Comment by dmix
3 days ago
Which is what Trump seems to want. A Europe not totally dependent on the American taxpayers for their own self defense and their own global power projection agendas. Many countries like Germany are quite far from that. France is more of a leader in that regard.
Although abandoning commercial American software wholesale would likely degrade their own security and GDPs even further than it already is.
Defence and power projection is extremely expensive and tech is incredibly work demanding. Is the average EU citizen ready for 15 days PTO and 50-60 hour work weeks?
I don't mean this as a slight, but I genuinely do not think the average European worker, who has at this point spent most of their career in a pretty cushy worker friendly environment, is going to be up for American style death-race productivity. Or the European style death-race productivity of centuries past for that matter.
The average American worker works 500 more hours a year than their German counterpart. That is 62.5 more work days annually. Trying to close that gap will have people rioting. Never mind the cuts to social programs and bumping retirement age to boost defense spending. Double never mind avoiding Russian energy. Europe would need a wholesale societal rewrite, not just a few more bonds issued.
Its much less resistance to stick out 4 years and hope the US gets it's sanity back.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have generally opposed European efforts to reduce reliance on foreign arms - The "Buy European" strategy.
The Trump administration seems to be pursuing a dual strategy: publicly demanding Europe be more self-sufficient while simultaneously trying to ensure U.S. economic and strategic interests are not sidelined in the process. Basically "Pay us more for less". Let's see how the NATO summit goes at the end of this month.
I really don't think Trump has run that line with the US weapons manufacturers.
He got the goal of increasing the EU weapons expenses, and entirely monkey-pawed it.
> Which is what Trump seems to want. A Europe not totally dependent on the American taxpayers for their own self defense and their own global power projection agendas.
If so, good because that's what I want. I want to have "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none" as Jefferson said. I consider it a great betrayal of the American people that past governments put us in a position where other nations are depending on us for security. Untangling us from that should be done as gently as possible, but IMO it should be done.