There will be a lot more decisions like this one. For the war in Ukraine and anything immediate they will buy American stuff if there is no EU alternative (and for many things there just isn't right now, there are too many dependencies). But the tide has changed, for 'in' it is now to 'out'. It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally, and that it will use all kinds of strings attached to hobble what they sell to be able to exert political pressure. Besides the obvious problems with the political system internally to the USA I think it is the external effects that drive decisions like these.
I see the same happening with choices about other suppliers. The EU is a very large trading partner to the US and what is happening right now is unprecedented in the last 75 years or more. The damage to our future world order is incalculable and the fact that it all seems to be by design bothers me greatly.
The lyrics of Alan Parson's 'Children of the moon' have been spooking through my head lately.
I don't think "damage" is the right word, especially outside of the US. Changes aren't necessarily bad, and, as someone living in the EU, I actually like the current trend.
As an American, I am also gratified to see the EU take steps toward independence from US foreign policy. Independence doesn't mean enmity; it just means that the EU and US should both be adults in the room, reaching decisions on equal terms.
If one takes a longer view of things, the period from WW2 to now is very much an anomaly reflecting relative European weakness in the aftermath of that war's physical and moral destruction. There is no intrinsic reason that the US should take the lead on, say, policy toward Russia. Quite the opposite.
As if the US influence was built on charity for poor Europe... It's been all Red Scare and geopolitical power play. The US influence was nothing but intrinsically motivated. The only reason Germany was allowed to be rebuilt was its function as east bloc barrier.
The current US government is throwing away a world power status of unimaginable costs, which literally took almost a century to build. For better or worse, but let's not spin fairy tales about the why and when.
US has historically taken the lead in policy regarding Russia to avoid nuclear proliferation in Europe. If the US umbrella is perceived as being unreliable then I think that is what will see.
this is already happening. France has already stated it will extend its nuclear umbrella to the rest of the EU.
the discussion about either an EU integrated army compared to nato is also back on the table after being basically politically dead for nearly 60 years.
Unfortunately it looks as if lots of people have not learned the lessons from that war. This is a pity because that means lots of people died for absolutely nothing.
I'll bet that half the right wing voters of today at a minimum would get their asses spanked by their grandparents if they were still alive.
I wouldn't say it was weakness rather than a sense of disgust about anything war related. Europe is tired of it, and precisely because of that may well end up in another major war.
I think GP means that Europe didn't intervene when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and, more generally, has done its best to limit rearmament until now. And we're going to pay for it by having a war against Russia that we might have avoided had we projected more strength.
The precedent being France and UK that were so disgusted by war after WWI (and recall that France was the historical biggest warmonger among Western nations at least since the second half of the Hundred Years War) that they didn't react to Nazi Germany annexing Austria, then invading Sudetenland, and in fact not even when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Had they reacted earlier, WWII might have been avoided.
Actually, it is not quite the case: the most warmongering country in Europe was the UK since the 1600s (between 16 and 18 times depending on the criterias you use, a war declaration is way less a clear cut decision than you might think). They most often declared war to France, whereas during the same time, France declared war about 13 times (mostly to Spain, Prussia and Austria). There is no single source for those numbers, because some count invasions as war declarations, and some others don't, and some count wars against coalitions as 1 and some detail the exact number of countries involved. If you want to compare that with Germany/Prussia, they declared war about 10 times during the same time. And if you want to know which country was the most declared war upon, it was France (about 20 times), whereas England/UK was declared war to only 10 times. So it would not be far fetched to argue that it was mostly England/UK that was the biggest warmonger of the past.
Britain never tried to conquer all of Europe, but France did.
Also, when the Brits have a revolution (e.g., English Civil War, American Revolution) deaths never get as arbitrary and difficult-to-predict as in the French Revoution.
Right now, Russia's hands are conveniently tied by their incompetently fought war in Ukraine.
In the mean time, most major EU countries have increased their defense budgets. Some of the larger ones, most notably Germany, are considering to reintroduce conscription. Within about five years, the EU will be able to withstand Russia without any aid from the USA.
In fact, right now, Poland would be able to withstand the Russians on their own. Mind you, they would not be able to defeat the Russians, but they would give them a beating and repel any invasion of Poland.
This is all correct, as is parent's parent. There is(was) this sense of war being failures of others, fought elsewhere now and we got better and employed more diplomacy (ignoring Yugoslavia which was a civil war to begin with).
It made us look weak internationally compared what could have been, and it made us weak. All that military money went into social programs and heavy lean to the left. It sort of works if you have other's umbrella shielding you, which now is questionable (but is it really, I think its more a projection how further can things go in future).
For Russia Europe never ceased to be a battlefield - eastern part of battlefield itself, western part as prize to win or conquer. Past 2+ decades of quite overt subversion, sowing chaos and discord via both radical left and right (which is hilarious, seeing 'patriots' parroting russian propaganda against their own country or ethnicity), sometimes outright attacks and assassinations.
Secret services kept reporting all this even publicly but were mostly ignored by politicians. Weak long term politicians like Merkel allowed this with open arms, hoping in vain that pure business is enough to keep psychopathic wolves happy. Well what a failure that was (yes I hate her as does most of eastern EU, leftist populist and nothing more which grinded strongest European economy to a halt).
Correction is being done, it will take decades but course is set regardless of what next elections in US brings.
As for geography - its only relevant doe to the fact we are connected by land to russia. Of course any country which has huge ocean between them and russians is much safer from them. The rest can either defend themselves or are an easy prey.
I’m Romanian, write this comment from Bucharest, a lot closer to Donbass than both France and UK. If those guys are “disgusted” about Russia then it’s their choice, but they shouldn’t re-create the Crimean War and battle the Russians on our (Romania’s) soil, with the destruction that would accompany such a war. If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West, at least Russia is the devil we know. I’m not alone here in Eastern Europe when it comes to this ideological choice, just look at what people vote (when they’re allowed to do that freely, that is, just look at the Călin Georgescu case).
> If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West
Based on your comment history, you have already done so. You've been carrying water for Russia on HN for the longest time.
> at least Russia is the devil we know
Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe, but it is this mentality that stops that from happening. Russia is a terrible country towards its citizens and you wouldn't even be a citizen of Russia, you'd be a citizen of a resource for Russia, someone to be exploited or to be sent to fight Russia's wars for it. Note that this is exactly what is happening and if Ukraine should become occupied you can expect that the next wave would be Ukrainians against Eastern Europe. That is what you are hoping for here.
> I’m not alone here in Eastern Europe when it comes to this ideological choice, just look at what people vote (when they’re allowed to do that freely, that is, just look at the Călin Georgescu case).
Yes, look at that case, and think about it a bit longer: you've been actively recruited as a fifth column member in the army of a hostile nation. If war does break out (which by trying to avoid the destruction you are actually increasing the chances of it!) you might be found to be aiding the enemy, think long and hard about the consequences of such choices.
> Based on your comment history, you have already done so. You've been carrying water for Russia on HN for the longest time.
I'm talking physically, for better or for worse that is still not the case. I don't want to see Romanian men (which would include me) leaving their (our, in fact) bones on the Ukrainian steppe up to the Volga, once was enough.
> Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe,
Yes, I do know, and yes, and I am completely and utterly annoyed by Westerners lecturing us on our geo-strategic future.
I don't want to see Romanian men (which would include me) leaving their (our, in fact) bones on the Ukrainian steppe up to the Volga, once was enough.
How have the men from the parts of Ukraine that surrendered with minimal resistance to Russia in 2014 fared so far? Do you prefer to leave your bones somewhere in Poland?
This surprises me. Is that how you see it, that countries like UK and France may choose to battle Russia on your soil? What would forego that in your scenario?
What's to be amazed about it? If I remember right you're from somewhere in the Low Countries, correct? Which means your country hasn't been part of a big land-war since the mid-1600s, give or take.
As I mentioned in another comment, I don't want to see us, Romanians, fight the West's wars anymore (like we fought Germany's war in the 1940s), I don't want for my grand-kids to tell their kids how their grandad barely managed to stay alive thanks to some Russian peasants close to Krasnodar who brought him (me) in their home in the middle of the Russian winter, i.e. the same story that has been actually directly experienced by a person close to me (now dead, of course, as are most of the WW2 veterans) on his way back from just outside Stalingrad.
Again, I don't want for my country, Romania, to be the West's sacrificial lamb for West's interests anymore, once was enough. And you should keep your pontificating for yourself, because you Dutch colonialists didn't fight sh*t on the steppes of Southern Russia / Southern Ukraine so you don't know s*it when it comes to fighting Russia in a great land-war, you were too busy, first, getting your asses kicked by the Japanese, and second, cutting the hands off of the Indonesian freedom fighters.
I've lived in Poland and in Romania as well, you know absolutely nothing about me but at least it's clear where you're coming from.
Major cities in 'my little country' have been bombed to little pieces during WWII, my family lived right next door to a particular bridge, maybe you've seen the movie.
All you will achieve is exactly the thing you are trying to avoid.
You're in Putin's pocket and you don't even know it. Guess who will end up fighting his wars for them? You, your grand children and so on. It's the proximity to Russia that is your problem, not the distance to the western part of Europe.
And I have never and will never make any excuses for what the Dutch have done in the past in their colonies and elsewhere, it is atrocious.
I firmly believe people are deluding themselves if they think that without US patronage, Europe wouldn't devolve into its historical norm, a state of internal warfare.
The popular narrative suggests a 'United States of Europe' is forming, but this seems like propaganda when you look at the reality, nations are already returning to the historical status quo, prioritizing their own agendas and pulling in separate directions, much as they always have.
A recent, clear example is the debate over using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. That single issue exposes the deeper divides. Belgium objects because it wants to shield its own financial sector. Germany backs the idea because it would spare it from taking on more of the financial burden. France, meanwhile, has long argued for a different approach, issuing joint EU debt, an option that many financially weaker member states would favor, but one Germany refuses to accept.
EDIT. Unfortunately HN has decided that "I am posting too fast", because I wrote 4 posts, amazing work, I love getting throttled by mods with not reason!
So cannot really respond in the thread.
EDIT2. As always, thank you for downvoting without addressing the argument.
I'll just update this one:
> Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual
> internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I
> believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its
> predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)
> was created - specifically to avoid another war.
> Your example is very on point: the member states are talking
> - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
It’s really not hard to imagine this turning into something very different. All it takes is a major political shift in Germany or France, and both are already close to that point. A lot of people are still thinking in peacetime terms, but we’re past that. The parties that are likely to come to power soon are not going to keep talking about “European solidarity,” because a core part of their message is that this solidarity has come at the expense of their own country’s strength.
EU is far more collaborative now than it's ever been, e.g. joint debt was always controversial, but the EU emitted 800M of joint debt during the COVID crisis, which had never happened before.
If you look at the short term, countries may be pulling one way or the other, but the "ever closer union" _is_ happening if you look at a longer trend.
Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created - specifically to avoid another war.
Your example is very on point: the member states are talking - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
I think it's very fair to say the USA is the only thing that has kept the EU together and a weaker or less globally important USA will allow the EU to fracture and fall apart.
Saying that joint EU debt already exists doesn’t really address the argument. The issue is not whether the EU has ever issued shared debt before. It is about whether member states are actually willing to expand that model in a politically sensitive area where the financial burden is uneven.
Germany is not objecting out of confusion about past instruments. It is objecting because a broader program of joint debt would place more longterm financial exposure on Germany, and it does not want to carry that load. Other countries support the idea precisely because it would distribute that cost more widely. That conflict keeps resurfacing every time the topic comes up.
You could just as easily point to other examples that show the same thing. Spain isn’t eager to pour money into the defense of Eastern Europe because it doesn’t feel the Russian threat the same way. And plenty of countries in Central and Eastern Europe push back hard when it comes to sharing the burden on migration, because they see that as a Southern European problem.
Same here. I’m not scared of China either and am excited for them to take more responsibility on the international stage. Hopefully US warmongering will come to an end too.
We already made that mistake with Russia. First we give them a ton of money and then when they think they're rich enough for a landgrab they go to war. Russia has gone through four such cycles since the 90's.
Yes, I'm sure all the countries around China are really excited and looking forward to this. Oh, wait ...
It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia.
You being ignorant doesn't mean there aren't real issues and real, justified fears.
> It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia.
And that is why Germany is moving a whole Brigade to Lithuania? I think only Spain and Portugal are not appropriately concerned with the Russian threat.
That sounds more like a one-time failure, though. I am hesitant to see that as a proof that the Irish government does not take the Russian threat seriously.
> Tell me why we should care about some island on the other end of the world.
I mean, if we're talking about Taiwan, it has strategic and commercial importance above and beyond being "some island". Certainly more than Central America ever did when the rest of the world was ignoring the US's idiotic anti-Communist adventures. Pretending that it's irrelevant because it's far away seems like a pretty big economic misunderstanding, at the least.
I hope EU will have a functional army before Russia will attack EU , so that US can withdraw troops from Germany. As much as Europe hate Trump, surely Americans too, he was the first president to force them treat defense seriously. Yet all military forces maybe except Poland are a joke
It is kinda funny that to become "independent" the EU is going to become even more dependent on the USA while saying at some undetermined future point they will be able to pivot to independence (which we all know is never going to happen).
And weirdly enough, most of the sanctions have been softened, or rolled back - there's been little effort on the US side to build up domestic production capability outside of semiconductors - a process that began well under the Biden admin.
Another curious thing is despite how the US has been acting in this manner, their stock market still continues to outperform everybody else's
Turns out even if you have as much power as the US president with their executive orders, if you start making stupid or insufficiently well-prepared policy decisions, you have to roll them back or your country will crash into the ground.
Kind of makes me think that supposedly autocratic leaders of powerful countries have much less power than we thought - once they make a couple stupid decisions, their countries start going down the drain.
> Another curious thing is despite how the US has been acting in this manner, their stock market still continues to outperform everybody else's
Only a tiny fraction of the S&P is performing, and it's because it's either part of the AI bubble or because people have memed extreme value into poorly run companies that now have absolutely insane EPS numbers. There's nothing about the US stock market that's even slightly connected to it's financial or economic performance, right now.
Instead of viewing the current world order as collapsing, it's more accurate to see this as a transitional period. The system established after WWII no longer serves the interests of its main creator, the US, making change inevitable.
A significant reduction in the quality of life for many in the 'so-called West' appears to be the unfortunate price of the world returning to a more 'normal' historical pattern of international relations.
>The system established after WWII no longer serves the interests of its main creator
I don't think that's true. The policy of alliance building and containment of their largest peer and competitor still makes sense. It was how the US ultimately overcame the Soviet Union, and is even more vital given the size and talent in China. A US without an alliance system will not win that competition.
What's much more concerning is that the rational interests of the US as a nation aren't reflected in its policy making any more. The 20th century had its share of domestic issues but the inmates weren't running the asylum as far as foreign politics was concerned which was coherent.
European countries becoming more capable of defending themselves by scaling up their own military instead of being dependent on a foreign power will only harden containment of bad actors. That applies to my country Canada.
What's much riskier to the world is the US having to take the brunt of defending Europe, the Arctic front, and dealing with a conflict in China (which is far far more serious military threat than Russia in 2025).
It's difficult medicine to swallow but that's the realpolitiks of it.
China might be a threat to the US, but I don't see it being a threat to Europe.
The fact that Americans are abandoning us in our struggle with Russia in order to pick a fight with China makes it hard to see them as reliable allies.
Well maybe European countries should have considered that before spending the last 3 decades shrinking the size of their military. Germany's military chief was ringing the alarm bells in 2023 about their inability to defend their own borders, and that was before Trump came back to power. This is the wealthiest country in Europe.
Germany's GDP is twice that of Russia. EU GDP is 8.5 times larger than Russia.
Yet even in the current state Russia would have very hard time fighting Europe. The Russian military hasn't been this diminished in decades. But the real issue is Europe can't easily spare stuff to help Ukraine because they don't have their own security figured out.
While I wouldn't argue that Russia is richer than Germany, I think GDP is a rubbish figure - at least it clearly doesn't translate to anything I would consider meaningful.
For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago - unclear, food has become disproportionately more expensive, housing cost has by far outpaced the wage growth, tech has become cheaper, but big-ticket items like cars are proportionally not cheaper.
From this, the person of today is poorer in tangible terms.
Did the infrastructure improve? - some, but I'd say it was a (sub)linear improvement in absolute terms - we certainly didn't build as much stuff as we did in the mid to late 20th century, and what we built before was the more important stuff, so the new stuff has marginal utility.
Did European industry and technology improve? I'd say in terms of relative importance, we regressed - there are huge gaps in European technological capability for which only foreign options exist - this didn't used to be the case.
Were there some big ticket innovations like Concorde or the Moon Landing or whatever - clearly no, the world seems to have lost its appetite for these kind of hugely ambitious projects.
This 'number go up' style capitalism is clearly not to the benefit of the individual, but I can't for the life of me think who does it actually benefit.
>For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago
Forget 20 years ago, you can just back 6 years is enough. Ask any person when life was more affordable and job security better, in 2019 or today and everyone will say 2019.
Graphs like GDP or the stock market going up, mean jack shit to the average person when they can't afford a house anymore.
A lot of our economic growth was just on paper through financial instrumentation.
None of this addresses why we should see China as a threat at all. We thought y'all had our back - why should we have yours now that you've shown your true colors?
I'd like to know why you think the US doesn't "have Europe's back"? Short term disagreements on priorities are expected when there's resource contention. NATO is still very much a thing.
Why do you think a rising China is concerning to the US, but not to Europeans?
Re China: We don't share any border or ocean with them and none of our interests are opposed. To the contrary, they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously. Why would they be a threat to us?
> It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally
An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
What has changed is the US has become more realistic and up front about the limitations of its reduced military. It’s not healthy, for the US /or/ Europe, to indulge the imperial fantasy that US forces in Europe (token deployments in Germany and Poland) are sufficient to defend against Russian attack.
Trump is not the first US president to push Europe to do more of precisely what it is doing here (spend its own money on defense). Being clear about limits is what a reliable ally does.
Europe ordering an Airbus AWACS instead of Boeing now that the US stopped subsidizing them is not surprising nor does it mean the sky is falling.
>An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
Before making chest-thumping proclamations of this sort perhaps you'd best read the text of article 5:
-- If a member is attacked, other members will take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area".
See the part where it says "such action it deems necessary"? Trump may decide that the necessary action is to go play golf. He's gone back and forth on his commitment to European defense a number of times over the years, so there's really no reason to believe that his he won't change his mind on it before breakfast tomorrow.
The unspoken truth here is that there are inner and outer members of the NATO core. Estonia, I’m sorry to say, is not a country the United States would go to WWIII over. The core members of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and possibly the Uk remain. Followed by a few others, and then there’s the rest where if Russia invaded journalists across the eastern seaboard would furiously rush to Chat GPT to find out where it is on the map.
All that aside, and regardless of your views on this administration’s posture toward NATO, Europe needs to revitalize its defense industry as there’s been a much remarked on free rider problem for a while. Robert Gates made a now infamous speech about this problem on his way out of office as secretary of defense.
> A treaty is only as good as its enforcement, and if the USA declines to uphold their obligations, who is going to force them?
A mutual defense treaty is no good at all if it needs enforcement; it only works as a coordinating tool between basically-willing parties. When it becomes anything else, well, look at CSTO.
However, I think that many in the US are underestimating the current paradigm shift. Right now, in Europe, leaders and voters need to take decisions while keeping in mind the possibility that the US will invade Canada and Greenland while not reacting if Russia movies to Estonia.
Will it happen? Who the f*k knows? Donald Trump has made declarations very much in this direction. Also, Donald Trump has broken a sufficiently large number of treaties since becoming president that _anything_ should be considered possible.
That being said, as you mention, it's not clear that any of this is in any way related to Europe not buying the E-7.
Unless I'm mistaken, by imposing tariffs, Donald Trump has broken pretty much all trade treaties ever signed by the US.
Since these treaties covered more than tariffs (e.g. some of them were the same treaties that ensured recognition of copyrights across borders), I'm not sure of the whole scope of these events.
Obama famously avoided sending either to Congress as he is legally required for the USA to ratify a treaty. The USA's "commitment" was non binding and frankly illegal for Obama to make. Hell the USA Congress even send a letter to Iran to be super explicit that the accords didn't mean shit since it's not ratified by the USA.
These are more incorrect emotional claims. Withdrawing from an agreement (all three of your examples) is not the same as reneging or “breaking” the agreement. The US has not withdrawn from NATO; meanwhile, it has proactively withdrawn from agreements it does not wish to be in any longer. That actually bolsters the case that nothing has changed w/r/t article 5.
Please provide a verifiable reference to the specific international law or laws that says that a US president's signature is sufficient to create a binding treaty.
The US Constitution, specifically Article II, section 2, says "[The president] shall have the power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur". That's pretty clear that the President's signature alone is not enough.
Article 7 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, specifically
> 1. A person is considered as representing a State for the purpose of adopting or authenticating the text of a treaty or for the purpose of expressing the consent of the State to be bound by a treaty if:
[...]
> (b) it appears from the practice of the States concerned or from other circumstances that their intention was to consider that person as representing the State for such purposes and to dispense with full powers.
> 2. In virtue of their functions and without having to produce full powers, the following are considered as representing their State:
>(a) Heads of State, [...], for the purpose of performing all acts relating to the conclusion of a treaty;
[...]
Again, your constitution is your business. We do not care about it and it is not pertinent to our dealings with you. Get your house in order.
> In international law, they were treaties. Your internal squabbles do not concern us and just make you look unreliable.
What a joke everyone knew we didn't ratify them everyone just wanted to pretend. We even send a letter to Iran making sure they knew. The EU especially was funny acting like the agreement had any value when the USA wasn't part of it.
"An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed"
What changed is the US President saying things like, he will encourage Putin to invade countries not spending so much on military.
What also changed is the US President threatening members of the EU militarily over greenland for example.
Reliable allies don't really do that.
(you probably do not realize the shock Denmark felt over this, that went deep and the change will not happen over night, but it will happen)
There's also no guarantees that the current president or administration would honor those NATO obligations if Article 5 is called.
The president has repeatedly been vocal about the US leaving NATO as a possibility.
If I were the EU, I certainly wouldn't be counting on the US honoring any of its agreements and I'd be planning with the assumption that they will not join a NATO response.
> It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally, and that it will use all kinds of strings attached to hobble what they sell to be able to exert political pressure.
This isn’t a US-only problem, and if anything the US has been more reliable on this account than some major European countries. For instance, in the first several months of the war Germany actually prohibited other countries from exporting their own surplus Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
That's a borderline whataboutism statement. Yes, Germany could have done a lot better. But at least they're not actively trying to sabotage NATO, they're not threatening to invade allies and they're not bombing other countries just because they can.
I don't disagree with your theme, but I think in this case it has less to do with the grenades Trump is randomly exploding and more to do with the E-7 simply being the wrong solution.
In the past it was useful for nations to opt for an American solution even if it wasn’t the most optimal precisely because of America being a dependable and trustworthy ally.
I won't be put in (public) writing, but it's a same thing as “no-one gets fired for buying IBM”. Sometimes it's part of a bigger international agreement, like, you buy food and we buy weapons or sth.
Or more realistically because no one else actually produces enough missile or bullets to shoot. It's like France being such a joke right now suggesting that Ukraine use their missile system instead of the USA's.
Oh France sure how long until you can supply a fraction of what we are buying from the USA? What a decade!?!?! Ukraine won't exist in a decade if we wait and what's that you won't even ramp production unless you can get guarantees from multiple member nations? What a joke.
Well this was quite openly communicated, why germany bought the F35 for example. To still get (nuclear) protection. (with the homebuild Tornados phasing out and the Eurofighter not getting a licence so easy, only the F35 is capable of delivering nukes with german pilots).
F35 has far better bvr capabilities than the eurofighter and in practice ends up being far more useful in the air superiority role.
Eurofighter is really only good for peacetime patrols, the F35 will detect and shoot down enemies in real conflict far before the Eurofighter can do anything.
In a bizarre hypothetical conflict you would certainly not want to engage a F35 in an Eurofighter, the Eurofighter would be knocked out of the sky long before it could even see the F35. It certainly couldn’t turn on it’s radar.
One would hope, as the Eurofighter is a 20-year-old design. There are older fighters that serve their purposes quite well, but the F35 will end up being compared against fighters yet to appear. And I wonder whether any of these birds will be effective during the day in a modern battlefield before the missile and radar systems are taken out.
That's a true claim today. The defence industry moves surprisingly slowly for a field where more advanced technology is such an advantage so it probably will be true for close to another decade as well because Europe has no native fifth gen fighter.
However the story might be different in a decade as sixth gen aircraft like Tempest are entering service and probably other modern technologies like unmanned/autonomous drones and hypersonic and directed energy weapons are more widely deployed. Connectivity between units in the field is also clearly a huge deal that is going to matter more and more and that is going to require a level of interoperability and trust that won't be kind to "partners" who aren't good team players.
On that kind of timescale I expect "buying American" will be much less attractive to most "allies" of the US than it has been for most of the past century and it will show exactly in decisions like who is making and buying whose planes.
That may well be, but if there had been a different person in the White House (or what's left of it) they would have most likely bought it anyway. They're just not going to come out and say it but the 'strategic' element is what points to that, I doubt the US would have withdrawn in Juli if not for Trump, Hegseth and their buddies. This is just one more program they've gutted.
An independent Europe is easier for China to dominate.
Now that NATO is in question, you'll start to hear about US manipulation of the SWIFT banking system, so Europe will start pushing for an international one, which China will eventually control.
It’s just a detail, the international financial market/banking system is basically under active US control, just look at what happened to Wegelin & Co. (at that point the oldest bank in Switzerland) when they thought that that was not the case.
Europe isn't dependable either. Your news routinely picks and chooses what to report on, leading to a slightly distorted understanding of the US in Europeans minds, at least those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an American. It's bound to happen, sure, but then the salt in the wound is when Americans say "but what about this topic, can't we discuss it?" and the response from Europe isn't just no but "that experience you're having in America? It never happened and you're totally wrong for wanting to bring it to my attention." Why wouldn't Americans learn to resent Europeans? Context: I have B1 in Swedish and C1 in German and after ten years of learning that about sums the majority of my interactions with Europeans up. I tried so hard to understand you all.
How can you deem Europe as not dependable based on what mostly amounts to studying two European languages? It's a continent of roughly 50 distinct nations, with almost as many languages and cultural distinctions, not to mention the huge political differences, even when in the same general ballpark, vastly overarching US political diversity (e.g. Danish Socialdemokratiet are something entirely else than the Swedish social democrats, who in turn are nothing like the German SPD).
Incidentally I'm reminded by how common this ignorant view of Europe and Europeans is with Americans, in how they either insist on or unfortunately misunderstand Europe as a single nation with near-homogeneity.
Europe isn't unified in the same sense as the US though, so this feels like a bit of an apples and oranges situation. Even though the US is varied geographically and culturally from an internal perspective, it's very much not in the sense of how the government conducts foreign policy and international trade. From the perspective of a European government pondering a trade deal, the differences between North Dakota and California aren't necessarily going to be super relevant, let alone the differences of various people within those states. This isn't really comparable to how things work in reverse; there's no "president of Europe" who can unilaterally decide to put a bunch of tariffs on anything imported from the US into Europe without regard to how it affects the individual member states.
> there's no "president of Europe" who can unilaterally decide to put a bunch of tariffs on anything imported from the US into Europe without regard to how it affects the individual member states.
And it's not even clear if it's legal in the US. The Supreme Court is in the process of deciding that after a dozen US states sued about it.
I mean Congress 100% gave him the power to do the only thing that's going to save us is that so many of the conservative justices are fans of the nondelegation doctrine.
No, Congress did not give him the power to implement arbitrary tariffs. They allowed limited power for emergency, targeted tariffs of limited duration and scope. This is so far beyond that they're clearly illegal, it's just a matter of whether the courts feel like writing another nonsensical opinion to allow them.
Yes, emergencies that he determines and they can if they choose to rescind. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not exactly what powers they gave him.
My hope is the court rules that Congress cannot delegate all its power like it's been doing (nondelegation doctrine) but I'm not going to pretend he wasn't granted these powers.
True, though we do have a system that apparently lets it go on for a bit even if it does end up getting determined to be illegal (not to mention the track record of the Supreme Court in recent years not exactly inspiring confidence in their impartiality when it comes to policies being decided on a non-partisan basis).
News aside, surely you can see how the game is currently being dominated by the US and how Europe understands the current status - where the US is objectively a political antagoniser - as huge liability with potentially extreme consequences?
> those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an American
I think there's a misunderstanding at play here; in the vast majority of cases Europeans see Americans as reliable, cool-headed, friendly people. What they take issue with is the US' imperialist, heavy-handed, ombelico-del-mondo approach.
Obviously it's about the symbolism. I think it's great Europe is breaking away from the US. I just think it's a crazy turn from their previous obsession with the US.
What you mention are your personal anecdotes while being mildly prolific in 2 out of many languages. Where I live, knowing fluently 4 or 5 is the norm and nobody considers themselves an expert on given country, even if its just another European country or even neighbor.
I've been to the US for couple of months working here and there, you folks are fine but I still don't get even after 2+ decades why you end up with such system. I don't mean the strengths, we all know them but the weaknesses which are all roughly solvable if enough focus is spent on them.
Utter disregard for the poor who are there to be exploited for life (or ignored like homeless), completely broken public education and medical system. From European perspective a proper police state - it was the first time I saw fear in faces of regular people from just a police car moving around the corner. Very high criminality of the 'heaviest' type. Also wars, those endless wars and their constant failures - what did Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan change for the better of people there or entire regions, apart from millions of civilians dead?
At the end, what Europeans care about is US politics, rest are details. We and rest of the world judge based on that. How that goes we all see these days.
You say all that as if I have a positive opinion of my country.
I live here. I know the problems. I'm very critical of them. In fact, the things that get discussed here don't even make it to Europe.
I live in a very violent city. I am a minority. I see minority crime. I know people who have been shot.
My point is that you all see us as unreliable, but fail to talk about the way this applies to western Europe as well.
I didn't say I was an expert.
You judge the US based on politics? Ok, I judge Europe based on politics. Your media lies to you regularly about the US and if the US is so bad, why did Europe obsess over it for so long?
> Your news routinely picks and chooses what to report on, leading to a slightly distorted understanding
You are not wrong, the european press hugely distorts and manipulates, but this is also textbook pot calling the kettle black: the american press is no better in that regard, and actually quite worse IMO. So this part of your argument is DOA.
> at least those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an american
Now we're squarely in the domain of the unreasonable. The proportion of americans that have had an experience similar to yours is vanishingly tiny compared to the amount of exposure an average european gets to american culture (and I'm not talking about hollywod here).
Let's hope a decision on an alternative platform is made quickly (although I am sceptical due to the bureaucratic maze of NATO procurement). The current AWACS-platform (E-3A) still uses old engines which are loud, smokey and not as efficient. Neighbouring communities deserve a quieter platform as well as NATO needs a potent airborne early warning platform. European technology is not an issue (Thales, Leonardo etc. make great modern AESA based radars). Also interoperability of data between NATO members used in the C2 chain is not an issue.
I wouldn't put all my eggs on a single billion dollar basket like that in 2025. A networked flock of million dollar drones with phased array radar could be cheaper, more effective, thanks to a larger virtual aperture, and far more survivable an overwatch resource. You could stagger refueling and have it available 24/7.
Sounds cool as a fantasy. How are you going to measure the distance between the drones with millimeter precision? How are you going to synchronize the pulse between the drones with nanosecond precision to achieve the phased array effect? How are you going to do all that with the enemy actively deploying EW measures?
Not that these problems are impossible to solve, but they are nontrivial in practice, I'm afraid. It would take quite some effort to turn the fantasy into a reliable theory, and then quite some more, into a practical swarm.
Atomic clocks are now less than $5000 devices. The same type of circuits that allow GPS receivers to correlate timing to the picosecond could be used in this application. None of what I suggested is fantasy, but it would require good engineering.
What would be even more fun (i.e. stretching the limits) would be to include a 30-300 mhz radar in the mix, which would resolve just fine with dispersed nodes, and penetrate most stealth coatings and bounce off the airframes of the enemy.
Yes, every separate component is doable. What looks hardest to me is the geometry: every node / drone would not only need to be perfectly synchronized with the rest of the swarm, but also understand its location within it with millimeter precision, in order to time its impulse to do beamforming, or allow locating any received signals. We should assume that near the battlefield GPS is already jammed, so it must be a sophisticated network of laser rangefinders between the drones, plus location data from land stations.
Then, there should be a super-node in a larger aircraft that would receive the data from the swarm and turn it into a coherent picture, run object detection and tracking, etc.
Seems so, but perhaps some nations like France want a bigger variant with a bit more range and larger sensors. Airbus A330 is already used by European fighters for aerial refuelling so I suppose it could also be built into an AWACS.
Sounds like the USAF decided last year that the E-7 was the wrong approach (too expensive, more interested in a distributed solution), so this isn't terribly surprising.
The first could e-7a aren't even slated to have particularly good radars. The US kept trying to do whatever it takes to get the price down & it keeps being hideously expensive anyways, with who knows what capabilities left on the cutting room floor.
Seems incredibly silly to me that such an incredibly crucial capability is being so sorely neglected. Having superior signals has loon been a key US advantage, that's core to enabling so many other capabilities to be used well. Theres what feels like absurd fantasy going around saying we can skip airborne platforms & just use space for all awacs needs. And who knows maybe, but it feels like a lot of ridiculous wish casting, that's leaving us with horrendous woefully inadequate eyes, ears, & links today. We need a real e-7 plan, one with a really good sensors not the decades old tech that the US's E-7A defined.
> The decision follows the withdrawal of the U.S. from the joint AWACS replacement program in July 2024, which left the initiative without its strategic and financial foundation.
Is this implying that USA was paying for it previously? It sounds like they're blaming "noise polution", but also that they're not getting the planes for free anymore?
I see so this isn't really a concerted effort by EU nations to gain independence on defense technology. It's just that USA didn't want to buy the planes anymore so it became too expensive for everyone else to as well.
Or perhaps pulling out of the program was too costly, political or otherwise, for EU and USA did them a huge favor by blundering away from it first, freeing them to pursue their goals.
I'm quite impressed with Europeans' entitled attitudes towards the US security umbrella.
First of all, none of this should be "unexpected"--Obama famously announced a pivot to Asia well over a decade ago. What exactly did Europeans think that meant?
Second, European military intransigence has dramatically escalated the risk of a devastating war affecting both US and Europe, and the US is simply overextended. The US cannot bring sufficient military power to bear to defend the Pacific, European, and Arctic theaters simultaneously. European NATO members simply must pull their own weight now; reaffirming European luxury beliefs like "we don't need to prepare for war because Uncle Sam has got us covered" would be doing both US and Europe a dis-service. Many presidents have tried more polite pleading and cajoling in less critical times, with evidently poor results.
Finally, the asymmetry of expectations is remarkable. Europeans clearly expect the US not just to fight Russia with them, but to fight Russia for them. Yet no Americans expect European forces to come to the US's rescue in the Pacific--and European commenters online make very clear that that expectation is correct. Consequently, many Americans are skeptical of the value NATO membership brings, while seeing clearly its risks and costs.
If you want America to remain engaged in European security, y'all need to get much more serious about fielding an effective military force and clearly commit to helping the US against China in every way possible. And if you don't want America to remain engaged in European security, y'all need to get even more serious about fielding an effective military force.
So put your heads down, get to work, and quit it with the hyperbolic butthurt comments about "unexpectedly" being "blown off".
I realize I was probably too oblique before, so let me be more specific.
The US has pivoted from traditional AWACS to the proliferated warfighter space architecture, the idea being hundreds of LEO satellites can provide a cheaper and much more survivable (not to mention persistent) air moving-target indicator capability. There is substantial project risk, but the US is resource constrained and cannot afford to fund everything under the sun.
European NATO nations don't currently need something so fancy and without the US, E-7's per-unit costs would be too high. But the US now prioritizes its needs in the Pacific theater (where those E-7s would not be survivable) over Europe's security interests (cheap, capable traditional AWACS). That's the pivot to Asia in action.
I don't even think that this outcome is bad for Europe. It's a reminder that Europe's needs are not America's priority, which helps to light a sorely-needed fire under European asses. Europe will buy GlobalEye or some Airbus platform, and the US will have a decent alternative available if the PWSA doesn't work out. It's also a potential opportunity for European NATO countries to contribute to PWSA, Starshield, and/or Golden Dome and more visibly and tangibly contribute to NATO's mutual defense.
It is worth pointing out that US' potential adversary in the Pacific region is known for boasting its "robust" anti-satellite capabilities, so it is difficult to see this move as anything but wasteful and potentially dangerous to other LEO satellites.
Dude, it's a joke about Boeing doors getting lost mid flight.
You know, the thing that happened recently and made quite some news?
Maaaybe you should introspect a bit about how a single thoughtless sentence on some web forum could possibly inspire you to write an essay about European entitlement. Is this American vulnerability?
They are complaining about the noise level of the existing E-3, which is based on the old Boeing 707 with old noisy low bypass turbofans. The new plane E-7 is based on a contemporary 737 so no more noisy than a regular commercial jetliner.
Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programs allows the participating countries to share most of the setup cost, except some high end technology that is country specific, it’s mainly divided by per airframe basis.
When you have the US Air Force in a program and they purchase a bazillion aircraft, things get relatively affordable.
Well, the US left and nobody want to spend billions of dollars into the development of this aircraft (most of the problems are the airframe not radar I heard, citation needed) and end up with just two aircraft and then deal with internal news about how they spend billions of dollars per aircraft when commercial airlines are so much cheaper.
It kind of sounds like the USAF did the EU countries a favor then. If they're not interested in the technology anymore then it prevented all those countries from investing billions in a fleet of lemons.
I’m starting to question thinking of China as our adversary, what makes us think that way? Russia, sure they’re actively fighting against our allies. China?
Well classically the EU has been a supporter of free expression, human rights, and all that jazz but lately that seems to mean a lot less to them.
> Russia, sure they’re actively fighting against our allies. China?
I assume this is a joke because China is actively helping Russia with weapons, intelligence, and Zelenskiy has even stated China is actively manufacturing weapons inside Russia for Russian use in Ukraine.
In my opinion it’s because of several things. They took over Xinjiang and Tibet, and committed large scale atrocities in both. They threaten Taiwan. They abandoned the treaties around Hong Kong. They continue to harass India - a sort of ally of NATO countries - over borders they share. Let’s also not forget crimes against Chinese people during the cultural revolution and since then.
They’ve also engaged in widespread campaigns of asymmetric warfare against other countries. Lots of cyberattacks. Theft of intellectual property - corporate espionage but also copies of designs and hacks of government agencies. Unfair protectionism in their own markets. Lots more to list.
But mostly because the CCP just can’t be trusted with their power, because they’re neither democratic nor support liberal values like free speech. I think there’s a lot to admire about China and Chinese citizens. But their government is ultimately a threat to the world order and the progress of liberalism.
A lot of that context I didn’t have, thank you, I should catch up more in that regard.
> But mostly because the CCP just can’t be trusted with their power, because they’re neither democratic nor support liberal values like free speech.
How do we square this with the US being democratically elected (let’s ignore gerrymandering and absence of one person one vote) but the actions like the upcoming war with Venezuela, bombing Iran. The people didn’t vote for that either.
I don’t think we can square it exactly. The US isn’t perfect and has deep issues as well. But it just depends on which values you care about. For me, I think despite problems, the US has a more trustworthy system of democracy than most countries. And as far as democratic values like free speech - it’s far above literally any other country in the world in protecting those rights. These things alone make it special - I think it lets the US consider different ideas and change over time.
For Venezuela and Iran specifically - I won’t claim to be an expert on either. But I think neither the Maduro dictatorship nor Iranian theocracy are legitimate. You can read about how Maduro suppressed opposition movements and manipulated elections in many sources (example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro). As for Iran, the current theocratic authoritarian government came into power via a revolution in 1979 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Iran). Sure it replaced a monarchy, but that monarchy was actually quite liberal and photos of Iran from that era show a culture that was very different from today. That was taken away from their people, and replaced with their current rulers’ cultural agenda.
As for specifically the issue of whether people voted for something or not - well the US system and I think all democratic systems that exist today aren’t direct democracies. We give powers to the presidency and congress that let them do a lot of things. That’s by design, but it is still at the service of the people, who have the ability to alter the constitution at any time. If someone (like the president) breaks the law, we have the ability to hold them accountable. But I also know sometimes they get away with crimes. I look at that as minor flaws of an otherwise very functional system.
> Sure it replaced a monarchy, but that monarchy was actually quite liberal and photos of Iran from that era show a culture that was very different from today.
Well duh, pictures of pretty girls from the (very small) upper classes sell better than pictures of the victims of Savak.
Do you think Iran is less or more aligned to liberal values or the general notion of “freedom” under the current theocracy than under the previous monarchy?
Why should the EU not see an expansive authoritarian superpower as an adversary, or, at the very least, a real threat to its continued existence and sovereignty?
China needs Europe to support its export economy because there will never be enough domestic demand to prevent a deflationary spiral. Europe is a rational actor China can expect to act rationally in trade, and Europe can benefit from that.
The US has nothing to offer Europe except LNG that Europe cannot produce itself, or obtain from China at better price or quality. Canada has ~200 years of LNG reserves and can ship to Europe from LNG Canada.
> In 1995, China accounted for less than five percent of global manufacturing output. By 2010, that number had jumped to around a quarter, and today it stands at nearly a third.
> The US has nothing to offer Europe except LNG that Europe cannot produce itself, or obtain from China at better price or quality. Canada has ~200 years of LNG reserves and can ship to Europe from LNG Canada.
This line here makes it clear to me you've never really researched any of this. Canada doesn't have the ability to export that to anywhere but the USA and refuses to even consider building another pipeline.
https://www.shell.com/news-and-insights/our-stories/lng-cana... ("July 1, 2025: With production underway in Kitimat on Canada’s west coast, LNG Canada connects natural gas from British Columbia to Asian markets. Explore the project with our interactive map, read about the extraordinary engineering behind LNG Canada, and watch the videos to learn more about LNG.")
China is not exporting LNG at all, did you mean Canada?
The US is still a very large and attractive market for European exporters, and it would at the very least substantially least hurt Europeans if they had to fully substitute the US with China as a trade partner.
Apologies if my phrasing was not concise. The idea I intended to communication was "Europe can get all the LNG they want from Canada, and anything manufactured from China."
To your point about the US market, I would put forth the size of China, India, and Africa as import markets for Europe. The population of the US is ~343M, ~745M is Europe, while that of China, India, and Africa combined is ~4.6B (as of this comment, rough proxy for total addressable markets). Admittedly the latter are at various stages of development, but I am of a strong opinion they can replace the US considering demographics, proximity, rate of development and purchasing power increasing, etc. International equities have already outperformed the S&P500 this year, so this may happen faster than we might expect. China is not as quite as wealthy as the US, but India and Africa are the last of global emerging markets and where the economic growth future of the world is. Do you configure and target your export economy for growing markets? Or declining markets?
They're on the opposite end of the world, our interests do not conflict, but even overlap (i.e. they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously)
> The US doesn't really see Russia as an adversary under Trump.
From the fall of the Berlin wall until the Ukraine invasion, the US saw Russia as more of an adversary than Europe saw Russia.
Yes, even after Russia annexed Crimea. In fact, it's only this year that Europe has started to significantly increase defense spending, three years after Russia invaded Ukraine. And, even then the most aggressive increase plans end up short of where spending was during the Cold War.
Every US president after Clinton (and maybe Clinton as well) urged European countries, especially NATO ones, to keep funding defense and they cut instead.
It turns out that the cowboys were right, that there was a bear in the woods, and that "soft power" wasn't power.
I 100% agree that Europe regarded Russia as a potential trade partner (and possibly more positively than the US) even after the 2014 annexation.
But I don't think that this makes EU policy necessarily incorrect:
Would German military spending of 5% GDP have prevented the Crimea annexation?
We won't know, but I don't think so, and European militarism in the 2000s might have led to significantly worse outcomes than we actually got.
I also think that painting this as a clear "US stance proven right in hindsight" is an outsized claim; EU military spending only really came up under Trump, and was a very minor topic before. You could make a similar argument that "the cowboys" were all wrong with the whole middle-east interventionism thing (in Afghanistan and Iraq), but the military side of that was at least competently executed (unlike Russia in Ukraine), collateral damage lower and war crimes somewhat minimized/prosecuted.
I sadly agree that Costa-Rica-style pacifism appears a non-viable approach for the EU now despite looking somewhat workable 15 years ago.
> Would German military spending of 5% GDP have prevented the Crimea annexation?
Probably not Crimea, but you'd think that the annexation would have caused some rethinking of "soft power".
The lack of European defense spending since 95 means that Europe doesn't have much to help Ukraine. (EU countries brag about "100% to Ukraine" but never talk about how little that 100% is.) It also means that Europe doesn't have much in the way of a defense industry. (And then they whine when money gets spent on US weapons.)
Getting serious in 2014 (after Crimea) would have given Europe options.
> EU military spending only really came up under Trump
Trump's comments, the actual words, on EU defense spending were basically the same as Obama and W's.
The difference was in how Europeans, especially the Germans, reacted.
BTW - do Europeans know how "But we have better work/life balance" comes across? The reaction by many Americans is "Why am I paying to defend their work/life balance?"
> Getting serious in 2014 (after Crimea) would have given Europe options.
Realistically, what options? The only thing that could have really helped in my view in hindsight was either massive visible arms-deliveries to the Ukraine before 2022 (to discourage Russia), or to demonstrate willingness to join the fight (with soldiers). That willingness is and was not there (in neither US/EU), and spending more would not really have helped that.
> you'd think that the annexation would have caused some rethinking of "soft power".
You mean giving up on Russian gas early? It's a much harder call without hindsight in my view if Crimea is the main focus. The whole second Chechen war was much more problematic than that annexation in my view, and if you're not drawing the line for that, than why'd you change your opinion for Crimea?`
I do fully agree with you though that there should have been harsher consequences after 2014, and that those might have actually helped more than anything else (by making the "happy path" for the 2022 invasion worse): I think Putin considered the 2022 invasion as "quick regime change, some yapping from the west and then business as usual in a few years"; the west/EU demonstrating willingness for self-sacrifical sanctions to punish expansionism in 2014 might have discouraged this strongly.
> BTW - do Europeans know how "But we have better work/life balance" comes across? The reaction by many Americans is "Why am I paying to defend their work/life balance?"
I'll give you my European perspective:
1) Yes the US is overspending on its military, but that is entirely their own decision
2) American military spending profits itself first and foremost, because spending mainly goes to domestic industry, and forces are mainly used to further domestic interests
3) Europe is already paying for the humanitarian fallout of ill-advised US interventionism in the middle east, and indirect costs from this alone are in the "percent GDP" range as well
Don't get me wrong, I think it is a really good thing that the US did provide substantial aid during the Ukraine invasion. I personally wish that "the west" did even more, but the sad reality is that a good part of the population considers the Ukraine conflict a "not my problem", and is simply unwilling to pay more to defend human rights abroad (and the attitude is very similar between especially western Europeans and US-americans in my view).
Because democracies and authoritarian regimes are like oil and water.
Authoritarian regimes will inevitably attempt to expand because authoritarian leaders view the existence of people they don't rule as a threat towards their rule and they inevitably desire to grow their control and power over more and more people.
> Authoritarian regimes will inevitably attempt to expand
Which is ironic that most of the annexation talk came from the US in the recent times, not from China. Canada, Greenland, Panama Canal, Mexico what else has he threatened to annex?
> Coincidentally it's also why the US and EU are growing further apart.
That is not a given, as there are many authoritarian political parties in European countries growing in size and influence. Possibly Europe is only the usual decade or two behind the US developments? Well, I at least hope it does not come to this.
We're not in the post ww2 world illusion or world peace through commerce, mutual dependencies clearly don't stop nationalist interests. Trump shattered the illusion with his illegal meme tier tariffs, now we're slowly going back to empires dealing with their friends while fucking over anyone else.
It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
Throughout my 40 years on this planet, Pax Americana was a constant that seemed to hold the world together (+/-). It's scary to see it vanish and with such speed and efficiency.
> amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
Has that happened? Give us something concrete a real example of that. Europe seems to be increasing it's dependency on the USA with large military spendings. They bent the knee really quickly during the last round of trade talks....
If this is a damaged USA's soft power what we've really learned is that we've been wildly overestimating other countries.
> It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
The world was somewhat sympathetic to the US when we elected Trump the first time: it's disappointing, but you can get tricked sometimes. When we re-elected him it casts the first time as not an error, but rather a deliberate choice.
A nation that makes that kind of choice is not a reliable ally. We're just beginning to see the repercussions of that loss of trust.
The EU is worried about Trump being unpredictable, so they are pushing hard for sovereignty. See their initiatives to leave US clouds. This decision is completely in line with that strategy and, probably, also what the US military expected to happen.
The pressure to leave US controlled cloud providers actually started way back with the US Cloud Act. I’ve been surprised that that process has been as slow as it has been, especially for the public sector and adjacent services.
> I’ve been surprised that that process has been as slow as it has been, especially for the public sector and adjacent services.
Europe can't seem to get a tech sector bootstrapped no matter what it does and European governments seem to be much more comfortable with the USA having full access to everything they do then risk running on a EU cloud.
What effect does this have on Boeing, one of 3-4 major defense companies. Can the industry handle one more giant meger? Can it handle a vastly impoverished Boeing?
There will be a lot more decisions like this one. For the war in Ukraine and anything immediate they will buy American stuff if there is no EU alternative (and for many things there just isn't right now, there are too many dependencies). But the tide has changed, for 'in' it is now to 'out'. It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally, and that it will use all kinds of strings attached to hobble what they sell to be able to exert political pressure. Besides the obvious problems with the political system internally to the USA I think it is the external effects that drive decisions like these.
I see the same happening with choices about other suppliers. The EU is a very large trading partner to the US and what is happening right now is unprecedented in the last 75 years or more. The damage to our future world order is incalculable and the fact that it all seems to be by design bothers me greatly.
The lyrics of Alan Parson's 'Children of the moon' have been spooking through my head lately.
> The damage to our future world order
I don't think "damage" is the right word, especially outside of the US. Changes aren't necessarily bad, and, as someone living in the EU, I actually like the current trend.
As an American, I am also gratified to see the EU take steps toward independence from US foreign policy. Independence doesn't mean enmity; it just means that the EU and US should both be adults in the room, reaching decisions on equal terms.
If one takes a longer view of things, the period from WW2 to now is very much an anomaly reflecting relative European weakness in the aftermath of that war's physical and moral destruction. There is no intrinsic reason that the US should take the lead on, say, policy toward Russia. Quite the opposite.
As if the US influence was built on charity for poor Europe... It's been all Red Scare and geopolitical power play. The US influence was nothing but intrinsically motivated. The only reason Germany was allowed to be rebuilt was its function as east bloc barrier.
The current US government is throwing away a world power status of unimaginable costs, which literally took almost a century to build. For better or worse, but let's not spin fairy tales about the why and when.
US has historically taken the lead in policy regarding Russia to avoid nuclear proliferation in Europe. If the US umbrella is perceived as being unreliable then I think that is what will see.
this is already happening. France has already stated it will extend its nuclear umbrella to the rest of the EU. the discussion about either an EU integrated army compared to nato is also back on the table after being basically politically dead for nearly 60 years.
But Europe did block the rapprochement with Russia in the 1990s, which the US was trying to achieve. https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-documents-...
> If one takes a longer view of things, the period from WW2 to now is very much an anomaly
WW2 was the anomaly- a conflict impacting all nations on earth, with Europe falling under a horrible regime
Unfortunately it looks as if lots of people have not learned the lessons from that war. This is a pity because that means lots of people died for absolutely nothing. I'll bet that half the right wing voters of today at a minimum would get their asses spanked by their grandparents if they were still alive.
I wouldn't say it was weakness rather than a sense of disgust about anything war related. Europe is tired of it, and precisely because of that may well end up in another major war.
That has more to do with their geography than their disgust no?
I think GP means that Europe didn't intervene when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and, more generally, has done its best to limit rearmament until now. And we're going to pay for it by having a war against Russia that we might have avoided had we projected more strength.
The precedent being France and UK that were so disgusted by war after WWI (and recall that France was the historical biggest warmonger among Western nations at least since the second half of the Hundred Years War) that they didn't react to Nazi Germany annexing Austria, then invading Sudetenland, and in fact not even when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Had they reacted earlier, WWII might have been avoided.
Actually, it is not quite the case: the most warmongering country in Europe was the UK since the 1600s (between 16 and 18 times depending on the criterias you use, a war declaration is way less a clear cut decision than you might think). They most often declared war to France, whereas during the same time, France declared war about 13 times (mostly to Spain, Prussia and Austria). There is no single source for those numbers, because some count invasions as war declarations, and some others don't, and some count wars against coalitions as 1 and some detail the exact number of countries involved. If you want to compare that with Germany/Prussia, they declared war about 10 times during the same time. And if you want to know which country was the most declared war upon, it was France (about 20 times), whereas England/UK was declared war to only 10 times. So it would not be far fetched to argue that it was mostly England/UK that was the biggest warmonger of the past.
Ah, interesting data points, thanks.
Still, let's not forget Napoleon :)
Britain never tried to conquer all of Europe, but France did.
Also, when the Brits have a revolution (e.g., English Civil War, American Revolution) deaths never get as arbitrary and difficult-to-predict as in the French Revoution.
Right now, Russia's hands are conveniently tied by their incompetently fought war in Ukraine.
In the mean time, most major EU countries have increased their defense budgets. Some of the larger ones, most notably Germany, are considering to reintroduce conscription. Within about five years, the EU will be able to withstand Russia without any aid from the USA.
In fact, right now, Poland would be able to withstand the Russians on their own. Mind you, they would not be able to defeat the Russians, but they would give them a beating and repel any invasion of Poland.
I have a family member in the reservists in Poland, they are on the highest level of readiness they've ever been.
Indeed, that is exactly what I meant.
This is all correct, as is parent's parent. There is(was) this sense of war being failures of others, fought elsewhere now and we got better and employed more diplomacy (ignoring Yugoslavia which was a civil war to begin with).
It made us look weak internationally compared what could have been, and it made us weak. All that military money went into social programs and heavy lean to the left. It sort of works if you have other's umbrella shielding you, which now is questionable (but is it really, I think its more a projection how further can things go in future).
For Russia Europe never ceased to be a battlefield - eastern part of battlefield itself, western part as prize to win or conquer. Past 2+ decades of quite overt subversion, sowing chaos and discord via both radical left and right (which is hilarious, seeing 'patriots' parroting russian propaganda against their own country or ethnicity), sometimes outright attacks and assassinations.
Secret services kept reporting all this even publicly but were mostly ignored by politicians. Weak long term politicians like Merkel allowed this with open arms, hoping in vain that pure business is enough to keep psychopathic wolves happy. Well what a failure that was (yes I hate her as does most of eastern EU, leftist populist and nothing more which grinded strongest European economy to a halt).
Correction is being done, it will take decades but course is set regardless of what next elections in US brings.
As for geography - its only relevant doe to the fact we are connected by land to russia. Of course any country which has huge ocean between them and russians is much safer from them. The rest can either defend themselves or are an easy prey.
I’m Romanian, write this comment from Bucharest, a lot closer to Donbass than both France and UK. If those guys are “disgusted” about Russia then it’s their choice, but they shouldn’t re-create the Crimean War and battle the Russians on our (Romania’s) soil, with the destruction that would accompany such a war. If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West, at least Russia is the devil we know. I’m not alone here in Eastern Europe when it comes to this ideological choice, just look at what people vote (when they’re allowed to do that freely, that is, just look at the Călin Georgescu case).
This is a delusional position.
> If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West
Based on your comment history, you have already done so. You've been carrying water for Russia on HN for the longest time.
> at least Russia is the devil we know
Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe, but it is this mentality that stops that from happening. Russia is a terrible country towards its citizens and you wouldn't even be a citizen of Russia, you'd be a citizen of a resource for Russia, someone to be exploited or to be sent to fight Russia's wars for it. Note that this is exactly what is happening and if Ukraine should become occupied you can expect that the next wave would be Ukrainians against Eastern Europe. That is what you are hoping for here.
> I’m not alone here in Eastern Europe when it comes to this ideological choice, just look at what people vote (when they’re allowed to do that freely, that is, just look at the Călin Georgescu case).
Yes, look at that case, and think about it a bit longer: you've been actively recruited as a fifth column member in the army of a hostile nation. If war does break out (which by trying to avoid the destruction you are actually increasing the chances of it!) you might be found to be aiding the enemy, think long and hard about the consequences of such choices.
> Based on your comment history, you have already done so. You've been carrying water for Russia on HN for the longest time.
I'm talking physically, for better or for worse that is still not the case. I don't want to see Romanian men (which would include me) leaving their (our, in fact) bones on the Ukrainian steppe up to the Volga, once was enough.
> Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe,
Yes, I do know, and yes, and I am completely and utterly annoyed by Westerners lecturing us on our geo-strategic future.
So, you're scared. And through being scared you empower your enemy. Well done.
This surprises me. Is that how you see it, that countries like UK and France may choose to battle Russia on your soil? What would forego that in your scenario?
He would like to roll over to see Romania rejoin the new Russian empire. Click on username then comments and be amazed.
What's to be amazed about it? If I remember right you're from somewhere in the Low Countries, correct? Which means your country hasn't been part of a big land-war since the mid-1600s, give or take.
As I mentioned in another comment, I don't want to see us, Romanians, fight the West's wars anymore (like we fought Germany's war in the 1940s), I don't want for my grand-kids to tell their kids how their grandad barely managed to stay alive thanks to some Russian peasants close to Krasnodar who brought him (me) in their home in the middle of the Russian winter, i.e. the same story that has been actually directly experienced by a person close to me (now dead, of course, as are most of the WW2 veterans) on his way back from just outside Stalingrad.
Again, I don't want for my country, Romania, to be the West's sacrificial lamb for West's interests anymore, once was enough. And you should keep your pontificating for yourself, because you Dutch colonialists didn't fight sh*t on the steppes of Southern Russia / Southern Ukraine so you don't know s*it when it comes to fighting Russia in a great land-war, you were too busy, first, getting your asses kicked by the Japanese, and second, cutting the hands off of the Indonesian freedom fighters.
I've lived in Poland and in Romania as well, you know absolutely nothing about me but at least it's clear where you're coming from.
Major cities in 'my little country' have been bombed to little pieces during WWII, my family lived right next door to a particular bridge, maybe you've seen the movie.
All you will achieve is exactly the thing you are trying to avoid.
You're in Putin's pocket and you don't even know it. Guess who will end up fighting his wars for them? You, your grand children and so on. It's the proximity to Russia that is your problem, not the distance to the western part of Europe.
And I have never and will never make any excuses for what the Dutch have done in the past in their colonies and elsewhere, it is atrocious.
Geography itself, as they aren’t going to battle the Russians in Lorraine or in Belgium/Netherlands, just opposite the UK.
Damn, are you sure you're an American? :)
Talk to me in 10 years or so. Changes can be very bad if they are rapid.
I firmly believe people are deluding themselves if they think that without US patronage, Europe wouldn't devolve into its historical norm, a state of internal warfare.
The popular narrative suggests a 'United States of Europe' is forming, but this seems like propaganda when you look at the reality, nations are already returning to the historical status quo, prioritizing their own agendas and pulling in separate directions, much as they always have.
A recent, clear example is the debate over using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. That single issue exposes the deeper divides. Belgium objects because it wants to shield its own financial sector. Germany backs the idea because it would spare it from taking on more of the financial burden. France, meanwhile, has long argued for a different approach, issuing joint EU debt, an option that many financially weaker member states would favor, but one Germany refuses to accept.
EDIT. Unfortunately HN has decided that "I am posting too fast", because I wrote 4 posts, amazing work, I love getting throttled by mods with not reason! So cannot really respond in the thread. EDIT2. As always, thank you for downvoting without addressing the argument.
I'll just update this one:
> Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual > internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I > believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its > predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) > was created - specifically to avoid another war. > Your example is very on point: the member states are talking > - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
It’s really not hard to imagine this turning into something very different. All it takes is a major political shift in Germany or France, and both are already close to that point. A lot of people are still thinking in peacetime terms, but we’re past that. The parties that are likely to come to power soon are not going to keep talking about “European solidarity,” because a core part of their message is that this solidarity has come at the expense of their own country’s strength.
EU is far more collaborative now than it's ever been, e.g. joint debt was always controversial, but the EU emitted 800M of joint debt during the COVID crisis, which had never happened before.
If you look at the short term, countries may be pulling one way or the other, but the "ever closer union" _is_ happening if you look at a longer trend.
Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created - specifically to avoid another war.
Your example is very on point: the member states are talking - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
the EU claims credit for the peace
in reality for most of it was the fact the Russians were 50ft away, with American troops as the security guarantee
Russia in 2022 is yet another example of how rapidly despots will discard "entangled trade" for military conquest
I think it's very fair to say the USA is the only thing that has kept the EU together and a weaker or less globally important USA will allow the EU to fracture and fall apart.
Your analysis is literally decades out of date.
Joint EU debt isn't new, it already exists. Investments etc..
I don't think your narrative is as informed as you make it out to be.
Saying that joint EU debt already exists doesn’t really address the argument. The issue is not whether the EU has ever issued shared debt before. It is about whether member states are actually willing to expand that model in a politically sensitive area where the financial burden is uneven.
Germany is not objecting out of confusion about past instruments. It is objecting because a broader program of joint debt would place more longterm financial exposure on Germany, and it does not want to carry that load. Other countries support the idea precisely because it would distribute that cost more widely. That conflict keeps resurfacing every time the topic comes up.
You could just as easily point to other examples that show the same thing. Spain isn’t eager to pour money into the defense of Eastern Europe because it doesn’t feel the Russian threat the same way. And plenty of countries in Central and Eastern Europe push back hard when it comes to sharing the burden on migration, because they see that as a Southern European problem.
What is the mechanism through which "US patronage" prevents Europe from internally warring with each other?
Prosperity.
Same here. I’m not scared of China either and am excited for them to take more responsibility on the international stage. Hopefully US warmongering will come to an end too.
We already made that mistake with Russia. First we give them a ton of money and then when they think they're rich enough for a landgrab they go to war. Russia has gone through four such cycles since the 90's.
Yes, I'm sure all the countries around China are really excited and looking forward to this. Oh, wait ...
It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia.
You being ignorant doesn't mean there aren't real issues and real, justified fears.
We’ll see if it actually gets much better the a what we have now with the US “in charge”. Overall it might turn out better.
Yeah, for example we only get good cheap jeans, because of high quality cotton from Xinjiang! So, it really may turn out better for everyone*.
> It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia.
And that is why Germany is moving a whole Brigade to Lithuania? I think only Spain and Portugal are not appropriately concerned with the Russian threat.
Ireland comes to say hello. They somehow let a Russian sub operate freely in their waters.
That sounds more like a one-time failure, though. I am hesitant to see that as a proof that the Irish government does not take the Russian threat seriously.
The thing is - the Baltic states are in our sphere of influence, so Russia messing with them is a problem for us.
Tell me why we should care about some island on the other end of the world.
It would make sense to begrudgingly accept it, just like we did US military adventures in South America.
> Tell me why we should care about some island on the other end of the world.
I mean, if we're talking about Taiwan, it has strategic and commercial importance above and beyond being "some island". Certainly more than Central America ever did when the rest of the world was ignoring the US's idiotic anti-Communist adventures. Pretending that it's irrelevant because it's far away seems like a pretty big economic misunderstanding, at the least.
It's got importance for the Pacific trade to the US, not the land route to Europe.
It is your problem and you're not exactly being great allies to us in ours.
What do you like about it, specifically?
I hope EU will have a functional army before Russia will attack EU , so that US can withdraw troops from Germany. As much as Europe hate Trump, surely Americans too, he was the first president to force them treat defense seriously. Yet all military forces maybe except Poland are a joke
This is why the aukus thing puzzles me. Thats a huge longterm bet on the US being reliable
It is kinda funny that to become "independent" the EU is going to become even more dependent on the USA while saying at some undetermined future point they will be able to pivot to independence (which we all know is never going to happen).
And weirdly enough, most of the sanctions have been softened, or rolled back - there's been little effort on the US side to build up domestic production capability outside of semiconductors - a process that began well under the Biden admin.
Another curious thing is despite how the US has been acting in this manner, their stock market still continues to outperform everybody else's
Turns out even if you have as much power as the US president with their executive orders, if you start making stupid or insufficiently well-prepared policy decisions, you have to roll them back or your country will crash into the ground.
Kind of makes me think that supposedly autocratic leaders of powerful countries have much less power than we thought - once they make a couple stupid decisions, their countries start going down the drain.
> Another curious thing is despite how the US has been acting in this manner, their stock market still continues to outperform everybody else's
Only a tiny fraction of the S&P is performing, and it's because it's either part of the AI bubble or because people have memed extreme value into poorly run companies that now have absolutely insane EPS numbers. There's nothing about the US stock market that's even slightly connected to it's financial or economic performance, right now.
Both parties in the US will celebrate the EU being more independent militarily.
We are in a multipolar world with the dominance of China incoming and the western nations need to spread capability.
Instead of viewing the current world order as collapsing, it's more accurate to see this as a transitional period. The system established after WWII no longer serves the interests of its main creator, the US, making change inevitable.
A significant reduction in the quality of life for many in the 'so-called West' appears to be the unfortunate price of the world returning to a more 'normal' historical pattern of international relations.
>The system established after WWII no longer serves the interests of its main creator
I don't think that's true. The policy of alliance building and containment of their largest peer and competitor still makes sense. It was how the US ultimately overcame the Soviet Union, and is even more vital given the size and talent in China. A US without an alliance system will not win that competition.
What's much more concerning is that the rational interests of the US as a nation aren't reflected in its policy making any more. The 20th century had its share of domestic issues but the inmates weren't running the asylum as far as foreign politics was concerned which was coherent.
European countries becoming more capable of defending themselves by scaling up their own military instead of being dependent on a foreign power will only harden containment of bad actors. That applies to my country Canada.
What's much riskier to the world is the US having to take the brunt of defending Europe, the Arctic front, and dealing with a conflict in China (which is far far more serious military threat than Russia in 2025).
It's difficult medicine to swallow but that's the realpolitiks of it.
China might be a threat to the US, but I don't see it being a threat to Europe.
The fact that Americans are abandoning us in our struggle with Russia in order to pick a fight with China makes it hard to see them as reliable allies.
Well maybe European countries should have considered that before spending the last 3 decades shrinking the size of their military. Germany's military chief was ringing the alarm bells in 2023 about their inability to defend their own borders, and that was before Trump came back to power. This is the wealthiest country in Europe.
Germany's GDP is twice that of Russia. EU GDP is 8.5 times larger than Russia.
Yet even in the current state Russia would have very hard time fighting Europe. The Russian military hasn't been this diminished in decades. But the real issue is Europe can't easily spare stuff to help Ukraine because they don't have their own security figured out.
While I wouldn't argue that Russia is richer than Germany, I think GDP is a rubbish figure - at least it clearly doesn't translate to anything I would consider meaningful.
For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago - unclear, food has become disproportionately more expensive, housing cost has by far outpaced the wage growth, tech has become cheaper, but big-ticket items like cars are proportionally not cheaper.
From this, the person of today is poorer in tangible terms.
Did the infrastructure improve? - some, but I'd say it was a (sub)linear improvement in absolute terms - we certainly didn't build as much stuff as we did in the mid to late 20th century, and what we built before was the more important stuff, so the new stuff has marginal utility.
Did European industry and technology improve? I'd say in terms of relative importance, we regressed - there are huge gaps in European technological capability for which only foreign options exist - this didn't used to be the case.
Were there some big ticket innovations like Concorde or the Moon Landing or whatever - clearly no, the world seems to have lost its appetite for these kind of hugely ambitious projects.
This 'number go up' style capitalism is clearly not to the benefit of the individual, but I can't for the life of me think who does it actually benefit.
>For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago
Forget 20 years ago, you can just back 6 years is enough. Ask any person when life was more affordable and job security better, in 2019 or today and everyone will say 2019.
Graphs like GDP or the stock market going up, mean jack shit to the average person when they can't afford a house anymore.
A lot of our economic growth was just on paper through financial instrumentation.
None of this addresses why we should see China as a threat at all. We thought y'all had our back - why should we have yours now that you've shown your true colors?
I'd like to know why you think the US doesn't "have Europe's back"? Short term disagreements on priorities are expected when there's resource contention. NATO is still very much a thing.
Why do you think a rising China is concerning to the US, but not to Europeans?
Re the US not having our back - here's just the latest evidence: https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-security-funding-baltics...
Re China: We don't share any border or ocean with them and none of our interests are opposed. To the contrary, they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously. Why would they be a threat to us?
> It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally
An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
What has changed is the US has become more realistic and up front about the limitations of its reduced military. It’s not healthy, for the US /or/ Europe, to indulge the imperial fantasy that US forces in Europe (token deployments in Germany and Poland) are sufficient to defend against Russian attack.
Trump is not the first US president to push Europe to do more of precisely what it is doing here (spend its own money on defense). Being clear about limits is what a reliable ally does.
Europe ordering an Airbus AWACS instead of Boeing now that the US stopped subsidizing them is not surprising nor does it mean the sky is falling.
>An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
Before making chest-thumping proclamations of this sort perhaps you'd best read the text of article 5:
-- If a member is attacked, other members will take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area".
See the part where it says "such action it deems necessary"? Trump may decide that the necessary action is to go play golf. He's gone back and forth on his commitment to European defense a number of times over the years, so there's really no reason to believe that his he won't change his mind on it before breakfast tomorrow.
The unspoken truth here is that there are inner and outer members of the NATO core. Estonia, I’m sorry to say, is not a country the United States would go to WWIII over. The core members of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and possibly the Uk remain. Followed by a few others, and then there’s the rest where if Russia invaded journalists across the eastern seaboard would furiously rush to Chat GPT to find out where it is on the map.
All that aside, and regardless of your views on this administration’s posture toward NATO, Europe needs to revitalize its defense industry as there’s been a much remarked on free rider problem for a while. Robert Gates made a now infamous speech about this problem on his way out of office as secretary of defense.
>The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
A treaty is only as good as its enforcement, and if the USA declines to uphold their obligations, who is going to force them?
> A treaty is only as good as its enforcement, and if the USA declines to uphold their obligations, who is going to force them?
A mutual defense treaty is no good at all if it needs enforcement; it only works as a coordinating tool between basically-willing parties. When it becomes anything else, well, look at CSTO.
Well, Ukraine joined the US in its invasion of Iraq. Actual boots on the ground.
This has not been reciprocated.
I don't think that the sky is falling.
However, I think that many in the US are underestimating the current paradigm shift. Right now, in Europe, leaders and voters need to take decisions while keeping in mind the possibility that the US will invade Canada and Greenland while not reacting if Russia movies to Estonia.
Will it happen? Who the f*k knows? Donald Trump has made declarations very much in this direction. Also, Donald Trump has broken a sufficiently large number of treaties since becoming president that _anything_ should be considered possible.
That being said, as you mention, it's not clear that any of this is in any way related to Europe not buying the E-7.
> Also, Donald Trump has broken a sufficiently large number of treaties
Which?
Unless I'm mistaken, by imposing tariffs, Donald Trump has broken pretty much all trade treaties ever signed by the US.
Since these treaties covered more than tariffs (e.g. some of them were the same treaties that ensured recognition of copyrights across borders), I'm not sure of the whole scope of these events.
Iran Nuclear Accords (negotiated by the EU!), Paris Climate Agreement are two that come to mind concerning the EU.
There's obviously more, like NAFTA.
> Iran Nuclear Accords
The USA did not ratify
> Paris Climate Agreement
The USA did not ratify
Obama famously avoided sending either to Congress as he is legally required for the USA to ratify a treaty. The USA's "commitment" was non binding and frankly illegal for Obama to make. Hell the USA Congress even send a letter to Iran to be super explicit that the accords didn't mean shit since it's not ratified by the USA.
These are your internal implementation details. They only make you look untrustworthy, they do not strengthen your case.
These are more incorrect emotional claims. Withdrawing from an agreement (all three of your examples) is not the same as reneging or “breaking” the agreement. The US has not withdrawn from NATO; meanwhile, it has proactively withdrawn from agreements it does not wish to be in any longer. That actually bolsters the case that nothing has changed w/r/t article 5.
Iran and Paris weren’t treaties. Neither of them were ever ratified by the Senate.
Trump didn’t break NAFTA, he renegotiated it. NAFTA remained in effect until the new treaty, USMCA, came into effect.
See, this is exactly what I mean.
In international law, they were treaties. Your internal squabbles do not concern us and just make you look unreliable.
> In international law, they were treaties.
Please provide a verifiable reference to the specific international law or laws that says that a US president's signature is sufficient to create a binding treaty.
The US Constitution, specifically Article II, section 2, says "[The president] shall have the power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur". That's pretty clear that the President's signature alone is not enough.
Article 7 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, specifically
> 1. A person is considered as representing a State for the purpose of adopting or authenticating the text of a treaty or for the purpose of expressing the consent of the State to be bound by a treaty if:
[...]
> (b) it appears from the practice of the States concerned or from other circumstances that their intention was to consider that person as representing the State for such purposes and to dispense with full powers.
> 2. In virtue of their functions and without having to produce full powers, the following are considered as representing their State:
>(a) Heads of State, [...], for the purpose of performing all acts relating to the conclusion of a treaty;
[...]
Again, your constitution is your business. We do not care about it and it is not pertinent to our dealings with you. Get your house in order.
> In international law, they were treaties. Your internal squabbles do not concern us and just make you look unreliable.
What a joke everyone knew we didn't ratify them everyone just wanted to pretend. We even send a letter to Iran making sure they knew. The EU especially was funny acting like the agreement had any value when the USA wasn't part of it.
If one branch of your government says A and another branch says B, then that doesn't make other people fools.
It only makes you look like you don't have your shit together.
I would withdraw from the Iran deal, which was horrible.
"An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed"
What changed is the US President saying things like, he will encourage Putin to invade countries not spending so much on military.
What also changed is the US President threatening members of the EU militarily over greenland for example.
Reliable allies don't really do that.
(you probably do not realize the shock Denmark felt over this, that went deep and the change will not happen over night, but it will happen)
There's also no guarantees that the current president or administration would honor those NATO obligations if Article 5 is called.
The president has repeatedly been vocal about the US leaving NATO as a possibility.
If I were the EU, I certainly wouldn't be counting on the US honoring any of its agreements and I'd be planning with the assumption that they will not join a NATO response.
> It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally, and that it will use all kinds of strings attached to hobble what they sell to be able to exert political pressure.
This isn’t a US-only problem, and if anything the US has been more reliable on this account than some major European countries. For instance, in the first several months of the war Germany actually prohibited other countries from exporting their own surplus Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
That's a borderline whataboutism statement. Yes, Germany could have done a lot better. But at least they're not actively trying to sabotage NATO, they're not threatening to invade allies and they're not bombing other countries just because they can.
I don't disagree with your theme, but I think in this case it has less to do with the grenades Trump is randomly exploding and more to do with the E-7 simply being the wrong solution.
In the past it was useful for nations to opt for an American solution even if it wasn’t the most optimal precisely because of America being a dependable and trustworthy ally.
That sounds like such a made up thing. Any source to back that up?
I won't be put in (public) writing, but it's a same thing as “no-one gets fired for buying IBM”. Sometimes it's part of a bigger international agreement, like, you buy food and we buy weapons or sth.
Or more realistically because no one else actually produces enough missile or bullets to shoot. It's like France being such a joke right now suggesting that Ukraine use their missile system instead of the USA's.
Oh France sure how long until you can supply a fraction of what we are buying from the USA? What a decade!?!?! Ukraine won't exist in a decade if we wait and what's that you won't even ramp production unless you can get guarantees from multiple member nations? What a joke.
One could also phrase it more cynically as protection money.
Now that no more protection is offered, there's no point in spending the money.
Well this was quite openly communicated, why germany bought the F35 for example. To still get (nuclear) protection. (with the homebuild Tornados phasing out and the Eurofighter not getting a licence so easy, only the F35 is capable of delivering nukes with german pilots).
But I think it was a pretty bad appeasement deal.
The F35 is also just a much better plane.
The F35 is a fighter-bomber/light-bomber. Others are air superiority platforms. Different tools for different situations.
F35 has far better bvr capabilities than the eurofighter and in practice ends up being far more useful in the air superiority role.
Eurofighter is really only good for peacetime patrols, the F35 will detect and shoot down enemies in real conflict far before the Eurofighter can do anything.
In a bizarre hypothetical conflict you would certainly not want to engage a F35 in an Eurofighter, the Eurofighter would be knocked out of the sky long before it could even see the F35. It certainly couldn’t turn on it’s radar.
There are extensive public studies available from e.g. the Danish government that ended up with the conclusion that the F35 is far superior in air-to-air combat. https://www.fmn.dk/globalassets/fmn/dokumenter/strategi/kamp...
One would hope, as the Eurofighter is a 20-year-old design. There are older fighters that serve their purposes quite well, but the F35 will end up being compared against fighters yet to appear. And I wonder whether any of these birds will be effective during the day in a modern battlefield before the missile and radar systems are taken out.
Against Russia? Why not.
Against China? If you’re willing to accept a level of losses we haven’t seen since WW2, but that’s just the nature of peer to peer warfare.
That's a true claim today. The defence industry moves surprisingly slowly for a field where more advanced technology is such an advantage so it probably will be true for close to another decade as well because Europe has no native fifth gen fighter.
However the story might be different in a decade as sixth gen aircraft like Tempest are entering service and probably other modern technologies like unmanned/autonomous drones and hypersonic and directed energy weapons are more widely deployed. Connectivity between units in the field is also clearly a huge deal that is going to matter more and more and that is going to require a level of interoperability and trust that won't be kind to "partners" who aren't good team players.
On that kind of timescale I expect "buying American" will be much less attractive to most "allies" of the US than it has been for most of the past century and it will show exactly in decisions like who is making and buying whose planes.
That's a good point.
That may well be, but if there had been a different person in the White House (or what's left of it) they would have most likely bought it anyway. They're just not going to come out and say it but the 'strategic' element is what points to that, I doubt the US would have withdrawn in Juli if not for Trump, Hegseth and their buddies. This is just one more program they've gutted.
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/air-force-cancels-e-7-we...
How is the E-7 the wrong solution? It's worked fine for Australia.
An independent Europe is easier for China to dominate.
Now that NATO is in question, you'll start to hear about US manipulation of the SWIFT banking system, so Europe will start pushing for an international one, which China will eventually control.
SWIFT is Belgian, though?
It’s just a detail, the international financial market/banking system is basically under active US control, just look at what happened to Wegelin & Co. (at that point the oldest bank in Switzerland) when they thought that that was not the case.
Europe isn't dependable either. Your news routinely picks and chooses what to report on, leading to a slightly distorted understanding of the US in Europeans minds, at least those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an American. It's bound to happen, sure, but then the salt in the wound is when Americans say "but what about this topic, can't we discuss it?" and the response from Europe isn't just no but "that experience you're having in America? It never happened and you're totally wrong for wanting to bring it to my attention." Why wouldn't Americans learn to resent Europeans? Context: I have B1 in Swedish and C1 in German and after ten years of learning that about sums the majority of my interactions with Europeans up. I tried so hard to understand you all.
How can you deem Europe as not dependable based on what mostly amounts to studying two European languages? It's a continent of roughly 50 distinct nations, with almost as many languages and cultural distinctions, not to mention the huge political differences, even when in the same general ballpark, vastly overarching US political diversity (e.g. Danish Socialdemokratiet are something entirely else than the Swedish social democrats, who in turn are nothing like the German SPD).
Incidentally I'm reminded by how common this ignorant view of Europe and Europeans is with Americans, in how they either insist on or unfortunately misunderstand Europe as a single nation with near-homogeneity.
I am referring to western Europe.
Europe isn't unified in the same sense as the US though, so this feels like a bit of an apples and oranges situation. Even though the US is varied geographically and culturally from an internal perspective, it's very much not in the sense of how the government conducts foreign policy and international trade. From the perspective of a European government pondering a trade deal, the differences between North Dakota and California aren't necessarily going to be super relevant, let alone the differences of various people within those states. This isn't really comparable to how things work in reverse; there's no "president of Europe" who can unilaterally decide to put a bunch of tariffs on anything imported from the US into Europe without regard to how it affects the individual member states.
> there's no "president of Europe" who can unilaterally decide to put a bunch of tariffs on anything imported from the US into Europe without regard to how it affects the individual member states.
And it's not even clear if it's legal in the US. The Supreme Court is in the process of deciding that after a dozen US states sued about it.
It's clear that it's not legal, the Supreme Court is simply in the process of deciding whether it can happen anyway.
One of the larger lessons here is that betting on something happening because the law says it should is not necessarily going to work out every time
I mean Congress 100% gave him the power to do the only thing that's going to save us is that so many of the conservative justices are fans of the nondelegation doctrine.
No, Congress did not give him the power to implement arbitrary tariffs. They allowed limited power for emergency, targeted tariffs of limited duration and scope. This is so far beyond that they're clearly illegal, it's just a matter of whether the courts feel like writing another nonsensical opinion to allow them.
Yes, emergencies that he determines and they can if they choose to rescind. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not exactly what powers they gave him.
My hope is the court rules that Congress cannot delegate all its power like it's been doing (nondelegation doctrine) but I'm not going to pretend he wasn't granted these powers.
True, though we do have a system that apparently lets it go on for a bit even if it does end up getting determined to be illegal (not to mention the track record of the Supreme Court in recent years not exactly inspiring confidence in their impartiality when it comes to policies being decided on a non-partisan basis).
News aside, surely you can see how the game is currently being dominated by the US and how Europe understands the current status - where the US is objectively a political antagoniser - as huge liability with potentially extreme consequences?
> those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an American
I think there's a misunderstanding at play here; in the vast majority of cases Europeans see Americans as reliable, cool-headed, friendly people. What they take issue with is the US' imperialist, heavy-handed, ombelico-del-mondo approach.
FYI, I'm not seeing how this relates to the story or discussion.
That might explain the current downvotes.
Obviously it's about the symbolism. I think it's great Europe is breaking away from the US. I just think it's a crazy turn from their previous obsession with the US.
What you mention are your personal anecdotes while being mildly prolific in 2 out of many languages. Where I live, knowing fluently 4 or 5 is the norm and nobody considers themselves an expert on given country, even if its just another European country or even neighbor.
I've been to the US for couple of months working here and there, you folks are fine but I still don't get even after 2+ decades why you end up with such system. I don't mean the strengths, we all know them but the weaknesses which are all roughly solvable if enough focus is spent on them.
Utter disregard for the poor who are there to be exploited for life (or ignored like homeless), completely broken public education and medical system. From European perspective a proper police state - it was the first time I saw fear in faces of regular people from just a police car moving around the corner. Very high criminality of the 'heaviest' type. Also wars, those endless wars and their constant failures - what did Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan change for the better of people there or entire regions, apart from millions of civilians dead?
At the end, what Europeans care about is US politics, rest are details. We and rest of the world judge based on that. How that goes we all see these days.
You say all that as if I have a positive opinion of my country.
I live here. I know the problems. I'm very critical of them. In fact, the things that get discussed here don't even make it to Europe.
I live in a very violent city. I am a minority. I see minority crime. I know people who have been shot.
My point is that you all see us as unreliable, but fail to talk about the way this applies to western Europe as well.
I didn't say I was an expert.
You judge the US based on politics? Ok, I judge Europe based on politics. Your media lies to you regularly about the US and if the US is so bad, why did Europe obsess over it for so long?
> Your news routinely picks and chooses what to report on, leading to a slightly distorted understanding
You are not wrong, the european press hugely distorts and manipulates, but this is also textbook pot calling the kettle black: the american press is no better in that regard, and actually quite worse IMO. So this part of your argument is DOA.
> at least those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an american
Now we're squarely in the domain of the unreasonable. The proportion of americans that have had an experience similar to yours is vanishingly tiny compared to the amount of exposure an average european gets to american culture (and I'm not talking about hollywod here).
American news isn't 'confidently wrong' the way western European news reports on the US. In fact most Americans never even hear about Europe.
An interesting angle.
Seemingly the USAF was about to buy E-7 Wedgetail aircraft, but according to Wikipedia, they think it would be a better idea to use satellites.
This isn’t an angle I had thought of before, and there must be many satellites required to support that.
I’ll try and research more into this.
Let's hope a decision on an alternative platform is made quickly (although I am sceptical due to the bureaucratic maze of NATO procurement). The current AWACS-platform (E-3A) still uses old engines which are loud, smokey and not as efficient. Neighbouring communities deserve a quieter platform as well as NATO needs a potent airborne early warning platform. European technology is not an issue (Thales, Leonardo etc. make great modern AESA based radars). Also interoperability of data between NATO members used in the C2 chain is not an issue.
I wouldn't put all my eggs on a single billion dollar basket like that in 2025. A networked flock of million dollar drones with phased array radar could be cheaper, more effective, thanks to a larger virtual aperture, and far more survivable an overwatch resource. You could stagger refueling and have it available 24/7.
Sounds cool as a fantasy. How are you going to measure the distance between the drones with millimeter precision? How are you going to synchronize the pulse between the drones with nanosecond precision to achieve the phased array effect? How are you going to do all that with the enemy actively deploying EW measures?
Not that these problems are impossible to solve, but they are nontrivial in practice, I'm afraid. It would take quite some effort to turn the fantasy into a reliable theory, and then quite some more, into a practical swarm.
Will be cool though.
Atomic clocks are now less than $5000 devices. The same type of circuits that allow GPS receivers to correlate timing to the picosecond could be used in this application. None of what I suggested is fantasy, but it would require good engineering.
What would be even more fun (i.e. stretching the limits) would be to include a 30-300 mhz radar in the mix, which would resolve just fine with dispersed nodes, and penetrate most stealth coatings and bounce off the airframes of the enemy.
Yes, every separate component is doable. What looks hardest to me is the geometry: every node / drone would not only need to be perfectly synchronized with the rest of the swarm, but also understand its location within it with millimeter precision, in order to time its impulse to do beamforming, or allow locating any received signals. We should assume that near the battlefield GPS is already jammed, so it must be a sophisticated network of laser rangefinders between the drones, plus location data from land stations.
Then, there should be a super-node in a larger aircraft that would receive the data from the swarm and turn it into a coherent picture, run object detection and tracking, etc.
Presumably the alternative is the SAAB GlobalEye?
Seems so, but perhaps some nations like France want a bigger variant with a bit more range and larger sensors. Airbus A330 is already used by European fighters for aerial refuelling so I suppose it could also be built into an AWACS.
Sounds like the USAF decided last year that the E-7 was the wrong approach (too expensive, more interested in a distributed solution), so this isn't terribly surprising.
The first could e-7a aren't even slated to have particularly good radars. The US kept trying to do whatever it takes to get the price down & it keeps being hideously expensive anyways, with who knows what capabilities left on the cutting room floor.
There was a request for information that went out in April, asking, hey, uh, if we do want to make this an actually good awacs, what should we do with the platform? https://breakingdefense.com/2025/04/air-force-eyes-advanced-...
Seems incredibly silly to me that such an incredibly crucial capability is being so sorely neglected. Having superior signals has loon been a key US advantage, that's core to enabling so many other capabilities to be used well. Theres what feels like absurd fantasy going around saying we can skip airborne platforms & just use space for all awacs needs. And who knows maybe, but it feels like a lot of ridiculous wish casting, that's leaving us with horrendous woefully inadequate eyes, ears, & links today. We need a real e-7 plan, one with a really good sensors not the decades old tech that the US's E-7A defined.
> The decision follows the withdrawal of the U.S. from the joint AWACS replacement program in July 2024, which left the initiative without its strategic and financial foundation.
Is this implying that USA was paying for it previously? It sounds like they're blaming "noise polution", but also that they're not getting the planes for free anymore?
No. Europeans were paying for theirs but, once US backed out of their own purchases, the cost per unit rose sharply and was no longer sustainable.
I see so this isn't really a concerted effort by EU nations to gain independence on defense technology. It's just that USA didn't want to buy the planes anymore so it became too expensive for everyone else to as well.
Or perhaps pulling out of the program was too costly, political or otherwise, for EU and USA did them a huge favor by blundering away from it first, freeing them to pursue their goals.
Europeans were blown off, when America unexpectedly pulled out like a Boeing door.
I'm quite impressed with Europeans' entitled attitudes towards the US security umbrella.
First of all, none of this should be "unexpected"--Obama famously announced a pivot to Asia well over a decade ago. What exactly did Europeans think that meant?
Second, European military intransigence has dramatically escalated the risk of a devastating war affecting both US and Europe, and the US is simply overextended. The US cannot bring sufficient military power to bear to defend the Pacific, European, and Arctic theaters simultaneously. European NATO members simply must pull their own weight now; reaffirming European luxury beliefs like "we don't need to prepare for war because Uncle Sam has got us covered" would be doing both US and Europe a dis-service. Many presidents have tried more polite pleading and cajoling in less critical times, with evidently poor results.
Finally, the asymmetry of expectations is remarkable. Europeans clearly expect the US not just to fight Russia with them, but to fight Russia for them. Yet no Americans expect European forces to come to the US's rescue in the Pacific--and European commenters online make very clear that that expectation is correct. Consequently, many Americans are skeptical of the value NATO membership brings, while seeing clearly its risks and costs.
If you want America to remain engaged in European security, y'all need to get much more serious about fielding an effective military force and clearly commit to helping the US against China in every way possible. And if you don't want America to remain engaged in European security, y'all need to get even more serious about fielding an effective military force.
So put your heads down, get to work, and quit it with the hyperbolic butthurt comments about "unexpectedly" being "blown off".
I realize I was probably too oblique before, so let me be more specific.
The US has pivoted from traditional AWACS to the proliferated warfighter space architecture, the idea being hundreds of LEO satellites can provide a cheaper and much more survivable (not to mention persistent) air moving-target indicator capability. There is substantial project risk, but the US is resource constrained and cannot afford to fund everything under the sun.
European NATO nations don't currently need something so fancy and without the US, E-7's per-unit costs would be too high. But the US now prioritizes its needs in the Pacific theater (where those E-7s would not be survivable) over Europe's security interests (cheap, capable traditional AWACS). That's the pivot to Asia in action.
I don't even think that this outcome is bad for Europe. It's a reminder that Europe's needs are not America's priority, which helps to light a sorely-needed fire under European asses. Europe will buy GlobalEye or some Airbus platform, and the US will have a decent alternative available if the PWSA doesn't work out. It's also a potential opportunity for European NATO countries to contribute to PWSA, Starshield, and/or Golden Dome and more visibly and tangibly contribute to NATO's mutual defense.
It is worth pointing out that US' potential adversary in the Pacific region is known for boasting its "robust" anti-satellite capabilities, so it is difficult to see this move as anything but wasteful and potentially dangerous to other LEO satellites.
Dude, it's a joke about Boeing doors getting lost mid flight. You know, the thing that happened recently and made quite some news?
Maaaybe you should introspect a bit about how a single thoughtless sentence on some web forum could possibly inspire you to write an essay about European entitlement. Is this American vulnerability?
They are complaining about the noise level of the existing E-3, which is based on the old Boeing 707 with old noisy low bypass turbofans. The new plane E-7 is based on a contemporary 737 so no more noisy than a regular commercial jetliner.
Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programs allows the participating countries to share most of the setup cost, except some high end technology that is country specific, it’s mainly divided by per airframe basis.
When you have the US Air Force in a program and they purchase a bazillion aircraft, things get relatively affordable.
Well, the US left and nobody want to spend billions of dollars into the development of this aircraft (most of the problems are the airframe not radar I heard, citation needed) and end up with just two aircraft and then deal with internal news about how they spend billions of dollars per aircraft when commercial airlines are so much cheaper.
It kind of sounds like the USAF did the EU countries a favor then. If they're not interested in the technology anymore then it prevented all those countries from investing billions in a fleet of lemons.
It’s only a bad news for Boeing and by association the US defense industry, though everyone knew the program was cooked when the US decided to leave.
Boing stock didn’t even fall down as much as the S&P500 so one can assume that this was already taken into account.
So new tariffs coming in, because it goes against the agreement.
Geopolitically this rift between the US and EU is great for adversaries like Russia and China.
I’m starting to question thinking of China as our adversary, what makes us think that way? Russia, sure they’re actively fighting against our allies. China?
Well classically the EU has been a supporter of free expression, human rights, and all that jazz but lately that seems to mean a lot less to them.
> Russia, sure they’re actively fighting against our allies. China?
I assume this is a joke because China is actively helping Russia with weapons, intelligence, and Zelenskiy has even stated China is actively manufacturing weapons inside Russia for Russian use in Ukraine.
In my opinion it’s because of several things. They took over Xinjiang and Tibet, and committed large scale atrocities in both. They threaten Taiwan. They abandoned the treaties around Hong Kong. They continue to harass India - a sort of ally of NATO countries - over borders they share. Let’s also not forget crimes against Chinese people during the cultural revolution and since then.
They’ve also engaged in widespread campaigns of asymmetric warfare against other countries. Lots of cyberattacks. Theft of intellectual property - corporate espionage but also copies of designs and hacks of government agencies. Unfair protectionism in their own markets. Lots more to list.
But mostly because the CCP just can’t be trusted with their power, because they’re neither democratic nor support liberal values like free speech. I think there’s a lot to admire about China and Chinese citizens. But their government is ultimately a threat to the world order and the progress of liberalism.
A lot of that context I didn’t have, thank you, I should catch up more in that regard.
> But mostly because the CCP just can’t be trusted with their power, because they’re neither democratic nor support liberal values like free speech.
How do we square this with the US being democratically elected (let’s ignore gerrymandering and absence of one person one vote) but the actions like the upcoming war with Venezuela, bombing Iran. The people didn’t vote for that either.
I don’t think we can square it exactly. The US isn’t perfect and has deep issues as well. But it just depends on which values you care about. For me, I think despite problems, the US has a more trustworthy system of democracy than most countries. And as far as democratic values like free speech - it’s far above literally any other country in the world in protecting those rights. These things alone make it special - I think it lets the US consider different ideas and change over time.
For Venezuela and Iran specifically - I won’t claim to be an expert on either. But I think neither the Maduro dictatorship nor Iranian theocracy are legitimate. You can read about how Maduro suppressed opposition movements and manipulated elections in many sources (example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro). As for Iran, the current theocratic authoritarian government came into power via a revolution in 1979 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Iran). Sure it replaced a monarchy, but that monarchy was actually quite liberal and photos of Iran from that era show a culture that was very different from today. That was taken away from their people, and replaced with their current rulers’ cultural agenda.
As for specifically the issue of whether people voted for something or not - well the US system and I think all democratic systems that exist today aren’t direct democracies. We give powers to the presidency and congress that let them do a lot of things. That’s by design, but it is still at the service of the people, who have the ability to alter the constitution at any time. If someone (like the president) breaks the law, we have the ability to hold them accountable. But I also know sometimes they get away with crimes. I look at that as minor flaws of an otherwise very functional system.
> Sure it replaced a monarchy, but that monarchy was actually quite liberal and photos of Iran from that era show a culture that was very different from today.
Well duh, pictures of pretty girls from the (very small) upper classes sell better than pictures of the victims of Savak.
Do you think Iran is less or more aligned to liberal values or the general notion of “freedom” under the current theocracy than under the previous monarchy?
The US doesn't really see Russia as an adversary under Trump.
Which begs the question, why should the EU see China as an adversary? That's mostly an American thing, the Pacific doesn't really concern us.
Maybe alliances will reshuffle in the future?
Why should the EU not see an expansive authoritarian superpower as an adversary, or, at the very least, a real threat to its continued existence and sovereignty?
China needs Europe to support its export economy because there will never be enough domestic demand to prevent a deflationary spiral. Europe is a rational actor China can expect to act rationally in trade, and Europe can benefit from that.
The US has nothing to offer Europe except LNG that Europe cannot produce itself, or obtain from China at better price or quality. Canada has ~200 years of LNG reserves and can ship to Europe from LNG Canada.
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/imports/united-s...
https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
The True Cost of China's Falling Prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876691 - November 2025
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-self-d...
> In 1995, China accounted for less than five percent of global manufacturing output. By 2010, that number had jumped to around a quarter, and today it stands at nearly a third.
> The US has nothing to offer Europe except LNG that Europe cannot produce itself, or obtain from China at better price or quality. Canada has ~200 years of LNG reserves and can ship to Europe from LNG Canada.
This line here makes it clear to me you've never really researched any of this. Canada doesn't have the ability to export that to anywhere but the USA and refuses to even consider building another pipeline.
https://www.shell.com/news-and-insights/our-stories/lng-cana... ("July 1, 2025: With production underway in Kitimat on Canada’s west coast, LNG Canada connects natural gas from British Columbia to Asian markets. Explore the project with our interactive map, read about the extraordinary engineering behind LNG Canada, and watch the videos to learn more about LNG.")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNG_Canada
https://www.gem.wiki/LNG_Canada_Terminal
https://www.lngcanada.ca/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322266
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/facilities-we-reg...
https://www.politico.eu/article/canada-lng-europe-tim-hodgso...
(commodity market participant)
China is not exporting LNG at all, did you mean Canada?
The US is still a very large and attractive market for European exporters, and it would at the very least substantially least hurt Europeans if they had to fully substitute the US with China as a trade partner.
Apologies if my phrasing was not concise. The idea I intended to communication was "Europe can get all the LNG they want from Canada, and anything manufactured from China."
To your point about the US market, I would put forth the size of China, India, and Africa as import markets for Europe. The population of the US is ~343M, ~745M is Europe, while that of China, India, and Africa combined is ~4.6B (as of this comment, rough proxy for total addressable markets). Admittedly the latter are at various stages of development, but I am of a strong opinion they can replace the US considering demographics, proximity, rate of development and purchasing power increasing, etc. International equities have already outperformed the S&P500 this year, so this may happen faster than we might expect. China is not as quite as wealthy as the US, but India and Africa are the last of global emerging markets and where the economic growth future of the world is. Do you configure and target your export economy for growing markets? Or declining markets?
Citations:
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3m... | https://archive.today/P2HxS ("International stocks are outperforming the S&P 500 by the widest margin in 16 years.") - November 12th, 2025
Goldman Strategists See US Stocks Lagging All Peers Next Decade - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-12/goldman-s... | https://archive.today/aINUx - November 12th, 2025
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44769439
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44455077
You talking about China or the US here?
China is trying to grow their influence around the world, while the US is trying to reduce their influence around the world.
From where I’m sitting in the EU, both seem successful in their quests.
(So I’m assuming they mean China.)
They're on the opposite end of the world, our interests do not conflict, but even overlap (i.e. they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously)
> The US doesn't really see Russia as an adversary under Trump.
From the fall of the Berlin wall until the Ukraine invasion, the US saw Russia as more of an adversary than Europe saw Russia.
Yes, even after Russia annexed Crimea. In fact, it's only this year that Europe has started to significantly increase defense spending, three years after Russia invaded Ukraine. And, even then the most aggressive increase plans end up short of where spending was during the Cold War.
Every US president after Clinton (and maybe Clinton as well) urged European countries, especially NATO ones, to keep funding defense and they cut instead.
It turns out that the cowboys were right, that there was a bear in the woods, and that "soft power" wasn't power.
I 100% agree that Europe regarded Russia as a potential trade partner (and possibly more positively than the US) even after the 2014 annexation.
But I don't think that this makes EU policy necessarily incorrect: Would German military spending of 5% GDP have prevented the Crimea annexation?
We won't know, but I don't think so, and European militarism in the 2000s might have led to significantly worse outcomes than we actually got.
I also think that painting this as a clear "US stance proven right in hindsight" is an outsized claim; EU military spending only really came up under Trump, and was a very minor topic before. You could make a similar argument that "the cowboys" were all wrong with the whole middle-east interventionism thing (in Afghanistan and Iraq), but the military side of that was at least competently executed (unlike Russia in Ukraine), collateral damage lower and war crimes somewhat minimized/prosecuted.
I sadly agree that Costa-Rica-style pacifism appears a non-viable approach for the EU now despite looking somewhat workable 15 years ago.
> Would German military spending of 5% GDP have prevented the Crimea annexation?
Probably not Crimea, but you'd think that the annexation would have caused some rethinking of "soft power".
The lack of European defense spending since 95 means that Europe doesn't have much to help Ukraine. (EU countries brag about "100% to Ukraine" but never talk about how little that 100% is.) It also means that Europe doesn't have much in the way of a defense industry. (And then they whine when money gets spent on US weapons.)
Getting serious in 2014 (after Crimea) would have given Europe options.
> EU military spending only really came up under Trump
Trump's comments, the actual words, on EU defense spending were basically the same as Obama and W's.
The difference was in how Europeans, especially the Germans, reacted.
BTW - do Europeans know how "But we have better work/life balance" comes across? The reaction by many Americans is "Why am I paying to defend their work/life balance?"
> Getting serious in 2014 (after Crimea) would have given Europe options.
Realistically, what options? The only thing that could have really helped in my view in hindsight was either massive visible arms-deliveries to the Ukraine before 2022 (to discourage Russia), or to demonstrate willingness to join the fight (with soldiers). That willingness is and was not there (in neither US/EU), and spending more would not really have helped that.
> you'd think that the annexation would have caused some rethinking of "soft power".
You mean giving up on Russian gas early? It's a much harder call without hindsight in my view if Crimea is the main focus. The whole second Chechen war was much more problematic than that annexation in my view, and if you're not drawing the line for that, than why'd you change your opinion for Crimea?`
I do fully agree with you though that there should have been harsher consequences after 2014, and that those might have actually helped more than anything else (by making the "happy path" for the 2022 invasion worse): I think Putin considered the 2022 invasion as "quick regime change, some yapping from the west and then business as usual in a few years"; the west/EU demonstrating willingness for self-sacrifical sanctions to punish expansionism in 2014 might have discouraged this strongly.
> BTW - do Europeans know how "But we have better work/life balance" comes across? The reaction by many Americans is "Why am I paying to defend their work/life balance?"
I'll give you my European perspective:
1) Yes the US is overspending on its military, but that is entirely their own decision
2) American military spending profits itself first and foremost, because spending mainly goes to domestic industry, and forces are mainly used to further domestic interests
3) Europe is already paying for the humanitarian fallout of ill-advised US interventionism in the middle east, and indirect costs from this alone are in the "percent GDP" range as well
Don't get me wrong, I think it is a really good thing that the US did provide substantial aid during the Ukraine invasion. I personally wish that "the west" did even more, but the sad reality is that a good part of the population considers the Ukraine conflict a "not my problem", and is simply unwilling to pay more to defend human rights abroad (and the attitude is very similar between especially western Europeans and US-americans in my view).
Because democracies and authoritarian regimes are like oil and water.
Authoritarian regimes will inevitably attempt to expand because authoritarian leaders view the existence of people they don't rule as a threat towards their rule and they inevitably desire to grow their control and power over more and more people.
> Authoritarian regimes will inevitably attempt to expand
Which is ironic that most of the annexation talk came from the US in the recent times, not from China. Canada, Greenland, Panama Canal, Mexico what else has he threatened to annex?
So what does that tell us about the current US administration?… :)
Democracies and authoritarian regimes naturally oppose each other, which is why the EU and China will never be true allies.
Coincidentally it's also why the US and EU are growing further apart.
> Coincidentally it's also why the US and EU are growing further apart.
That is not a given, as there are many authoritarian political parties in European countries growing in size and influence. Possibly Europe is only the usual decade or two behind the US developments? Well, I at least hope it does not come to this.
The EU needs China. No green deal without Chinese batteries, solar cells and rare earth metals.
And China needs the EU.
No rising Chinese middle class without the world's largest wealthy consumer market.
A match made in heaven ;)
> And China needs the EU.
lol, no one needs the EU which is why the EU is having such a crisis right now.
Like Russia's gas and Germany's industry ;)
Or the EU relying on the US army for defense ;)
We're not in the post ww2 world illusion or world peace through commerce, mutual dependencies clearly don't stop nationalist interests. Trump shattered the illusion with his illegal meme tier tariffs, now we're slowly going back to empires dealing with their friends while fucking over anyone else.
There is no conflict in our nationalist interests though. We are too far apart, unless we split up Russia between us...
It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year. Throughout my 40 years on this planet, Pax Americana was a constant that seemed to hold the world together (+/-). It's scary to see it vanish and with such speed and efficiency.
> amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
Has that happened? Give us something concrete a real example of that. Europe seems to be increasing it's dependency on the USA with large military spendings. They bent the knee really quickly during the last round of trade talks....
If this is a damaged USA's soft power what we've really learned is that we've been wildly overestimating other countries.
> It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
The art of the deal.
The world was somewhat sympathetic to the US when we elected Trump the first time: it's disappointing, but you can get tricked sometimes. When we re-elected him it casts the first time as not an error, but rather a deliberate choice.
A nation that makes that kind of choice is not a reliable ally. We're just beginning to see the repercussions of that loss of trust.
The EU is worried about Trump being unpredictable, so they are pushing hard for sovereignty. See their initiatives to leave US clouds. This decision is completely in line with that strategy and, probably, also what the US military expected to happen.
> leave US clouds
The pressure to leave US controlled cloud providers actually started way back with the US Cloud Act. I’ve been surprised that that process has been as slow as it has been, especially for the public sector and adjacent services.
> I’ve been surprised that that process has been as slow as it has been, especially for the public sector and adjacent services.
Europe can't seem to get a tech sector bootstrapped no matter what it does and European governments seem to be much more comfortable with the USA having full access to everything they do then risk running on a EU cloud.
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What effect does this have on Boeing, one of 3-4 major defense companies. Can the industry handle one more giant meger? Can it handle a vastly impoverished Boeing?
> The decision follows US's decision to withdraw from some joint AWACS treaty in July 2024
So... can't really blame Trump.
The article doesn't mention Trump anywhere?