Comment by tharne
1 day ago
Lol, I'll believe it when I see it. Is this the same Europe that despite everything going on in the world is:
- Still buying Russian gas
- Dependent on U.S. Military bases for their own security
- Dependent on Chinese manufacturing for consumer goods
- Dependent on the U.S. for software and cloud infrastructure
- Dependent on the Chinese for computer hardware
Best of luck Europe, you've had a good run, but you've gotten yourself into a fine mess here.
Yeah, it was a mistake taking this free trade, globalization, UN, WTO, basic human rights, ICC, change through trade, nuclear disarmament etc. stuff seriously. Cost us bigly.
It really did cost you bigly. Compared with 25 years ago, Europe is less safe, less powerful, and more dependent on other countries for very important things.
That is arguably incorrect and a matter of perception. Europe was perceived to be safer and more powerful 25 years ago. But is in fact, safer and more powerful now than it was then. Are you safer if the dependencies are unknown or if they're known and people are talking about them? Are you safer if you believe the US will have your back, not knowing that it won't really, or are you safer with better knowledge on how far support will go?
The EU countries are, right now, pumping up their military budgets. Russia has just spent several years destroying it's huge stock of soviet era equipment. 25 years ago, that equipment was in better shape and the EU was reducing military budgets all over the place, and Ukraine was closer to Russia's sphere of influence - potentially far less safe but nobody knew it?
Not everything but in alot of cases yes it was a mistake. Trade has never been free, globalization has been a negative for alot of people etc
The best will be when they turn away from the US and start infighting.
As an American, I think the US as EU scapegoat mechanism is so cute.
No history, no bad blood. Those centuries old rivalries and wars have all been forgot about lol.
The problem is that for a lot of these problems Europe hasn't had that much self determination over the last 75 years. The US had to intervene twice in world wars that started in Europe. And after WWII the US did, arguably, a reasonably noble thing in how it provided investment to rebuild Europe. No more wars out of Europe and a market to sell US goods to, and then a bit later a bulwark against the USSR. All these things meant a forced dependency. And the US still wants to sell its military equipment, and under Trump very very keen to sell more goods. I would argue that this situation also contributed to Europe losing it's initial developments in computing with brain drain to the US.
75 years just isn't that long in geopolitics, and it's a hard ship to turn around. Only 25 years ago the relationship between the US and Europe was still very strong and it didn't look like there was any pulling back.
You mention buying Russian gas. Again, it's very hard to suddenly stop that gas flow. Even Ukraine didn't shut down the gas pipelines going from Russian to Europe while they had existing contracts in place, it's happening this year. Gas from Russia was 40%, is now less than 11%, is forecast to drop much further this and next year. These kind of economic dependencies also continued for surprising long in previous wars between countries that were actually in hot wars with each other.
The kind of changes you're talking about are slow. The US also has it's dependencies on Asian manufacturing that it is also now trying to turn around, and that will also be slow.
Yes the funding of Russia's war machine (by buying Russian energy) whilst expecting the US to fund the EU's defense takes some level of nerve. Nobody should take the EU seriously.
Could you show the numbers in 2018 and the numbers in 2024 so we can compare?
I guess I could but why would I bother?