively profitable
But then a portion of the US started believing the whole gift part, and now they're destroying their own control of the world order and forcing other to realign out of their control
Anybody who had the pleasure to go through relationship with mentally unstable person (for the lack of better words, if I had to guess some undiagnosed borderline disorder on a scale 1-2 out of 10 mixed with some childhood traumas) sees nothing out of ordinary - just daily chaos, tantrums, illogical destructive behavior and very little self-control on the other side.
Narcissism adds a curious twist, but of course for the worse.
The more shocking thing might even be that this whole mess is allowed to continue and that there is no way to stop an out of hand situation. The whole US system can't be trusted even when this administration is gone, it's just broken.
This is the truth. It would only take half a dozen Republicans to stop the madness now so the obvious question is why don't they?
The political system and elite institutions have failed their country. Does the US self correct with the next two election cycles? Hard to believe right now.
No, the US has been losing its stance in the world since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, murdering a million people in cold blood on the basis of outright lies.
It has been downhill ever since then. The support for the Gaza genocide is just one in a long list of atrocities for which the American state is responsible, and for which the entire world is starting to hold America responsible.
The rest of the world has been watching, and knows this - even if Americans, in their bubble, do not.
Its the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights at scale which cause the world to lose face in the American system.
Plus, the way Americans treat their own people - nobody wants to live like an American, any more.
Until someone comes up with an antidote for the warrior narcissism which inflicts a huge portion of American society, the maw of the abyss remains wide open.
This feels like the 1920s all over again. Germany is riddled with structural and economic failures, yet instead of addressing them, politicians are pivoting toward a war footing. The economy has been trapped in a cycle of recession and stagnation since the pandemic, but the current political response is to debate cuts to social benefits and tax increases. This is compounded by a self-inflicted energy crisis, shutting down every nuclear power plant has destabilized the energy market for the rest of Europe. Meanwhile, the AfD is polling at nearly 30% nationwide. History may not repeat itself, but it is definitely rhyming.
> But the U.S. has made it clear that it wants to concentrate on the Indo-Pacific and the threat posed by China's powerful military, rather than propping up Europe.
If that were true they wouldn't have wasted enormous amounts of expensive ammunition in Iran.
One, I feel like the "propping up Europe" is preposterous when europe is buying those things, not getting them for free, just like american weapon delivery to Ukraine have been paid by europe and not free for a long while now.
Two, the US wasting of ammunition in an ill-prepared fight against Iran that has not produced any of the result they claim to want but managed to make things instable for a lot of the world has nothing to do with helping Europe.
Every year for like the last decade I've heard "pivot to China" proceeded by the US using its various European bases to attack something in the Middle East.
But even worse in this specific case is "we do it for Europe" seems to be the thing they keep repeating, but if they had bothered to ask or warn us we all would have told them to stay the hell away from it, don't touch it, don't start it, no absolutely not.
One country even asked them publicly why didn't you warn us and Trump's only answer was some stupid comment about pearl harbor. This is so absurd.
Ukraine soldiers had some comments on US military guidelines for use of patriots that they saw in this war - incredibly wasteful, where up to 10-15 rockets are used per 1 incoming shahed. They just set the system in automatic mode, let it select targets and fire at its will, and run for the bunker.
Ukrainians, having very little of those (or nothing now), used 1 patriot missile per 1 boogey with little drop in effectiveness, and whole crew remained in and guided it manually. According to them system is built to be wasteful to increase those interception numbers marginally, but for anything but short exchange its a very bad design mistake that can be easily overwhelmed or depleted, as seen trivially exploitable by enemy.
Ukraine government also issued a statement saying that the US forces used 800 Patriot interceptors against Iran in three days at the start of the current war.
While Ukraine used just 600 interceptors in 4 years of war.
Iran is imo. in parts about china. Controlling the strait of Hormuz means controlling a significant amount of energy supplies if china. Same thing with Venezuela.
The US did not "pick up" Europe's defense bill out of charity. It ran a garrison empire because forward bases served American interests: containing Russia, projecting power, locking allies into US weapons. European welfare states are funded by European taxes, not Pentagon largesse. Defense is nowhere the "largest expense" of any developed country, pensions and healthcare are. Europe rearming is overdue, but the right framing is strategic autonomy from an unreliable partner, not a wayward teenager finally paying rent.
> the right framing is strategic autonomy from an unreliable partner
Yes but that's an uncomfortable framing for online-americans to use when they want some gotcha argument
And not a useful one for US administrations in the last 30 years (trump was far from the first one) to make because the (mostly) unstated assumption was that the vast majority of increased spending would go to american manufacturers to prop up american jobs
You don't need to add this, just say that you agree with him on that point. If the mob comes down on you for agreeing with the devil you can counter that you agree with facts, not based on who happens to voice them.
The problem with this, historically is that the way Europe's geography works, a number of countries are just not going to fairly share in the burden of defending Europe, while other countries have the ability to tax foreign trade. Ireland is famous for this, and looking at a map, you can see why. Spain, Turkey and Denmark have historically taxed foreign trade.
Additionally a number of countries have "unfair" advantages over others. There are 2 straits that control access to the oceans. Which means Denmark and Norway control free trade routes (land routes are not "free" as in they are taxed) into Germany, Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, and of course Russia. This can't be fixed, and the UK effectively occupies Gibraltar to prevent it.
Spain (I'd say Spain and Morocco, but really ... Spain) controls sea access for all Mediterranean countries, from Italy to Georgia, Algeria to Greece. France (and Morocco) being the major exceptions to this. This can't be fixed, and is currently blocked by what is effectively an international force. Spain is not happy with this.
Turkey controls (and intends to tax) trade routes into all the black sea countries, which is most of Eastern Europe.
Oh and UK and the Netherlands, for reasons that are slightly less obvious, control free trade into Belgium.
In addition to this, most countries do not have the resources they need. Not even to survive. And even most countries that could be self-sufficient, aren't (cough Germany, really, WHY????). Really only France is somewhat close to self-sufficient. Specialization, on a country level, is a necessity in Europe, most countries do not have access to free trade routes and are utterly dependent on trade, in other words: they have to pay to survive.
Essentially the situation is simple: all European countries, except France. Spain, UK and Portugal (and, yes, Ireland) COULD get themselves into a secure position, but haven't (and so if it came to it, it would be very hard to do in a short time). All other countries probably can't do it at all. So all these countries have good reason to attack each other.
So the question with getting Europe's armies weapons is: the natural situation is that they'll try to destabilize Europe rather than stabilize it, because that is in most countries' direct economic interest. Historically, they ... you can say Europe was more peaceful than places like the areas of the ottoman empire, for example. But that should not be confused with peaceful in an absolute sense. In fact, the last 80 years or so have been remarkably peaceful, with America guaranteeing access to international trade. Well, I'm sure Russia would counter "guarantee access? You mean control access", and yes, that's been done.
Unfortunately it's very clear that America's power, especially measured relative to other countries, is waning. Meaning America is still far more powerful than, say, Turkey. But it used to be easily 100x more powerful. Now ... it looks more like 10x. Opposing Turkey will be a huge effort for the US, far more than the Iran war will be. US's deal, the Pax Americana, was that America would simply guarantee free trade routes with it's military for everyone, in fact, that's what the Iran war is really about (free trade for everyone behind Hormuz). In exchange, US gets the dollar. Many nations, most obviously Iran, but Turkey, Indonesia, China, Somalia, ... have all taken steps to tax the trade routes they control, which will over time create an untenable trade situation for a very large number of countries.
The situation for Germany in the long term is a simple choice: they can either pay, or attack. We all know what their historical choice has been, as soon as you have a somewhat prolonged economic crisis. Germany is not alone in this, in fact all of Eastern Europe is more or less in the same situation. A decent chunk of those countries are arming themselves (for example, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Finland have all given hints they're building a nuclear force)
The problem with America weakening is that the US wants free trade, because that directly benefits the US greatly, whereas most other factions want to control trade instead. Turkey, Iran, China, Indonesia, even Spain's current government if we're honest and others want to (go back to) taxing other countries. Historically they have succeeded at this, but it resulted in constant wars.
Good. It’s time for America to leave Europe to its own fate. We should stop messing with it. Once we stop putting things into Ukraine, Europe can resolve internal matters as they see fit without our interference. If they want to make weapons that’s up to them.
So no more US military bases in Europe then? No more trade with a market of 500 million people? No more cooperation on science and research? Nothing of the current US isolationism makes any goddamn longterm sense for the US. Europe and the rest of the world will be fine, mostly.
Just please don't start any wars that mess up the global economy like you just did. Thanks.
Fine. If the US wants to lose that, it's collateral to the US's political changes. It should have been obvious that this was a consequence, and one bad for the USA - e.g. it's much harder to fly aircraft from USA to middle east without refuelling bases in Europe.
> No more trade with a market of 500 million people?
The EU is always willing to trade, and negotiate durable terms. The impediments to that are on the US side. "no more trade" is an exaggeration of course, but the US's actions will limit trade.
> No more cooperation on science and research?
How much science and research is going to happen in the US in the near future? I'm told that it's not a growth area. The EU and others are going to have to step up here, take in researchers, develop vaccines etc.
> Nothing of the current US isolationism makes any goddamn longterm sense for the US.
Agreed, no notes.
> Europe and the rest of the world will be fine, mostly.
The current petrochemical price shock seems like it will be not fine for Europe and the rest of the world. And they will know who to blame. The silver lining is that it helps make the case for solar and renewables, and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
Serious question: Would you rather the US had started this war or Iran obtained nuclear weapons?
When the North Koreans started enriching uranium and producing plutonium, everyone dithered until they actually build nuclear weapons, and now everyone in the region periodically submits to nuclear blackmail because, well, what else are they going to do? Do we really want to see Iran doing that?
We have our own interests. If you want to fight us over them, it wouldn’t be the first time. But the last time we had to beat you to stop you from killing your own people.
- Massively reduced capability to strike the Middle East
- Europe dumping US bonds
- Europe reducing dependence on the USD
- No ability to restrain Europe from arming
- No one would trust the US again - remember, the USA has had security guarantees with Ukraine long before this mess.
There is a lot to be said about this attitude of "we are doing Europe a favour" idiocy, it's reminiscent of the Bush era jingoism that I have noticed a resurgence of since Trump's second term, especially since the war with Iran.
The USA would be doing the USA a favour if they keep doing what they have been doing in Europe since the end of WWII. It's NOT bad for the USA. Europe is under the USA's thumb as a result of NATO.
Europe is in for a lot of short term pain as a result of the Ukraine and blockade of the Strait.
I also firmly believe (controversial I am aware) a desperate Europe will 100% throw Ukraine to the wolves and make peace with Russia for their energy, and what then?
America already stopped putting things into Ukraine. They even stopped delivering system European countries bought and already paid for. Literally not delivering what others bought.
I'm upvoting you for the fact, that I want to see USA also decline in power and everything else just to see USA get f... after all of this shit from that Clown in the Clown House.
But otherwise? All of this is stupid. USA always warmongered around everywhere and it gave it a lot of power, petrodollar and control. Its very weird that the USA Strategy is now getting dismanteld like this.
I can only assume its the orange clown who either thinks very ignorant or only for his own interest and gets pushed from Putin to play this game.
I don't mind though, Putin showed how shit his army is and germany/europe knows how to make weapons. Always have
Sure, but then don't cry like a baby that we don't support your made up wars half around the world. Also don't expect us to participate in your global hegemony any more than absolutely minimal necessary amount for as short as possible.
Europe is bigger than US, if US loses (actually lost) all allies its just <5% of global population, against remaining 95%. We can collectively ditch SWIFT, petro dollars and so on that your ancestors spent their lives building to bring you where you are now, and then you will be alone against China (and russia, your forever mortal enemy). Good luck.
We are not complaining, this is good for us long term. I don't think its so good for you compared to where you are now though.
There is definitely truth that Europe has relied on US defense for too long, but what the US got in return is hard to put into words and economic terms. We bought your tech, culture, defense and so much other stuff.
This rift won't close anytime soon
Same protection racket plus a foot on the brake of the EU's push to renewables.
Unless you have nuclear or another reliable source like hydro, which you only get if you have the right topography for it.
If anything, renewables help existing stock of fossil fuels last longer as you don't burn as much when renewables are generating.
* solar with no storage
* shutting down existing nuclear
* natural gas peaker plants
* making everyone to use natural gas for heating by making it much cheaper than electricity
* slowing down the EV rollout by keeping to subsidize gas and diesel
could definitely be seen as a scheme to make the fossil fuel gravy train last as long as possible.
And that's not even talking about the absolutely out there schemes that didn't succeed like hydrogen powered vehicles (with most of hydrogen coming from fossil fuels and you can theoretically switch to zero emission one but you never would have because the fossil one is always going to be cheaper because making hydrogen is difficult).
But it could also all just be incompetence.
There need to be assurances renewables are replacing fossil fuels rather than just adding capacity.
First of all, this is an insane statement.
> Unless you have nuclear
Second of all, with nuclear most countries will still be dependent on other countries for their fuel needs. So it doesn't solve the problem discussed here at all.
At the same time EU had no proper army to defend itself because dependance on US or a way to supply said army.
The dictator now makes more money, so we just lost our cheap gas source, and we buy more expensive oil from others.
Europe does have uranium resources, for instance the Salamanca/Retortillo project, but the constraint is permitting, environmental acceptance, waste handling, and political legitimacy rather than geology. So the honest claim is not "nuclear makes Europe autarkic". It is "nuclear gives Europe a more diversifiable and stockpilable dependency than gas, provided Europe also invests in mining, conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication capacity".
To a certain extent the US occupation of Germany was intended to prevent Germany rearming on its own.
Do you say this because of the outstanding debt? Otherwise, just their top 10 publicly traded companies earn more than all but 2 countries. Just the US defense budget ($1T and estimated $1.5T next year), which exports US foreign policy globally, absolutely dwarfs every other country's.
Yes, theoretically they can always print their way out, but that's just default through inflation and bond yields will correct immediately to account for it.
Are not European countries trying to reduce dependency on American tech giants? China was very successful in this regard. Russia is also independent but in the most incompetent way possible. The EU could do it quite well.
The USA is not a reliable partner. To send data to the USA from the EU is a fatal mistake that needs to be corrected. The risk was acceptable in the past, but not anymore.
The USA comes from a very privileged position thanks to many factors. The government is making sure that non of the conditions hold anymore.
These privileges were supported wholeheartedly by all the worlds 'middle' powers e.g. Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Spain, Sweden etc. Thus establishing a world order.
The US has seemingly turned on all these middle powers for no reason, decided the world order needed to change when it was already #1. The US will of course still be a superpower but it is going to lose it hegemony.
The issue is that there's a complete collapse in it's ability to pick good leadership, or at least leadership that can meet the bar of 'doesn't piss on the floor', and no path for course-correction from it. It's in the 'everyone plunder as much as you can carry' stage, and nobody cares.
(Which also means that whatever that debt will be buying will more likely than not, be incredibly stupid, and likely self-destructive.)
The world's rules were written by them, for them, and their allies notably european countries were willing to go along for the ride for all the side benefit of said safety and stability, both pretended it was a gift out of niceness while it was actually massively profitable
But then a portion of the US started believing the whole gift part, and now they're destroying their own control of the world order and forcing other to realign out of their control
We have Mauser, Carl Walther, Sauer & Sohn, Haenel, DWM, Krupp, Reinmetall, Hckler & Koch and more. We know how to do military
Narcissism adds a curious twist, but of course for the worse.
The political system and elite institutions have failed their country. Does the US self correct with the next two election cycles? Hard to believe right now.
No, the US has been losing its stance in the world since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, murdering a million people in cold blood on the basis of outright lies.
It has been downhill ever since then. The support for the Gaza genocide is just one in a long list of atrocities for which the American state is responsible, and for which the entire world is starting to hold America responsible.
The rest of the world has been watching, and knows this - even if Americans, in their bubble, do not.
Its the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights at scale which cause the world to lose face in the American system.
Plus, the way Americans treat their own people - nobody wants to live like an American, any more.
Until someone comes up with an antidote for the warrior narcissism which inflicts a huge portion of American society, the maw of the abyss remains wide open.
If that were true they wouldn't have wasted enormous amounts of expensive ammunition in Iran.
Two, the US wasting of ammunition in an ill-prepared fight against Iran that has not produced any of the result they claim to want but managed to make things instable for a lot of the world has nothing to do with helping Europe.
One country even asked them publicly why didn't you warn us and Trump's only answer was some stupid comment about pearl harbor. This is so absurd.
Ukrainians, having very little of those (or nothing now), used 1 patriot missile per 1 boogey with little drop in effectiveness, and whole crew remained in and guided it manually. According to them system is built to be wasteful to increase those interception numbers marginally, but for anything but short exchange its a very bad design mistake that can be easily overwhelmed or depleted, as seen trivially exploitable by enemy.
While Ukraine used just 600 interceptors in 4 years of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdtafGdIVM
Napoleon would like a word.
Yes but that's an uncomfortable framing for online-americans to use when they want some gotcha argument
And not a useful one for US administrations in the last 30 years (trump was far from the first one) to make because the (mostly) unstated assumption was that the vast majority of increased spending would go to american manufacturers to prop up american jobs
Frankly, it doesn't pass the sniff test and its bizarre to see some (educated!) American HN readers falling for it.
You don't need to add this, just say that you agree with him on that point. If the mob comes down on you for agreeing with the devil you can counter that you agree with facts, not based on who happens to voice them.
Additionally a number of countries have "unfair" advantages over others. There are 2 straits that control access to the oceans. Which means Denmark and Norway control free trade routes (land routes are not "free" as in they are taxed) into Germany, Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, and of course Russia. This can't be fixed, and the UK effectively occupies Gibraltar to prevent it.
Spain (I'd say Spain and Morocco, but really ... Spain) controls sea access for all Mediterranean countries, from Italy to Georgia, Algeria to Greece. France (and Morocco) being the major exceptions to this. This can't be fixed, and is currently blocked by what is effectively an international force. Spain is not happy with this.
Turkey controls (and intends to tax) trade routes into all the black sea countries, which is most of Eastern Europe.
Oh and UK and the Netherlands, for reasons that are slightly less obvious, control free trade into Belgium.
In addition to this, most countries do not have the resources they need. Not even to survive. And even most countries that could be self-sufficient, aren't (cough Germany, really, WHY????). Really only France is somewhat close to self-sufficient. Specialization, on a country level, is a necessity in Europe, most countries do not have access to free trade routes and are utterly dependent on trade, in other words: they have to pay to survive.
Essentially the situation is simple: all European countries, except France. Spain, UK and Portugal (and, yes, Ireland) COULD get themselves into a secure position, but haven't (and so if it came to it, it would be very hard to do in a short time). All other countries probably can't do it at all. So all these countries have good reason to attack each other.
So the question with getting Europe's armies weapons is: the natural situation is that they'll try to destabilize Europe rather than stabilize it, because that is in most countries' direct economic interest. Historically, they ... you can say Europe was more peaceful than places like the areas of the ottoman empire, for example. But that should not be confused with peaceful in an absolute sense. In fact, the last 80 years or so have been remarkably peaceful, with America guaranteeing access to international trade. Well, I'm sure Russia would counter "guarantee access? You mean control access", and yes, that's been done.
Unfortunately it's very clear that America's power, especially measured relative to other countries, is waning. Meaning America is still far more powerful than, say, Turkey. But it used to be easily 100x more powerful. Now ... it looks more like 10x. Opposing Turkey will be a huge effort for the US, far more than the Iran war will be. US's deal, the Pax Americana, was that America would simply guarantee free trade routes with it's military for everyone, in fact, that's what the Iran war is really about (free trade for everyone behind Hormuz). In exchange, US gets the dollar. Many nations, most obviously Iran, but Turkey, Indonesia, China, Somalia, ... have all taken steps to tax the trade routes they control, which will over time create an untenable trade situation for a very large number of countries.
The situation for Germany in the long term is a simple choice: they can either pay, or attack. We all know what their historical choice has been, as soon as you have a somewhat prolonged economic crisis. Germany is not alone in this, in fact all of Eastern Europe is more or less in the same situation. A decent chunk of those countries are arming themselves (for example, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Finland have all given hints they're building a nuclear force)
The problem with America weakening is that the US wants free trade, because that directly benefits the US greatly, whereas most other factions want to control trade instead. Turkey, Iran, China, Indonesia, even Spain's current government if we're honest and others want to (go back to) taxing other countries. Historically they have succeeded at this, but it resulted in constant wars.
Um... WHAT?
I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.
> After his fall, Honecker said of Otto von Habsburg in relation to the summer of 1989, "this Habsburg drove the nail into my coffin."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-European_Picnic
Just please don't start any wars that mess up the global economy like you just did. Thanks.
> So no more US military bases in Europe then?
Fine. If the US wants to lose that, it's collateral to the US's political changes. It should have been obvious that this was a consequence, and one bad for the USA - e.g. it's much harder to fly aircraft from USA to middle east without refuelling bases in Europe.
> No more trade with a market of 500 million people?
The EU is always willing to trade, and negotiate durable terms. The impediments to that are on the US side. "no more trade" is an exaggeration of course, but the US's actions will limit trade.
> No more cooperation on science and research?
How much science and research is going to happen in the US in the near future? I'm told that it's not a growth area. The EU and others are going to have to step up here, take in researchers, develop vaccines etc.
> Nothing of the current US isolationism makes any goddamn longterm sense for the US.
Agreed, no notes.
> Europe and the rest of the world will be fine, mostly.
The current petrochemical price shock seems like it will be not fine for Europe and the rest of the world. And they will know who to blame. The silver lining is that it helps make the case for solar and renewables, and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
When the North Koreans started enriching uranium and producing plutonium, everyone dithered until they actually build nuclear weapons, and now everyone in the region periodically submits to nuclear blackmail because, well, what else are they going to do? Do we really want to see Iran doing that?
Does that mean ceasing to use Europe as a strike base for the middle east?
- No more soft power
- Massively reduced capability to strike the Middle East
- Europe dumping US bonds
- Europe reducing dependence on the USD
- No ability to restrain Europe from arming
- No one would trust the US again - remember, the USA has had security guarantees with Ukraine long before this mess.
There is a lot to be said about this attitude of "we are doing Europe a favour" idiocy, it's reminiscent of the Bush era jingoism that I have noticed a resurgence of since Trump's second term, especially since the war with Iran.
The USA would be doing the USA a favour if they keep doing what they have been doing in Europe since the end of WWII. It's NOT bad for the USA. Europe is under the USA's thumb as a result of NATO.
Europe is in for a lot of short term pain as a result of the Ukraine and blockade of the Strait.
I also firmly believe (controversial I am aware) a desperate Europe will 100% throw Ukraine to the wolves and make peace with Russia for their energy, and what then?
But otherwise? All of this is stupid. USA always warmongered around everywhere and it gave it a lot of power, petrodollar and control. Its very weird that the USA Strategy is now getting dismanteld like this.
I can only assume its the orange clown who either thinks very ignorant or only for his own interest and gets pushed from Putin to play this game.
I don't mind though, Putin showed how shit his army is and germany/europe knows how to make weapons. Always have
Europe is bigger than US, if US loses (actually lost) all allies its just <5% of global population, against remaining 95%. We can collectively ditch SWIFT, petro dollars and so on that your ancestors spent their lives building to bring you where you are now, and then you will be alone against China (and russia, your forever mortal enemy). Good luck.
We are not complaining, this is good for us long term. I don't think its so good for you compared to where you are now though.