Comment by RedShift1 3 hours ago
Fuck it. Let the Americans start another trade war then. This nonsense has been going on long enough, if times need to get tough so be it then, start earlier rather than in 5 years when these misery machines are everywhere and the car arms race is in full effect.
It doesn't matter how much is this repeated by politicians: it's a lie to suggest that the EU does not spend enough for defense.
We spend multitudes of times more than our only realistic threat. And that threat can't even wage war with Ukraine, you expect Russia to be able to fight Poland, yet alone the rest of the European countries?
Also, just a reminder: US servicemen have not been sent to fight a war for European souls since almost a century. Whereas European soldiers are actively deployed even now in the middle East for wars that Washington started.
Please start looking more at facts and less about propaganda. Of course Europe should step up in being more independent defense-wise, but you'd be a fool if you think the US does not enjoy and leverage the current status provides.
> Of course Europe should step up in being more independent defense-wise, but you'd be a fool if you think the US does not enjoy and leverage the current status provides.
> it's a lie to suggest that the EU does not spend enough for defense.
Which is it? Is Europe spending enough, or does American have influence because Europe is still cripplingly dependent on the US?
I wouldn’t argue that the US isn’t abusing that dependence at the moment.
What I would argue is that the US spent 20 years telling Europe to get its act together, and finally in the last 3 years that has started to change, but notably that was years after NATO was publicly declared braindead. So it was pretty irresponsible of the Europeans to leave themselves beholden to the US for so long.
> So it was pretty irresponsible of the Europeans to leave themselves beholden to the US for so long.
> Which is it?
The answer is complex.
Europe's dependence on US is not much on the military front (again, there are no realistic threats in a conventional war that European countries have) as it is on a political and diplomatic one.
Europe is made of 27+ countries that have different foreign policies, goals, and whose word in a war of real defence has never been tested.
Under that situation US is an absolutely critical reference as in times of difficulties even countries with different interests will still realistically rally around US guidance.
You can thus understand why the group of Baltics and Poland are absolutely much more leaning into playing friends with Washington than they are with Brussels.
Europe is absolutely dependent as of now, and likely will be forever for these very reasons, on US.
The answer is complex, but it should never read as "Europe does not have enough weapons or soldiers to defend itself", rather than "Europe is not taking their own defence under its own responsibility".
It is difficult to tell Italians: "stop producing your own rifles, tanks, mines, etc, let's all agree on a single design". It is hard to tell the Portuguese "look, you're gonna deploy two brigades in Estonia for the next 10 years". It is hard to tell the Belgians they have to follow the command of an Austrian in a war fought in Eastern Europe.
Europe is plagued by differences that the common alliance with the US flattens out. Without US, it's a borderline disaster. It's not a matter of money being spent.
You think that if Europe spend "enough" America would have not influence? You think that Europe would be allowed to spend "enough" but only in Europe companies?
They like to talk about the bad Russians influencing politics and people in Europe, but compared to the Americans they are flies in the wall. This people that is taking decisions now in Europe, finish later working in the Atlantic Council or something like that. That is the root of the European independence problem.
This is a bogus statement. EU countries have met or surpassed defense budget goals, usually the ones that don't have the contracts in progress but the full payouts not done yet since they are still in progress. Percentage of GDP to military spending has been criticized as a bad way to measure how much military spending is done and needed. Additionally, the European countries are paying for the war while the US is taking that money and the optics of providing certain military supplies. This whole situation is just exploitation of the EU with the benefit of the US' companies.
Only about a third of European defense spending goes to the US. Europes struggles to ramp up production have been an ongoing story for many years now.
There is still about a trillion dollars of NATO defense spending to replace if Europe does not want to be reliant on America. Doable, but spending a third of that on American equipment wouldn’t help matters.
Perhaps if Europeans got an earlier start, instead of ignoring nearly two decades of warnings and a clearly deteriorating security situation, they wouldn’t need to care so much about US policy. Better late than never.
https://economist.com/europe/2025/12/01/europe-is-going-on-a... from The Economist
No they did not. Just a handful of countries are spending close to 5% of their GDP on defense, the rest are doing everything in their power to pay as little as possible.
The 5% GDP deadline is 2035. The 2% by 2024 was met. Not even the US spends 5% of their GDP on defense. Again as I've stated, it's been criticized as a bad goal to use this metric. In actuality, people who push the narrative that Europe is being bankrolled by the US will never be satisfied by any percentage.
> Just a handful of countries are spending 5% of their GDP on defense
Have you even read the comment in full before responding? I'm talking about this part of it:
> Percentage of GDP to military spending has been criticized as a bad way to measure how much military spending is done and needed
But since you wouldn't get it anyways:
The "5% of GDP" is a number that US politicians came up with, seemingly out of nowhere, because they figured they want to boost their military industry.
EU countries are already spending that or even more - just look at Ukraine spending by EU countries - but since it's spent on their own domestic defense industry, US politicians don't like it. That's the point.
They don't want us spending 5% of the GDP on defense unless we buy their stuff. So here we are.
A correct statement would be that the Europe didn't want to pay for US equipment for its own defense.
The US has previously discouraged Europe from building out its own defense industry, the current situation is due to that a dovish view of Russia therefore less of a need to spend money on equipment and troops for a land war.
It’s tough when there’s a war going on and the EU countries don’t really want to pay the true cost for their defense.