It's still baffling to see the US lose 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.
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.
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.
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.
* 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).
Gas for heating used to be the standard but is on its way out now. My house hasn't had a gas connection for 8 years, and many people qre switching to heat pumps and other cleaner methods of heating.
> 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.
Yes, but it won't matter. The state energy firms of EU countries are going heavily into debt to survive this crisis, and it'll just turn from "paying high electricity prices because oil is expensive" to "paying high energy prices to repay state debt".
I mean it'll help in the sense that energy supply will switch to renewable sources, sure. Great for the climate, hopefully, But it won't help in lowering energy cost.
And before you say "but solar panels". A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
Which state energy firms? Most countries have mostly privatized generation with just the grid in public ownership. EDF is something of an exception, but they have very different economics (and the nuclear fleet).
> "paying high energy prices to repay state debt"
The whole range of general taxation is available for that.
> A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
I don't mind buying from china, as long as they're not irreplaceable essentials (like oil). Solar panels and -batteries are fine as long as they meet safety standards and don't have backdoors, and for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. And since it's electronics, any chip and any software can be investigated and taken apart by both amateur hackers and government funded (IT) security bureaus. Nothing. Unless I missed it, but I don't think something as big as that would go by quietly.
> [..] for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. [..]
Are you asserting no backdoors were found in Chinese made tech? I'm not sure how it'd happen in solar panels (which sucks, since I own a couple of these). Another thing to keep in mind is plausible deniability. If you don't patch software, it will be vulnerable, which is an issue in networked software, especially. So what I have seen happening (and I can name some examples of companies here, both Chinese and Taiwanese) where vulnerabilities are simply not patched. Sometimes, they're plain obvious.
I have seen KRACK vulnerability not getting patched. I have seen old MiFi without proper firmware updates, like ever. I have seen motherboard update software still using HTTP instead of HTTPS. And in the world of IoT, it has been a huge mess from the get-go.
Furthermore, the core network of a major telco here was maintained by Chinese engineers who were flown from China. You can probably guess the company name here.
The tactic is obviously not limited to China or Taiwan only, but it can be tackled with reproducible builds and FOSS.
US sells a lot of other things to Europe that Europe doesn't have to buy. That includes tech. I'm not looking forward to the ensuing trade war but it's not a one way street by any means.
> 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.
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 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.)
Debt can be paid off until it can't, US's budget expenditure on interests has tripled since 2020, it is larger than their expenditure on the military now.
The 10-year bond yield is not controlled by the Fed, if it keeps raising the interests payment will continue the crushing of the budget. The USA currently depends on debt, it doesn't collect enough taxes to cover expenses as it is, with interests raising on an even larger debt amount there's no way out except for raising taxes to plug the gap. Any American politician who raises taxes will be out of a job, it's one of the most sensitive topics for Americans so it will only be done when the problem is out of hand.
Of course, the USA can just print its way out of debt instead of raising taxes but at that point their bonds wouldn't be as attractive, inflation would also become a huge issue (probably the 2nd most sensitive economic topic for Americans).
As far as I know most empires had their pivotal moment when their debt crushed their power, it seems to be inevitable.
> The USA currently depends on debt, it doesn't collect enough taxes to cover expenses as it is
That's where the lack of 'good governance' comes in. Good governance would, as of 2026, require raising taxes. The US has plenty of capacity to pay, it's just that the people running it prioritize keeping capital owners happy over the long-term welfare of the country.
You're right that actually raising taxes is political suicide. That's one of the reasons this dysfunction has no escape clause, but the past 10 years have piled on a lot of other reasons, too. It's one thing when a government is ignoring a financial timebomb, but is otherwise, trying to... Run the country like a country.
It's another when it's ignoring a financial timebomb, while also running the country in the same way that a drunk runs a hurdle race.
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.
So many people, including very intelligent and well-informed ones, do not understand this. The US gets truly outsized benefits from having the reserve currency.
Debt is symptom not a underlying cause. As well big defense budget and very big valuations (1). This is according to Klain and Pettis diagnosis that I think is correct one or at least close to being correct (from the "Trade wars are class wars" book - do not worry this has nothing to do with socialism).
Basically they argue that US (and other trade deficit countries) and China (and other trade surplus countries) are creating mirror imbalances that would have to be rectified - either by policy actions or when driven up to conclusion by system breakage. Like Great Depression or Japan lost decade on the surplus side. And possibly inflationary crisis on deficit countries (but this is my interpretation - I do not think they claim that and I might have not understood something).
In that lenses latest political development in US does make more sense.
(1) trade deficit pushes assets price up - as dolar from trade surplus has to return to US somehow - to buy stocks for example. That would also explain why market looks so good even if "real economy" is not so hot - but as US trade deficit is big so is stock demand. Similarly trade deficit pushes unemployment up - to keep it in check federal policy has to intervene. Could be by Biden IRA or by Trump big defense spending. This in turn results in big budget deficits.
Europe is a lot more diversified than the US (subtract the whole AI / internet tech sector and US treasure bonds and you get a lot less volume than Europe) and spends more in social security which is good for the economy as a whole.
The US has inflated numbers through soft power influence throughout the whole world but that makes its current course only more self-destructive including bond yields when they come crashing down.
People say this about a lot of places, and even Greece is now kind of OK. The US is not yet Argentina. The bad governance is mostly exporting problems to elsewhere, like the new oil crisis for east Asia.
Even the ""government shutdown"" (just ended) isn't a problem. It turns out that you don't have to pay air traffic controllers for months.
They have been saying it about Russia for five years now, and while I'm sure they're hurting, it takes a lot more to fully collapse an economy, especially one as big as Russia or especially the US.
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".
Europe managed to get off Russian Gas, but didn’t manage to get off Russian uranium industry. You correctly identified the chokepoints and Russia can’t be replaced fast there.
Kazakhstan is by far the largest uranium producer in the world and has a leg in Europe, west of the Ural river. The important thing is that there are more stable partners worldwide for uranium than Russia is for oil and gas.
There are deposits in Europe, the respective countries decided not to exploit them [0]. This could change depending on external pressures.
> 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.
> it was transparently obvious that the idea of minimum spending commitment to NATO was intended to prop up the US arms industry
...to Trump. European leaders took it literally: since the USA stopped being a reliable partner, Europe needs to depend on itself for protection. It makes zero sense to buy American weapons if you can produce/purchase them on the continent.
I'm german and as you just read in the article, Rheinmentall is a german company.
And from whom do i depend on US defense? Against Russia? Who can barely make it in Ukraine? Middle east were everyone is fighting everyone and were Iran is very very pissed at the USA?
> Also funny how you give 2 examples of nuclear powers who attack countries with no nuclear deterrence.
Yes, very funny. When you're done laughing, would you mind reflecting on the fact that neither of those countries have lost their respective war of yet (despite fighting against a nuclear power, both of whom have threatened to use nukes in one way or another?)
I mean, everyone relies on everyone in a world economy, you need to come up with examples. You mean nuclear deterrence? The French are going to share their nuclear deterrence with the rest of the EU.
Yes, indeed. Although on paper UK also joins this venture, they depend on USA for their nuclear arsenal (subs).
On the long-term, EU might need more nuclear weapons for adequate deterrence, and also FR might not be so stable given alt-right over there. So any integration needs to be stable on paper.
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
> 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
I'm still not sure whether Trump actually believes it or if he's just using it as a propaganda tool. I remember how he reported a conversation with Macron telling him that Macron will have to increase the cost of drugs for French citizens. It was so completely out of touch as drug pricing works completely different in the EU. But he definitely likes to directly imply that all positive aspects of life in Europe are being sponsored by the USA (rather than citizens paying higher taxes). Who knows, maybe he believes it, I wouldn't be surprised really.
The PAX Americana established from '45 and expanded globally after the Soviet Union fell is so all-encompassing that people can't see beyond it anymore. They just can't see the forest as they've been between the trees all their lives.
We've truly fell for our own tricks as we call it "international rulebased order" which hides the fact that it's just a benevolent dictatorship under the American Federal government.
As we say in Dutch: trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. Perhaps now it leaves in a Boeing.
This will forever change the US' role in the world.
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.
I’m not from the US and not trying to defend the US actions, but on Iraq and Gaza, much of Europe takes the same position and goes along with it (and even directly joined the wars and sent troops).
I find the online opinion on Europe / US relations interesting. Online you’d think Europe and US are about to split. But in real life, Europe is more dependent on the US than ever. In terms of energy (Russian fossil fuels basically replaced by US fossil fuels), defense, economy (European economy relatively smaller now than 20 yrs ago), and they just finished signing very one sided deals where they guarantee energy purchases and investment after the tariff war. I think there’s a disconnect between European commenters and European politicians.
> I’m not from the US and not trying to defend the US actions, but on Iraq and Gaza, much of Europe takes the same position and goes along with it (and even directly joined the wars and sent troops).
What?!
I'm not talking about the recent events when Europe not only didn't joint Trump's war but openly refused the use of its military bases. Even in the past when the so-called "coalition of the willing" was formed, Europe had the biggest protests in its history. There were not hundreds of thousands but millions people on streets.
So your picture of uniformity was already false 20 years ago, and now it's just crystal clear.
Indeed, we are discussing the propaganda wasteland of Western media, more than anything else.
American media are owned by the same people making profit from selling the bombs falling in the genocide - so, it won't freely and openly report European upset at America's war crimes so readily.
Not trying to be a cynic, but I think you’ve got a bit of a rosy view of what happened and what is happening.
Concerning past wars: yes there were enormous protests. Just like today, many people disagreed with what was happening. But the same was true in the US; many Americans also disagreed with the Iraq war. There was an entire Bush vs Kerry election on that theme. In the end though, there’s a difference between what normal citizens are saying, and what the country actually does. This applies to both the US and Europe. With Iraq, despite all these protests, the majority of European states actually joined the war, with a few standout exceptions like the neutral states and France/Germany. And then they joined the US in several more regime change operations over the following two decades (and with these somehow the IS didn’t even seem like the main cheerleader).
With Iran now, there’s what normal people say and what politicians say and do. I haven’t seen any of the major leaders actually condemn the war apart from Spain. Most tweets are along the lines if “we are watching with concern but we agree something had to be done”. Macron only piped up against it like a month in, and that seemed as much related to Trump insulting his wife as it was to the war itself.
EU is the third largest economy and has 450m people. If they genuinely wanted to do something about this, about their oil being cut off and all the rest of it, they would have.
On Gaza too. Despite the large protests, and there are a few small nations plus Spain being vocal about it, but what concrete actions has the EU and European nations taken on Gaza? And have you actually seen the UK and German government responses to the protests?
It's not exactly rosy as you say, but the leaders are increasingly open with Trump as to what they actually think (see Merz's latest comments) and he uses this as an excuse to realize what they planned a few years ago. There is zero chance that any Europen state starts bombing Iran.
OTOH, while refusing to do wrong is already something, there are limits to what they can actively start doing - and concrete consequences if they start doing something Trump doesn't like. He's highly unstable and can decide to take a decision that can be perceived as crazy, and harmful to the USA, but at the same time harmful to the ex-ally who decided to stand up to him. So the EU leaders basically do what they can to just wait the crazy guy out.
Today it's Iran, or maybe Iraq 2003. Or maybe those pharma factories in Sudan in the 90s. Or perhaps the Serbia bombing. Or maybe Iraq 1991. Or again Panama in 88. Or maybe Grenada. Or maybe Laos. Cambodia. Vietnam. Haiti. Japan. China. Phillipines. Cuba. etc.
It's always something. We are always losing our stance.
I dabble in correcting other people’s spelling on occasion (can’t help it). Somewhat frustratingly, the usual reaction is “language evolves” and “everyone uses it this way” and “if it is understood, it does not matter how you wrote it”.
Still, "loose" is confusing because it makes me think for one second of the actual word "loose", so it breaks the cadence of reading (and thus it is not really "understood"). If the word "loose" didn't exist, I would have no problem with people misspelling "lose" in this way and eventually becoming mainstream.
Well only to a point, I don't think there's been any significant or formal "we spell this existing word like this now" in a very long time.
The only way English language really evolves now is by the addition / invention / adoption of a new word or added meaning to existing words, like yeet, influencer, youtuber, incel, looksmaxxer and simp. And a lot of them are meme words not actually used in normal parlance. Others are the wider adoption of subculture specific words and expressions, like AAVE getting adopted by teenagers / young adults.
They bought all that stuff, but it was also a choice.
I wish Europe was more organized as a group and assertive. But as it stands I don't think Europe is capable of that for reasons beyond just "we bought a lot of stuff". Politically I'm just not sure they're capable.
There are wonderful parallels with Wilhelm II of Germany. It just takes one idiot at the top with no understanding of his own failings to undermine decades of careful diplomacy and policy.
In a functioning democracy, this should not be possible. There should be check and balances.
Reading a bit about Wilhelm II: so many parallels indeed. "Dreamt of a great colonial power", had to deal with some form of democracy, making incoherent replies, ... And more.
No it should definitely be possible in a functioning democracy (and is because it happened in one). It would not be possible with an educated electorate. But that's different from what you said
Doesn't it require some form of educated electorate to sustain a functioning democracy? Otherwise it is really "by the people" if they are merely avatars?
> It would not be possible with an educated electorate.
A free and impartial press is vital for democracy to work (how else do you know who to vote for). However the current state of American news media leaves a lot to be desired..... Abandonment of the broadcast media 'fairness doctrine' for one thing.
The problem with this situation in USA is not quite only because of media. Why did Congress instantly caved under the threat and even imposed a self censorship on itself to prevent any minority dissent (the case of "let's make whole year 2025 a single legal day, to prevent opposition vote" a year ago). It's because they are afraid to not be elected under threat of MAGA. And why is that? Because the election system is very not democratic in the USA. First past the post is already very bad system. No alternative parties, no open election lists, a huge legal lobbying/bribing allowed preventing electing independents. Etc. So the top commenter is right - democracy or even a semblance of one would have mitigated this disaster a lot, by protecting "checks and balanced" from being dismantled by a dictator.
> In a functioning democracy, this should not be possible.
I think it's less about democracy vs not, and more about empires/hegemonies vs whatever the antonyms are. They seem to just fold over themselves at one point or another, like it's unavoidable.
At one point we (humanity) should figure out how the small and many can try to rein in the solo bullies in the world, but guess we're not quite there yet.
You need a lot of support to stay in power, even in a democracy. Impeachment procedures for instance exist for that reason. No one rules alone, it's never one, nor even a small bunch of idiots.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Our serious adversaries like China must love that we're focusing so much on the Middle East. They don't even have to get directly involved for it to be expensive and fruitless for us, in fact they make money selling weapons. Should be a national priority to banish the Israeli lobby from the US.
>European countries are rushing to refill military stockpiles after U.S. President Donald Trump last year warned NATO members that they needed to spend more on defense and rely less on the U.S.
I don't think that's the main reason. It's more the impression that the US can't be relied on to defend against Russia, especially after the oval office meeting where they went on about Zelensky not saying thank you. I got stuck in a crowd on the pavement for twenty minutes after that because all the European heads and Zelensky flew into London for an emergency meeting to discuss the "oh shit the US is no longer going to defend against Russia" issue and they decided to ramp up our own defense and support for Ukraine.
It was a worrying situation because if Ukraine were to fall, Putin would then probably round them all up into the Russian army and look at attacking EU territory like the baltics leading to an EU/NATO vs Russia war. Hence the arms.
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.
Yes ... countries that can't decide to invest in their own hospitals or education are going to arm themselves to pursue wars to protect little states thousands of kilometers away they barely even trade with. I haven't even mentioned that even as part of NATO they have systematically refused to invest in the defense of the Baltic states. That is not ancient history, that's 6 months ago. Oh and they're financing this with loans. EU government debt is already a pretty heavy burden in ... essentially everywhere except Germany. So they're kicking the can down the road, and this is military investment. It's not going to improve anything about the EU. It'll either do nothing at all (that's the optimal scenario: Russia is deterred and nothing happens. The economic production rots away in some secret basement until it literally decays into dust) or it'll cause destruction. Its value is either zero or MINUS trillions. The loans, however, will need to be repaid.
I'm just thinking ahead to what will happen once these loans turn from a short-term economic boost and start dragging the economies further down.
Yes. You see whats going on in Ukraine. Small countries have either partner countries or the bigger ones use them as proxies like i would assume would happen with lithuania.
Yep. Really. As I said, not because Europe was very peaceful (although most of these conflicts were extremely underwhelming if compared to what ended the era: WW1)
Everything everywhere ever (except perhaps some of the larger wars in China) was underwhelming compared to WW1. That's why it's so famous.
But you were specifically claiming that Europe was "more peaceful than places like the areas of the ottoman empire", which is frankly absurd. I mean, we're talking about a region that had a Thirty Years' War, an Eighty Years' War, and a Hundred Years' War!
Unless... if you're talking about WW1 "ending the era" - were you talking only about a shorter timeframe prior to WW1? If we look only at the 40 or so years before 1914, then indeed Europe had a fairly peaceful period (Belle Époque, Gründerzeit) while the Ottoman Empire was basically starting its death throes.
Where do you get this from? Is this a remark that comes from antipathy to social democracy? Every speech by Sanchez that I have listened to over the last year has him promoting free trade, even the wiki says so:
Sánchez has been a strong advocate for finalizing the long-negotiated EU–Mercosur Free Trade Agreement,[170] which aims to establish one of the world's largest free trade areas.[171]
He is pushing really hard to renegotiate Gibraltar, and has even booked some success there (the fence is taken down). He's artifically pushing the Spanish economy in the region, and he's also sending in ships on a regular basis (no change from previous Spanish governments there) that UK has to chase away.
Why do you think that is? If you want to know: Spain's official story is they want it back because "it's inconveniently placed" (they imply they mean for the Spanish fishing industry).
and has even booked some success there (the fence is taken down).
He negotiated that with the UK so that the whole border control thing could be ameliated that made commerce and travel more difficult than strictly necessary. I would argue that is more in the vein of enabling free trade than installing a tax.
As for the UK chasing spanish ships, do you have a link?
I mean, he is arguing for the UK to return to the EU every chance he gets and that was part of the negotiations for Gibraltar, is that what you object to?
Weirdly enough, Honecker was unrepentant until his death. They didn't put him on trial in the unified Germany, because the law in Germany is intentionally soft towards the terminally ill.
that's just a myth, there even is a black book on them (in German). one of the many examples is the Magnate Conspiracy, from WP: "Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan (Francesco Cristoforo Frangipani) were ordered to the Emperor's Court. The note said that, as they had ceased their rebellion and had repented soon enough, they would be given mercy from the Emperor if they would plead for it. They were arrested the moment they arrived in Vienna, and put on trial. They were held in Wiener Neustadt and beheaded on April 30, 1671."
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.
I think you need to go back to school and learn history before labeling everything which goes against your belief as Fascism. What happened in 1930s Germany is absolutely not what is happening in US right now. US is still a democracy whether you like it or not.
It works just fine or is USA not having a war right now, arming like crazy and want to fight for lebensraum with China, while also having meager real economy output? I guess you should learn more about history ;)
You were comparing to 1920s Germany preparing for war, and it's not about Nazis?? It's not even that I disagree, it's just, you clearly meant this and then acted like someone is silly to interpret it that way.
Why would I care what others do or don't do, know or don't know, like or don't like, when it comes to Germans serving other right-wing extremist Germans talking points and votes on a silver platter, because they cannot be arsed to actually read and take seriously the accounts and warning of historians who lived through those times? I can't even figure what point you think you are making.
It's still baffling to see the US lose 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.
This rift won't close anytime soon
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.
They like it this way. That, more than anything else, makes them Republicans.
> It would only take half a dozen Republicans to stop the madness now
Well, the alternative for now is Vance. Hard to say which one is worse.
Definite risk of a monkey paw curling. But I assume he's less chaotic.
This is what the people voted for. To be honest, they voted for more but trump chickened out with ICE.
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.
The renewables rollout just keeps going despite the discourse. It does mean buying things from China, which is now the least threatening option.
Alas, it is exactly the intermittent renewables that create a dependency on fossil fuels.
Unless you have nuclear or another reliable source like hydro, which you only get if you have the right topography for it.
How do renewables create a dependency on fossil fuels? This dependency already existed before renewables in the current sense were a thing.
If anything, renewables help existing stock of fossil fuels last longer as you don't burn as much when renewables are generating.
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.
> the gaps on cloudy, windless days will result in greater fossil fuel use than before
How can it possibly, when ""before"" (what dates and countries are we talking about?) was mostly fossil fuel anyway?
Remember that Germany, France, Spain and Poland look completely different in terms of energy mix!
The way they do renewables in some places:
* 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.
All true, but that does not create a fossil fuel dependency, it just prolongs an already existing one.
Gas for heating used to be the standard but is on its way out now. My house hasn't had a gas connection for 8 years, and many people qre switching to heat pumps and other cleaner methods of heating.
> The way they do renewables in some places: > * making everyone to use natural gas for heating by making it much cheaper than electricity
They do renewables in some places by selling cheap fossil fuels? That’s… not doing renewables.
> 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.
Stockpiling uranium ore, or lowly enriched uranium is much simpler than stockpiling natural gas.
Yes, but it won't matter. The state energy firms of EU countries are going heavily into debt to survive this crisis, and it'll just turn from "paying high electricity prices because oil is expensive" to "paying high energy prices to repay state debt".
I mean it'll help in the sense that energy supply will switch to renewable sources, sure. Great for the climate, hopefully, But it won't help in lowering energy cost.
And before you say "but solar panels". A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
> The state energy firms of EU countries
Which state energy firms? Most countries have mostly privatized generation with just the grid in public ownership. EDF is something of an exception, but they have very different economics (and the nuclear fleet).
> "paying high energy prices to repay state debt"
The whole range of general taxation is available for that.
> A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
Which European states?
Through various methods the EU is subsidizing the increased cost of fuel for a large number of customers, including electricity prices and gas prices.
e.g. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
The issue is that this is very expensive and EU countries are going deeper into debt to finance this.
I don't mind buying from china, as long as they're not irreplaceable essentials (like oil). Solar panels and -batteries are fine as long as they meet safety standards and don't have backdoors, and for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. And since it's electronics, any chip and any software can be investigated and taken apart by both amateur hackers and government funded (IT) security bureaus. Nothing. Unless I missed it, but I don't think something as big as that would go by quietly.
> [..] for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. [..]
Are you asserting no backdoors were found in Chinese made tech? I'm not sure how it'd happen in solar panels (which sucks, since I own a couple of these). Another thing to keep in mind is plausible deniability. If you don't patch software, it will be vulnerable, which is an issue in networked software, especially. So what I have seen happening (and I can name some examples of companies here, both Chinese and Taiwanese) where vulnerabilities are simply not patched. Sometimes, they're plain obvious.
I have seen KRACK vulnerability not getting patched. I have seen old MiFi without proper firmware updates, like ever. I have seen motherboard update software still using HTTP instead of HTTPS. And in the world of IoT, it has been a huge mess from the get-go.
Furthermore, the core network of a major telco here was maintained by Chinese engineers who were flown from China. You can probably guess the company name here.
The tactic is obviously not limited to China or Taiwan only, but it can be tackled with reproducible builds and FOSS.
US sells a lot of other things to Europe that Europe doesn't have to buy. That includes tech. I'm not looking forward to the ensuing trade war but it's not a one way street by any means.
The US is teetering on the edge of a financial abyss. These are all just foreshocks.
> 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.
It's the outcome I expect. It's probably the outcome the US politicians expect, too.
> 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.
I'm sure you've seen many empires come and go in your thousands of years as an immortal elf mage.
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 issue isn't the debt. Debt can be paid off.
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.)
Debt can be paid off until it can't, US's budget expenditure on interests has tripled since 2020, it is larger than their expenditure on the military now.
The 10-year bond yield is not controlled by the Fed, if it keeps raising the interests payment will continue the crushing of the budget. The USA currently depends on debt, it doesn't collect enough taxes to cover expenses as it is, with interests raising on an even larger debt amount there's no way out except for raising taxes to plug the gap. Any American politician who raises taxes will be out of a job, it's one of the most sensitive topics for Americans so it will only be done when the problem is out of hand.
Of course, the USA can just print its way out of debt instead of raising taxes but at that point their bonds wouldn't be as attractive, inflation would also become a huge issue (probably the 2nd most sensitive economic topic for Americans).
As far as I know most empires had their pivotal moment when their debt crushed their power, it seems to be inevitable.
> Debt can be paid off until it can't,
> The USA currently depends on debt, it doesn't collect enough taxes to cover expenses as it is
That's where the lack of 'good governance' comes in. Good governance would, as of 2026, require raising taxes. The US has plenty of capacity to pay, it's just that the people running it prioritize keeping capital owners happy over the long-term welfare of the country.
You're right that actually raising taxes is political suicide. That's one of the reasons this dysfunction has no escape clause, but the past 10 years have piled on a lot of other reasons, too. It's one thing when a government is ignoring a financial timebomb, but is otherwise, trying to... Run the country like a country.
It's another when it's ignoring a financial timebomb, while also running the country in the same way that a drunk runs a hurdle race.
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.
THANK YOU!
So many people, including very intelligent and well-informed ones, do not understand this. The US gets truly outsized benefits from having the reserve currency.
Debt is symptom not a underlying cause. As well big defense budget and very big valuations (1). This is according to Klain and Pettis diagnosis that I think is correct one or at least close to being correct (from the "Trade wars are class wars" book - do not worry this has nothing to do with socialism).
Basically they argue that US (and other trade deficit countries) and China (and other trade surplus countries) are creating mirror imbalances that would have to be rectified - either by policy actions or when driven up to conclusion by system breakage. Like Great Depression or Japan lost decade on the surplus side. And possibly inflationary crisis on deficit countries (but this is my interpretation - I do not think they claim that and I might have not understood something).
In that lenses latest political development in US does make more sense.
(1) trade deficit pushes assets price up - as dolar from trade surplus has to return to US somehow - to buy stocks for example. That would also explain why market looks so good even if "real economy" is not so hot - but as US trade deficit is big so is stock demand. Similarly trade deficit pushes unemployment up - to keep it in check federal policy has to intervene. Could be by Biden IRA or by Trump big defense spending. This in turn results in big budget deficits.
If this is true, it's more true of the larger European countries.
How exactly?
I don't believe it's true about the USA, and it's even less true about Europe.
Europe is a lot more diversified than the US (subtract the whole AI / internet tech sector and US treasure bonds and you get a lot less volume than Europe) and spends more in social security which is good for the economy as a whole.
The US has inflated numbers through soft power influence throughout the whole world but that makes its current course only more self-destructive including bond yields when they come crashing down.
Please do try to substantiate this with numbers.
People say this about a lot of places, and even Greece is now kind of OK. The US is not yet Argentina. The bad governance is mostly exporting problems to elsewhere, like the new oil crisis for east Asia.
Even the ""government shutdown"" (just ended) isn't a problem. It turns out that you don't have to pay air traffic controllers for months.
They have been saying it about Russia for five years now, and while I'm sure they're hurting, it takes a lot more to fully collapse an economy, especially one as big as Russia or especially the US.
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.
Conflict with allies is not a good thing for anyone, apart from nationalism.
The dictator now makes more money, so we just lost our cheap gas source, and we buy more expensive oil from others.
Conflict is not good, but wake up call that EU need means to defend itself will help long term. You cant outsource army to defend your borders.
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".
Europe managed to get off Russian Gas, but didn’t manage to get off Russian uranium industry. You correctly identified the chokepoints and Russia can’t be replaced fast there.
> Europe managed to get off Russian Gas, but didn’t manage to get off Russian uranium industry.
Only Slovakia and Hungary. They will need to find a way. (Finland planned it but cancelled after Russia invaded Ukraine.)
There is zero chance that new nuclear plants in Europe will use any Russian tech or fuel.
France still gets around a quarter of its uranium from russia and partnerships between Framatome and Rosatom are still going on: https://www.politico.eu/article/france-russian-state-owned-n...
> Europe sans Russia does not produce uranium
Kazakhstan is by far the largest uranium producer in the world and has a leg in Europe, west of the Ural river. The important thing is that there are more stable partners worldwide for uranium than Russia is for oil and gas.
There are deposits in Europe, the respective countries decided not to exploit them [0]. This could change depending on external pressures.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...
Oh great, another country for Russia to take back.
That wasn't the problem for the USA, on the contrary.
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.
> it was transparently obvious that the idea of minimum spending commitment to NATO was intended to prop up the US arms industry
...to Trump. European leaders took it literally: since the USA stopped being a reliable partner, Europe needs to depend on itself for protection. It makes zero sense to buy American weapons if you can produce/purchase them on the continent.
They knew what Trump meant, but this way they could agree at a surface level to keep him happy, while actively distancing themselves in reality.
> It makes zero sense to buy American weapons if you can produce/purchase them on the continent.
And if you can't, the better option still remains to try to keep it "local" and not rely on very far away "partners".
Worse than "Washington says it wants Europe to arm itself". There's the business of threatening to take Greenland for one thing.
People finally started seeing America's true colors
We didn't 'rellied on US defense'. We have a different policy...
We have Mauser, Carl Walther, Sauer & Sohn, Haenel, DWM, Krupp, Reinmetall, Hckler & Koch and more. We know how to do military
I hope you're French, otherwise you are still relying on US defense.
I'm german and as you just read in the article, Rheinmentall is a german company.
And from whom do i depend on US defense? Against Russia? Who can barely make it in Ukraine? Middle east were everyone is fighting everyone and were Iran is very very pissed at the USA?
Tell me what defense do i need against whom?
You don't think nuclear deterrence has a place in a modern defense strategy? If not, then I don't see the point in discussing this further.
Well, the nuclear deterrence was how effective in RU vs UA and US/IL vs IR?
Like I said, if you think you don't need nuclear deterrance, there is no point in discussing this further.
Also funny how you give 2 examples of nuclear powers who attack countries with no nuclear deterrence.
> Also funny how you give 2 examples of nuclear powers who attack countries with no nuclear deterrence.
Yes, very funny. When you're done laughing, would you mind reflecting on the fact that neither of those countries have lost their respective war of yet (despite fighting against a nuclear power, both of whom have threatened to use nukes in one way or another?)
It's clear you don't understand the "deterrence" part of "nuclear deterrence".
I mean, everyone relies on everyone in a world economy, you need to come up with examples. You mean nuclear deterrence? The French are going to share their nuclear deterrence with the rest of the EU.
So Germany will depend on France for their nuclear deterrence then.
Yes, indeed. Although on paper UK also joins this venture, they depend on USA for their nuclear arsenal (subs).
On the long-term, EU might need more nuclear weapons for adequate deterrence, and also FR might not be so stable given alt-right over there. So any integration needs to be stable on paper.
It's a classic case of falling for your own BS.
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
I wish I could upvote you twice, because that's exactly what's happening.
> 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
I'm still not sure whether Trump actually believes it or if he's just using it as a propaganda tool. I remember how he reported a conversation with Macron telling him that Macron will have to increase the cost of drugs for French citizens. It was so completely out of touch as drug pricing works completely different in the EU. But he definitely likes to directly imply that all positive aspects of life in Europe are being sponsored by the USA (rather than citizens paying higher taxes). Who knows, maybe he believes it, I wouldn't be surprised really.
The PAX Americana established from '45 and expanded globally after the Soviet Union fell is so all-encompassing that people can't see beyond it anymore. They just can't see the forest as they've been between the trees all their lives.
We've truly fell for our own tricks as we call it "international rulebased order" which hides the fact that it's just a benevolent dictatorship under the American Federal government.
As we say in Dutch: trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. Perhaps now it leaves in a Boeing.
This will forever change the US' role in the world.
This is a great way to put it. Also, confusing having the most powerful army with having an all powerful army.
Short time?
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.
I’m not from the US and not trying to defend the US actions, but on Iraq and Gaza, much of Europe takes the same position and goes along with it (and even directly joined the wars and sent troops).
I find the online opinion on Europe / US relations interesting. Online you’d think Europe and US are about to split. But in real life, Europe is more dependent on the US than ever. In terms of energy (Russian fossil fuels basically replaced by US fossil fuels), defense, economy (European economy relatively smaller now than 20 yrs ago), and they just finished signing very one sided deals where they guarantee energy purchases and investment after the tariff war. I think there’s a disconnect between European commenters and European politicians.
> I’m not from the US and not trying to defend the US actions, but on Iraq and Gaza, much of Europe takes the same position and goes along with it (and even directly joined the wars and sent troops).
What?!
I'm not talking about the recent events when Europe not only didn't joint Trump's war but openly refused the use of its military bases. Even in the past when the so-called "coalition of the willing" was formed, Europe had the biggest protests in its history. There were not hundreds of thousands but millions people on streets.
So your picture of uniformity was already false 20 years ago, and now it's just crystal clear.
Indeed, we are discussing the propaganda wasteland of Western media, more than anything else.
American media are owned by the same people making profit from selling the bombs falling in the genocide - so, it won't freely and openly report European upset at America's war crimes so readily.
Not trying to be a cynic, but I think you’ve got a bit of a rosy view of what happened and what is happening.
Concerning past wars: yes there were enormous protests. Just like today, many people disagreed with what was happening. But the same was true in the US; many Americans also disagreed with the Iraq war. There was an entire Bush vs Kerry election on that theme. In the end though, there’s a difference between what normal citizens are saying, and what the country actually does. This applies to both the US and Europe. With Iraq, despite all these protests, the majority of European states actually joined the war, with a few standout exceptions like the neutral states and France/Germany. And then they joined the US in several more regime change operations over the following two decades (and with these somehow the IS didn’t even seem like the main cheerleader).
With Iran now, there’s what normal people say and what politicians say and do. I haven’t seen any of the major leaders actually condemn the war apart from Spain. Most tweets are along the lines if “we are watching with concern but we agree something had to be done”. Macron only piped up against it like a month in, and that seemed as much related to Trump insulting his wife as it was to the war itself.
EU is the third largest economy and has 450m people. If they genuinely wanted to do something about this, about their oil being cut off and all the rest of it, they would have.
On Gaza too. Despite the large protests, and there are a few small nations plus Spain being vocal about it, but what concrete actions has the EU and European nations taken on Gaza? And have you actually seen the UK and German government responses to the protests?
It's not exactly rosy as you say, but the leaders are increasingly open with Trump as to what they actually think (see Merz's latest comments) and he uses this as an excuse to realize what they planned a few years ago. There is zero chance that any Europen state starts bombing Iran.
OTOH, while refusing to do wrong is already something, there are limits to what they can actively start doing - and concrete consequences if they start doing something Trump doesn't like. He's highly unstable and can decide to take a decision that can be perceived as crazy, and harmful to the USA, but at the same time harmful to the ex-ally who decided to stand up to him. So the EU leaders basically do what they can to just wait the crazy guy out.
Today it's Iran, or maybe Iraq 2003. Or maybe those pharma factories in Sudan in the 90s. Or perhaps the Serbia bombing. Or maybe Iraq 1991. Or again Panama in 88. Or maybe Grenada. Or maybe Laos. Cambodia. Vietnam. Haiti. Japan. China. Phillipines. Cuba. etc.
It's always something. We are always losing our stance.
Serbia was NATO.
Yeah, maybe you should, as a citizen, start holding your war criminals accountable for their crimes.
You can't keep buying the worlds' love with trinkets while murdering its children, Americans.
Minor nitpick: you meant "lose", not "loose". It's a common mistake that I see around, and I think it might be useful for you to know :)
I dabble in correcting other people’s spelling on occasion (can’t help it). Somewhat frustratingly, the usual reaction is “language evolves” and “everyone uses it this way” and “if it is understood, it does not matter how you wrote it”.
I don't agree with those a lot. At some age, ones use of language stops/slows evolving I suppose.
I agree with the argument that language evolves.
Still, "loose" is confusing because it makes me think for one second of the actual word "loose", so it breaks the cadence of reading (and thus it is not really "understood"). If the word "loose" didn't exist, I would have no problem with people misspelling "lose" in this way and eventually becoming mainstream.
Well only to a point, I don't think there's been any significant or formal "we spell this existing word like this now" in a very long time.
The only way English language really evolves now is by the addition / invention / adoption of a new word or added meaning to existing words, like yeet, influencer, youtuber, incel, looksmaxxer and simp. And a lot of them are meme words not actually used in normal parlance. Others are the wider adoption of subculture specific words and expressions, like AAVE getting adopted by teenagers / young adults.
Corrected
They bought all that stuff, but it was also a choice.
I wish Europe was more organized as a group and assertive. But as it stands I don't think Europe is capable of that for reasons beyond just "we bought a lot of stuff". Politically I'm just not sure they're capable.
There are wonderful parallels with Wilhelm II of Germany. It just takes one idiot at the top with no understanding of his own failings to undermine decades of careful diplomacy and policy.
In a functioning democracy, this should not be possible. There should be check and balances.
Reading a bit about Wilhelm II: so many parallels indeed. "Dreamt of a great colonial power", had to deal with some form of democracy, making incoherent replies, ... And more.
No it should definitely be possible in a functioning democracy (and is because it happened in one). It would not be possible with an educated electorate. But that's different from what you said
Doesn't it require some form of educated electorate to sustain a functioning democracy? Otherwise it is really "by the people" if they are merely avatars?
> It would not be possible with an educated electorate.
A free and impartial press is vital for democracy to work (how else do you know who to vote for). However the current state of American news media leaves a lot to be desired..... Abandonment of the broadcast media 'fairness doctrine' for one thing.
The problem with this situation in USA is not quite only because of media. Why did Congress instantly caved under the threat and even imposed a self censorship on itself to prevent any minority dissent (the case of "let's make whole year 2025 a single legal day, to prevent opposition vote" a year ago). It's because they are afraid to not be elected under threat of MAGA. And why is that? Because the election system is very not democratic in the USA. First past the post is already very bad system. No alternative parties, no open election lists, a huge legal lobbying/bribing allowed preventing electing independents. Etc. So the top commenter is right - democracy or even a semblance of one would have mitigated this disaster a lot, by protecting "checks and balanced" from being dismantled by a dictator.
> In a functioning democracy, this should not be possible.
I think it's less about democracy vs not, and more about empires/hegemonies vs whatever the antonyms are. They seem to just fold over themselves at one point or another, like it's unavoidable.
At one point we (humanity) should figure out how the small and many can try to rein in the solo bullies in the world, but guess we're not quite there yet.
You need a lot of support to stay in power, even in a democracy. Impeachment procedures for instance exist for that reason. No one rules alone, it's never one, nor even a small bunch of idiots.
> 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.
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.
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.
At the behest of Israel.
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.
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.
How’s all the ‘controlling’ coming along?
The US look like fools.
If it looks like a fool, talks like a fool, and acts like a fool...
Our serious adversaries like China must love that we're focusing so much on the Middle East. They don't even have to get directly involved for it to be expensive and fruitless for us, in fact they make money selling weapons. Should be a national priority to banish the Israeli lobby from the US.
>European countries are rushing to refill military stockpiles after U.S. President Donald Trump last year warned NATO members that they needed to spend more on defense and rely less on the U.S.
I don't think that's the main reason. It's more the impression that the US can't be relied on to defend against Russia, especially after the oval office meeting where they went on about Zelensky not saying thank you. I got stuck in a crowd on the pavement for twenty minutes after that because all the European heads and Zelensky flew into London for an emergency meeting to discuss the "oh shit the US is no longer going to defend against Russia" issue and they decided to ramp up our own defense and support for Ukraine.
It was a worrying situation because if Ukraine were to fall, Putin would then probably round them all up into the Russian army and look at attacking EU territory like the baltics leading to an EU/NATO vs Russia war. Hence the arms.
Discussion at the time - meeting https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43208973 5349 comments
US Ends Support For Ukrainian F-16s https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43307996 2313 comments
relevant Norm Macdonald
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdtafGdIVM
I don't know how many of you are history buffs...
>that had never been tried before
Napoleon would like a word.
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.
Rather odd nineteenth century outlook that doesn't mention the European Union.
We work together in europe and we are not arming ourselves to fight european partners but because of russia
Yes ... countries that can't decide to invest in their own hospitals or education are going to arm themselves to pursue wars to protect little states thousands of kilometers away they barely even trade with. I haven't even mentioned that even as part of NATO they have systematically refused to invest in the defense of the Baltic states. That is not ancient history, that's 6 months ago. Oh and they're financing this with loans. EU government debt is already a pretty heavy burden in ... essentially everywhere except Germany. So they're kicking the can down the road, and this is military investment. It's not going to improve anything about the EU. It'll either do nothing at all (that's the optimal scenario: Russia is deterred and nothing happens. The economic production rots away in some secret basement until it literally decays into dust) or it'll cause destruction. Its value is either zero or MINUS trillions. The loans, however, will need to be repaid.
I'm just thinking ahead to what will happen once these loans turn from a short-term economic boost and start dragging the economies further down.
Yes. You see whats going on in Ukraine. Small countries have either partner countries or the bigger ones use them as proxies like i would assume would happen with lithuania.
There is no issue with loans.
> Historically, they ... you can say Europe was more peaceful than places like the areas of the ottoman empire
Um... WHAT?
I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
Yep. Really. As I said, not because Europe was very peaceful (although most of these conflicts were extremely underwhelming if compared to what ended the era: WW1)
Everything everywhere ever (except perhaps some of the larger wars in China) was underwhelming compared to WW1. That's why it's so famous.
But you were specifically claiming that Europe was "more peaceful than places like the areas of the ottoman empire", which is frankly absurd. I mean, we're talking about a region that had a Thirty Years' War, an Eighty Years' War, and a Hundred Years' War!
Unless... if you're talking about WW1 "ending the era" - were you talking only about a shorter timeframe prior to WW1? If we look only at the 40 or so years before 1914, then indeed Europe had a fairly peaceful period (Belle Époque, Gründerzeit) while the Ottoman Empire was basically starting its death throes.
even Spain's current government
Where do you get this from? Is this a remark that comes from antipathy to social democracy? Every speech by Sanchez that I have listened to over the last year has him promoting free trade, even the wiki says so:
Sánchez has been a strong advocate for finalizing the long-negotiated EU–Mercosur Free Trade Agreement,[170] which aims to establish one of the world's largest free trade areas.[171]
He is pushing really hard to renegotiate Gibraltar, and has even booked some success there (the fence is taken down). He's artifically pushing the Spanish economy in the region, and he's also sending in ships on a regular basis (no change from previous Spanish governments there) that UK has to chase away.
Why do you think that is? If you want to know: Spain's official story is they want it back because "it's inconveniently placed" (they imply they mean for the Spanish fishing industry).
and has even booked some success there (the fence is taken down).
He negotiated that with the UK so that the whole border control thing could be ameliated that made commerce and travel more difficult than strictly necessary. I would argue that is more in the vein of enabling free trade than installing a tax.
As for the UK chasing spanish ships, do you have a link?
I mean, he is arguing for the UK to return to the EU every chance he gets and that was part of the negotiations for Gibraltar, is that what you object to?
https://spanishnewstoday.com/s%C3%A1nchez-and-starmer-seal-n...
Uhuh ... now explain Ceuta. Why oh why does one need extensive military installations on both sides of a strait?
German Engineering, loosing two world wars and counting.
Germany didn't lose ww2 because of engineering
Technically they said they "loosed" them, which arguably could be true.
Maybe.
I thought he meant loose, as in create two world wars
Yeah, that's probably just a typo, but you could argue that German engineering gave Germany the ability to "loose" war on the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j20voPS0gI
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.
Nah, it's mostly the Prussians. Those Bavarians and Austrians and other southerns are too jolly.
you certainly don't know how belligerent the Hapsburgs were
Fun Fact, a Habsburg was even blamed for the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic
> 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
Weirdly enough, Honecker was unrepentant until his death. They didn't put him on trial in the unified Germany, because the law in Germany is intentionally soft towards the terminally ill.
Weren't they supposed to marry, not war?
that's just a myth, there even is a black book on them (in German). one of the many examples is the Magnate Conspiracy, from WP: "Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan (Francesco Cristoforo Frangipani) were ordered to the Emperor's Court. The note said that, as they had ceased their rebellion and had repented soon enough, they would be given mercy from the Emperor if they would plead for it. They were arrested the moment they arrived in Vienna, and put on trial. They were held in Wiener Neustadt and beheaded on April 30, 1671."
Nobody has ever heard of an Austrian starting a war.
Downvoted for Tom Lehrer?!
Oh right. Germans don’t understand sarcasm. Ha.
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.
If we’re comparing Nazis, can we include both sides of the Atlantic?
I wasn't comparing Nazis but the reality. Maybe that's your narrative
I thought you were comping 1930s politics to current events.
I’m saying that your comment broadly works when you compare current US politics to 1930s German politics (nuclear policy aside).
I think you need to go back to school and learn history before labeling everything which goes against your belief as Fascism. What happened in 1930s Germany is absolutely not what is happening in US right now. US is still a democracy whether you like it or not.
> US is still a democracy whether you like it or not.
It’s not a Boolean, it happens gradually, but it’s accelerating. I’m glad you think everything is fine, let’s hope you’re right.
You could change Germany for USA in your comment and it would be mostly correct too.
No it's not. Learn the actual history before you make vague comparisons.
It works just fine or is USA not having a war right now, arming like crazy and want to fight for lebensraum with China, while also having meager real economy output? I guess you should learn more about history ;)
"meager real economy output" what
What's the comparison, US is at war so it's like WW2 Germany? Hasn't it been this way since the 1960s?
All the "growth" is propelled by AI and Finances. USA is very similar to UK and will end up same.
Profit is profit, and supposedly there's been a tech bubble since 2008. I thought US was supposed to be similar to 1920s Germany here.
You were comparing to 1920s Germany preparing for war, and it's not about Nazis?? It's not even that I disagree, it's just, you clearly meant this and then acted like someone is silly to interpret it that way.
Why would I care what others do or don't do, know or don't know, like or don't like, when it comes to Germans serving other right-wing extremist Germans talking points and votes on a silver platter, because they cannot be arsed to actually read and take seriously the accounts and warning of historians who lived through those times? I can't even figure what point you think you are making.