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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20101 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Do American on The Motte feel that the country is generally in favour of breaking from its old European alliances? I am not sure I have got that sense when visiting but I've visited only fairly D-leaning areas in recent years.

From the British/European point of view, one has the sense from current reporting that a significant rebalancing is happening, one that I would characterise as going beyond wanting to reduce American spending on e.g. Ukraine, and towards decisively breaking with European countries out of gut dislike, and beginning instead to form either a US-Russian alliance of sympathies, or if not that, then at least a relationship with Russia that is rhetorically much friendlier than that with Europe. I think the fear is starting to take root in Europe that the US would effectively switch sides in return for Russia granting it mineral rights in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. This heel turn seems unlikely, but things are murky enough that it is worrying people.

I feel that this rebalancing is already working in a way towards achieving stated Trump goals – it certainly is succeeding in restoring Europe's appetite for military spending (underinvestment here is one thing Trump has been consistently right about but European leaders have buried their heads in the sand on, hoping he'd go away). But the current situation re Ukraine is also sending confusing signals, as it had previously seemed as though the US wanted Europe to step up and be part of a solution for Ukraine, whereas currently it seems they actively want to stop Europe from having a role in peace talks. The motive for this appears to be stopping Europe from asking terms of Russia that would delay a solution the US and Russia find jointly satisfactory, though perhaps there is more going on beneath the surface.

I did not have the impression that the American population generally has gone through this kind of Europe->Russia realignment in their hearts, Russians still being a regular foil for the good guys in movies (said movies coming from liberal-leaning Hollywood, sure). I have the impression that moving towards Russia is an aspect of foreign policy that Trump has not built domestic support for. But maybe this is wrong. Maybe the average American now thinks not only "Europe should contribute more to solve their own defence problems", but furthermore, "Europe should get its nose out of international affairs and attempt to help only when it's spoken to. We, Russia and China are in charge now."

I'm writing this without especially detailed knowledge of foreign policy, but I'm more interested here in the emotional calibration of ordinary Americans generally. What outcomes would they accept, what outcomes are they afraid of, who do they feel warm to and who not, and to what extent do they feel entirely insulated from global events, alliances and enmities?

Do American on The Motte feel that the country is generally in favour of breaking from its old European alliances?

I'm assuming you mean military/political alliance here.

I may have grown up in a more rural place (read: red tribe) than most of the others here, but for the most part, except for middle aged men who are really interested in WWII, I don't get the feeling that most Americans think about Europeans that much. When people do think about Europe, I don't think alliance is the first thing that comes to mind. I think both "nice place to have a vacation" and "land filled with effeminate men and hot women" would show up in peoples' minds before "ally".

I should be clear here, I don't sense a ton of animosity towards Europeans. Most of the people I know can trace their ancestry back to Europe. There's some vaguely positive feelings, but I don't think alliance is the association most of the people I grew up with would draw. I would expect a vague desire to be friendly with Europe, all other things equal, but I would expect a modern "Why die for Danzig?" campaign would leave most Americans scratching their head for a reason. Especially post Afghanistan/Iraq where getting involved in foreign places has the connotation of both "expensive" and "will get people angry at us".

I also don't think Americans think about foreign policy nearly as much as you think. Foreign countries are a long way away from most of the people I know. Most Americans never travel to another country and have little reason to pay attention to foreign policy unless they're trying to look smart to impress someone. I also think it's quite likely that if an actual crisis that mattered to the US cropped up, you could must up enough jingoism to get people to want to intervene on Europe's behalf.

Vibes-wise, in my circles at least:

  • Russia sucks. No one likes Putin, no one thinks they're "in the right" in terms of casus belli and such. Public opinion still prefers Ukraine of the two.

  • That being said, people don't really like Ukraine as a standalone country. They support them in the war against Russia but they aren't otherwise pro-Ukraine. It's a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation - we don't like Russia, they're fighting Russia, so we support them. In many ways they're the European equivalent of the mujahideen, just with a more-visible cause and leadership. No one would support American boots on the ground.

  • The Nazis argument Russia keeps trying to stick won't work, because people know Zelenskyy is a Jew and "Nazis=Jew Haters" is ingrained to Americans (at least where I'm from) from at least middle school and quite possibly elementary school. Obviously no Jew would be a Nazi.

    • Perhaps some of the super-left Palestine "Israel is like Nazi Germany" supporters could be convinced of a Jew leading a neo-Nazi organization; unfortunately for Putin those people also hate his guts, so he isn't likely to win their support ever.

  • I think anyone who has even remotely paid attention to the war knows that Ukraine can't really win it. Just in general people know that Russia is bigger, and the bigger side usually wins. The best Ukraine can hope to do is not totally lose - any victory condition of getting the Russians totally out of the pre-war borders are a fantasy, and anyone who looks at a map knows that Putin's a dick and Russia in generally is not known for being generous with conquered territories (see the Iron Curtain); Ukraine isn't getting that back. They're eventually going to lose the war as it stands. They have to be the side that gives up concessions if they want the fighting to end; why would Putin give stuff back when he's going to win the damn war? Logically Ukraine is going to have to give more than Russia will, because there's less incentive for Russia to end the war. If Zelenskyy is seen to be asking for obviously unacceptable conditions, people won't continue to back supporting them indefinitely if it becomes obvious they're throwing it away on impossible goals.

  • People aren't against Europe as a whole, or the alliances. We share way more cultural (and linguistic) values with them than with the alternative alliance partners. Russia we still don't like due to the Cold War, and people know China is if not the #1 country on the evil countries to worry about list, it is at worst #2.

  • People don't consider Europe as a particularly effective or particularly independent fighting force; if we were engaged in a large-scale conflict they would be looked at as smaller/less important than any individual branch of the US military. If push ever really came to shove it's expected that those militaries would shut up and get in line considering how much they rely on our support.

  • Many people do think Europe has been extremely lax with their militaries since at least the Soviets fell, and just expected the US to do the work if they were ever in trouble. The best-case scenario right now would be the Europeans take this saber-rattling as a wake-up call when they look around at their militaries and realize how weak they've become. Some people think that the US should instead follow their lead and stop investing in our military to bolster domestic policies, but those people are morons.

  • In general Europe is looked at as a great vacation spot, and full of history, but also (for lack of a better term) kinda gay. They can do the soft cultural stuff really well, but when it comes to any actual "work" Americans are just way better, with the Germans probably being the best of a poor crop out of the Euros in this regard (though CoD makes some think the Brits aren't completely useless).

Note that Europe in this context generally means Western Europe primarily, in general anything from Germany down to Italy and west, plus the Nordics (very few people could tell any differences between those cultures right now, even Finland - most wouldn't even know they have mandatory conscription, considering the only models ever cited for that are Israel and South Korea). Eastern Europeans generally have an almost reversed opinion - pretty trash culturally (no one's going to a Bulgarian restaurant), and the people are backwards, but could possibly do solid work if there were more of them.

Do American on The Motte feel that the country is generally in favour of breaking from its old European alliances?

Not at all. We just want Europe to get its shit together, economically, culturally, and its military. Europe is like the burnout older brother who was once promising but now lives with your parents, spends all day in the bar, and has threesomes in his childhood bedroom with hideous women. And worse, he thinks this makes him cultured.

I perceive Europe as completely unable to innovate, unable to produce good art, and unable to defend itself. It’s so pathetic it’s not capable of being a threat. There is at most some hope that Trump can give Europe a kick in the ass and make Europe at least “get a job.”

This is all vibes based of course. There are some more concrete complaints about EU overregulation, but I would say many American conservatives feel great contempt towards Europe.

America sabotaging its alliances is a horrendous own-goal. China has a larger economy than the US in PPP terms (the only terms that matter), and its manufacturing base is like 4-5x ahead. The only way the US can compete at this point is through alliances. It's how we managed to get the chip embargo together, which IIRC was mostly enabled through a Dutch company that manufactures some important machine tools.

Most people in the US hate Putin. He has like a 10% approval rating here. Some on the DR like him, but they're goofballs that fall for the "based and trad Russia" meme/psyop. Most of the Ukraine-bashing is done out of reflexive negative partisanship, i.e. people on the left like Ukraine, and it would be great to see the left suffer, so let's hate Ukraine by proxy. Trump dislikes Ukraine partially out of them not carrying water for him in 2020, and partially because he's desperate for some sort of "deal", and since the Russians aren't budging he knows he has more leverage over Ukraine, so he's going after them instead.

Some on the DR like him, but they're goofballs that fall for the "based and trad Russia" meme/psyop.

Just want to reiterate this- my filter bubble is probably top 10%, maybe top 5%, for conservatism in the US. It does not see the federal government as a force for good.

Putin still has a somehow lower approval rating. Russia isn't seen as some based and trad country except among the already fringey, it's seen as one of a series of corrupt tinpot dictatorships propped up by organized crime and natural resources. The opinion of unironic russophiles is not high.

And yet it really seems as though the signals coming from the US administration are 100% favourable to Putin and 100% negative to Ukraine and Europe. "Ukraine shouldn't have started it", Trump says now. How can this music play well at home if home isn't full of Russophiles (and I'm sure you're right, it's not)? I think the extent of the reversal is becoming more exrtreme by the day, to the distress of Europeans, who are beginning to feel not abandoned (which would be one thing), but as if they are being suddenly turned on by a former friend, which is quite another and will go down in history.

I doubt that Trump’s comments play well if taken literally, but they’re not. The median American wants peace and doesn’t care about borders in Eastern Europe. The slightly better informed note that Crimea voted to join Russia, and democracy counts for something even when it’s retarded.

There is widespread distaste for Zelenskyy, ranging from ‘corrupt freeloader’ to ‘effeminate clown’ to ‘look at the swastikas’. The public might be sympathetic to Ukrainian soldiers and citizens but not, generally, to their elites, and almost everyone thinks that forcing Ukrainian elites to accept a deal is the most important task for peace.

You don't have to be a Russophile to think that Ukraine, collectively, made a poor national choice by trying to court a Western alliance when Russia was bound to react negatively. I don't actually think the "Ukraine shouldn't have started it" comment will play particularly well here unless Trump manages to steer the narrative very aggressively (he might be able to, I am sure there are interesting CIA documents he could declassify) but peace probably will.

And when I say predictable – Obama himself – hardly a Russophile, I don't think – said that Russia would always control the escalatory cycle over Ukraine simply because they perceived of it as a core national interest and the West didn't. Bill Burns' declassified cables reveal similar knowledge. It is not particularly shocking (although I do admit to being a bit surprised but not shocked by the SMO, if that makes sense) to anyone who listened to Putin, or Obama, that this would happen. Given that knowledge, you don't have to be a Russophile to believe that Ukraine played its hand poorly by choosing the West over Russia. (I am not saying that is the only opinion that is valid, just that it is a valid opinion.)

being suddenly turned on by a former friend

Outside of England, Europe has not exactly acted like our friend – we spy on them, they spy on us, they build massive natural gas pipelines to Russia after we tell them that is not a great idea and they should stop, they laugh at us when we tell them that is a silly idea, they try to tell Jeff Bezos what he can do with his own social media companies, they accuse us of human rights violations, we pass a bill authorizing an invasion of Belgium if they do anything about it. Friendly, maybe, but friends? Maybe that is overstating it.

And suddenly? The United States told Europe during the Obama administration that they needed to pay more in defense spending and that the United States was going to pivot to Asia. This is not new. This is longstanding US policy priorities working themselves out.

There seems to be a motte/bailey dynamic here. You put it more mildly, so maybe you will disagree somewhat with the bailey, but it's common enough that I hope you indulge me.
Motte: It's reasonable for states to care about their international influence, more so when their neighbors are concerned. When a highly culturally and linguistically related people and a former colony attempts to steer away, expect attempts to prevent this.
Bailey: It was predictable all along that these attempts include abrupt abandonment of other options in favor of an all out war, with all of the inevitable costs that would ensue in the best case scenario. It also includes doubling down for years when the best case scenario did not materialize.
Just tragic geopolitical dominos falling and rulers forced into ugly decisions, nothing to do with a septuagenarian autocrat gradually detaching from the real world, ending up spending fortunes and immolating hundreds of thousands of both his enemy's and his own citizens on sacrificial pyre of boomer retardation

Hmm. From my point of view, what you describe as the bailey is a subset of what you describe as the motte. Or perhaps the motte here is offering a moral justification while the bailey is offering a prediction.

I do not know that the bailey always follows from the motte here, but in this case I would describe the war as predictable not necessarily inevitable and I describe it as predictable because you can see Obama or Burns or RAND predict it. Obviously Putin has a say, and Putin's not clockwork – I was honestly, as I say, surprised but not shocked when the SMO kicked off when it did and the way that it did (I thought that Russia had locked down their vital assets in Crimea and might try less brazen methods in the Donbass, keeping the conflict at a low simmer to keep Ukraine locked in conflict. I do recall in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and there was a feeling of shock from some quarters that I did not share.)

Just tragic geopolitical dominos falling and rulers forced into ugly decisions, nothing to do with a septuagenarian autocrat gradually detaching from the real world, ending up spending fortunes and immolating hundreds of thousands of both his enemy's and his own citizens on sacrificial pyre of boomer retardation

I think that individuals and leaders always have a say. But what I think, based on reading Western sources, is that "Russia responds some degree of violently to a coup in Ukraine" was probably not a response that was unique to Putin. I also think that Western sources were well aware that Russia might escalate the conflict in response to what they viewed as Western provocations because they say this and they continued to offer the perceived provocation anyway.

So, predictable. And if something is predictable it is possible to question whether the choices that led to the actions were good decisions even if you think the predictable thing is not justified. Moral correctness does not absolve someone from the obligation of foresight. I think you can think that Russia's invasion is illegal, unjustified and evil while also thinking that Ukraine was pragmatically unwise to pursue rapprochement with the West. I don't think that's a hard baby to split. I'm not sure how that plays into your motte/bailey assessment, but I really think people should be able to isolate their moral judgments from their assessments of how the world works. Once you understand how the world works, you will be better able to reintegrate your moral judgments. At least that's my point of view.

Rest assured, morality is not a factor in what I'm talking about here
Politicians say lots of things all of the time, it's practically their job.
I'm certain there are numerous records of Western and Russian leaders saying things that totally support any given picture, including this one. It just seems like painting targets centered around a bullet hole in the wall after the fact. "Talking a lot and lying, contradicting, exaggerating routinely" applies to Putin at least as much as to any other big politician.
Are Putin's decisions sound, practical? maximizing interests of his own country, roughly based on reality as it can be observed?
It sure seems like many faulty premises were involved based on what actually happened. Perhaps the inherent unpredictability and dependence on whims of a lone, seemingly unaccountable man should be included in the equation, but it's far from easy, and at this point we are straying from what you were saying.

Ukraine was pragmatically unwise to pursue rapprochement with the West

Based on Russian rhetoric and expecting from them self-interested actions, you might well argue that moving westward was actually more sound of strategy after 2014 than before.
Threats from NATO? Leaving aside the existence of ICMBs, NATO members having veto right about new admissions, NATO states that are already on Russian border...surely that problem was solved already by the festering wound Russia inflicted on the country.
Protection of Russians in Donbass from oppression? Given that war has cooled down substantially and annual civilian casualties reached nearly 0 by 2021, things are looking good. Worst they can be expected to do is what, properly annexxing it?
Maybe Russia wants to have Ukraine in its cultural sphere, advance their language and political influence? Surely they must realize they burned those bridges back in 2014. And it's not like attacking harder will make things better.
Basically, I think there's this 'noble savage' view of Russia/Putin in the sense that there are supposed to be totally sound, realistic, predicable motivations in the driver's seat, they're just not easy to grasp for a Westerner, but I don't believe any of it holds up or amounts to more than wishful attempts to force orderly models on a messy world.

I'm certain there are numerous records of Western and Russian leaders saying things that totally support any given picture, including this one.

Really? Can you show me records of Putin saying "really Ukraine joining NATO is fine, I don't care"? Or Medevev or Yeltsin, even?

Are Putin's decisions sound, practical? maximizing interests of his own country, roughly based on reality as it can be observed?

It is hard to know the totality of information Putin is acting on. But on balance I think Putin has governed fairly well, from where I sit. You can look at "national vital signs" types of stats like life expectancy to see that. I think that Russians are slightly more paranoid than is corresponding with reality, but I think their general concerns about NATO are quite sane. Whether or not the "SMO" will prove to be a massive win or a massive blunder is probably too soon to tell, but my guess is that it will end up being a win, albeit one with a cost.

Based on Russian rhetoric and expecting from them self-interested actions, you might well argue that moving westward was actually more sound of strategy after 2014 than before.

Yes, I actually think there is a decent argument to be made here. Unfortunately(?) I was following this back before 2014 and so I consider mistakes made at that time and even before to be worth re-litigating.

Basically, I think there's this 'noble savage' view of Russia/Putin in the sense that there are supposed to be totally sound, realistic, predicable motivations in the driver's seat, they're just not easy to grasp for a Westerner, but I don't believe any of it holds up or amounts to more than wishful attempts to force orderly models on a messy world.

Sure, I agree that people are always trying to essentially force orderly models on a messy world. But whatever messy eccentricities there are with Putin and Russia, I think that "great powers are likely to intervene to stop hostile alliance formation on its borders" is just sort of something you should anticipate as a general rule. I think this in part because I, too, live in a great power and when the shoe was on the other foot (as it has been several times) we responded with military coercion.

Now, I agree that this general model is necessarily fine-grained enough to predict exactly what Russia's specific response was going to be. But it's good enough to anticipate a hostile response.

It makes sense based on these considerations that the US would reduce funding and expect the EU to step up to help it with a shared aim of containing Russia. That is not what is happening though. Rather the US is actively taking Russia's side in the conflict and ideologically allying itself with an autocracy over (most of) the world's democracies. Europe's minor encroachments on religious freedoms are obviously far more problematic ideologically to the US administration today than any number of assassinations of opponents, state control of media and corruption that happen in Russia. Don't pretend that this change isn't extraordinary and new.

The outcome is now looking like a US-Russia led alliance, with the EU trying to build an army and contain Russia with the hopes the US changes its mind before the conflict expands.

I hear the opinion that Ukraine did not act wisely in courting the west but it's a great players view of the world that doesn't come naturally to me. The people were given freedom and chose the west, you can say they could have collectively seen the geopolitical writing on the wall and gone against all their own preferences to avoid being invaded, but that sounds like victim blaming to me. Democracies cannot act strategically in that manner, it's one of the reasons they need and deserve protecting.

Rather the US is actively taking Russia's side in the conflict and ideologically allying itself with an autocracy over (most of) the world's democracies.

From what I can tell the United States is still providing Ukraine with weapons, which means they are actively taking Ukraine's side in the conflict.

Europe's minor encroachments on religious freedoms are obviously far more problematic ideologically to the US administration today than any number of assassinations of opponents, state control of media and corruption that happen in Russia. Don't pretend that this change isn't extraordinary and new.

European divergence from shared Western human rights norms is particularly problematic to Americans because Europe has (kinda sorta) been our ally in promoting traditional Western human rights norms. If Europe refuses to cooperate ideologically with the United States, it disrupts that traditional shared project.

Of course, Europe's encroachments on religious freedoms and other unalienable rights are not minor by American standards. The United States winked at this sort of thing in the past so as not to ruffle feathers and also because there are a contingent of Americans who agree with Europe's approach on these matters (more or less) but America thinking that European speech laws is a problem is not new at all and European leaders should have anticipated the possibility that right-wing leadership would criticize them. However, U.S. criticism of European actions is not surprising or new (again recall that the States passed the Invade The Hague act in 2002!) and does not mean that the US is going to leave NATO and join CSTO or anything like that.

On the flip side, United States is already willing to cooperate with regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, or France that assassinate their political opponents, regimes like England that have state control of media, and regimes like Ukraine that are deeply corrupt, and so on. It engages in trade with China despite that nation's absolutely atrocious human rights record. It should not be a surprise to you that it is willing to drop sanctions on Russia.

The outcome is now looking like a US-Russia led alliance

This does not seem like a serious possibility to me, and I wonder where you got this idea. I've seen the United States talk about lifting sanctions with Russia, which is not an "alliance" any more than Nordstream constitutes an "alliance" between Germany and Russia. Trump trying to hit the same reset button that Obama, Bush, etc. tried to hit does not mean that the United States is allying with Russia.

I hear the opinion that Ukraine did not act wisely in courting the west but it's a great players view of the world that doesn't come naturally to me. The people were given freedom and chose the west, you can say they could have collectively seen the geopolitical writing on the wall and gone against all their own preferences to avoid being invaded, but that sounds like victim blaming to me.

Well for context keep in mind that Ukraine was split on the question of Western rapprochement. In fact the people you mention violently overthrew their own elected government in a coup because their elected government decided not to pursue the West and elements of the people, backed by Western intelligence services, did not like that. In response, the people in other parts of Ukraine, backed by Russian intelligence services, violently overthrew their own government in a counter-coup. None of that is according to normal democratic political norms, at least in the West.

As far as victim-blaming goes – I think that the government has a responsibility to protect its people from adversaries. If a country's government fails to build up its military and is invaded, the invader is morally at fault for its decisions, but the government failed in its responsibility and it is more than fair to assign blame to its actions. But military readiness is not the only way to protect your citizens, and it is perfectly fair to criticize the actions a government takes if those actions lead to back outcomes regardless of whether or not the bad outcomes are the result of malign third-party actors. You can believe that Ukraine made bad political decisions while still believing that moral culpability for the invasion(s) of Ukraine rests with Russia. Criticism of a government's actions is not only defensible but necessary because criticism is how you learn from failure.

Democracies cannot act strategically in that manner, it's one of the reasons they need and deserve protecting.

If democracies cannot act strategically [which is not my position], then they deserve to be replaced by a form of government that is better at protecting its citizens.

From what I can tell the United States is still providing Ukraine with weapons, which means they are actively taking Ukraine's side in the conflict.

I mean, the US is probably paying some DEI consultancy bills still too, but it doesn't say much about the direction of travel or the intended end point.

[A US-Russia alliance] does not seem like a serious possibility to me, and I wonder where you got this idea. I've seen the United States talk about lifting sanctions with Russia, which is not an "alliance" any more than Nordstream constitutes an "alliance" between Germany and Russia. Trump trying to hit the same reset button that Obama, Bush, etc. tried to hit does not mean that the United States is allying with Russia.

Where I got the idea is just listening to the drumbeat of criticism of Ukraine and praise for Russia, and the US's willingness to throw away all the bargaining chips immediately. Has a technical alliance emerged, no. Is it apparent to Europe that they now face a transformed world after 80 years of relative confidence in the US's ideological preferences, yes.

Regarding religious freedoms in Europe, I think that American concerns are pretty much bullshit and an excuse, and that if Trump introduced things like protest exclusion zones outside, I dunno, military hospitals instead of abortion centres (such things were seemingly the thing JD Vance is mainly exercised about at a time of grave geopolitical danger) ... if Trump introduced those then the same people complaining about Europe's restrictions wouldn't bat an eyelid.

Where I got the idea is just listening to the drumbeat of criticism of Ukraine and praise for Russia, and the US's willingness to throw away all the bargaining chips immediately.

If the United States had ended sanctions and weapons deliveries, they would have thrown away their bargaining chips (although not really since they could resume them both at a moment's notice). But instead they are expecting concessions from Russia. That's how bargaining works.

Is it apparent to Europe that they now face a transformed world after 80 years of relative confidence in the US's ideological preferences, yes.

I think that wise European actors (the French) have more or less always understood that American ideological preferences (or perhaps more relevantly, interests in Europe) were contingent and not permanent.

Certainly I don't think J.D. Vance giving a speech is at the level of the United States threatening to destroy the British economy (which we did in 1956 after they invaded Egypt) so I'm not sure I buy this idea you seem to have that the United States has just been a team player to Europe since the end of World War Two.

Regarding religious freedoms in Europe, I think that American concerns are pretty much bullshit and an excuse

I mean I dunno what to tell you, it might be that it's an excuse for the administration, but the bottom-up sentiment is real. My recollection is that mainstream right-wing media in the United States has been complaining about this for a long time. Certainly I've complained about this sort of thing on here.

if Trump introduced things like protest exclusion zones outside, I dunno, military hospitals instead of abortion centres (such things were seemingly the thing JD Vance is mainly exercised about at a time of grave geopolitical danger) ... if Trump introduced those then the same people complaining about Europe's restrictions wouldn't bat an eyelid.

Aren't military hospitals likely to be on military bases where your rights are already restricted...? I assure you if Trump followed the U.K.'s lead of cracking down on silently standing outside of abortion clinics many righties in the United States would be angry. But of course one of Trump's first acts was pardoning anti-abortion protestors.

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I don't think Russia can be a true ally in its current political configuration, so any potential realignment in that direction is likely temporary if it is even real.

"The West" -- U.S., Canada, Europe -- as the enduring post-WWII alignment has been called, is only successful because all nations have a long-term survival incentive to cooperate with each other, based on their common-enough values and the accepted dynamic of U.S.' larger status. Any country who wants to compete with U.S.' status and has different non-cooperative values is never likely to make a long-term ally.

I know there are Russia-stans who have an alien-to-me notion of Putin as a benevolent victim of Western aggression who would love to nestle into an accepting U.S. bosom (once it's purged of its Euro-centric WEF neoliberals), but that seems like a fantasy that is bound to end like the Hitler-Stalin pact.

I think that Russia could have actually been a partner against China. But I think that was fumbled by various US presidents, and probably finally and irrevocably by Obama.

I think the fear is starting to take root in Europe that the US would effectively switch sides in return for Russia granting it mineral rights in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. This heel turn seems unlikely, but things are murky enough that it is worrying people.

I think the perception of a turn towards Russia rests almost entirely on Trump being a Putin simp. While this sort of thing might be damaging to long-term US relations with allies (hard to count on a senior partner that elects a mad king at regular intervals), it's not a stable relationship in that it hinges almost entirely on Trump's personal affinity. While there are elements of the American fasc post-liberal populist right who view Russia as an ally against liberalism, they generally lack popular credibility (and keep getting caught taking money from Russia). Any alignment between the US and Russia dies with Trump, and even while Trump is in office he'll be fighting his own party.

The primary effect (and in my more paranoid moments, the goal) will be to shred the US' network of alliances.

Maybe the average American now thinks not only "Europe should contribute more to solve their own defence problems", but furthermore, "Europe should get its nose out of international affairs and attempt to help only when it's spoken to. We, Russia and China are in charge now."

Per above, I think this loosely summarizes the view inside the Trump administration. However, most Americans don't think about foreign policy that much or that deeply. A lot of Americans love flashy, muscular actions, but it's not tied to a coherent view of foreign policy. Kicking ass and taking names good, getting sneered at by the French bad. Your average American probably thinks the Europeans should shut up, but more in a "pull your weight or stop complaining" sense than a "know your place" attitude.

Russia is not a great power. They have an economy rivaling that of Italy and an aging sick population. As of latest reports Europe gets 18% of their natural gas from Russia, so Russia has that hold over some of them.

Nah, they have the fourth largest economy in PPP terms, which is the only comparison that really matters for most international comparisons.

It's been almost 80 years. Time for the occupation armies to go home.

You lot want to fight China for world domination.

Every single army soldier in Europe needs to be retrained for air and naval duties and sent to the Pacific if you want to have more than a snowball's chance in hell.

Why is everyone so obsessed with military spending, especially as a % of GDP?

We constantly hear complaints that Europe isn't meeting its 2% defence spending targets. Or Trump wants them to reach 5%.

Defence spending is a basically meaningless number that has only a very tenuous relationship with capabilities, which actually matter. The Taliban did not outspend America in Afghanistan. North Korea could thrash Australia (our defence budget approaches 60-70% of North Korean GDP according to those who invent these numbers) in a war. They have ICBMs and H-bombs, we could barely reach them and couldn't do any damage. Russia has a smaller economy than Italy according to the GDP calculators. But in terms of capabilities...

What is it that Europe needs that they don't have? Ammunition? Then build ammunition factories. Shell factories should be cheap, this is WW2-era technology. Drones? Then build drone factories. Defence spending seems to usually translate into ludicrously expensive purchases of equipment from the United States, which is why the Americans want it constantly raised.

In reality Europe doesn't need any additional militarization. The European half of NATO has about 2 million troops, a population of about 600 million. If Russia is struggling to burn through Ukraine's male fighting age population, how are they supposed to cut down 20x more? How is Russia supposed to man a frontline from Turkey to Finland? How is Russia supposed to contest huge navies with submarines and aircraft carriers? How is Russia supposed to deal with large and powerful air forces, Eurofighters and F-35s? Why would Russia attack such a gigantic, powerful, nuclear-armed alliance?

The European half of NATO alone has the power to smash Russia's conventional forces and force them to fall back on nuclear weapons, where they Russia has a considerable superiority. No additional militarization is needed. There's plenty of room for defence cuts, unless Europe plans on helping the US fight China, nuclear war with Russia or further wrecking in the Middle East.

Talk of defence spending should be wound down and replaced by talk of what specific capabilities are needed to achieve specific objectives. Is it necessary to build fortifications in Lithuania? Do airbases need to be hardened against drones? Anything but 'lets throw billions of dollars in the general direction of these schlerotic military bureaucracies that consistently fail to deliver success'.

Why is everyone so obsessed with military spending, especially as a % of GDP?

This is a joke, right?

Dollars spent isn't the only determinant of a nation's fighting power, but it's the ground-truth for a lot of important factors. How do you think the Allies won WW2? It was by having more tanks + planes + ships (and also oil).

The problem with Europe's defending against Russia is that the countries don't really want to raise defense spending at all, which limits their political appetite for defending their neighbors. Russia wouldn't need to invade the entirety of Europe all at once, they'd just salami-slice e.g. the Baltics and hope other European countries don't get their act together to oppose them. Each European country basically treats all the other countries to their east as buffer states.

Spending is irrelevant. The Allies won WW2 because of capabilities, not expenditure. Europe already spends a lot more than Russia does, yet this spending isn't translating into Europe performing well. The UK and Germany alone spent more in 2023, according to the dollar figures. But they're not stronger than Russia by themselves.

The problem is not 'Europe is not spending enough', which implies that Russia is somehow outspending Europe. They are not. European NATO is spending about $400 billion a year, which is far more than enough to defend themselves. It makes zero sense that $400 billion is insufficient to defend against a foe spending about $100 billion in wartime. It makes zero sense that an alliance of 600 million could be threatened by 140 million.

The problem is that European spending is being allocated wastefully and that European strategy is muddled. Raising defence spending won't fix anything, what's needed is a plan to achieve specific capabilities and integrate them into a broader political strategy.

Adjust those spending figures to PPP and they become quite a bit closer. Europe is spending lots of nominal dollars (or Euros), but those dollars don't go nearly as far in Europe as they would in Russia.

The problem is that European spending is being allocated wastefully and that European strategy is muddled. Raising defence spending won't fix anything, what's needed is a plan to achieve specific capabilities and integrate them into a broader political strategy.

This is certainly another piece of the puzzle. If we could wave a magic wand and make Europe a single country like the USA, then a lot of these issues would be fixed. Reducing duplication and having a clear strategy would be great force-multipliers, but in absence of someone having that magic wand, increasing spending is a much more plausible solution in the short and medium term.

In reality Europe doesn't need any additional militarization. The European half of NATO has about 2 million troops, a population of about 600 million.

So Russia has around as nearly as many or more troops (if you count reservists) despite having less than a third of the population?

If Russia is struggling to burn through Ukraine's male fighting age population, how are they supposed to cut down 20x more? How is Russia supposed to man a frontline from Turkey to Finland? How is Russia supposed to contest huge navies with submarines and aircraft carriers? How is Russia supposed to deal with large and powerful air forces, Eurofighters and F-35s?

Have you read about the readiness problems that European countries, in particular Germany, are experiencing? (Also, note that in reality Russia's air force, which is not its strong suit, is larger than the German air force even if we are counting only modern Russian aircraft like the Su-30, Su-35, Su-34, Su-57 and counting German F-35s which haven't been delivered yet. The Russians also have strategic bombers, which no European military possesses. Removing American air power from the picture considerably curtails European capabilities.)

Anyway, I think it's very very clear from Ukraine that Europe needs more artillery production and more mine clearing capabilities. IMHO, while I haven't done the napkin math, the odds of Europe beating Russia on its own are actually not as high as you'd like if they can't sustain artillery production or clear minefields, including minefields that can be laid behind your own lines via rocket.

Why would Russia attack such a gigantic, powerful, nuclear-armed alliance?

Yeah they prolly won't. But if the US is sending all its effort to the Pacific, the alliance is much less gigantic, much less powerful, much less nuclear-armed.

Talk of defence spending should be wound down and replaced by talk of what specific capabilities are needed to achieve specific objectives.

I tend to agree with this, tbqh. From my armchair: in specific capabilities, Europe needs to actually have the capacity to produce millions of artillery shells per year, to clear tens of thousands of mines at a minimum, and they need lots of anti-drone capabilities that actually work, they probably need lots of drones/loitering munitions. I don't see any real evidence of this. (They need the artillery shells because artillery is the prime killer on the battlefield and being at a fire disadvantage means they will lose like the Ukrainians are losing; they need the ability to clear thousands of mines because the Russians have millions of mines and if they don't have robust mine clearing capabilities they will not be able to reclaim lost territory; they need anti-drone capabilities to defend their ability to meaningfully maneuver and drones to prevent Russian maneuver formations.)

I am also skeptical about their ability to sustain a prolonged air-to-ground air campaign due to a lack of munitions and inability to defeat Russian counter-PGM surface-to-air missiles, which can target anti-radiation missiles like the HARM. I am likewise skeptical about their ability to defeat Russian cruise and ballistic missiles due to a lack of surface-to-air missiles – e.g. Germany has only 7 Patriot batteries as per Wikipedia – which, if you assume 4 launchers with 8 missiles per, means they can optimistically defend against about 200 missiles before running dry and needing to be reloaded; Russia has supposedly launched mass attacks consisting of about 300 missiles and drones at one time against Ukraine. (They need to be able to defeat Russian SAMS to use aircraft offensively at all, and in particular the Eurofighter, which is not stealthy – which as an aside I think is still largely using a mechanically scanned array, and should for that reason thought of as inferior to modern Flanker variants. They need air-to-ground munitions to make multirole aircraft relevant, they need to be able to defeat Russian cruise missile raids to protect air bases, electrical generation, command posts, etc. I think the reason they need all of this is fairly clear.)

If we're positing a US pull-out of NATO, they need tactical nuclear weapons as well. (They need this because it's unlikely that France or England will be happy about using their strategic arsenal to retaliate if the Russians use a few low-yield tactical nuclear weapons on air bases, ships, entrenched troops, etc.)

Look, I think that Russia is afraid of NATO for a reason, and I don't think it's good to exaggerate their capabilities or overlook their weaknesses. But on the other hand, I don't think now is a time for NATO triumphalism for a reason. Here's the truth about the Russian military right now:

  • They are competing successfully with the entirety of NATO + Ukraine in military industry
  • They are successfully defeating the largest European land force despite significant assistance from NATO states (and even non-NATO states)
  • They are the most combat-experienced force in the world (outside of Ukraine)
  • Their military is roughly on par with Europe's in size
  • They have successfully adapted to numerous modern front-line Western systems, including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, aircraft, stealthy air-launched cruise missiles, ground launched ballistic missiles, loitering munitions, anti-tank weapons, anti-radiation missiles, all while fighting handicapped under a NATO ISR umbrella that would be challenged in the event of an actual war with NATO.
  • They possess a decisive advantage in tactical and strategic nuclear weapons over Europe

I think Europe should on paper be able to deter Russia successfully. But when it comes to the US out of NATO, or US tied up in the Pacific, I think there's a reason that Europeans are nervous. I do not believe they are ready to defend themselves alone against Russia if Russia wins in Ukraine. This does not imply that Russia has the appetite to attack even an EU-only NATO, or that Russia would defeat the EU. It just means that Europe's security situation, if the US substantially leaves NATO, becomes substantially more precarious because they will be roughly at parity* with Russia instead of having overmatch.

*just going off of troop numbers here, I'm sure I could do some napkin math to see how that stacks up in equipment.

Eurofighter

Damn, I did not realise they were only now adding AESA radars on those things, I thought they were half decent! Were they cribbing notes from Indian military procurement? Or did the Indians learn how to design aircraft from Europe and apply those lessons on the Tejas? The Rafales at least have AESA.

Yes tactical nukes are one field where I think there's a real case for further development. Poland's conventional forces won't be much good if Russia starts vaporizing them and demanding unconditional surrender, trusting that France and Britain won't risk their own infrastructure.

But it seems unlikely that either party would take such risks. Does Russia really want to subjugate some extremely unruly and recently irradiated Poles? Why would they so greatly desire to conquer the tiny Baltic states? There are potential strategic gains but huge risks.

And Europe's population is so high that they can afford to buy time with hundreds of thousands, millions of lives in low tech, defensive trench warfare. They might have readiness problems, they might have shortages of this and that. But they're so big that they have the time and space to fix this stuff and fight a long war. Russia does not have the blitzkrieg capabilities to reach the European industrial core before they can militarize. Bombing Ukraine is one thing but Russian PGM production surely isn't sufficient to bomb out the combined military industry of Europe.

I thought they were half decent!

Well, they can carry the Meteor, which is something. There's a possibility radar will be if not obsolete then somewhat more limited in utility in World War III than it was in prior wars, so perhaps it won't be as much of a handicap as it seems.

But yes, the fact that they are apparently still running around with mechanically scanned arrays does not inspire me with confidence in Europe's military readiness.

Yes tactical nukes are one field where I think there's a real case for further development. Poland's conventional forces won't be much good if Russia starts vaporizing them and demanding unconditional surrender, trusting that France and Britain won't risk their own infrastructure.

Bingo.

But it seems unlikely that either party would take such risks. Does Russia really want to subjugate some extremely unruly and recently irradiated Poles? Why would they so greatly desire to conquer the tiny Baltic states? There are potential strategic gains but huge risks.

Well it's interesting, I had the chance to speak to a former KGB officer about Russia's geopolitical situation once. (This would have been about a decade ago.) He told me that due to USSR central planning - which distributed various parts of Soviet industry to various SSRs, essentially specializing specific regions - Russia wanted to essentially reintegrate its old economy that was cleft from it by the fall of the USSR. Now, I don't think this necessarily needs to involve force - you'll notice that Russia did not start coercive measures against Ukraine [which is in any event more important in Russian consciousness than Latvia or Poland] until Ukraine started attempting to disentangle itself economically from Russia. Even after 2014, the Ukrainian arms industry continued to deliver arms to the Russian military as Soviet central planners had intended.

And of course there's always the intense Russian desire to put more space between Moscow and potential hostiles.

Now, I don't think Poland or Latvia are nearly as emotionally central or economically important to Russia as Ukraine is. It's also been a couple of decades and Russia has been able to develop their own internal industry. I tend to agree that going after Poland or even Latvia is unlikely while they have NATO protection. But on the other hand, I was a little surprised (although not shocked) when they went into Ukraine.

And Europe's population is so high that they can afford to buy time with hundreds of thousands, millions of lives in low tech, defensive trench warfare. They might have readiness problems, they might have shortages of this and that. But they're so big that they have the time and space to fix this stuff and fight a long war. Russia does not have the blitzkrieg capabilities to reach the European industrial core before they can militarize.

I think the concerns most people have are a bit more limited than "reaching the European industrial core," it's things like carving a land bridge to Kaliningrad and NATO being unwilling or unable to fix the problem after the blitzkrieg (which wouldn't need to drive more than 200 miles or so through the weakest NATO members).

Bombing Ukraine is one thing but Russian PGM production surely isn't sufficient to bomb out the combined military industry of Europe.

On a quick Google, Russia launched more than 10,000 missiles between 2022 and 2024. Wikipedia says the Shahed Geran-2 has a possible maximum 1,600 mile range which, if true, means Russia could hit targets in France even without staging from Belarus. A more conservative estimate of 600 miles merely threatens Poland. Russia looks to be able to make at least 6,000 a year, plus 10,000 decoy drones to screen them. And the Geran is bottom-shelf technology, cheap built stuff for mass attacks. For a more top-end option, consider the Kh-101 cruise missile (range of 2000 miles or so) and Russia is supposed to be able to make about 100 per month on wartime footing.

So in other words, if you assume Russia gets two years of respite at current production levels they could probably have a theoretical opening day salvo of 12,000 Gerans, 20,000 decoy attack drones, and maybe 2,500 "conventional" cruise missile, of just those two types alone.

Obviously Russia may not continue wartime production after Ukraine winds down. However on the other hand their production might be so high during the war, should it continue, that even winding it down to nominal peacetime levels afterwards leaves them with stockpiles of thousands.

Anyway I do not believe that all of NATO could intercept nearly 35,000 targets even if they were fired piecemeal. On the other hand, 10,000 missiles isn't necessarily as devastating as it sounds when split across a large enough target set (as Ukraine shows - although I believe Ukraine has access to plenty of old Soviet hardened industrial sites and I am not sure if Germany is quite so hardened). I doubt even a 10,000 missile salvo can totally destroy all relevant European military industry, but I confess I don't have a good idea of how large a target set that would be. But definitely I can imagine a force like that being capable of a series of week-one salvos on the order of "kill thousands of sleeping troops in garrison" or "delete the Polish air force and navy in port" or "destroy dozens of major ammo depots and vehicle servicing facilities."

Poland's conventional forces won't be much good if Russia starts vaporizing them and demanding unconditional surrender, trusting that France and Britain won't risk their own infrastructure.

I think that’s a scenario that Europe needs to think about hard given that a lot of old Soviet war plans (like Seven Days to the Rhine) explicitly call for massive nuclear strikes on peripheral NATO countries while avoiding nuclear strikes on Britain and France to give them an out. As for your irritated Polish clay point, there are pretty good strategic reasons to seize the Baltic States and Poland, that’s what gets them the Sulwaki Gap choke point, probably Russia’s most logical post-GDR defensive barrier against NATO.

Regarding your last point, most Western European countries might have serious internal stability problems calling up huge conscript armies, given the religious and ethnic demographic makeup of the military aged males they would be arming.

But where is the logic in launching such an ambitious invasion?

Why would you invade NATO so you can defend against NATO from mildly more advantageous geography?

Because they are in demographic decline and they’re thinking about how they are going to defend their border 40 years from now.

Regarding your last point, most Western European countries might have serious internal stability problems calling up huge conscript armies, given the religious and ethnic demographic makeup of the military aged males they would be arming.

Conscripting the fighting aged males from a poorly assimilated minority and throwing them into the meatgrinder is a solution to a problem, not a cause of social instability per se.

Until they decide they would rather not get frog-marched off to die in a trench in Ukraine and decide that Tiocfaidh ár lá might in fact refer to today.

I feel like NATO expansion was a complete own-goal. What does the United States get out of any NATO member state that joined after 1990? Are we really expecting the Polish winged hussars to open a second front on the Mongolian Steppes in response to a Chinese attack on the US? These states are a massive liability for no discernible benefit. I would support kicking Eastern Europe out of NATO. If Western Europe doesn’t agree to that, then they can start their own alliance with blackjack and hookers.

NATO expansion to the east was a great move in hindsight.

Russia was always going to be hostile to any nation that tried to project power east of Berlin, so the only options were to either kick Russia while it was down or stand by and let it reassemble the borders of the USSR, then fight it on much more equal terms.

Why did you link to a 17-min long video from a YT channel of rather dubious inclinations?

It's a good primer on why Russia is so obsessed with pushing as far west as possible, and therefore why friendly relations are unlikely with any nations holding power in Eastern Europe.

so the only options were to either kick Russia while it was down or stand by and let it reassemble the borders of the USSR

Well no, there are other options: the US could have tried to integrate Russia into NATO, or simply not tried to project power past Berlin. The former seems very hard to get but has incredible payoff, and I am sorry it didn't seem to get much serious consideration from the West (perhaps there were good reasons it was a nonstarter – but I can't help thinking that if we can put up with having Turkey in NATO Russia could surely have been shoehorned in somehow.)

There were attempts to build better relations between Russia and the West during the 90s, then briefly during Obama's first term. They never came to much because Russia never gave up the dream of dominating Eastern Europe.

Refusing to grant NATO entry to countries east of Berlin would have just made them easy targets when Russia regained its strength. The Baltics would almost certainly have been either invaded, or pressured into becoming defacto Russian client states by this point.

then briefly during Obama's first term

Also under Bush. The US has repeatedly attempted a rapprochement with Russia but from what I can tell continues to refuse to make vital concessions to them. Which might be good! But it's not surprising rapprochement fails.

The Baltics would almost certainly have been either invaded, or pressured into becoming defacto Russian client states by this point.

From an American realpolitik perspective it would be infinitely better to have a good relationship with Russia and have Eastern Europe as Russian client states than it is to have Russia as an enemy and be rolling the dice on Eastern European states. However, obviously, some of this is with the benefit of hindsight and also presupposes a stable US-Russia alliance which frankly I think would be a very delicate thing, perhaps an impossible one (Russia has no friends only interests etc. etc.) I don't think it's fair to tell Bill Clinton he goofed up by not anticipating that we would need to pivot to the Pacific badly in 20 years. Obama, however...

An alliance with Russia would be basically impossible if they were gobbling up democratic European states, and even if the US ignored what they were doing I don't see why they wouldn't just become hostile to the US again once they reassembled the borders of the USSR. Putin's Russia is stilly highly ideologically opposed to the US just like the USSR was, but instead of Communism it has negativity towards democracy and hallucinating that the CIA has a 100% effective anti-Russian brainwashing technique in the form of "color revolutions".

Even just having Poland on the US's side is a great deal because they're a fantastic foil for tinpot dictators. It's not inaccurate to think that Ukrainians looked at how Poland was doing, and how Belarus was doing, and said "I think I'll take some of the former, thanks".

An alliance with Russia would be basically impossible

And isn't needed, for what I am talking about. If the United States wants to contain China, it needs to prevent alliance formation; forming its own alliances is one way of doing this, but not the only way. China and Russia are not natural allies, but their mutual dislike of the United States pushed them closer together now than they were for much (perhaps all) of the Cold War, when they were ostensibly ideologically aligned.

Putin's Russia is stilly highly ideologically opposed to the US just like the USSR was, but instead of Communism it has negativity towards democracy

I don't think this is true. Russia and democratic countries like India, Israel, France, Germany, South Korea all have or have had recently cordial relations, including mutually beneficial trade deals, sometimes for sensitive items such as military equipment. Shoot, after the end of the Cold War, Yakovlev assisted Lockheed Martin with VTOL technology for the F-35B.

In fact, let's talk about Israel. Israel has refused to send military aid to Ukraine or sanction Russia, not because they aren't a US ally (they ostensibly are) or because they are a Russian ally (they aren't) but because they want to maintain good relations with Russia and think they have a lot to lose by angering them. If the United States wants to compete with China, it is in its best interest for Russia to have a similar relationship with it - not necessarily one that is hostile towards China, but one that is not willing to participate in broader coordinated action against the United States. However, I think the ship has sailed on that, but it hadn't probably as late as the Obama administration.

And I don't think that's an insane world. Imagine a simple counterfactual where the US had listened to diplomats like Kennan in the 1990s, drawn a hard line at NATO expansion further east (at a minimum, ruling out Georgia, Finland and Ukraine) and instead promoted trade and investment both between itself and NATO and others (such as Germany) while generally keeping its hands off of former SSRs, perhaps telling Russia that NATO's ranks remaining closed its contingent on Eastern Europe remaining peaceful. Fast forward to the Sino-American War of 2027, and now Russia, instead of having already been hit by every sanction imaginable (and surviving), does brisk trade with the West, still uses SWIFT, has some degree of economic and geopolitical integration with most former SSRs, and does not view the West as a threat. Going to Russia under such a situation and saying "hey just sit this one out, we know you are friends with China, but don't give them your satellite imagery or any new arms deals please and thank you" probably wouldn't be a heavy lift! (From what I understand, Putin, who spent some of his formative years in Germany, is probably pro-Western moreso than pro-Asian in terms of his instinctive biases.)

Now, you can argue it wouldn't be worth Poland getting the Belarus treatment or whatever, sure, but the United States losing a war with China is potentially a Very Big Deal, probably much worse than Ukraine losing the war to Russia, and if that's your #1 priority you're going to want as many ducks in a row as you can get. From where I sit, it really looks like the US tried to have its cake and eat it too and as someone who lives here I am more than a bit concerned that we bit off more than we could chew.

hallucinating that the CIA has a 100% effective anti-Russian brainwashing technique in the form of "color revolutions".

Russia obviously knows this is not true or Putin would have been color revolutioned by now. They are concerned both about color revolutions, however, as well as military threats from NATO.

Even just having Poland on the US's side is a great deal because they're a fantastic foil for tinpot dictators.

Am I missing something here? I don't typically think of Poland as being a particularly good foil for tinpot dictators. More like a magnet (no offense to the longsuffering Poles).

It's not inaccurate to think that Ukrainians looked at how Poland was doing, and how Belarus was doing, and said "I think I'll take some of the former, thanks".

Sure. I mean, I don't blame countries for wanting their own sovereignty. But this ultimately means that when, say, Iran tries to get nuclear weapons I'm like "well I can't blame them" and when Israel tries to stop them - yeah, can't really blame them either.

In realpolitik terms, there was no realistic scenario where better relations with Russia would make much of a difference in a US-China conflict. Such a war would be dominated by sea + air power, which Russia is anemic in. Russia would be helpful in terms of sending raw materials to China, so having them embargo China during a conflict would indeed be useful for the US, but there was never a realistic chance for US-Russia relations to be good enough to where Russia would consider that rather than simply profiting and staying neutral while continuing to trade. Even if Russia joins China relatively explicitly, how much of a difference would that make? It might help China with marginal things like initial missile stockpiles and intelligence gathering. Those aren't nothing, but they'd be highly unlikely to turn the tables. And they'd be well worth the trouble if it meant the US had a stronger European contingent of allies to call on, even if they're mostly limited to just economic sanctions against China.

or simply not tried to project power past Berlin

Politically the hardest part about it is that at least Poland and the Baltic states were always going to apply for NATO membership at one point or another. So the US government either has to engage in political 4D chess to prevent that from even happening or reject such requests publicly, which then obviously opens one up to denunciations from the domestic opposition.

if we can put up with having Turkey in NATO

And also Greece, which was a military dictatorship for a period and generally a basket case.

Politically the hardest part about it is that at least Poland and the Baltic states were always going to apply for NATO membership at one point or another. So the US government either has to engage in political 4D chess to prevent that from even happening or reject such requests publicly, which then obviously opens one up to denunciations from the domestic opposition.

Yeahhhh but from a purely realpolitik perspective Poland and the Baltic states are zip compared to getting Russia on your side. I think the real problem is if it's a two-sheriffs one-town situation, and likely it would have been. Sad!

And also Greece

See, if we could get GREECE AND TURKEY into the SAME military alliance we could get Poland and Russia in one. Surely the CIA has a magic mind-control ray that could make that work, or maybe USAID could gainfully employ the entire intelligentsia of Eurasia on the condition that they meme NATO-CSTO into being.

See, if we could get GREECE AND TURKEY into the SAME military alliance we could get Poland and Russia in one.

That's actually a rather good point I never thought about before.

Where do we put the cost of this catastrophic war and entirely foreseeable loss in Ukraine, a loss so bad it's possible it could end the alliance altogether? Do we put it in the "it's a good idea to extend NATO eastward" argument or somewhere else?

no one is getting into nuclear Armageddon to defend Eastern Europe (except maybe the British who have been nuts for 120 years) which makes all of this a giant bluff which was eventually called

the Americans were never going to be used as mercenaries (who pay Europe for the privilege) against the Russians if push came to shove

NATO's decline is almost entirely unrelated to Ukraine, and if anything Ukraine helped to rally + expand NATO. It got Sweden and Finland to join, remember?

NATO's decline, or really America's waning interest, is mostly caused by a combination of China's rise and negative partisanship where modern US conservatives hate Ukraine mostly just because US liberals like it.

Okay, so the cost of the Ukraine War can be attributed to the "it's a good idea to extend NATO eastward" argument?

Expanding NATO for what? No one is going to face nuclear Armageddon to defend Joensuu, Finland. Adding Sweden and Finland to NATO doesn't change anything except maybe a few pins on the "things to obliterate with Nuclear Weapons" map for the Russians in case of Armageddon.

NATO has emptied its treasuries and armories to lose the Ukraine War. This line of argument may have had more support in 2022 when the TURBO AMERICA meme was getting passed around, but it's 2025 where Russia is obviously winning the war and NATO has emptied their armories. NATO is weaker now, even with the added military powerhouses of Sweden and Finland than they were in Feb 2022. Instead of a stronger NATO, you get a deindustrializing Europe in huge debt, empty armories, and paper militaries.

NATO is a jobs program for unimpressive American and Euro midwits "elites" to give them excuses to go to expensive parties on the public dole; it's not a serious military alliance and hasn't been for decades.

NATO's decline, or really America's waning interest

is NATO stronger than ever or is NATO in decline? you don't get to have both at the same time and if you're arguing it was strong before the Ukraine loss and is declining now when the loss is all but accomplished you're making my point for me

(edit: saying NATO is in decline "only" because the US has lost interest in Europe because of an ascendant China is an argument against the idea that eastward expansion was a good idea; if the pivot to Asia was going to happen, it is dumb to provoke a war in Europe and blow a bunch of money and weapons there)

where modern US conservatives hate Ukraine mostly just because US liberals like it

completely wrong to the point it makes me question if you interact with american conservatives

american conservatives don't "hate" Ukraine and NATO because of liberals, they want US wealth to be focused on the US

NATO was stronger because of the Ukraine war, but now its weaker because Trump is trashing both the organization and US allies. Simple.

A larger NATO spreads the cost of defense over more countries. It also gives the US the diplomatic leverage to do stuff like enact the chips ban on China, for which critical machine tools were manufactured only in Europe.

Sending weapons to Ukraine has give the US some ability to rebuild its shattered defense-industrial base, trading out old stock leftover from the Cold War for more modern kit. The notion that the US has "emptied its armory" is egregiously wrong. The US apparently never had the political will to part with enough stuff for Ukraine to get a decisive advantage. The notion that the US doesn't have any tanks or planes or ships because they were all sent to Ukraine is just goofy.

On the money aspect, the US has sent about $110 billion to Ukraine over 3 years, although even that number is probably too high since much of the value "lost" was due for disposal anyways and is being replaced by more modern kit as I said above. Even taking the $110 billion number at face value, it's still tiny in comparison to America's other priorities. It's like a week's worth of spending on SS + Medicare, the two largest welfare programs for old people. The Afghan war wasted $2,300 billion on a war that was genuinely unwinnable (and that Trump was more than happy to can-kick on for the 4 years of his first term) since we were never going to be up for the ethnic cleansings required to bring long-term stability.

american conservatives don't "hate" Ukraine and NATO because of liberals, they want US wealth to be focused on the US

This makes me wonder if you genuinely interact with American conservatives. Maybe some small fraction are genuinely principled, hardcore isolationists, but I highly doubt that's the genuine plurality position. As always, Catturd serves as a good barometer of the modern US conservative movement. He uses the monetary cost as an argument, sure, but he goes much further in seeming to genuinely hate Zelensky. There's also this weird quirk where the monetary cost only matters in relation to Ukraine, but it mattered a lot less when it came to getting out of Afghanistan early, or for aid to Israel, etc.

You think NATO is stronger in January 2025 than it was in January 2020? For any comparison from before the war or the start of the war to at any point after summer of 2023, I honestly don't think this is a defensible position at all.

it's simply patently ridiculous to characterize "conservatives," the major part of which has been talking about getting out of entangling alliances requiring hundreds of military bases all over the world and the continuing forever wars for at least 15 years as "you just hate the libs"

we're just too far apart on what reality looks like to really have a productive discussion without expending a lot of effort hashing out the factual disagreements we have and, to be frank, I don't think you acknowledging what I view as reality would change your ideological opinions anyway

Certainly NATO was stronger before Trump's election in 2024 than it was in 2020. That's really not a very high bar since Trump was trashing NATO in his first term too. The fact you can't even begin to see how this could be possible is indicative that you're either using some weird scorecard in terms of "stronger", or something else similarly strange is going on. I don't think I've seen any serious piece of analysis claim NATO got weaker from Trump --> Biden.

Further, if you don't think negative partisanship is the absolute most critical factor driving basically every voter in the US for the past decade, you're quite wrong. This applies to both sides for what it's worth. There are a few principled ideologues out there, but the id of both sides' voterbase looks a lot closer to Catturd's twitter feed than it does to a coherent list of policy positions.

You're right that it seems we're probably too far apart to have a productive discussion.

Expanding NATO for what? No one is going to face nuclear Armageddon to defend Joensuu, Finland.

Come on now, I no longer hate my old hometown that much...

Would US be facing nuclear Armageddon to defend Alaska?

I’d file it under “nice work, if you can get it”. If they had gotten Ukraine into NATO as a fait-accompli, I think it would have been a good move, and would leave the alliance in a pretty rock solid strategic position over the years. But the State Department badly misjudged Russia’s temperament and now they’re throwing money down a hole and having to contemplate a war that they are under-armed to fight.

This war was great for NATO no matter what. Whether Trump destroys NATO himself is a different matter that's more related to domestic negative partisanship. The war has:

  1. Added Finland and Sweden to the alliance.
  2. Shown the world Russia's true colors, that it was always interested in dominating Eastern Europe.
  3. Driven a likely permanent cultural wedge between Russia and Ukraine, regardless of the ultimate outcome.
  4. Given the West a chance to rebuild their shattered defense-industrial base for likely future conflicts.
  5. Gave the opportunity for NATO to be rallied around the US (at least when Biden was president), and direct more ire towards China.

etc.

I don't think State badly misjudged Russia's temperament, at least not for lack of intel and understanding. You can read Bill Burn's diplomatic cables where he talks about Ukraine being an absolute red line for all Russians, even liberal ones.

It really doesn’t feel like they anticipated or were preparing for a war though. It took them four months of panicking and hand-wringing before the first substantial aid packages started to arrive.

I suspect this might be because they expected Russia to roll Ukraine in 72 hours. But I'm open to State just not knowing what they really should know by virtue of their job.

I don't know which liberal Russians Bill Burn polled, the ones I've heard from were unanimous on "Russia gotta stay the fuck out of Donbass with their 'polite green men'".

I think the ones Bill Burns polled were the ones near positions of power. Have you heard of a guy named Alexei Nalvany? Not that he ever had a particularly realistic shot at power, but he was the Western-beloved liberal opposition to Putin...and in 2014 after Russia seized Crimea he said "Is Crimea some sort of sausage sandwich to be passed back and forth?" and told Ukrainians to get real, they weren't getting Crimea back. (FWIW, I believe he recanted in 2023 from prison, but at that point I think he had probably realized that he did not need to fear electoral repercussions.)

What do you think would have happened if Ukraine had been accepted into NATO overnight on February 22, 2022?

Do you think Russia wouldn't have invaded? If you think the reason it wouldn't have worked is because it's too close to the invasion, when do you think it would have worked? 2014? 2017?

No one is going to get into nuclear Armageddon to defend Eastern Europe except maybe the British whose foreign policy establishment has been nuts for over a century and who burned their empire and wealth to the ground in order to perpetuate their nuttery.

What has happened over the last few years is well-beyond any requirement of Article 5. Despite the constant desperate framing by neocons and other anti-Russian warhawk ethnics who have weaseled their way into the machinations of the US and NATO foreign policy establishment, it does not require the other parties to declare or go to war.

Whether NATO snuck in a brigade in 2014 or 2022 makes no difference. At some point, that bluff is going to be called.

If you’re unfamiliar with the idiom, “nice work if you can get it” carries with it the sly implication that said work would be nigh-impossible or at least very difficult to get.

I’m on record here several times saying that I think it was a stupid plan because of its high likelihood of backfiring. I think if they were going to try to pull it off, it would have best to do it sometime back when Alanis Morrisette and overly baggy jeans were still popular.

Oh, fair enough!

No one was going to do that during that time period. If you had told the people of the time that in 25 years they were going to be fighting over the Oskil River with Russia, I think they would have assumed nuclear war had already happened. It took the silliness of 9/11 and the initial success of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars to make NATO think this was something which could happen.

I would support kicking Eastern Europe out of NATO

So would I, better no guarantees than false guarantees. False guarantees lead to complacency and Ukraine scenario for us.

George F. Kennan was rather prophetic about this in his dying years (I bolded the most important parts):

'I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''

''What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,'' added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ''X,'' defined America's cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ''I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.''

The benefit is fewer wars and more stability, which helps everybody.

Plus more military bases I guess. Better to have one somewhere than to need one somewhere and not have one.

Better to have one somewhere than to need one somewhere and not have one.

I cannot disagree more. Ever look at the US national debt?

Fewer wars?

Removing Ukraine from status of a buffer state and into US ally sure was peaceful!

What is your argument in plain English?

I know I wasn't the one you asked, and I'm also fairly certain that you comprehend what his(?) argument actually is, but I'll chime in.

We have ample evidence at this point to conclude that eastward NATO expansion was going to lead to more wars and less stability as opposed to not expanding NATO eastwards in exchange for a renegotiated peaceful coexistence with the newly reformed Russian state.

This assumes Russia wouldn't have just invaded those countries anyways, which was almost guaranteed to happen. Russia right now is like Germany after WW1: a revanchist power that's seething in resentment. It hasn't had its face smashed against the concrete like WW2 Germany or Japan did in a way that would convince the populace that war wasn't the answer. The only options were to actually do the smashing, which would be very problematic given its nuclear stockpiles, or to contain it. For the containment strategy, abandoning Eastern Europe would have just drawn the line in a less advantageous position.

That may be the situation now, but it wasn't in 1991. Also, one cannot 'abandon' something one never had, or never promised to claim and defend in the first place.

There was little chance reproachment would have ever worked. Russia has always really, really wanted to dominate Eastern Europe.

I'm not too sure what the evidence is for this. Surely, for all we know, less NATO expansion would lead to more invasions, because Russia would not have to worry about making an enemy of other treaty bound countries.

Has Russia attacked any of its neighbors that were not considered for NATO expansion?

ETA: I think you could maybe make this case for Moldova, although Russian action there seems very different than in Ukraine. There might be other cases that I am missing. But to be clear I don't think I buy either the narrative that Russia does everything out of fear of NATO or that NATO expansion has no connection to Russian actions.

We have, in fact, 4 clear examples from recent history of Russia not attacking her neighbor even when it goes down the obvious years-long path towards NATO expansion, namely Poland and the 3 Baltic states. All in all, yes, both of those narratives are wrong.

More comments

The European CFR recently conducted polling on US/EU relations. Warm relationships have lowered, shifting towards a necessary relationship. The combined support for necessary and aligned relationships is still ~75%. So thats pragmatic and strong. Other polling shows about a 60% favorable rating of the US by Europeans.

I couldn't find American views of Europe. My guess it leans favorable, but there is an attitude (especially in the administration) that the US is getting screwed. (I believe Trump once quipped that "the EU was created to screw the US"). I think roughly half of Americans want to put American unambiguously "first", but will also accept pragmatism.

https://ecfr.eu/publication/transatlantic-twilight-european-public-opinion-and-the-long-shadow-of-trump/

I think it may help to distinguish between Europe and the EU in assessing American feelings. Europe seems generally snobbish with weird customs, and most likely to produce our enemies in world wars; they also aren't pulling their end of the bargain in many agreements. Eastern Europe looks like various puppet states. The EU over regulates and views reducing their current tariffs to match ours as a "concession," and are problematic on that front. They also can't control their borders and are kind of hypocritical about their definition of "democracy."

Russia is still the big bad thing that goes bump in the night, and always will be. Protests will always be considered Russia funded. The WW2 alliances were weird ones in a historical context. I can't see Americans turning towards Russia, except to the extent that Russia provides leverage against the Europeans taking Americans for granted.

Attempting to summarize the ideas of red tribe normies around me

-Putin is not popular. Russophiles are acknowledged to exist but seen in the same way hardcore conspiracy theorists in, say, 2010 would be. That being said, ‘Russia is our enemy but Ukraine is not our friend’ is a good summary of the popular consciousness.

-Most people are aware that EG Poland and Greece are much poorer than the US per capita but believe that France, Germany, the UK, etc have lower personal incomes mostly due to very high tax rates and that these societies have similar resources to Marshall for defense to the US once you adjust for population size. There is little sympathy for euro defense budgets.

-This is the main military recruitment demographic in the U.S., especially for the combat branches. There is no appetite whatsoever for their sons coming home in body bags. On the other hand, most believe that in the event of a major war a draft is just, necessary, and correct. That it would be extremely unpopular is something politicians should consider before putting boots on the ground. The cultural memory of stop lossing and national guard deployments abroad is alive and well.

-Most support America as #1, hate and fear red China, and believe Islam needs to be repressed. But there is widespread disapproval of the, uh, social and cultural goals associated with US foreign policy.

-Japanese rearmament is extremely popular; so are Israeli and South Korean conscription. France, Germany, Britain, etc are viewed as freeloaders that should follow their example instead of relying on American protection. Many think they should cut their welfare budgets to pay for it. British and German hate speech laws are widely hated and seen as evidence that they don’t share our values.

-Most accept that non-US powers are allowed to have interests and advocate for them. But they do not want the US to advocate for the interests of these countries, or fund those interests.

Putin is not popular

How much of the unpopularness is Putin, and how much is the man on the TV told them they should find Putin unpopular?

Many people I find that express their disfavor towards Putin, would still believe any number of 'Russian interference' narratives, the Steele dossier, etc.

How much of the unpopularness is Putin, and how much is the man on the TV told them they should find Putin unpopular?

Very little, if any.

The cultural reach and credibility of legacy "mainstream" media outside of college-educated Democracts has declined preciptously over the last 10-20 years, to the point where "believing what the man on TV told them" is strongly anti-correlated with "normie" politics.

How much of the unpopularness is Putin, and how much is the man on the TV told them they should find Putin unpopular?

There is no real reason for an American to like Putin, so like, not much? I know there is a significant amount of anti-Putin propaganda out there, but even absent that there's not really any reason to like him. He doesn't actually ride bears, and he does actually, at best, waste everyone's time and money clinging to power and saber rattling.

And he doesn't even do cool stuff with his aggression like nuke Tehran. Its all boring border squabbles with his weaker neighbors.

These people view Russia as a corrupt tinpot dictatorship propped up by oil money and connections to organized crime. They don't see the racial/religious kinship towards Russians that wignats tell them they should; 'white and christian' are not adjectives they'd use to describe Russia. They see Putin as a thuggish oriental despot overseeing all the Russian state has ever been- a brutal tyranny that fails at its goals without outside assistance due to the savagery and treachery of its inhabitants.

To the extent that the TV told them this, the TV told them this during the cold war. Most don't believe Trump-Russia connections, or ascribe any mystic powers to Russian foreign services. They hate Russia and the core red tribe was in large part raised to hate Russia- I was taught that it was a savage land which blends the worst aspects of Asian civilizations in with things stolen from the west by a cruel, treacherous people who can barely keep the lights on, and are the enemy of all that's good and free.

corrupt tinpot dictatorship propped up by oil money and connections to organized crime

Do they believe Russia is unique in this? This describes alot of places.

Who said anything about being unique?

No. They hate Iran and Venezuela and mistrust Saudi Arabia. But the median redneck opinion is to group Russia in with that set of notoriously oppressive countries and not to see it as some outpost of the old European civilization.

Conservative American russophilia is far overstated in popular media, and russophiles are seen like hardcore conspiracy theorists or antivaxxers would have been in 2010- sure, they're mistrusting the right people, but in the most gullible and stupid manner possible.

the country is generally in favour of breaking from its old European alliances

No. I went into this in detail here: https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/1ir1ozg/adam_tooze_discusses_rightwing_americas_offer_to/md4y0k2/

Most believe they want to tear it down, but with this "olive branch" they aim for mere ideological capture (or reinvigoration, depending on PoV), to transform the undergirding which built the Atlantacist consensus.

Oh shit, you're veqq from /r/CredibleDefense Doing the Lord's work over there. That Tooze article was interesting for good and bad reasons. I discounted most of what he had to say after the bizarre opening paragraph. The repeated, unsupported claims of "MAGA is bullshit" seemed literally sophomoric, along with the multiple retreats to "racism!".

His analysis of the scary dilemmas presented by Vance was insightful, but I think he was wrong to downplay the now-unavoidable concerns about immigration across all Western nations which have opened the floodgates.

I'm not an American (would that I were), but it seems to me that recent American geopolitics reflects a few things:

  1. America and Europe are no longer peers. They might have had a passably equitable partnership till the 90s, but only the blind deny the former has raced ahead economically while the latter stagnates and sniffs its own farts.

  2. The Soviet Union was a far more compelling adversary to both parties than its descendant, Russia, or the new upstart, China. It was a nuclear superpower with large land borders and a hostile ideology. Russia might retain the nukes, and is a great power if you squint, but it no longer has any meaningful ideological drive or desire to spread it beyond "if you trade with us and speak favorably of us, we'll back you". Even China has strong trade relations with Europe, and is not culturally hegemonising to the same degree.

  3. Europe grew complacent, too accustomed to US security guarantees to uphold its own military and budgetary commitments to a mutual defense pact. Why bother? Uncle Sam would pick up the bill, and there's always more welfare to be funded.

  4. The US was too polite to notice, and for the period of the 90s to the early 2010s, not threatened to the degree that it asked for more than lip-service from its allies and subsidiaries. As long as they sent a token force to muck about in American Forever Wars, and made the right sounds in global forums, why demand more?

  5. The former no longer holds. Lines in the sand are being drawn, and the US has realised that the restrictions of international law do not matter. You can tell nearby nations that they better toe the party line or you'll screw them with sanctions or military action, and the world doesn't end. Panama, Mexico, Greenland, all will come to realise that if America wants what you have, there's little saving you. Europe decided to kick back and relax instead of staying peers. They're finding out, to their shock, that what you give and what you get from a superpower are strongly correlated. Especially an insecure super power, one that is belatedly realizing that a legitimate challenger has arisen, and that demanding tribute from its vassals finally makes sense.

The sleeping bull has woken up, and remembered it has horns. Blunted horns, wreathed in garlands and unwieldy from lack of use. But still horns on a very big bull. Speaking softly is slowly being discarded in favor of wielding a very big stick.

The Soviet Union was a fare more compelling adversary to both parties than its descendant, Russia, or the new upstart, China. It was a nuclear superpower with large land borders and a hostile ideology. Russia might retain the nukes, and is a great power if you squint, but it no longer has any meaningful ideological drive or desire to spread it beyond "if you trade with us and speak favorably of us, we'll back you". Even China has strong trade relations with Europe, and also is not culturally hegemonising to the same degree.

Maybe in some respects, but in other respects China seems more dangerous than the USSR.

  1. More of a manufacturing giant.
  2. Not committed to the dubious economic theories of Karl Marx, only uses Socialism as a convenient branding tool.
  3. Probably others I can't think of right now.

China is actually rather tame as super powers go. It has minor expansionist aspirations, especially in its backyard the South China Sea. Of course, there's Taiwan, but even that country thinks that it and the mainland are a single nation, they just disagree on who's the legitimate one. That would be akin to a counterfactual world where both Russia and Ukraine consider themselves to be the true inheritors of the USSR.

It is also particularly concerned with protecting its own very exposed supply chain and being self-sufficient in the eventuality of war shutting down maritime traffic.

China is defensive. They have no interest in spreading international communism or Xi Jinping Thought. Not even the communism as a fig-leaf over state capitalism that they actually endorse. They are agnostic to the internal politics and ideologies of foreign countries as long as they don't interfere with theirs. Third parties have to do very little to remain in their good books, free trade is usually sufficient.

I would expect that if by some miracle, Taiwan suddenly reunified with China, they had uncontested hegemony over a few islands, and the US went from a cold-war footing to neutrality, then the rest of the world would have little to fear from China. It might bicker with India over mountains and a few valleys, but that is a glorified border skirmish that would simmer indefinitely as nobody really wants to escalate first.

Of course, this is an implausible setting, and it is possible that such a China would then get expansionist tendencies, but that's not really what's been observed so far.

And most of China's woes are self-inflicted. If they didn't threaten Taiwan or throw its weight around with its neighbors, then the happy end of history that was the late 90s to the early 2000s probably would have persisted for much longer.

I'm not disagreeing with you, in fact I agree. I just want to explain why from China's perspective, it is a far more restrained and civil superpower than the USSR ever was. And they even have a point.

Why can't we all get along?

A cautious monster is not necessarily preferable to a reckless one.

I wouldn't say that I am in favor of "breaking from old aliances" but there is definitely a consensus amongst most of the people that i talk to that it is long-past time to reevaluate some of those relationships.

As the old PolandBall meme goes.

EU: Silly stupid fat Americans, why all the guns? Are you compensating for something. Hon hon hon.

US: Yes, weak allies.

NATO was (since the 70’s) a Disneyland vision of Europe propagated by American thinktanks and intelligence, propped up by US aid and USAID. A place for young PMC progressives to take a summer break, as real as Cabo or Cozumel.

The Ukraine war is the culmination of Europeans believing that fantasyland. A million dead with almost no gains and Nordstream 2 gone. Do not believe my country’s military/industrial decisionmakers. We cannot hold your borders locked in their postwar positions forever.

The more important question, in my eyes, is whether "the Europeans", or the EU, are even a natural geopolitical unit if the US actually draws down its support. Its scale and structure have grown way beyond the initial undertaking of intertwining the three perpetual poles of conflict (France, Germany and the UK) economically and culturally so they would never go to war against each other again, and while I would see the France-Germany axis of that project as essentially successful and stable for the foreseeable future, it's hard to understand any of the eastward expansion as anything other than driven by a mixture of American geopolitical interests (which are now being withdrawn) and the Western European industry's interest in maintaining wage pressure on their own workers (which is increasingly irrelevant as Western European industry itself becomes irrelevant, Eastern European living standards have gone up, and Arabs/Africans have become an alternative source of undercutting labour) and supported by a well-oiled deputised propaganda machine of transatlanticist media and NGOs (which is getting weakened as American soft power is eating itself and the USAID money hose has been shut off, though it has a heavy flywheel).

Without either the US stick of "we can bring you on the brink of civil war" or the US carrot of "we can ensure political stability, pay for your defense and insulate you from responsibility for any hard and unpopular decisions", it's not clear why countries like Germany or France would have any shared interests with countries like Estonia, Lithuania or Poland, which are all mooching off subsidies and still basically behaving like adversaries (between sabotaging infrastructure and demanding ever more reparations). The natural order of things in an America-free Europe may see Western Europe downsizing back to something like a Coal and Steel Plus community, which would maintain cordial relations with the great gas station in the far East, while the Baltics have to figure out for themselves how to shine the boots of the two greater powers on either side well enough that they do not just get partitioned up and invaded again. Interesting things would probably start happening along the Balkans-Greece-Turkey axis, but the rump EU parties might be able to muster enough of a peacekeeping and expeditionary force to keep the minnows down there from each other's throats (though it might be hard to save Greece from a thousand-cut death in the long run, similar to what is happening to Armenia).

it's not clear why countries like Germany or France would have any shared interests with countries like Estonia, Lithuania or Poland, which are all mooching off subsidies and still basically behaving like adversaries (between sabotaging infrastructure and demanding ever more reparations).

How are the mooching off of subsidies? As far as I know, the economic development of Poland and other eastern European states has been a great boon to both themselves and Germany; why would Germany cut that relationship off when its aids them?

They received about 3% of their GDP in EU subsidies every year for the past 20 years, for a total about 250bln EUR. I don't doubt that their development has been a great boon to themselves, but it's not clear a priori why it would be to Germany, or how to quantify whether and how much of a boon it would have been. Manifestly, Germany's economy is currently shrinking. (...and the standard analysis attributes this to loss of Russian gas, where Poland for years obstructed procurement and finally hosted and sheltered the group that blew up several of the Baltic pipelines!)

It appears that Poland's economic development has paid dividends to Germany. Developing nearby countries is a priori beneficial for Germany; not only does it get a new market for its goods, it gets a source of skilled workers. The strategic partnership improves the eurozone economy, which in turn improves Germany's position.

Germany shot itself in the foot when it comes to energy. Their hesitancy to adopt nuclear or at least diversify their natural gas sources is their problem. Blaming Poland for the inevitable energy crisis is just shooting the messenger; that pipeline was always going to be targeted by any actors that are fighting against Russia. If they weren't going to be based in Poland, they would have been based in some other eastern European country with an axe to grind against Russia (read, practically all of them).

The shared interest is an anti-russian alliance. Assuming americans withdraw from europe, why would western europe give up eastern europe to russia? It would be feeding the bear. Germany gave russia the chance to be a gas station, and they threw our generous offer in our face. So cold war it is. Obviously poland et al are very eager for the alliance because only we offer sovereignty. And for us, an excellent meat shield against russian aggression, should it come to that.

I don't understand why this would be a (materialistic) interest for Germany or anyone west of it. There is a spiritual interest, sure, but I contend that it was manufactured by transatlanticists. The Baltics seem to me to be a net negative, and even then Russia wasn't making any real moves against them since they joined NATO. I don't see the Russians having done anything that could be fairly interpreted as rejecting a German offer to be Germany's gas station, unless you understand such an offer to also include Russia admitting the US State Department up its rear (in Ukraine, Georgia, and domestic opposition), in which case Germany was making a bad and certainly not "generous" offer against its own interest. Germany should have considered slapping Ukraine itself after it started stealing gas meant for transit to Germany in the 2000s; instead it demurred as our Baltic "allies" did their utmost to sabotage any project to expand gas export routes that bypass it.

Correct me if I‘m wrong, but I seem to remember either you being part russian, or else you have a chomskyite view of russia as soviet union which you fondly remember as a noble altruistic project that was sadly misunderstood by the ungrateful eastern europeans who didn‘t like it.

I don‘t see how anyone else in europe can look at russia‘s behaviour these past 5 years, nay 20, nay 100, nay 300 years, and not see a threat. The unhelpful behaviour of ukraine and the baltics towards germany you highlight is motivated by one thing only : an extreme fear of russia (shared by finland, and every close neighbour of russia).

Germany, being too far away and too strong, has for now avoided russia‘s threats, but it still has eyes and ears, and it has no desire to become russia‘s neighbour and feel what those countries feel.

I don't see the Russians having done anything that could be fairly interpreted as rejecting a German offer to be Germany's gas station

I was expecting russia to stop warring against its neighbours. It‘s not some obscure demand russia inadvertently missed. Russia keeps acting against Germany‘s expressed will. No argument can be construed where those wars are in line with germany‘s interests. Even a 19th century diplomat would have threatened war in retaliation: ‚you want abkhazia/donbas. What do we get for staying neutral?‘.

or else you have a chomskyite view of russia as soviet union which you fondly remember as a noble altruistic project that was sadly misunderstood by the ungrateful eastern europeans

My most pro-Russia friend is also a Chomskyite former-Leftist who has found himself realigned as a Trumpist right winger, and I've always found the consistent position on Russia informative even if he denies it's relevant. This faction was anti-US Imperialism (pro-communist) in the 1980s and are anti-US Imperalism (anti-WEF/neoliberal Communism) now, with Russia as the noble bulwark against The West. I have to say that Putin's narrative building in this regard has been very shrewd. He's known which buttons to push.

Before the Euromaidan, Russia had a lot of de facto control in Ukraine. If you make peace with such a Russia as a third party, then I dont think their attempts to maintain said influence break that peace. If you want a war, then yes, this is a good opportunity to start it, but its not a sign of someone who will conquer everything including you.

Let's assume euromaidan was an american conspiracy...and further take a 'realist' view of international relations (neither of which I agree with, for the record). Germany prefers a border country(Ukraine) to be under a far-away power(US) than a close-by power (Russia). The Far-away power won the borderland with soft-power. The bad loser responded with hard-power, violence, hundreds of thousands of deaths and counting. They lost a chess game (partly against germany, see EU-ukraine trade agreements) , pulled a gun, and mowed down the whole country. Obviously this cancels the peace.

Let's assume euromaidan was an american conspiracy

This is not essential to my argument. I think the game theory is sensitive to de facto rather than official control, and so we should react to this similarly as to suppressing a separatist movement. What matters for escalation is the extent of the consequence: Starting a war over the shifts in trade would be have been escalation, but if soft power loses them their black sea port, you cant hide behind "just playing chess".

Consider: If the West openly attempted a colour revolution in Russia, would that also be "not escalation" because its "just soft power"? This idea that everyone has to take unbounded amounts of damage for losing at your prefered game and may not pull a gun in response is good as a justification for enforcing pax americana, but not for deciding if thats actually what you want to do.

Germany prefers a border country(Ukraine) to be under a far-away power(US) than a close-by power (Russia).

Theres two different arguments. First, that Russia is dangerous, and if nothing stops them in Ukraine then whats to stop them from taking Germany. And second, that we could whisk Ukraine away from Russia and come out ahead. My argument is against the first: I think there is a red line, and the Ukraine war is on the safe side of it.

I think 4bpp is German, as per this post.

Russian living in germany, as per his response. I would say his opinion of germany's interests wrt russia is tainted and not representative. Of course there are some pro-putin arguments in the german left, but, I don't think 4bpp would fall for them if he wasn't russian, because they're pretty stupid. It's different for the american left (eg, chomsky) , because they're far away and don't know what they're talking about, not stupid.

Dang now I’m worried how much yall know about me…

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Correct me if I‘m wrong, but I seem to remember either you being part russian,

Fully, actually. I left long ago, though, and have no remaining ties or attachments (financial or otherwise).

Rest assured I will argue for the same position when/if China vs. Taiwan kicks off and the Germans are once again invariably subjected to a year-long psyop to make them enthusiastically sacrifice blood and treasure for American interests (because of some mixture of democracy, the rules-based international order and China will come for you next), and I say this as someone who thinks of Taiwan as far more sympathetic than the PRC, or any of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia or Ukraine.

The only thing I think it the Russian roots really do here is giving me a better understanding of how the country ticks, so I feel more confident in the assessment that there is not more of a likelihood that Russia would proactively seek out war with Germany than there is that the UK would (of course, the general likelihood of war is more likely, along the lines of "Estonia kicks off something and Germany is obliged to join", but again that could be prevented by cutting off false allies.), and more generally resisting arguments resting on "scary unknowns may be capable of anything". A lot of the Western theoretising about what Russia will or won't do is based on a model where it is basically some sort of DnD character maximising for what the speaker understands as evil (and casting those who doubt this model as secretly pro-evil), whereas I argued before that it is better predicted by a "prisoner social hierarchy" model/the thing where you deter transgressions against yourself and secure high status by signalling that you are willing to take disproportional revenge with no regard for collateral self-harm.

The unhelpful behaviour of ukraine and the baltics towards germany you highlight is motivated by one thing only : an extreme fear of russia (shared by finland, and every close neighbour of russia).

Yes, but that should be their problem, not ours.

I don‘t see how anyone else in europe can look at russia‘s behaviour these past 5 years, nay 20, nay 100, nay 300 years, and not see a threat.

...because not everyone in Europe is a close neighbour of Russia. Yes, being a close neighbour of Russia sucks, just like being a close neighbour of China and the US sucks. Germany didn't form an alliance with Cuba, Nicaragua, Taiwan or the Philippines either. Why did it have to form one with Ukraine or the Baltics?

I was expecting russia to stop warring against its neighbours. It‘s not some obscure demand russia inadvertently missed. Russia keeps acting against Germany‘s expressed will. No argument can be construed where those wars are in line with germany‘s interests.

The argument is actually easily construed, based on everything that has been said before: if Russia subjugated its neighbours or they at least forced them to act mindful of the possibility of it doing so, that would mean a lot of middlemen who want a cut from the natural beneficial trade partnership (Russian raw materials for German secondary products) being robbed of their ability to demand it. There is no obvious other way to stop the middlemen from taking their cut.

Even a 19th century diplomat would have threatened war in retaliation: ‚you want abkhazia/donbas. What do we get for staying neutral?‘.

I don't think 19th century diplomats are paragons to follow as far as not sticking your nose into business that will be unprofitable for you goes. On that matter, should the Russians have asked the same thing when the US+EU were grabbing Ukraine? Do you know the events that lead up to Euromaidan?

Rest assured I will argue for the same position when/if China vs. Taiwan kicks off

Yeah, but any idiot would; the analogous China argument is incomparably stronger; china being a superpower, far more peaceful, and on the other side of the world. I find american discourse on china shrill and out of proportion to chinese aggression. If our american friends look to be engaged in an ego driven „War for Number One“, Europe should obviously do a 180 and moonwalk out of the ring.

"scary unknowns may be capable of anything"

Where is the unknown? They keep threatening our cities with nukes. The idea that we could resume cordial relations after this is delusional.

Germany ignored its friends‘ advice and gave russia a chance to be peaceful and rich, forgave its trespasses for a long time. Now that it has all ended in tears and defection, that failed forgiveness and goodwill is to be withdrawn with prejudice, and I want russia to lose more than I want ukraine to win.

Russians always go on about their perceived slights, justifying all this madness; this is ours. Germany‘s been disrespected; put this into your prison hierarchy metaphor.

if Russia subjugated its neighbours or they at least forced them to act mindful of the possibility of it doing so, that would mean a lot of middlemen who want a cut from the natural beneficial trade partnership being robbed of their ability to demand it.

That's disgusting. Keep your blood gas.

I expected better from you, but every time I dig into a pro-russian position, there is nothing but moral nihilism.

On that matter, should the Russians have asked the same thing when the US+EU were grabbing Ukraine? Do you know the events that lead up to Euromaidan?

You know, if they‘d just counter-coup‘ed, and put yanukovich back , I would have no problem, fair game. I we had then sent in the bundeswehr to attack the yanukovich regime, that would be a slight worthy of russian outrage. Do you see how that works?

Why did they not counter-coup? Perhaps they preferred losing hundreds of thousands of men. Or they can‘t counter-coup, because they‘re unpopular. All they have left is violence and their own lack of restraint to inflict it.

Yeah, but any idiot would; the analogous China argument is incomparably stronger; china being a superpower, far more peaceful, and on the other side of the world. I find american discourse on china shrill and out of proportion to chinese aggression. If our american friends look to be engaged in an ego driven „War for Number One“, Europe should obviously do a 180 and moonwalk out of the ring.

Well, it's easy to say that now. I remind you that shortly before the war, 55% of Germans still were for operating NS2 "despite the ongoing conflict with Russia". Can you say with confidence that if a CN-TW war starts, after three years of nonstop war propaganda in the media, where Chinese atrocities and Taiwanese valour are frontpaged in the papers every day and every expert agrees that China will no doubt attack Europe eventually if it is allowed to win in Taiwan, which will presumably percolate through the social strata until everyone you know agrees and only obviously disgusting and sketchy outgroup people argue for moderation and non-interference, you will still think that Germany should stay neutral and mind its own economic interests?

Where is the unknown? They keep threatening our cities with nukes. The idea that we could resume cordial relations after this is delusional.

Do they? I don't think I've seen much of that messaging at all, and to begin with, was this before or after their people were being killed with military hardware that we donated?

Germany ignored its friends‘ advice and gave russia a chance to be peaceful and rich, forgave its trespasses for a long time. Now that it has all ended in tears and defection, that failed forgiveness and goodwill is to be withdrawn with prejudice, and I want russia to lose more than I want ukraine to win.

What trespasses were there against Germany? You can of course extend the set of trespasses that count to include any arbitrary rule concerning anything anywhere in the world, but that sort of approach does not converge to a notion of national interests that allows equilibria that are not global dictatorships.

Russians always go on about their perceived slights, justifying all this madness; this is ours. Germany‘s been disrespected; put this into your prison hierarchy metaphor.

In the prison hierarchy metaphor, Russia is bending over for Germany pants down. I mean, again, German tanks are currently being used to take towns that had been Russian for centuries, and what's Russia doing in retaliation? Making unhappy noises?

That's disgusting. Keep your blood gas.

I expected better from you, but every time I dig into a pro-russian position, there is nothing but moral nihilism.

Ugh. We can have the same argument from a non-morally-nihilist standpoint, which would be much closer to my actual standpoint, if you want - I've done that many times here (with my line being that unchallenged American hegemony is a far greater evil upon the world, and to put checks on it, barring a miraculous inversion of firepower, you need to support lesser evils with opposing interests, so their capacities are tied up with each other and they are compelled to do good to gather third-party support), and apart from the uninteresting responses that selectively assign low moral weight to targets of US evildoing, the dominant retorts always turn out to be the morally nihilistic ones ("sure, grant that the US hegemony kills millions and results in even greater non-killing injustice around the world, but why should I as a citizen of $european_country care about that?").

Why did they not counter-coup? Perhaps they preferred losing hundreds of thousands of men. Or they can‘t counter-coup, because they‘re unpopular. All they have left is violence and their own lack of restraint to inflict it.

They did counter-coup; the result was Crimea and the Donbass and the whole 2014-2022 period. To begin with, are you suggesting that coups are not "violence"?

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Europe should obviously do a 180 and moonwalk out of the ring.

That would be moonwalking into the ring.

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Do American on The Motte feel that the country is generally in favour of breaking from its old European alliances?

What old alliance are you thinking of?

Define the alliance. What sort is it? What does it entail, who is providing what, and when was this understanding established?

For example: if I was to characterize the transatlantic alliance from 1975, it would be something along the lines of 'the Americans bribed the Europeans to be the front line fodder in a war with the Soviet Union.' Yes, it was in the Americans own interest to fight with the Europeans to prevent Soviet domination of Eurasia, but the Americans were paying for strategic deference (such as via the Marshal Plan and establishing favorable trade flows / market access for the Europeans), and the Europeans were the ones who would be the front line shield. In the crudest oversimplification, it was a mercenary relationship, where the Europeans were the mercenaries.

Around the late 90's/00's, however, my perception is that the desires of at least half of the alliance shifted. The Europeans did not want to defer to American strategy, but did want preferential market access. Which is why the EU formed with the common market barrier with often explicit purpose of negotiating a better deal vis-a-vis the Americans, and they had the strategic break over Iraq when the French and Germans tried to muster a pan-European boycott of strategic cooperation with the US. (This is not a criticism.) Come the 2010s, and the Germans were outright laughing at American warnings of vulnerabilities vis-a-vis Russia, and some of that was after Crimea.

Which is fine enough. Again, observational, not a criticism. But if the alliance has shifted from a mercenary dynamic, what sort of alliance is supposedly being broken?

Come the 2020s, if I were to characterize the sort of alliance the European establishment media and media spheres signals they want, it would be something along the lines of 'the Americans are to be the front line fodder in a war with the Russians... but also pay us for non-military cooperation on China.' Hence why when the US finally adopts a European-style domestic industrial policy as part of the anti-China strategy, there is significant lobbying for exceptions to let American subsidies to go to European factories importing Chinese material. And why the scandal of the hour is the US is failing NATO by... not sending yet more material support to a non-NATO country. When over the last few years, in the face of the biggest military crisis on the continent, major European power centers wanted to approach critical logistic shortfalls in things like Artillery shell production by... limiting contracts with these funds to only European manufacturers, and cutting off American producers who had already started expanding production at significant expense on the expectation of there being demand for such products.

Like, I'm not against supporting Ukraine. Even saying that is an understatement. I could even make a number of arguments why carve outs for the Europeans in industrial strategy is a good thing. But if you approach a major logistical bottle neck as the basis for a jobs program, it might just give a signal that the security issue is not actually the biggest concern, and that protecting your jobs program from competition from your security partner is.

Which, again, is fine. I have been an outspoken proponent that other countries have agency, and such decisions should be respected. If the Europeans, as I have been led to believe by the last few weeks of European media, truly believe that the US military is a security threat to them, I would not bat an eye if they demanded the US military leave germany, and I would expect the Americans to do so at all due (albeit deliberate) speed.

But that certainly isn't the same sort of alliance that was formed with NATO and the Marshal Plan and the Cold War.

As for what's going on in the present-

But the current situation re Ukraine is also sending confusing signals, as it had previously seemed as though the US wanted Europe to step up and be part of a solution for Ukraine, whereas currently it seems they actively want to stop Europe from having a role in peace talks. The motive for this appears to be stopping Europe from asking terms of Russia that would delay a solution the US and Russia find jointly satisfactory, though perhaps there is more going on beneath the surface.

Part of this is transactionalism, and part of this is that Trump has a memory and many of the major Europeans not-so-subtly loathed him and celebrated the partisan efforts of the previous administration to put him away.

The later is just choosing the wrong side of the American electoral culture war, which has been a European choice / mistake since the Obama years. When Trump came into office, the European center-establishment eagerly accepted the premise of the Russiagate conspiracy due to its parallels with European actors, generally accepted / echoed American-left framings in a symbiotic cycle, and greatly rejoiced when Trump left. When you choose political favorites, and join in to various degrees on the political warfare, you pay political costs when their enemies come out on top. By contrast, the Japanese and Koreans never joined in, and broadly got by without issue. It certainly also helps that Japan has always spent significantly on its navy, and the Koreans on their army, so were forced to be fought alongside of instead of in place of.

The point on transactionalism is more important, and goes up to what was stated before- the nature of the 'old' alliance has been changing, and with it the underpinning logic. The alliance going forward will be as strong as the clear and convincing benefit to the American electorate, as judged by the American electorate.

Is Trump vain / greedy / [insert pejorative here]? Sure, why not. But he is also underscoring the benefits, or lack of benefits, by demanding things that would be beneficial to receive, while allowing the reaction to serve as a contrast. The contrast is the point, because the contrast is what will legitimize future decisions under the transactionalist paradigm.

Does Trump really expect Ukraine to sign over 50% of the resources (however you want to define that)? Almost certainly not. Does it make a big flashy point that the expenditure of aid does not directly increase future American wealth? Almost certainly so. Cost of support versus benefit from continuing.

Similarly with the Greenland saga. Does Trump actually in his heart of hearts believe Denmark will sell Greenland? Who knows, though obviously any businessman would insist he does. Do various European establishment media characterizations of the US as threatening invasion, and calls for sending european troops to the island make a big contrast with the lack of troops being advocated for Ukraine for the last few years? Probably. And it would also make it easier to draw down forces in Europe, if there are multiple major European media outlets and officials who can be caught on camera saying they think the American military is a threat.

Which, in turn, can be leveraged when engaging in the next round of, say, US-German base agreements and cost-coverage of American presence. Angela Merkel allegedly once protested to Trump that the US couldn't withdraw from German bases, because of the impact it would have on those German localities dependent on American military and soldier spending. This is not the right line of argument to take with Trump, who generally views such expenditures as a financial net cost (which is generally true) not worth the cost (which is debatable, but he's the one who has to be convinced).

Trump's approach to the European alliance this time around is fundamentally not going to be about equitable burden sharing. The Europeans laughed at him about that last time around. It is likely to be a very clear-cut transactional 'what about this is self-evidently advantageous to an American skeptic,' so that the American leaders gain rather than spend political capital working with Europe.

Helping Ukraine, while popular in many corners, was not exactly an election-winner. Giving military equipment away or at massive discounts while major European powers and media spheres moot the merits of blocking the US from the European arms market is certainly not an election winner in any way.

The flip side of that transactionalism, however, is that partnership will be available when there is clear, unambiguous benefit to the US for doing so, something that could be shown to the American electorate.

And since the Europeans generally lack military capabilities that would allow the US to achieve things it otherwise wouldn't, that's going to mean non-military trades for the American to point to.

Or- to return to the crudest metaphor of alliance logic-

Cold War NATO was an alliance in which the Europeans were the mercenaries being paid for on retainer by the Americans.

Cold War NATO died brain-death when the Europeans didn't want to be mercenaries, but still wanted the Americans to pay them.

Trump-Europe can be an alliance in which the Americans are the mercenaries paid for by the EUropeans... but mercenaries still have to be paid.

if I was to characterize the transatlantic alliance from 1975, it would be something along the lines of 'the Americans bribed the Europeans to be the front line fodder in a war with the Soviet Union.' Yes, it was in the Americans own interest to fight with the Europeans to prevent Soviet domination of Eurasia, but the Americans were paying for strategic deference (such as via the Marshal Plan and establishing favorable trade flows / market access for the Europeans), and the Europeans were the ones who would be the front line shield

I think one would be hard-pressed to come up with a more absurd characterization of the NATO alliance, at any point from April 4th, 1949 until now, as "Europeans were going to be the front line shield, and Americans were going to bribe them to do so," implying that the entire European continent wasn't a target of Soviet expansion from the second Berlin fell, and that Europeans would otherwise had the option of sitting out the Cold War, were it not for Americans sweetening the deal.

We were always going to be the shield to protect Europe from being overrun by the Soviets, and at most, we planned for some material support from our allies, but there was never, at any point, a belief that Europeans would be doing the heavy lifting. None.

but there was never, at any point, a belief that Europeans would be doing the heavy lifting. None.

I don't know about this; the whole idea of NATO came about in part because the aftermath of WWII made it clear that lots of Europeans, East or West, were not yet so tired of war that literally nobody was willing to pick up a rifle or drive a tank. Just a few years afterwards, European and British troops came along with us Americans to go push North Korea's shit in for a little while, AIUI.

NATO came about because:

  1. Everyone understood that the Soviet Union had designs on all of Europe; they were not going to mind their own business and co-exist with the West
  2. It was not in the interest of the United States to have a Soviet-domniated Europe
  3. Europe had no hope of resisting a Soviet invasion, individually, or collectively

This is why the US had bases, and large numbers of forces, stationed throughout Europe. This is why the OPLANS all have the US being in command of the combined militaries, and why they assume the US would be providing the lion's share of forces in the event of a Soviet invasion. This is why everyone and their mother noted the irony that the one time Article 5 got invoked, it was because the US was attacked; this wasn't what NATO was created for, everyone knew what was supposed to happen was the US coming to Europe's aid when the Soviets finally came a knockin'.

This doesn't look anything like Dean's suggestion of Europe as a "mercenary" between the Soviet Union and the US; mercenaries are otherwise uninterested parties that you have to pay to fight for you, not people you promise to defend and you spend a fortune stationing your troops in their territory to do so.

...European and British troops came along with us Americans to go push North Korea's shit in for a little while, AIUI.

Allied contributions to the Korean War effort were around 10% of the total manpower, and the casualties are even more lopsided towards the Americans. The allied contingent was there for political purposes, to keep up the pretense that this was not just the US vs. the Commies, but the "whole world" versus a belligerent state. Any effort in "pushing North Korea's shit in" provided by the Commonwealth nations was just gravy, and appreciated, but it wasn't the point.

What old alliance are you thinking of?

Having re-watched the Lord of the Rings movies fairly recently, I can't help but feel like all of the comments about "the Old Alliances" there felt very relevant to today's geopolitics situation, even though it was published after WWII. Some of the significant political moments felt very relatable: political leaders either feeble in their old age and fed questionable information by disloyal advisors, or stewards uninterested in the worldly success of their constituents. There is a real sense that the alliances have frayed and that, should the beacons be lit over the reluctance of one kingdom, forces of good will choose to fall divided rather than answer and stand together against the forces of Sauron. And this all takes place in the backdrop of the Elves, one of the members of the alliance choose to withdraw completely from the surrounding world and board ships to somewhere. I'm not sure whether I'd map Europe to Gondor or the Elves in this situation: both feel fairly pertinent at different times.

Obviously it's not a perfect allegory, nor do I think it was meant to be: Monarchy isn't really that popular of an idea these days, wingnut "God-Emperor" memes aside, and right-wing leadership feels far short of Theoden or Aragorn. And I'm not sure how the populace would feel more allegorically about how orcs, goblins, and such are rigidly type-cast as followers of evil: to those wanting to type-cast immigration as "the forces of darkness" here, Europe and America are hardly homogenous kingdoms, and never really have been either.

Sure.

And just to add to it- when I first read through Lord of the Rings many years ago, I never felt anger/contempt that the old alliance of history might not be honored. It was sad, sure, and unfortunate in the context, but also understandable- the spirit of the alliance had died long before the crisis came. The fact that the allies came was uplifting, but it was all the more uplifting because it was not an expectation/obligation- it was people who chose rather than were obligated to. Were it people who grudgingly showed up to because they had to because their masters made them on behalf of promises none of them were alive for, it would have been lesser, maybe even worse than if they had not at all. After all, if they only showed up because of a piece of paper despite the apathy or neglect, they would practically be slaves to their forefathers' whims. There's little agency in 'I'm going so because I was told I have to,' and little health in an alliance built on the same.

I think it's also worth noting / remembering that Putin is not Sauron. For all the memes of the Russian orks, the antagonist of [current year] is not the beneficiary of Tolkein-style plot armor / power. Putin is inept, incompetent, a warmonger with a midlife crisis, and even genocidal by the UN definition used in other conflicts in the world, but he is not fated by the power of plot narrative to win if Gondor's Call to Aid is not answered... and in this case, the Call to Aid, while certainly worthy, is no Gondor-scale cataclysm if it fails either, with the mobilized armies marching on without resistance.

Mind you, I was also one of those people who never really 'got' Sauron as a narrative force, and even now I can understand without sharing the sentiment some feel.

Were it people who grudgingly showed up to because they had to because their masters made them on behalf of promises none of them were alive for, it would have been lesser, maybe even worse than if they had not at all.

Funnily enough, the movies' interpretation of events is basically that. They added a scene in Helm's Deep where elves show up and say, "Idk, we were allied thousands of years or so or something, so we'll stick around and help out ig." Basically, completely distorting Tolkien's intentions with what Alliances represented (to say nothing of the relevance of elves in the war by that point).

These are the views of one blue-state reactionary, but I don't particularly like Russia any; I have sympathy for the crappy history they've been dealt, but their current government doesn't spark any joy. The food and drink is pretty good at the emigre restaurants here in LA, even if they're all probably money laundering for something. Plus there's lots of adorable old emigre bakeries and groceries with slightly sketchy but usually delicious dumplings in the freezer if you go to the right part of WeHo. If anything, they're fargroup.

Western Europe, on the other hand, was in-group but recently has been making a pretty serious bid to be outgroup with the way they can't stop freeriding on defense, shooting themselves in the foot over really basic speech and energy issues, confusing institutional inertia for "democracy" itself, and still finding ways to be all snooty and trying to claim the moral high ground from a position of abject weakness. They just seem to be acting completely contemptibly.

My views are of course nuanced and sophisticated, but stripped of all the sophistication and nuance, here's the deal:

Europe is a sinking ship and when we yell "your ship is sinking!", the captains (plural) insist, in the most arrogant tone possible, that we only think the ship is sinking because we are uncivilized buffoons. Fine. Enjoy the rest of your trip.

Also for some reason literally weeping about Vance's speech.

Edit: He was the German guy laughing at Trump when Trump warned them about overreliance on Russian gas. This is now too good. Arrogance followed by grief like a tragic play.

I live in EU and I have different take here. EU is increasingly growing irrelevant on global stage. You can look at it from the perspective of GPD, where the share decreased from 31% of World GDP in 1980 to 15% now. Or you can take it through most successful companies in EU where two out of top 5 EU you just have bunch of luxury apparel companies like LVMH and Hermes or old IT companies like SAP or Accenture representing the IT sector with some pharma companies added. Top 15 top EU companies have less value than Apple with 3,6 trillion market cap.

You can look at it from the perspective of security. EU countries cannot do anything for themselves in this front for last 70 years at least. We could not resolve issues in Yugoslavia, we could not resolve issues in Syria or Lebanon and we cannot do shit in Ukraine. The whole EU cannot even produce the same amount of artillery shells as North Korea.

Culturally EU is dead. In the past there were at least some italian spaghetti westerns, some interesting French movies and music. This is now completely overwhelmed by USA. There is basically nothing produced in EU, the culture is thoroughly US based.

Politically, EU countries are weak as well, it is much worse than in other countries. We now basically have permanent unelected bureaucratic structure with zero legitimacy. Our current President of the European Commission - Ursula von der Layen - is career bureaucrat, she was just a party figure in local German politics. She does not represent shit, most people in EU do not even know she exist. She is a dwarf not even compared to people like Trump or Xi Jinping, she is a dwarf compared to Macron and other elected EU leaders. This whole structure is a joke.

When I am thinking about the whole debacle with Trump, it is just another nail in the coffin. Some people in EU may be surprised, but in reality EU countries are not US allies, we are just vassals. If anything I do actually consider this as a "tough love". In a sense it is liberating to see somebody who actually talks to EU leaders as irrelevant dogs as they are instead of getting pets and platitudes from figures like Obama or Biden, while inevitably going into irrelevancy.

It also opens a very interesting conundrum for many people in Europe, who so far thought of themselves as "The West" or some such. This may even continue if some other countries - especially Germany o France elect more nationalistic governments that will try to forge their own path in the world. In a sense the whole Russia narrative is just a red herring. It is the topic of this decade, but there are other heavy-weights: India, China, Turkey or some up-and-coming countries which may have increased importance in upcoming decades such as Nigeria. European countries will have different geopolitical goals even compared to one another - like when Germans were cozying up to Putin for decades despite many warnings from other countries like Poland - until he was suddenly a bad guy. But there will be different goals compared to these other great powers or superpowers.

Accenture is or ever was an European company? News to me. Always thought it was a US origin cancer.

I believe it's Irish?

No, it's not. It's merely taking advantage of the Irish tax dodge. It's a US company, now pretty global. They have a pretty bad reputation in IT I believe. Scummy practices.

It's news to me as well, given that it is the surviving consulting arm of Arthur Andersen.

It's not really relevant but I'd point out that it was probably well within the capacity of the EU (or the ECC at that time) to negotiate the Yugoslavian War (I mean the one between 1991-5) to be terminated without either armed intervention or American assistance. Although it'd have probably been necessary to invite Russia as a negotiating party.

Syria and Lebanon are outside Europe and thus outside the responsibility of the EU anyway.

Syria and Lebanon are outside Europe and thus outside the responsibility of the EU anyway.

Imagine what the world stage would look like if US shared this attitude.

Were Saddam still in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, it'd be different but I'm not convinced it would be worse.

It's not like the US "resolved" matters in either Lebanon or Syria in any meaningful sense either.

I think @wlxd is refering to both world war, where US pretended to be a neutral party while helping the allies, to a point where US directly decleared war on Germany during WW1, and Japan was being forced their hand due to US embargo

If US stay out of both world war with the reasoning of "China/France/Britain are out side of America and thus outside the responsibility of the US anyway", EU won't even exist in the first place, or called themselves the Third Reich instead

Culturally EU is dead. In the past there were at least some italian spaghetti westerns, some interesting French movies and music. This is now completely overwhelmed by USA. There is basically nothing produced in EU, the culture is thoroughly US based.

I will point out that Europe is still a major force in music. Particularly in the realm of electronic dance music; DJs and producers like David Guetta (French), Martin Garrix (Dutch), Armin Van Buuren (Dutch), R3HAB (Dutch of Moroccan ancestry), Alesso (Swedish), Tiësto (Dutch), Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish), Ofenbach (French), the recently disbanded Daft Punk (French) and the late Avicii (Swedish) have all been massive figures in dance-pop music for decades, including composing and producing mega-hits with famous artists from America, the UK, Australia, etc.

Yes, this is not a cultural achievement on the level of the great European orchestral music tradition, nor even of the intellectually-stimulating European high cinema of the 20th century, but I think it’s at least as respectable as Spaghetti Westerns, and certainly considerably more popular and lucrative.

EU also holds its own relatively well in one of the largest and culturally (including politically) most relevant forms of youth culture today - vidya. There just was a big discussion here on Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. And who here - or, I would guess, among the DOGE zoomers - hasn't played hours and hours of Paradox map games?

I wonder if Rockstar North also counts.

Music is dead as a cultural touchcpoint.

I think this is a delusional take, and that major music artists are still an extremely important part of the cultural zeitgeist. I don’t know what it would take to convince you otherwise.

It's far more fragmented bc of online archives.

People have way more options now.

Really? Dylan, Hendrix, The Beatles, etc all touched culture. They molded it and it molded them and what was spit out changed the world. You can’t help when you think of Vietnam thinking of the soundtrack to Vietnam.

Today? There is some small commercial stuff. You see people trying to make statements but it comes off less organic and more “we are supposed to stand for something.”

Who is the soundtrack of the 2020s?

Who is the soundtrack of the 2020s?

HEALTH? bbno$? Post Malone?

I only know who one of those even is. I don't know if online life is to blame like someone else said - it seems to me to slightly predate modern social media - but whatever the reason, music is so fragmented now that it's almost inconceivable someone could get the whole culture following them the way the Beatles did. Taylor Swift is probably the closest thing currently possible but it's not that close.

That's fair, I think once rock music was finally out of the spotlight by the end of the 2000's and streaming took hold, the music landscape became massive and manifold.

I think I saw those words..once or twice?

You can’t help when you think of Vietnam thinking of the soundtrack to Vietnam.

In my filter bubble ‘Vietnam’ brings up thoughts of lily-livered anti-American pinkos in the media and the soundtrack is understood to be Okie from Muskogee.

Today? There is some small commercial stuff.

To be clear, are you claiming that there are no massively-commercially-successful musical artists today? Thats just demonstrably and profoundly false.

As for your claims about how musicians in the 2020s don’t have the power to mold young people’s entire brains and ethos the way the big 60’s and 70’s acts did, that’s partially a result of those acts’ legacies being inflated retroactively by the use of their music in media created by the very Boomers who grew up listening to them. Yeah, we associate Creedence Clearwater Revival and Buffalo Springfield with the Vietnam War now because Boomer liberal filmmakers intentionally cultivated that association.

There’s nothing going on in America today which unites a cross-section of the young people in opposition to the government quite the way that the Vietnam War did. We haven’t had military conscription in this country in two generations. Whatever you want to say about all the bad things the government is doing, none of them are as viscerally threatening as forcibly shipping you across the world to get shot at. If the next Big War pops off in the 2020’s — and it’s not exactly looking unlikely that it will — and it results in a reintroduction of the draft, it’s going to forge a shared culture among young people that’s only nebulous today. It’s amusing to imagine films (or whatever the next step in media content will be) about World War III, with montages of mass drone strikes set to the music of Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd, and for those to be the retroactive associations future generations perceive when they think about our time period.

In the meantime, the soundtrack of the 2020s is not difficult to identify if you just look at what artists are selling the most albums, having their music streamed the most often on Spotify and other similar services, whose concert tours are the most successful, who appear the most on TV, etc. Taylor Swift still dominates, plus the aforementioned Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, Doja Cat, BTS, Chappell Roan… and that’s not even getting into the resurgence of country music as mass culture, with Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At A Time being the longest-running #1 album of the decade so far.

I think this is a delusional take

No, U.

To be clear, are you claiming that there are no massively-commercially-successful musical artists today?

No, he's claiming there's none that have the cultural impact of those in the past, and he's right. Your explanations only confirm this, though they are wrong in the sense that were the causes of past artists' status that you identified reproduced, it would not inflate them to the level of the people he mentioned. That is: you can put Taylor Swift's music in every movie, and none of it will matter because movies lost their cultural impact as well.

In the meantime, the soundtrack of the 2020s is not difficult to identify if you just look at what artists are selling the most albums, having their music streamed the most often on Spotify and other similar services, whose concert tours are the most successful, who appear the most on TV, etc. Taylor Swift still dominates, plus the aforementioned Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, Doja Cat, BTS, Chappell Roan

Taylor Swift is the only one that's remotely close to what he's talking about, and that's by the skin of her teeth.

Yeah, we associate Creedence Clearwater Revival and Buffalo Springfield with the Vietnam War now because Boomer liberal filmmakers intentionally cultivated that association.

That’s the point Kubrick was making in Full Metal Jacket when he set the Battle of Hue scene to Surfin’ Bird ie the forgotten, low artistic value bubblegum crap that was actually at the top of the charts in 1968. Not the historical hindsight classics like CCR and the Doors.

Who?

I mean I have some idea but that's more like 2010s.

A fairly niche band and not even its most recognizable song?

If you think people at large know any other MGMT song better than Little Dark Age, you're not paying attention to zoomer culture.

It's a meme song at this point, has specific (if unintended) political salience and enough cultural impact that a whole genre of musical videos is named after it.

You want the equivalent of Dylan's boomer hymns, this is it.

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How old are you? This song is instantly recognizable to a huge portion of Millennials, zoomers and gen alpha across cultures.

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I believe the user you’re responding to is saying that the 2020’s are, in some important sense, a “Little Dark Age”, which is why that song would be an apropos soundtrack.

I think you’re right but European dance music has little cultural relevancy.

Nobody cares what Armin van Buren or Afrojack has to say the way they did about the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or hell, even Taylor Swift.

As an art form, EDM is sterile, mere decoration. It has nothing to say about the cultural moment except as a monument to escapism and hedonism. Its closest historical parallel is disco.

I think you’re right but European dance music has little cultural relevancy.

All of the artists I named have major followings, and perform at festivals that attract tens of thousands of attendees. David Guetta has sold over 10 million albums and 65 millions singles globally, and has over 30 billion streams on Spotify. These artists’ music is played ubiquitously on the radio, and again, they collaborate with some of the most famous singers in the world.

Yes, you’re correct that nobody cares what Armin Van Buuren has to say about philosophy or geopolitics or whatever. This is a good thing! It’s actually a terrible thing for our culture that young people started taking the political opinions of drug-addicted twentysomething musicians seriously! Disco kicks ass! Hedonistic pop music is infinitely preferable to supposedly “deep and counter-cultural” music by midwit pseudo-intellectuals like Bob Dylan seeking to poison relationships between the generations.

Worth also noting that "luminary" artists like Dylan also seem to tend to lose favor and popularity, as people realize that these artists stop being/never were what people thought they were (as what happened to Dylan post-50's/60's) and/or these artists disappear up their own ass later in life.

I like disco music and EDM for what it is, but it's not high art.

In some ways it really is the perfect European music. It's trans-national. Much like the disconnected global elite, it is not from a place. It is from anyplace. It is generic, bland, almost always in English, etc... Swedish, Dutch, Irish, who cares? It's all the same. Performance consists of a DJ pressing play and then bopping his head around.

supposedly “deep and counter-cultural” music by midwit pseudo-intellectuals like Bob Dylan

Fair enough. Most artists are firmly midwits, and I'd put Dylan in that category, though he's smart enough to let his music stand on its own. But the music of Dylan, The Beatles, or Taylor Swift exists as an art form in a way that EDM music, which is inherently disposable, does not.

As an art form, American music is vastly superior to European music.

But the music of Dylan, The Beatles, or Taylor Swift exists as an art form in a way that EDM music, which is inherently disposable, does not.

I'm sorry, did you really say Taylor Swift exists as an art form in way that EDM music cannot? Corporate Taylor Swift? Basic white girl Taylor Swift? The most generic music of the decade, Taylor Swift?

Also The Beatles were British. And if you retort that they don't really count because of their still Anglophone, there's Rammstein, Stromae, Bladee, for your none EDM music consideration.

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In some ways it really is the perfect European music. It's trans-national. Much like the disconnected global elite, it is not from a place. It is from anyplace. It is generic, bland, almost always in English, etc... Swedish, Dutch, Irish, who cares? It's all the same.

Based. The greatest European music has always been transnational. Classical music was very intentionally cosmopolitan, and even the more nationalist composers were still working within a template that was extremely recognizably Pan-European. Even when it came to opera, which requires the use of a specific language and thus presents some thorny questions of national specificity, composers would set their operas in languages other than their native tongues.

The development of a shared culture transcending borders is an extremely positive development in European history, and I’m happy to see it recapitulated in European pop music. It’s not true that these musicians could be “from anywhere”; I don’t see them taking much influence from Southeast Asian music, or Amerindian folk music, or anything like that. Their music is clearly descended from a European tradition.

Europe is still a major force in music.

Also various metal subgenres. Not that most people in the US care, but it matters to me.

Right, as soon as I posted my comment I thought, “I forgot to mention the metal scene!” Obviously metal has dramatically declined from a commercial standpoint, but artistically it’s still going strong and Europe is at the forefront of it. (Particularly in genres I love, like symphonic power metal, gothic metal, etc. I presume the black metal scene is still chugging along, although I haven’t personally been paying attention to it for a long time now.)

For the out of touch among us, what's the next phase after Children of Bodom and Tarja Turunen?

Tuomas Holopainen's Scrooge McDuck concept album?

I was about to voice the same objection. There are dozens of us!

Not at all. I view Russia as an adversary, although more of an annoying one than a serious threat at this point. In stark contrast, I view Europe as a loveable older brother that's a bit of a fuckup and needs to straighten themselves out. Many of my criticisms of European pathologies also apply to the United States though, so it's a bit like my loveable older brother that's kind of a drunk and doesn't really want to hear about it from me because I've been known to knock back a few myself. The only thing I genuinely dislike about Europeans is the tendency to smugly believe that there is some sort of superiority to the United States when I find such a claim absolutely laughable. Now we're at the point where my loveable, drunk, fuckup older brother still thinks of himself as better than me because acknowledging that he's broke and about to go bankrupt is just too hard to accept.

Huge caveat - I don't actually like to think of "Europe" as a single entity all that much because my experience with different places is very different. The Dutch aren't actually fuckups, for example. Also, to be clear, I really do mean that I find these places and peoples loveable.

In what ways are Western European nations (to the extent that they still function as nations) fuckups wherein the Dutch somehow aren't?

Based on my experience with Americans, most would conflate the Dutch and the Danes, not be sure who was in the Netherlands, and generally just think that being along the North Sea was enough to qualify for 'northern Europe.'

Most Americans know a few differences between the Dutch and the Danes- even if it’d be expressed as ‘one has tulips and wears clogs and the other one used to be Vikings’.

Their per capita GDP is 10% higher than Germany, 30% higher than France, and about 45% higher than Spain. Their debt to GDP ratio is 45%. When you visit, the productivity and industry is quite noticeable.

I agree that there are obvious factors that make those 3 countries fuckups, but raising the per capita GDP would have scarce if any effect on those.

The GDP is downstream of the general fuckuppery of the French and Spanish. They're just a lot less industrious than the Dutch.

Didn't the Dutch stop the migration in a sensible fashion, by responding to the right-wing criticisms and thus defanging them?

Are there Dutchmen being arrested for posting spicy memes?

Are there many foreign mass-murder (car) or random acts of violence (knife)?

Contrasts to Britain and Germany in favor of Nederlands.

ETA:

I am a boorish American and can't tell the difference between the Danes and the Dutch. For my own edification, I checked the distances. As the crow flies, the distance from Copenhagen to Amsterdam is about the same as Boston to Philadelphia (390 miles). Along roads, it's closer to Boston to DC, or, to my local environs, Seattle to Boise (500 miles).

Not sure why I'm getting strikethroughs when I'm only using one tilde each, but alas.

You're definitely thinking about Denmark, which instituted anti-minority policies that no one in the US would even think of suggesting, like breaking up ethnic enclaves.

Yes, I definitely had them mixed up.

I retract my praise of the Dutch.

I mean did they? Last I heard of Wilders the news were of the same sort of containment inflicted on AfD or RN.

Asking genuinely, I don't follow Dutch politics that much. Did they manage to do a Denmark?

Wilders's party - though not Wilders himself - is currently in the Dutch government. It already had a confidence-and-supply agreement with a previous government in 2010-2012.

I'm not sure if there are too many countries with Germany-like nationalist right exclusion policies left. Even in France, the Macronist government ended up trying to work with Le Pen to maintain government for some months until Le Pen decided to collapse the cooperation - over standard political woes over budget balancing, not over the spicy issues. Belgium still maintains the cordon sanitaire against Vlaams Belang, I think, though that's also a bit of a special case considering that VB would like to urgently make the entire concept of Belgium nonexistent.

Have I mixed the two? That's more likely.

I think so, yes.

Yes, I have.

This also puzzles me.

One might have actually made this point for the Swiss, but the Dutch have exactly the same maladies as France, Germany or the UK that Vance called out.

The Dutch at least seem to be handling their Moroccans better than Belgium does, while being mildly freer from an American perspective than Germany.

A smaller country generates fewer viral incidents, and so looks better if your view of Europe is formed by negative incidents that go viral on American social media. Also the anti-establishment right in the Netherlands isn't spicy enough for Musk to promote it on his birdsite.

That said, the Netherlands really is better in the limited sense that the Dutch VVD are no longer lying about their actual position on immigration the way the British Tories and German CDU are.

Belgium managed to generate more (I guess) viral incidents from time to time despite being even smaller. I suppose their per capita GDP isn't that different.

There are a few neocons in my circle, they're not terribly enthused with trump and putin's growing relationship.

Were any neocons ever enthused by anything Trump ever did?

The informed ones in my circle were mostly happy with his first term.

Yeah, because he wasn't prepared to win and they snuck into his administration.

Now there's hell to pay. Many cozy NGOs are getting the axe..

[ I don't claim to be an ordinary American. ]

It's always hard to tell with Trump, but I think threatening to blow up the relationship is the only realistic way forwards. What I mean is that for a few decades, Europe failed to live up to its end of the bargain without any realistic way to snap them out of it.

For my part, I don't really want to see the end of the alliance, but I also don't want to continue living in the world where because ending the alliance is unthinkable, one side continues shit the bed.

I had a longer post that got eaten. But here it is in short:

Americans aren't turning towards Russia, but some are turning away from Europe. The reason is simple, Europe has picked a side in the American culture war, and it is the far left side. That is not a good formula for maintaining good relations with America because even when we have a Democratic government, you guys are still to the left of it by a lot. There's the immigration piece, the welfare, the speech regulations, the climate alarm. And it doesn't help that Brussels and Berlin's default position is "never compromise".

So now we turn to military spending. Europe has failed at this from not only a monetary perspective, but from a readiness perspective to an even worse degree for decades. And what are you asking Americans to defend (while you certainly attempt to appear unwilling to do so yourselves)? An increasingly authoritarian Bureaucracy who are so intent on being authoritarian they'd rather cripple their own economy than let a little freedom spill out.

So, we are at a point similar to the point where we were around 1916 or so. Is it really wise for the US to jump in yet? I'd argue it was far too early for us in WWI. We should have let the sides bleed a bit more and come in and swept it all aside instead of what we did, which yielded the ineffectual Treaty of Versailles and more conflict just a generation later.

Europe has picked a side in the American culture war, and it is the far left side.

While I think your statement here has a strong ring of truth to it with respect to Kulturkampf and the dispositions of the cultural elites, I generally find claims that "center in Europe is far-left in America" to be true only for a very limited definition of the political spectrum. "Center in Europe" includes certain elements that I'd wager the average Republican considers far-right: Literal hereditary monarchs (many such cases, some established within living memory)! Official state churches (many such cases)! States collecting taxes on behalf of churches! Blasphemy laws!

Sure, "center in Europe" also looks a lot more friendly to carbon taxes than even the DNC, and endorses a shorter workweek, more worker protections (although German unions look very different in ways I find interesting from their American counterparts), firearms restrictions (although those aren't uniform across the EU, they're generally stricter than the US -- although Sweden has problems with hand grenades that seem unbelievable as an American!), and so forth. I don't think the statement is completely wrong, just oversold.

Yes, but those monarchs are just basically tourist attractions or ceremonial figureheads to lend legitimacy to the government of the day. And those established churches are usually more liberal than our American unitarians. Lastly, the "blasphemy" laws in practice seem mostly to result in Koran-burners getting harsher sentences than some violent criminals, while doing nothing to protect, e.g., Christian anti-abortion protesters. Hard for American conservatives to really be all that in support of any of that substantively, regardless of the label it's all wrapped up in.

Literal hereditary monarchs (many such cases, some established within living memory)! Official state churches (many such cases)! States collecting taxes on behalf of churches! Blasphemy laws!

We basically have never had any of this in America so it doesn't map to our Left-Right spectrum at all. In the instances we have something similar to those things, they basically map to the left: Hollywood dynasties, political family dynasties, state sponsored religious-like nonprofits, education centers, etc. They have all been left wing for generations.

The reason is simple, Europe has picked a side in the American culture war, and it is the far left side.

That accusation is a bit rich, because the causation is the other way around. It's not like a bunch of Blue Tribers somehow appeared in Europe and decided to pick a side in the US culture war. What in fact happened is that the Global American / Globohomo Empire poured lots of money and influence into its causes in Europe (among other places) through non-profits and NGOs which in turn recruited, trained and indoctrinated, directly and indirectly, the local cadre of Blue culture warriors and their sympathizers in Europe, all of whom incidentally consume no cultural and ideological products other than that produced by the US Blue Tribe, and adopt their talking points accordingly.

European leftism has been steadily feeding into the US via academia and the popular arts since the 1920s, if not earlier. The U.S. intelligenstia and trend-setters have always looked at Europe as more sophisticated and culturally respectable, especially its revolutionaries.

I agree, but @anti_dan was commenting on the current situation, when the feeding process is flowing the opposite direction.

The major communist parties of Europe weren't American-funded. Europe has a quite a strong revolutionary-left tendency on its own, completely independent of and long-pre-existing Soros/GAE-bux.

But it isn't the few and marginal European communists and revolutionary leftists that picked a side in the US culture war, is it?

Are you sure? Which side is antifa on? Which side were Sacco & Vanzetti on? What side are the IWW and the student movements of the 60's and 70's on?

Which side is antifa on? In the US, firmly with the democrats.

I maintain that the involvement of these particular groups in the US culture war is probably marginal/negligible, because they are marginal themselves.

Which side is antifa on?

"Its complicated". There are more "green" and more "old left" people. Current polls for the coming german election are about 2:1.

I think the cultural poison that has spread across Europe is a Western problem more than it is solely an American one. Obviously, Neo-lib American influence played a major hand through the things you mentioned, but the progressive policy that our annoying American neo-libs try to implement are usually modeled after some European country's system. European countries have leftist policies that are highly touted by the American neo-lib establishment. I think it's more of a symbiotic relationship between European and American progressives that is being characterized by a lot of people, including @anti_dan, as a conflict between Europe and America. That's not how I see it though. It's an ideological war between progressivism, liberalism, and conservatism that affects all Western countries. We're having the same issues with Canada.

Progressivism gained tremendous momentum over the past 15-20 years because it was protected by the ideals and moral framework of Western liberalism. Liberalism could never properly defend or maintain itself, and once it became fully embraced it was destined to be consumed by whatever trending illiberal ideology the masses would be most tolerant of. That ideology was progressivism, and it has effectively Trojan Horsed itself into Western society and its institutions. Its supporters have leveraged those institutions in a way that proliferates their ideas and oppresses their dissidents and ideological opponents. It has gotten to the point that political moderates (mostly liberals) have started to be negatively affected.

We all get confused by making it about countries, or race, or income. These claims aren't entirely untrue. They have their own share of problems and issues to contend with, but they're less true right now than the suicidal, progressive ideology that has captured the Western mind.

Perhaps it is best to consider the American Empire a separate entity from both America itself and the foreign peoples it administers.

Brussels bureaucrats, USAID and the network of NGOs that tie them all together have more in common with each other than they do everybody else.

I mean, if you want to say Europe was easily colonized and seduced by the American left, I guess that is also accurate. But America has consistently presented Europe with the other option. From Reagan & Thatcher to Trump there has been another way prominently on display, and Europe shied away from those proposals.

What proposals from Reagan and Thatcher are you referring to, if I may ask?

Adopting a lower-tax, lower-welfare state system coupled with an emphasis on national defense.

Fair enough. But Helmut Kohl did at least try that, didn't he?

Helmut Kohl

He I think embraced some parts of it. Then again, that was all before I was even in middle school, and it was during the era where Germany was trying to re-unite.

I dont think it is only a matter of seduction. The International Community also wanted us to... not revive history, so to speak, and that means listening to supranational organisations and "civil society" and so on. It has annoyed the US right at times when it led to something especially leftist, but not enough to adjust imperial governance.

But America has consistently presented Europe with the other option

It would be nice if they never presented us with either.

I was going to reply with OP on similar lines but you nailed it.

Europe, plus Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are a bigger threat to me than China or Russia, and have been for a long time. The EU Digital Security Act was meant to be an end around of the US bill of rights by handcuffing multinational tech companies. It’s still a threat and I hope/suspect that Trump will apply maximum leverage on this issue. If not for Trump winning, we would be screwed. By our “allies”.

The list of offenses is too long even for an effort post. Good riddance.

The EU Digital Security Act was meant to be an end around of the US bill of rights by handcuffing multinational tech companies.

Yeah... that was definitely one of those 'really bad ideas that no one will directly address because it would be acknowledging how bad an idea it was' that will probably be looked back upon unkindly. It was a case where the European desires to be the regulatory superpower create mutually incompatible interests with those who don't care to be regulated. There were non-trivial parts of the Democratic party who were okay with it for the same reason they were okay with setting up Newsguard-esque media policing via indirect regulation, but that's absolutely the sort of thing many of the American right would happily raze the internet for and let the world wide web be partitioned for, let alone other governments.

It's not run its course yet, so I fully expect it to matter more in the future, but since it was passed I've viewed that as the start of the European internet partition- it's just a matter of when others break from it.

So now we turn to military spending. Europe has failed at this from not only a monetary perspective, but from a readiness perspective to an even worse degree for decades.

So basically my country - which has maintained a huge land army through conscription, one of the largest artilleries in Europe etc., and which has coincidentally now committed to also defending the Baltic states while upending its past defence doctrine due to a recent NATO membership - will have to get screwed due to what other countries have done regarding their militaries? Of course that is the prize for putting one's trust in foreign countries, but still.

Most red tribe normies would, if they knew about Finland’s defense policies, strongly respect them. They don’t, of course- if asked about Finland they’d say, uh, trees?

Define 'screwed.' My bet on Trump would be no, not really, unless your government joins the French line on maximum-anti-Trump-resistance. At which point it's just classic patron relations.

The Trump-side of the Republican party is more about 'we aren't obligated to help people who aren't allies' and 'don't help those who don't help themselves' than 'don't help anyone.' The former is a reaction to scope creep- such as the resistance to leaving the Syrian conflict justified on the grounds of Kurdish partners that two elections prior would have been considered terrorists- and the later is one of the points of 'why Americans lose war' (because they try to fight instead of rather than along with partners).

Assuming you are referring to Poland, Sweden, or Finland, the Trump-end is far more sympathetic / willing to support those countries precisely because they have spent so much. That's not in the 'and bought American too', though that helps, but just in the general 'spending like it sees a threat.' Which is completely compatible with Trump's own past points, such as not helping NATO states that did not spend to the targets... but making no such claim about those that did.

The risk - screwed, if you will- is less about direct intention, and more of indirect complications of conflict with Germany on bases. The American presence / force flow for a Baltic contingency fundamentally relies on flowing forces into Germany, because that's where the infrastructure is. That risk, in turn, is that the bases close before an alternative is built up- and if that alternative is as good / reliable / not as vulnerable to disruption. It's not impossible to do so, but I wouldn't count on Trump setting timelines with that in mind.

Which leads to the risk that Trump closes bases over a basing break with Germany, and the US losing force-flow access into Europe for a contingency which occurs during the drawdown / before the alternative is created. It's not that alternatives aren't possible, but rather that they'd be less good / easier for the Russians to disrupt.

At which point my bet wouldn't be that your country would be screwed for lack of help, but rather screwed by the disruption to reinforcements before equivalent / alternative lines could be made.

The bright side to this is that Sweden and Finland entering NATO has significantly reduced the ability of the Russians to project disruption power into the western baltic, which in turn makes Poland more viable an intervention route than Germany, especially as American airpower can base in the northern baltic rather than also have to compete through the more dangerous southern baltic coast region.

Surely you must be aware that stefferi is Finnish? It's even in his flair.

Not everyone is aware what Suomi is in reference to.

The first order of business is selling your allies on reforming themselves. I think, unfortunately, your politicians were quite unwise in their plunge into NATO as opposed to a negotiated entrance that required many of the constituent states to live up to obligations. NATO's Eastern front needed Finland more than you needed NATO at the time of entry.

The biggest threat to Finland is not Russia, it is mass immigration.

Excluding Ukraine, Finland lets in about 0.7% of its population EVERY YEAR. And its not taking the best. In fact, the IQ gap between Finland natives and its immigrants is the worst in the world. And, of course, the immigrants have a fertility rate far above the Finns.

https://x.com/arctotherium42/status/1891483969486545295

Russia controlled Finland for a century and couldn't destroy the Finnish nation. But mass immigration is permanent. Left unchecked, Finland will be an entirely different country within a generation. In fact, it's already probably too late. Finland will be gone, and it won't be the Russians that did it, it will be suicide.

As an American, this is sad but it not my problem. We shouldn't spend blood and treasure defending countries that don't even recognize their own right to exist.

And, of course, the immigrants have a fertility rate far above the Finns.

A large portion of the current rise of immigration is labor immigration from low-fertility Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Philippines (including changes like seasonal berry pickers being required to apply for residence when they didn't need to so permanently) or nonpermanent student visas for South Asians (see here. Presumably some portion of them will say, but it's not as such by itself the sort of a culture-destroying moment being portrayed here.

In any case, this is an odd reason for doing a military alliance rugpull. I'm not aware of the US tying its other alliances to migration policies.

Russia controlled Finland for a century and couldn't destroy the Finnish nation.

This happened specifically during a time when the Russian Empire was a ramshackle premodern empire that was, as a system, built in a way that facilitated Finnish autonomy (due to being a collection of nationalities under an Emperor) and quite simply couldn't assimilate minorities to the same degree as a modern state could due to having very little in the way of state instutions beyond the very basic ones to speak of. This was already changing during the last years of the Empire, which were also related to attempts to start Russification campaigns in Finland and, of course, changed drastically during the Soviet times due to rapid modernization, though this was counteracted to some degree korenizatsya. Still, it was the Soviet times when many Finnic nations in Russia that had survived thus far started disappearing. Finland being theoretically conquered by Russia - admittedly still a low probability - would face a completely different situation from the Grand Duchy.

Not that I disagree with the core idea of the argument here, but it's not unlikely that Finland would ultimately end up the same as a Russian province in comparison to staying part of the Western system. Russia is undergoing demographic change as well, and while it's not as fast as in Central and Western Europe, the Russia of 2100 will be a whole lot more Muslim and Central Asian than it is now, at least based on the trends of the last few decades. Whether that's better than the Afro-Arab Finland that seems to be the destination at the moment is of course a matter of debate.

It will be darkly amusing if-when anti-western sentiment in Russia shifts from being because of ethnic-Russian-centric narratives, and more from Islamic-centric sentiments that make political alliances with them.

Please no, even Finland is going to be overrun by Indians.

On a side note I didn't realize native emiratis and other gulf states were so retarded. Does this exclude migrant workers or are they counted?

That's what one gets for dissolving oneself into a federal union.

Do remember that foreign policy is a EU prerogative now.

But it's not one! If it was one, our security situation would be better.

Look I fully agree with you that the current setup for the EU is a stupid mess that only hamstrings itself, but you decided to join this stupid mess by signing stupid mess treaties and devolving your powers to stupid mess institutions.

Now you get to feel the consequences.

If you don't like this you can either leave or attempt to change the institutions from the inside. Good luck.

I wish there was a simple solution, the way I see it it's just headed for implosion in a future financial, political or military crisis. The rot is far too widespread now. And the way the institutions are setup is too locked down to contenance any sort of reform.

Look I fully agree with you that the current setup for the EU is a stupid mess that only hamstrings itself, but you decided to join this stupid mess by signing stupid mess treaties and devolving your powers to stupid mess institutions.

Americans have been making similar comments about Federalism on this side of the pond for probably two centuries now. While some of those criticisms ring true, I think it'd be wrong to dismiss the American Experiment as having failed on that account. Americans are still having those very same arguments over our "stupid mess institutions" even now.

I'm not convinced that the idea of the EU is what's failing in practice. The most obvious difference I can point to is American chutzpah, which somehow seems more important than even the intra-EU language barriers.

I'm not convinced that the idea of the EU is what's failing in practice.

As an American looking from the outside, I'm inclined to agree.

This is only a net negative for Finland is Moscow's actions are dictated (at least in part) by perceiving NATO as a threat.

If Moscow is a mad dog attacking the weakest neighbors in its vicinity then a weak military alliance is better than none.

perceiving NATO as a threat

By failing to adhere to agreements, eastward expansion and providing support and aid to its enemies, and formenting color revolutions in allied states.

It's more than perception.

Maybe the average American now thinks not only "Europe should contribute more to solve their own defence problems", but furthermore, "Europe should get its nose out of international affairs and attempt to help only when it's spoken to. We, Russia and China are in charge now."

I think the average American has thought the former for years, but does not think that Russia or China are in charge. Your average American does not like Russia or the Chinese Communist Party but they likely think Europeans are weak and pretentious. (Of course Americans often have a pet European nation they like).

Personally I think that the Europeans have been living under the umbrella of American protection for years and they have used that position to take actions that are repugnant to Americans (such as increasingly draconian punishments for "hate speech") as well as advantageous to our rivals (such as building a massive oil pipeline directly to Russia).

The Biden administration successfully put Europe back in its place by convincing it to demilitarize itself in Ukraine's defense and cutting it off from Russian economic succor, which moved American leverage against Europe from "decent" to "strong." Europe would be forced to rely on America for military power and energy. Now Trump is ironically considering torching the military power and leaving Europe on its own. If he actually does this (and it's not a negotiating tactic, which...with Trump, what isn't) it will arguably be throwing away all of Biden's gains on the "keeping the Germans down" front. On the other hand, pulling out of Europe means that the Europeans will have to arm themselves further, which might actually prove fairly lucrative to the United States.

(I know I have said this before, but essential context for understanding American relations with Europe: Russia is by and large not a conventional threat to the United States. The only two powers likely to threaten the United States are China and...a united Europe.)

All I can say is you should have met your military spending guidelines. You can't play the freeloaders in a military alliance. If you are the freeloaders in a military alliance, annoying your biggest partner by continually meddling with how they run their businesses and suggesting they are uncivilized retards is a terrible idea.

The United States put Europe on notice that they needed to increase military spending and that they were pivoting to Asia under Obama. This is not a new idea. I think that Obama made withdrawing from Europe harder on every successive administration with his Ukraine policy, and I am happy to blame the US of A for worsening things on that front. Likewise, I grant some inconsistency in actions due to switching administrations. But Europe has been on notice that we were refocusing on Asia for a decade. They've been on notice that they needed to increase their defense spending for a decade. They have been on notice (if they were paying attention) that the old US two-war doctrine was gone for a decade. None of this should be a shock in any way.

The Biden administration successfully put Europe back in its place by convincing it to demilitarize itself in Ukraine's defense and cutting it off from Russian economic succor, which moved American leverage against Europe from "decent" to "strong." Europe would be forced to rely on America for military power and energy. Now Trump is ironically considering torching the military power and leaving Europe on its own. If he actually does this (and it's not a negotiating tactic, which...with Trump, what isn't) it will arguably be throwing away all of Biden's gains on the "keeping the Germans down" front.

Why would America want to keep Germany down? We don't expect another reich anytime soon.

forced to rely on America for military power and energy.

Energy is largely fungible, even if not 100%, so this doesn't really matter. And if relying on American military power means freeloading like they have been for years that isn't a benefit either.

Why would America want to keep Germany down? We don't expect another reich anytime soon.

It's not an American expression.

When NATO was formed, a British 'person of influence' (Lord Ismay, the first Secretary-General of NATO) summarized the purpose of the Alliance as 'to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.' Which is to say- to the Russians were only a middling reason, compared to the benefits of keeping the Americans involved as a way to mitigate of the issues of the European balance-of-power struggles (historically between France and others) and mitigate the Germans (whose mass destabilizes the European balance of power often unintentionally).

Due to its disproportionate size and position, the German Empire- even in its modern iteration as German- is disproportionately in the European strategic context. Just in terms of economics, the German economic unit starts to warp and shape its peripherary around itself (see how German media industries dominated much of the post-Soviet Warsaw Pact, including Poland) and militarily. Just on the basis of scale, if/when/whenever Germann militarizes, the resulting mass gives the German state disproportionate ability to influence its neighbors, and starts to form coalition that form to resist/teardown Germany... i.e., the European theaters of both world wars, among others.

Note that the German dynamic doesn't even require Germany to be 'a reich' or any equivalent thing. Any military alliance that can coopt Germany starts to shape the surrounding context as a coalition buildup for another major war- and that includes both OG-NATO (Warsaw Pact) and the Soviet Union (who- empowered in no small part via East Germany- led to NATO).

In the original formatting, among the narratives that convinced the Americans to join into NATO in the first place was a sense of inevitability of a European dissolution and another war if Germany was ever a dominant power in the European continent. America- as an offshort power greater than Germany- prevents the European power politics from balancing around- and against- Germany, which in turn prevents the need for buildup (in case Germany changes its mind) or the German counter-buildup (for fear of its neighbors).

In this sense, Germany down is about preconditions. As long as Germany is not 'up,' it can't lead to the conditions that led to the anti-german coalitions and the industrial era wars in Europe. As long as the Americans are the pre-eminent military power in Europe, Germany will be 'down.'

However, the American rational also has another, less spoken, point. Call it a realistic geopolitical priority.

It also included the point that the American has no fears of Europe so long as the European peninsula is not united under a polity hostile to the United States. Only a united European continent could conceivably muster the resources / naval capacity / means to credibly threaten a bridgehead into North America (likely using Iceland and Greenland as north atlantic staging grounds).

In the current context German reich-dom seems unfathomable because Germany and France are aligned and who would bound against them?

...except that Germany was quite happy to partner with the Russians not even a decade ago despite the security concerns of their eastern neighbors, and the German-French cordiality is generally dependent on France feeling it gets its way as often as not in a European Union framework it views itself as leading but which Britain no longer exists within to help counter-balance Germany, and all of this still occurs in a system where Germany is still a military dwarf and the US is uninvolved.

...and if the US and European alliance breaks, then Europe could conceivably be united under a single European polity (the EU), led by people who could adopt an anti-American posture (such as justifying EU centralization on grounds that the Americans are the real security threat), which could second conditions.

...at which point- on the theory of preventing preconditions- you start introducing an interest for the Americans to start encouraging the fragmentation of Europe- just so there isn't that sort of geopolitical threat vector.

Which would mean breaking the grip of the European Union...

...which the Germans, as a central figure / beneficiary for, would try to resist and enforce the EU as it benefits from...

...which could lead to a different sort of anti-German coalition, even if it would nominally be under anti-EU terms, as there are a number of states that are currently comfortable-enough with the EU which would very much not be if the EU started militarily suppressing it's dissidents and trying to enforce European sovereignity/suzerainty.

Another 'civil war' in Europe between the Germans and others in the European sphere is far from unthinkable. Unlikely in the near term, certainly, but less and less unlikely the further the rearmament goes and the more the Americans disengage.

Why would America want to keep Germany down? We don't expect another reich anytime soon.

Nobody did in 1920 either, did they? Remember, NATO was founded to keep the Germans down, the Americans in, and the Russians out, and even if Germany is not going to form another Reich anytime soon, the United States (like the United Kingdom before it) arguably benefits greatly by disrupting the formation of alliances that could threaten it. The EU is such an alliance.

Energy is largely fungible, even if not 100%, so this doesn't really matter.

Well traditionally Germany got their gas from Russia. Now it doesn't. I do think it matters - there's not unlimited LNG out there.

And if relying on American military power means freeloading like they have been for years that isn't a benefit either.

I think this depends on your calculus of things. If the United States does not have to worry about resource preservation, it can afford to let Europe free-ride, and arguably benefits from doing so. If the United States must worry about limited resources, it needs to prioritize, in which case as you say the free-riding is not a benefit. I think it's been signaling since the Obama administration that it is trying to maybe someday prioritize the Pacific and that Europe needs to step off and stop freeloading. Of course if the EU develops its own military power and no longer needs American assistance to deal with Russia, then that also gives them more freedom to make foreign policy decisions (France has always been like this!) There are a lot of different ways to try to thread this needle, but it seems to me that the Biden and Trump administrations have different ideas about the limits of US power - the Trump administration seems to think that prioritizing is necessary; the Biden administration was trying to walk and chew gum at the same time.

pulling out of Europe means that the Europeans will have to arm themselves further, which might actually prove fairly lucrative to the United States.

If that's your goal, you need to pull out very, very carefully.

The only reasons the Germans are begrudgingly buying any F-35s and FA-18s in the first place is that the US isn't certifying new EU aircraft for B-61 delivery, and the non-French EU really wants to be part of NATOs Nuclear Sharing program. If the US pulls its nukes from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, I don't see those guys buying American aircraft ever again.

And what else do you want to sell them? Outside of an actual defense emergency (where they would absolutely buy everything on offer - as Poland is doing right now, because they correctly perceive the situation to be an emergency already), they are more than capable of arming themselves with domestic systems, and would do so for now pertinent strategic reasons - and a whole lot of spite, of course.

Outside of an actual defense emergency (where they would absolutely buy everything on offer - as Poland is doing right now, because they correctly perceive the situation to be an emergency already)

One definitely wonders if recent moves by the Trump/Vance administration are going to push the rest of Europe into seeing things as the Poles do.

they are more than capable of arming themselves with domestic systems

Shrike's oversimplified view of the world is as follows:

  1. Industrial capability is downstream of energy availability
  2. Germany has always been a, perhaps the, industrial backbone of major European defense programs (such as the Leopard tank and the Eurofighter).
  3. German energy availability is substantially controlled by the United States, since they fill most of Germany's LNG needs and a fair portion of its oil needs as well.
  4. QED, the United States can probably credibly threaten to throttle German and thus European domestic arms production if they so choose.

Doubtless there are alternatives to US LNG, so I am not saying that attempting this would work flawlessly (and indeed such a hardball move might backfire) but between that, recent energy costs and reports of "de-industrialization," and the reported high price of European weapons systems I have seen rumblings about, I would not be surprised if Europe finds that standing up large numbers of domestic weapons systems is more troublesome than it was during the Cold War, when the Eurofighter and Leopard programs were stood up.

Indeed, both Europe and Russia (and the United States!) have been coasting on Cold War era stockpiles and technology for most of their main weapons systems for some time now in air and land equipment. (It's ironically the Russians with the Su-57 that have fielded the first advanced post-Cold War aircraft, although I will also give the Super Hornet at least partial credit).

the United States can probably credibly threaten to throttle German and thus European domestic arms production if they so choose

Not by LNG exports, at least not without significant direct embargoes. Qatar, Norway, Algeria, Canada, ect. all ship a lot of gas, and would supply gladly. The US could increase global gas prices by not selling to anyone, but the Germans would spend too keep their at least their MIC running. And at the end of the day the US really likes selling gas...

No, if the US really wanted to put the hurt on the EU, they could stop selling them chips and sensors.

But I don't think those steps are very realistic, measures like that would be unimaginably antagonistic.

But I don't think those steps are very realistic, measures like that would be unimaginably antagonistic.

Would you rate it as more or less antagonistic than bombing the pipeline which gave them a cheap alternative to buying American fossil fuels? This isn't some gotcha attempt, I'm actually curious as to where that would rank.

Yeah, I would. Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines is easier to defend. You can argue it was more about preventing your common adversary from selling than your good ally from buying. You can argue you're just making sure your good ally is following the agreed-upon embargo (with the stern implication that you both knew that this ally was always in danger of smashing the defect button if the economy got rough enough).

Then, of course, you can also always pretend that it was the work of an Ukrainian crack squad, that they (tragically, really) slipped their leash, and that there's really not much you could have done to stop them in the first place. Your intelligence counter-parties and the political elements they advise will see through that, but they'll understand. Support it even, maybe. The public won't see through the lies, and if they do, they'll have forgotten all about it a week later.

Not by LNG exports, at least not without significant direct embargoes. Qatar, Norway, Algeria, Canada, ect. all ship a lot of gas, and would supply gladly.

Germany imported less from Russia in 2022 than they do from the US now, and it caused a minor energy crisis and cost spikes when they stopped importing Russian gas. They had to build terminals to receive US LNG. Or am I wrong about that?

But I don't think those steps are very realistic, measures like that would be unimaginably antagonistic.

I kinda think this is less antagonistic than cutting off gas (although more realistically the US would just raise prices) - the US already has thrown its weight around with e.g. Turkey. But we'll see - I am not convinced that Everything That Happens is part of a massive conspiracy to make Lockheed Stonks go up. It's just interesting to map out the possibilities.

Germany imported less from Russia in 2022 than they do from the US now, and it caused a minor energy crisis and cost spikes when they stopped importing Russian gas. They had to build terminals to receive US LNG. Or am I wrong about that?

No, absolutely! But all those new floating gas terminals are agnostic to who's LNG carrier docks and delivers gas. Any country with gas liquidation tech can now sell to Germany - and that's most of the counties with gas wells.

Specifically, the US doesn't operate a single large LNG carrier. Those are built/owned/flagged/operated by third parties, and they can just pick up gas for Germany from somewhere else.

Gas delivery by LNG carrier is a mature global market. Japan, South Korea and India have historically imported a lot of their energy needs this way. Now the EU does, too.

That makes sense. But I assume either we've cut Germany a sweetheart deal (in which case I imagine that will be revisited soon!) or US LNG is cheaper than LNG from most other countries (otherwise Germany wouldn't buy US LNG). In either case, hiking US LNG prices is Bad For German Industry. I'm not saying you can Stop Eurotank 2.0 with this One Simple Trick necessarily, but it does seem to me that if the US wants to make their arms deals a more attractive option, they have some tools to do it (and indeed from talking to you it sounds like they are leveraging tools I hadn't even considered to do so!) As you say, some of them are very escalatory, and I doubt the US is going to break with Europe simply over arms deals (or a lack thereof). But I could definitely see the US stepping in if European industry is shaky.

In particular, I imagine the French will probably continue to do their own thing. But I would not be surprised if the Americans try to horn in on traditional German territory with arms deals to e.g. Spain, Scandinavia, the Baltics.

But I assume either we've cut Germany a sweetheart deal (in which case I imagine that will be revisited soon!) or US LNG is cheaper than LNG from most other countries (otherwise Germany wouldn't buy US LNG).

Kind of both / neither.

There are two main approaches to buying massive amounts of energy fuel (such as LNG) off the market: you either do spot-market purchases (paying what the market is charging at the moment), or you do fixed-price contracts. Fixed price contracts are often a bit higher than market price forecast at the time of purchase (or else there'd not be reason to sell it), BUT it protects you from price fluctuations if the market suddenly spikes (like if the Russian natural gas suddenly goes off the market and the Europeans with big checks start looking for less available supply).

When the gas crisis hit, Germany's limiting factor wasn't necessarily the gas on the market (though it was bad), but rather import capacity / throughput. This is why floating LNG terminals were brought in- they were faster than land-based- infrastructure.

While these were being arranged, the Europeans went to the American markets. In 2022/2023, the Biden Administration relaxed some regulatory controls to allow LNG exports to the Europeans. However, because the US government doesn't actually control the LNG companies, those were treated ass commercial transactions, and so the Europeans various bought off the spot market or made contract purchases. This was a basis of the later 2022/2023 European media stories / war propaganda narratives about how the US was trying to price-gouge Europe like a bad ally (because it wasn't offering discounts).

In 2024, this reversed for not-at-all electoral politics reasons. In January 2024, the Biden administration announced a pause in LNG exports in order to do an environmental / economic impact study. During this period, that coincidentally prevented more contracts to Europe or Asia, the gas was thus kept in US markets, reducing energy prices. It mysteriously also found that if you sell gas for more at global-market rates, then it raises the gas-energy prices for Americans who have to compete. This was realized in December, which is to after the election.

Which- to return to PB's point- is kind of why the 'US gas as a leverage tool' doesn't quite work like that. The Germans are back on the global market, so you can't exactly 'raise' their prices without either (a) shaping the entire global market, or (b) destroying their important infrastructure. Which- despite some conspiracies- the US hasn't been in the habit of doing. And similarly, the US can't get leverage by giving the gas away for cheap because (a) it isn't the government's gas, and (b) that comes with electoral consequences. Russia never cared, because Russia's been an oligarchy for decades, but it's not the sort of policy to survive a transition to 'drill baby drill.'

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It's ironically the Russians with the Su-57 that have fielded the first advanced post-Cold War aircraft, although I will also give the Super Hornet at least partial credit

Is there a reason you're discounting the F-35 here? Even going by the start of its development cycle (1995) it's clearly "post-Cold War" and there are far more of them in service (for a decade now) than Su-57s.

Oh, my bad. I was going by the start of the development cycle, but I mistakenly thought the JSF's development had gone back earlier than '95, so it's just a mistake on my part. (In my defense, the JSF was sort of the continuation of earlier pre-Cold-War aircraft programs, but I think 1995 is a fair start-by date).

I think we're experiencing a restoration of what was the typical attitude of Americans to Europe. You are asking for American Vibes, so what I say may not be representative but it is how it appears to my family:

The first American settlers knew that they were leaving behind a continent full of aristocratic in-fighting, abuses of human dignity, and religious persecution. When Americans first crafted their government, they did so in response to European governments. They were explicitly thinking, "This is what went wrong in Europe (mostly England and France) and here's how we're going to avoid it."

However, that still puts Europe in a privileged position in America. They're our foil. We didn't create a government in opposition to Chinese governance, or Ottoman governance. We were Europeans trying to improve upon European political theory.

Throughout American history, there was this tension. At first we were the underdogs. Later, we became partners, and imagined ourselves the saviors in global conflicts. We watched, amused, as Europe started to "catch up" to us in freedom. While they didn't have anything close to a Bill of Rights, they did seem to start to understand the value of Free Speech, a justice system centered on the rights of the accused, etc.

However, we were always aware that they didn't see things as we did. European rights and freedoms were not absolute, they still have "sovereigns" who aren't explicitly the citizenry, etc. We have a lot in common - more in common than the rest of the world - but we are not the same. We can be on the same side, but our priorities will be different.

In the past 20 - 30 years, there has been a movement in the US to see Europe as "Just like us, only better." Leftist commentators looked at Europe and said, "They have gay marriage and haven't fallen apart yet, we should have gay marriage." They looked at Europe and said, "They have paid maternity leave, we should too." Subsidized Healthcare, vacation days, worker protections, regulations. America was no longer ahead of Europe, we were behind it. Despite of being the center of culture, technology, and economics, we were told that we were a backwater. "The world hates America." These voices gained influence over time and seemed ascendant during Obama's presidency.

The American people are tired of this messaging. We are tired of snobby Europe who prioritizes their citizen's low retirement ages over their contractual defense obligations and then mocks us for working into our 80s while we foot the Global Peace Bill. We are tired of being lectured to by the Sages of Government Intervention and Safetyism while they prosecute people for praying silently in the wrong places. We especially don't want America to grow any more similar to Europe as it is now.

Most Americans don't have any love of Russia. Most Americans would probably agree that Russia shouldn't have invaded the Ukraine. But most Americans are pragmatic, and understand that prolonging this conflict isn't going to right that wrong. I see America as more pragmatic than Europe in general.

But I think that is the extent of it. America is not actively hostile to Europe. If Trump doesn't want Europe at the bargaining table, it might be because he thinks they will fuck it up. There are some concessions that will have to be made, and Europe has proved that they find it more convenient to throw Ukrainian males at the problem to delay making these concessions.

America has been detaching from Europe for a long time now, through multiple administrations, including Bush, Obama and Trump I. Due to events this detachment slowed down, though did not fully reverse, during the Biden admin, but is now being made visible and turbocharged. It doesn't mean automatic hostility to Europe, especially considering there's a high chance that the European right-wing parties will continue to gain influence and become acceptable partners in a country after country, bringing the European mindset closer to what Vance's speech clearly has in mind, but it's all a part of the great pivot from the Atlantic to the Pacific that's been going on anyway.

I don't think that US is going to align with Russia. Some forces on the American right seem to want this, but this seems to be based on a misguided enemy-of-my-enemy (where "my enemy" is the local American libs) thinking or a belief of some sort of a grand Russian geopolitical pivot against China that doesn't really capture either the actual Russian ideological mindset or the reasoning behind the Russia-China alignment, which is probably quite a bit stronger than some American geopolitics brains seem to think.

I think the Biden zeitgeist re Russia was unbelievably antagonistic and people seemingly viewed Russia almost akin to Goldstein (when something went “wrong” it was due to Russian misinformation).

I view Trump not as a realignment to a Russian U.S. alliance but more towards a reasonable approach to Russia (yes it is a revanchist power, but it isn’t pure evil either)

I'm a fellow European so not quite what you want, but I interpret american behaviour quite differently. IMO it's more about the EU finally getting their shit together again. Considering that we used to be the center of the world for quite a while, our performance in the last few decades has been very lacklustre, and especially comparing it to the US shows that this isn't about just having less opportunities to grow since we're already at the top - the US was already ahead, and then jumped even further. Military is just one point of many, but among the most obvious. Trump realized that as long as the Americans are nice to us we will always under-invest in Military and happily depend on them. It's pathetic tbh.

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