Comment by bawolff
13 hours ago
> Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of such a defence relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
Europe isn't a superpower but it's a giant entity with 450 million people and 15% of the world's gdp. It has the means to oppose the US and retaliate against its sanctions, if it doesn't it's because of the cowardice of its politicians and the weakness of its institutions.
More importantly, the bilateral relationship between the US and Europe represents 30% of global trade, and 40% of the global GDP. Both economies complement each other naturally (at least right now), and neither partners don't want it to end, so even with the relationship becoming more fragile as the US tries to close itself off from the world, I think both will still try to remain collaborative with each other, regardless of this posturing that is going on.
It will take a lot to shift that trade dynamic, but the current US administration seems quite energetic about rapidly tearing down Chesterton's Fences that it doesn't understand nor want to spend the time to understand, so I'd not bet on this remaining so even for the next 3 years.
And yes, I do understand how utterly bonkers it is to suggest something this big changing over just 3 years.
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"neither partners don't"
I think your main point is valid, but it would be more compelling if you'd taken a few seconds to read it before submitting, to catch this double-negative.
If the EU goes against the US and happens to recruit allies, we’re cooked.
Not really. We have the most money, the most guns, and world economies depend on us. Europe won't even fight Russia when they literally invaded a country in their backyard, and Russia is much weaker than the US.
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I hope that the USA will maintain strong relations with the EU. But the EU is structurally incapable of taking any coordinated action more significant than mandating USB-C chargers for cell phones.
Europe would need to increase military spending to 20+% of GDP to plausibly defend themselves.
The EU is a vassal state through and through, they just haven't accepted this yet.
Defend against what?
France has nukes, so those aren't a plausible threat. Any kind of land invasion is doomed to fail - the US didn't even manage to beat a bunch of goat herders in one of the poorest countries of the world. A naval blockade is the most likely to succeed - except for the whole "land bridge to Asia/Africa" part. And if the blockade does succeed and the continent starts to starve, there's the whole "France has nukes" part again...
Besides, do you really think China/India won't get involved? And do you really think the US public is going to accept their friends and family dying because some power-hungry politician got the braindead idea to send them against Europe? The reception will be worse than Vietnam!
> they just haven't accepted this yet.
What on earth are you talking about???
We have accepted that for a long time, and there are no plans to change it.
Why do you think there is zero movement to disentangle from any important US dependencies? Such as software. There is nothing whatsoever happening to be any less dependent on the US, part from defense, and that only after repeated urging and finally some real force-pressure to get the EU moving (even after Trump's first term little to nothing actually happened).
European countries are perfectly fine with where they are, if any less dependency on the US is to happen, it will only be after huge pressure from the US.
That is deliberate, they just don't see value in e.g. trying to recreate the Microsoft and other software ecosystems. After all, it already exists, so why compete at that point? It does not make economic sense. Also, it is not Europe's strength: Every country would, in practice, (have to) develop their own version, while in the US a company can easily scale across the entire nation. For Software, it makes no (economic) sense for Europe to compete in an area where this kind of scale is important.
And that strength argument, only some minor politicians, and some journalists, keep bringing up headlines such as "Can Germany save Europe?", or celebrating "Germany back on the world stage" when there is some minor meeting hosted by Germany (seen recently). The vast majority of people could not care less about being "number one" and "leading (anything, politically)".
Not trying to reinvent the wheel, or many wheels actually, out of some "pride" moment seems pretty foolish to me. If the US is good producing this or that, we get it from there, so what? Everybody, including the US, made even more far-reaching similar decisions with industry moved to China. Compared to that, European reliance on the US is not much, and pretty much unavoidable, unless one gives up lots of wealth.
EU is not a state, it's a union of states.
Europe (as in all european countries combined) does not have a military powerful enough to oppose the US. And that is all that matters.
Would you say that the United States had a much larger and more expensive military than Vietnam? How did that work out for the United States?
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That would only matter if US invaded Europe or vice versa. That's not going to happen. So the size of military expenditures doesn't really matter.
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Labor shortages abound in the US military. It is slowly approaching paper tiger status, unless we're talking about delivering long range ordinance. The US can engage in a small handful of conflicts at the same time; it cannot take on the world. The Coast Guard didn't have enough staff to commandeer an oil tanker near Venezuela recently [1] [2]. The US Navy has mothballed seventeen supply ships due to labor shortages [3]. Total global US military headcount is ~2.6M as of this comment, ~1.14M on US soil [4] [5] [6] [7]. There are also military sourcing single points of failure, like L3 [8] and the US Air Force.
China can already detect and track stealth aircraft using a combination of ground based passive radar and StarLink signal, as well as satellite reconnaissance. Europe could have this capability whenever they're ready to spend and, in the case of a satellite, lift to orbit. Use hypersonic vehicles for anti air defense and carrier busting [9].
[1] https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/12/18/eu-flag...
That doesn't matter. One or two atomic boms from France and say goodbye to a good GDP from the US coasts. Everyone losses, but the US it's set back to 1940.
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No, but China and Australia do if they were to, you know, alliance themselves against the tyranny of the US. Much like we did against the tyranny of the Nazi regime.
Add in other nato countries and we’re cooked.
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Nobody needs to go to war with America on behalf of the ICC. We merely need member nations to declare they won't enforce any American sanctions against ICC judges or other personnel. The US might cry and stamp their feet, maybe even threaten to invade France, but this is all impotent rage if the EU decides to wake up and call America's stupid bluffs.
If French banks with US presence start banking sanctioned individuals the US would start confiscating their American assets. It’s just not worth it for them. The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
Why does it need to be all French banks? The French government could establish a special class of bank for domestic business, that isn't subject to international pressure except pressure applied to the French government itself. They should be able to find a way that a judge in Europe, living in Europe, paying European taxes to European governments, paying rent to a European landlord, doesn't have to give a shit about what America thinks.
This is a tractable problem, except for the lack of political willpower to create a solution.
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Yes, and Europe will start confiscating European assets of American companies. Your point being?
> The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
The USD is rapidly losing this status, though. The current president's policies has turned the US into an extremely unreliable trade partner, so more and more trades are being done in EUR.
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Which is why the way to deal with this is by sanctioning US companies in retaliation. Europe can't shield its own companies from the US, but it can inflict equal pain on US companies.
If it's a French bank the country of France can tell said bank they must service said customer regardless of the loss of their US assets.
Every country that works at an international level assumes said risks.
I for one am tired of internal national companies playing pick and choose on the best options and ignoring everything else. If the world wants to go multipolar again it's time for corporations to get kicked in the sack.
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I don't think that's accurate. Which sanctions, specifically, would become ineffective if Emmanuel Macron stood up and said "Our government won't enforce this sanction against ICC judges or other personnel"?
If the sanctioned individuals can still use French that would make the "debanking" sanction much less effective.
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>Might makes right in international politics.
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
>But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this.
The whole point of Nuremberg was to put on a show against the defeated, and establish the "good guys" who now run international order.
Acts like Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the rest of allied abuses weren't on trial there or elsewhere.
Yes, imagine the ICC existed in 1945 and ... let's say ... Bolivia ... petitioned for the arrest of Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower over the Dresden bombing and whatever else.
Better, imagine the ICC ordered the arrest in 1943 of Franklin D. Roosevelt over ... let's say ... the forced relocation of Unangax̂ (Aleut) villagers in the Alaska Aleutian Islands.
The result wouldn't have been better for the ICC than the Gaza warrants.
You were there? No? You watched the taped proceedings then?
I don't think you appreciate the way justice becomes irrelevant in fascist and tyrannical countries.
The 'show' of fair justice, dispensed with care and deliberation, is something you seem to take for granted.
In most countries you get put up against a wall, and shot, for saying the wrong things about the right people.
I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny. And the position that tyranny should be the norm is something an evil or cowardly person espouses.
Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
I kind of feel like if one of the superpowers always been against international law although trying to enforce it on others, and not really wanting to participate in ICC in any shape of form, already made the whole idea dead in the water.
Lots of people realize the importance of this, but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
What you say is true, but idealists should not give up just because a murderer exists.
While it will not control the murderer, it can and will influence it (violence going 10% down is better than 0%)
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> Nuremberg
You may be mixing up the ICJ, which “settles legal disputes submitted to it by states” and is 80 years old [1] and the ICC, which was created in 2002 [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute
International Law predates Nuremberg by at least 300 years (see the School of Salamanca). I am not trying to nitpick, honestly, it is that the rights of other nations and peoples were recognized well before the US even was an idea.
There was already a world court before Nuremberg: the Permanent Court of International Justice, established after WWI, as part of the League of Nations. It didn't stop WW2 and the holocaust. After WWII, they form the exact same thing with new names: the International Court of Justice, as part of the United Nations.
You know why the League of Nations didn't work (supposedly)? Because the US wasn't involved. So with the United Nations, the US is involved. What do you think happens when the US decides to not abide by the United Nations' decisions? Nothing.
The US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times. It voted against Palestinian rights, and its Iraq war and ongoing foreign drone strikes go against the UN charter. Basically, whatever the US wants, goes. If they don't want you to have rights, you won't have them. If they want you to control some piece of land and anyone who lives on it, it's yours. If they don't like your government, they'll take it away and install their own, or call it terrorist and sanction it.
The whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it. There is no justice, there's just the powerful and the powerless.
> US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times
So have China and Russia. The rules-based international order has been explicitly rejected by the world’s great powers.
> whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it
There was a legitimate attempt. It had flaws. But so does any system of justice. It was ultimately done in by a combination of Russian and Chinese revanchism, American neoconservatism and global nihilism.
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You’re in for a big surprise once you discover what happened after Nuremberg.
>If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
So what, you should just keep your head in the sand instead? Not that I accept that claim anyways (quitter talk).
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The sovereign legal authority of any government derives from its monopoly on violence. If, at the end of the day, men with guns will not come to your home and force your compliance, then the "law" is nothing but paper.
The ICC could never be anything but what it is -- powerless against those with bigger guns. This is the fundamental nature of law and power. Barring the subjugation of all states to a supranational sovereign capable of universal enforcement, there is, ultimately, no such thing as international law.
It should be renamed to currently accepted “international traditions and customs” (ITAC)
Queue’s/line’s in shop are not formally enforced by some authority to my knowledge, but most participants adhere to such order. (I would call it tradition)
> But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this.
That seems a little silly on the face of it when you realize most people complicit during the war in what we would now call war crimes weren't even charged to begin with. Many on the losing side found lucrative jobs with the side that won, and the side that won wasn't even considered for charges.
> In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged?
That also seems a little farcical any way you twist it
> If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
Actually, I think we're moving towards a world that is more earnestly determined by market forces. Or, these were always the same concepts; we just can't force the world to take our "deals" anymore.
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Meet the "Hague Invasion Act":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Considering the relations between the US and the Netherlands it is inconceivable that the Dutch government would allow US military personel to be detained that way on its soil, and if that did happen I think a call from the White House would "clear any misunderstandings"...
Given the current us government, I would not be surprised if it happened instead
Until last year, sure.
Trump's been doing a lot of "inconceivable" things with the US's international relations.
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Invade The Hague, and the next you see it's the whole US bases' set kicked out from Europe and potential Russian/Chinese missiles in Cuba pointing to Silicon Valley.
And OFC Wall Street heading down faster than in 1929. Fucking up your main client would yield a disaster so huge to the US economy than no war would save them. If any, they would be fucked, because the EU might even temporally ally with Russia. Then the shit would hit the fan in Alaska.
Your army it's the best in the world? Say hello to a coallition between Europe-China-Russia. No one would dare to throw any single atomic bomb because the outcome would be MAD for everyone.
The US would attempt then to invade Mexico/Canada. But that would yield to its own people siding up with Canada and Mexico against an obvious corrupt US war-machine-corporate state, up to the point to getting former Mexican territory back to Mexico.
Texas and California might have declared indepent countries themselves to avoid any war. The smart move, you know.
There is no circumstance under which a unified EU would temporarily ally with Russia against the US.
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This is cute, like a little boy charging you with a cardboard sword. Better take him seriously or you're gonna get "attacked" by his model airplane collection next!
pats head That's nice, Billy, it sure is fun to play pretend. Now you run along and play with your marbles.
Where ICC could win against someone in the US is if the opposition comes to power in the US and does nothing to protect that person. "Oh gosh, bounty hunters grabbed them and smuggled them out of the country? What a shame."
Im sorry the latter part of the 20th century was all about trying to avoid the whole might makes right mindset and in international politics it still should be. Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right? The fact that people have just swallowed the might make right narrative just shows what kind of a dire situation we are in when it comes to international politics and how far standards have fallen since 2001.
The Roman Empire was a superpower too, until it made too many stupid mistakes not dissimilar to modern ones.
They don’t have to go to war. The ICC can just try these people in absentia and then once they’re found guilty put bounties out on them like Osama Bin Laden.
One of the things that made America a superpower is "soft power". Continuing to piss off their allies will eventually blow back if the US ever needs something from the UN.
Or worse they may need that French aircraft carrier if war breaks out with China.
The US is under no illusion that France of all countries will go to bat for the US in a Pacific war. And Macron has made clear that they will not: https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/france-president-m...
>When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power.
It was a superpower, until Trump got back in office. He's been taking an axe to US soft power, and our institutions in general. We're on the edge of losing Global reserve currency status. That's what's driving the re-monetization of Silver and Gold.
USAs superpower is their inability to see their own hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is itself a show of power. That you can openly allow for yourself that which you deny others.
It's a show of power that, for the US, is lessening that power.
Most of the US's power is from being a land of opportunity and of high ideals, with military power being secondary backup. As the US lessens opportunity and openly betrays its ideals, that power disappears. The Greenland and Canada threats alone probably require $500B-$1T/year in additional military spending to try to gain through force wha was previously given freely to the US. Add in the huge cost to the US from the tariff idiocy and cutting things like USAID and we could never spend enough militarily to make up for it.
Look at Putin's weakness in Ukraine. He tried to take by force what was not his, and ended up costing himself far more in lost trust than he could ever have gained with the war, and he has gained so little in the war. Putin had a better chance by continuing to try to divide Ukrainian society internally and have the majority of society side with Russia. Much like what is happening in the US right now.... but attack with bombs and the charade disappears. The US is going to discover the same loss of power through its attempts and threat of force.
Most people are hypocrites.
most people poop but some do cholera poop
Hypocrisy is an argument losers make. Might makes right.
Might makes right, you are correct.
The USA's might is highly dependent on the world order it fostered after WW2, and especially after the Cold War.
Erode that, and the USA as we've known the past 70 years starts to crumble. If in a couple decades the rest of the world works to decouple from the dollar as the main reserve currency; decouple from the dependency to sell to the USA; and decouple the dependency on American tech you still have a rich country but definitely not the superpower with the might as it exists today.
It's not possible for the USA to be funded with the astronomical deficits it runs to keep its war machine, it's not possible for the US, culturally and politically, to majorly increase taxes to cover this deficit. Slowly there would be cuts to its defence spending, diminishing its might.
Not sure why Americans decided this was a good path, didn't expect to see the era of Pax Americana to be so abruptly shaken during my lifetime but here we are.
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That’s why it’s extremely important to remain mighty. The US is in serious decline and I don’t see them turning that around anytime soon.
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I surely hope you don't really think "might makes right" and only cynically say that to express your thoughts about international politics. Between humans might does not make you right.
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
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It’s not a valid argument. But it is a valid observation.
Might does not make right. Might just means you’re holding the biggest stick, not that you have the faintest clue how to use it responsibly. Power sustained purely by bullshit, as it is these days in USA, eventually drowns in it. I'm not looking forward to it happening, but when it does, I'm sure to at least get some satisfaction out of watching the scum drowning.
Yes and no, there is a bit more to it. When dealing with democracies hypocrisy tends to actually harm the people practising it to some extent. If a polity insists on living in a fantasy rather than reality the political process will start optimising for outcomes in that fantasy world rather than reality. It is quite funny watching US politics where the voter base are unprincipled and opportunistic in how they vote then get hoist on their own petard when they get leadership that reflects their voting patterns. It is also interesting to think how effective a country could be if the voter base tended to be honest and forthright.
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
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Yes but the thing about power is the more you use it the more the other party learns to live without it. US has such a giant leverage over Europe because Europe believed US would never actually use its power against it. Imagine US sanctioning Chinese officials - they would shrug at best because China has its own everything because they always knew US would bully them.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
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