Comment by danieldk
Comment by danieldk 15 hours ago
Indeed.
So the question becomes whether these countries truly want to move off of the platform, or if this is all more of a bargaining chip in the trade negotiations.
JD Vance pretty much single-handedly destroyed most trust in the US in with his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Europe (and probably Canada and Australia) were shaken for days after it and realized that the US is not a reliable ally (or even not an ally) anymore. This was confirmed by the disastrous meeting with Zelensky in the White House and the US stopping to provide intelligence to Ukraine and F-16 updates (F-16s which were provided by European countries, not the US).
The pathetic little show you saw at the White House last week (with Macron, Mertz, etc.) is just a strategy to appease the US as long as needed so that the Europe can speed up its own weapon's production, increase independence, etc. It's damage control. The reason countries have stopped buying the F-35 is because nobody trusts the US anymore. And one or two sane presidents are not going to fix it (the US elected Trump a second time after all).
It is interesting how it is basically an indictment on the ability of the american people to manage their hard and soft power and military capability. That being said, populist right wing movements are taking root in europe as well. This threatens long term strategic planning in general, not just with the US, when critical positions of world power are replaced every few years by a subset of the population increasingly liable to propaganda influence granted by technology. In some ways regimes like North Korea are the most stable on earth due to careful control of the reigns of power and lack of any possibility of inroads for third party influence.