Comment by abletonlive 15 hours ago
It's crazy that you're acting like this is some kind of policy failure for the US, when this administration has been telling Europe it shouldn't rely on the United States at this level. This isn't some "gotcha" that you're describing, it's exactly what the administration wanted europe to do. Wake up and start innovating instead of being the Disneyland for American tourists.
> The EU is a big economy that’s relatively easy to deal with. Why would you alienate us?
Easy to deal with? We basically subsidize your entire existence. The fact that you can't understand this is exactly why this administration is doing this. We have too many problems at home to be daddy with a credit card.
At every level Europe is getting in the way of the US mindset of building and pushing forward. You "regulate" our tech companies, which let's be honest here, is a euphemism for extortion. You try to destroy moats that innovators have risked everything to build, not in the name of competition or an egalitarian society, because you believe that excellence is not worthy of being rewarded. Your culture has the mindset that excellence is not a product of hard work and determination, it's a product of luck and nepotism, so any hint of excellence gets taken away and diminished. It's a coping mechanism for your own lack at a society scale. Your people are snobby and literally think you're better than us while we pump trillions into your economies.
And what do you have to offer us? Tourist destinations and luxury goods? No thanks.
Without us it will quickly become apparent what your society is behind all of that exuberance and arrogance. Your right wing will become a problem again in decades and you will revert back to the endless wars with your neighbors in territorial disputes.
You are effectively saying that Europe should be a vassal state to the US and cannot have its own laws. Europe has a different vision on privacy and competition. The regulation asks for e.g. Apple are peanuts compared to what China asks. Apple bends back over to please China, but if Europe has some requirements for doing business part of the US do the tired trope “US innovates, Europe regulates”.
We have too many problems at home to be daddy with a credit card.
First, this is rich for a country living on borrowed money (that they can only get away with because the rest of the world uses it as the default currency).
Second, a lot of the problems of the US are caused by the lack of proper wealth redistribution, lack of efficient health care (no, the US doesn’t subsidize European healthcare, European countries spend far less on healthcare with better outcomes). It’s not solved by throwing lifelong allies under the bus and trading the for some dictator friends.
Finally, the security situation also arisen because the US did not want European militaries to become too powerful and has pushed a lot to be dependent on the US and US tech. For instance, countries have to buy US fighters for nuclear sharing, etc. The primary exception is France because they never wanted to be reliant and have their own nuclear force, etc.
Also let’s not forget Article 5 was only invoked once (by the US) and we were happy to help, because that’s what friends do. We have been in Afghanistan for over 20 years as a result and a lot of our soldiers died and were injured.
To be fair, the GP claimed to have a credit card, not a salary.
> The fact that you can't understand this is exactly why this administration is doing this.
> because you believe that excellence is not worthy of being rewarded. Your culture has the mindset that excellence is not a product of hard work and determination, it's a product of luck and nepotism, so any hint of excellence gets taken away and diminished.
This administration does not believe in rewarding excellence, hard work, or determination. It’s an administration by the most malicious, incompetent people who have ever led this country.
I don't know why Europe wants so badly to be reliant on the US. It's bad for them, it's bad for us. It's embarrassing for Europe that Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe for defense. It's embarrassing for Europe how little they contribute to NATO. The US isn't a partner, it's a caretaker. And as they say, if someone provides what you need, they also have the power to take it away.
Outsourcing your defense is stuupiiid.
Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.
Defense is a bit like advertising or finance. It has some aspects of a zero-sum game and a negative-sum game. All the money you invest in it is wasted. But if your enemy/competitor chooses to waste more money, you may be in trouble.
From an European perspective, the entire purpose of NATO from 1992 to 2022 was to prevent wasting too much money on defense. Because, for some reason, Americans were willing to do it instead.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the calculus changed. Now European countries are rebuilding their defensive capabilities, while Russia is still bogged down in Ukraine. Given the lack of credible short-term threats, limiting defense spending was clearly the right choice until 2022.
Also it makes sense to have a capability only once within an alliance. If the US has the command, space and air capabilities, why would anyone else need to have this. You can add to their capability by buying F-35s and hosting their air bases.
Now that we are not allies anymore we need to wastefully build up our own command, space and air capabilties resulting in duplicated effort.
After Russia took Crimea and part of the east of Ukraine in 2014, I'm not sure that calculus was valid.
Yeah, spending also started increasing steeply since 2014 already, 2022 only accelerated it.
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...
>> Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe for defense.
Is it? Especially in 2025.
It is embarrassing how little of (very old) heavy equipment USA provided to Ukraine. North Macedonia provided same amount of main battle tanks as USA, Poland provided ten times more. And zero fighter jets.
Anyway, people of Ukraine are thankful for any support and USA was the biggest donor during first years of the war.
The US promised to protect Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum, for which Ukraine had to give their nukes to Russia.
It's embarrassing for Europe that Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe
Europe has spent more on military aid to Ukraine than the US now.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...
Even though the US vowed to protect Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum.
It's embarrassing for Europe how little they contribute to NATO
Before Trump, non-US NATO spent 425 billion and the US 654 billion:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...
So it’s true that Europe/Canada spent less, but it comes with a bit fat asterisk that the US also wants to project power in the pacific/Asia, whereas European defense is primarily focused on avoiding Russian aggression (+ peace missions + supporting the US in various operations to give them more legitimacy).
Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.
That credit should go to Putin, European spending has grown rapidly since the annexation of crimea.
The credit the Trump should get: stop buying US weapons as quickly as we can and focus on non-US alternatives. It’s going to take a while, but US material has certainly become less attractive.
Us Europeans are just baffled by the fact that this ‘administration’ wants this. The EU is a big economy that’s relatively easy to deal with. Why would you alienate us?
But yeah so far Trump has been relatively true to his word, as far as it goes. Not really practically but going further down the road of a dare I say fascist outlook. I think Europeans still can’t believe it’s happening, much less intentionally so.