Comment by ExoticPearTree
10 hours ago
Europe (as in all european countries combined) does not have a military powerful enough to oppose the US. And that is all that matters.
10 hours ago
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?
The US was winning the Vietnam war militarily. The US pulled out because it wasn’t winning it domestically.
Another potential goal of the war may have been to demonstrate that the USSR couldn't hope to win a conventional war against the US (the 1973 Easter offensive fielded 700-1200 tanks of various kinds, and the US destroyed 400-700 of them with trivial losses to US forces). The Soviets were using 15-20% of their economy to produce, among other military items, 4000 tanks a year, so a demonstration that the US could destroy so much without significant losses or any particular economic strain could have been shocking. If that was a real goal, though, it probably couldn't be openly discussed at the time, which would have contributed to the "why are we even there?" mood of the American people.
Well, "not winning domestically" can happen as likely today as it did in the sixties.
If anything, the US society is more divided today.
4 replies →
This is a fiction.
The US was barely treading water militarily, at enormous cost in both lives and cash. It was not progressing towards its military and political goals. That's why the US public pulled the plug.
The US could have continued to tread water for another 5 years, or another 10 years, or another 15 years, and would have lost even more men and spent even more money, and it would still have faced the same problem: there was no way to win the war. Every day that the war continued just meant more deaths and more money wasted.
"Actually we did find weapons of mass destruction"
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.
You can’t be that naive to believe that military might has nothing to do with political might.
That's not what I said. I said that it doesn't matter.
Military might has plenty to do with bluffing. That's what politics is all about.
But when the music stops and the ball drops, US and EU aren't going to war with each other any time soon. So measuring military might doesn't really matter.
And you can't be that naive to believe is gonna make any difference. The US that had to get out of Korea, Vietnam, all the way to Afghanistan, will take on Europe? Lol...
It’s not what the US might do, it’s what they might not do.
If Putin decides Poland is propping up Ukraine he might expand the war into Poland because right now it isn’t clear that the US would honor their NATO commitments.
Ukraine was not a NATO country, never mind a EU country. I’m all for speaking truth to the weakness of the eu and its indecisive pussyfooting on the military front but let’s not start getting high on our own supply: Russia absolutely does not have the military nor industrial power to invade Poland and take on the actual EU in a hot war. NATO or no NATO it wouldn’t even be close.
Or it could just end with mutual total nuclear annihilation of course.
Edit: now if they were to attack the eu over a decades long interference campaign with its member state democracies, funding anti eu parties, stoking separatist sentiments, and covertly subverting the fundamental pillars of its liberal democracies, on the other hand…
2 replies →
Europe doesn't need the US to defend Poland against Russia.
If EU countries commit to a conflict, Russia has no chance. It makes nuclear escalation a real risk though.
Russia is has tried and failed for a couple of years now to push particularly far into Ukraine, and you think Europe would have a problem stopping a Russian attack on Poland?
Poland alone has a population comparable to Ukraine, and a significantly larger economy.
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.
This will only happen if France decides to commit suicide at a national level, which is very unlikely.
There's no difference between suicide and an invasion from the US with total control of the neocons against a social-democratic state. That being a puppet state a la Vichy, I mean; not something being bribed upon with corruption and money.
What the US needs is to invest right now in fusion technology and learn the damn Math right. Hint: hypercubes and physics.
They have it easy:
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-fourth-dimension-scientists-gl...
https://wt3000.substack.com/p/scientists-just-built-a-fourth...
They don't need a war to feed the industry, they need the balls to evolve themselves as the Chinese did. First from pure Maoism to Deng Xiaoping, and next from coal to clean energy. It's a decades bound plan, but if Beijing becames clean it would be one of the greatest things for China (and the world) ever.
This would mean acknowledging that some sectors are best stated supported, such as healthcare; while others are best company supported/evolved, such as telecos and R+D, but with proper regulations, so net neutrality stays as is and patents get open over few decades so everyone can play the game.
And, no, you don't need to put social credit, social surveillance or any other bullshit such as Chat Control.
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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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