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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.
Why would America want to keep Germany down? We don't expect another reich anytime soon.
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.
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.
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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.
Well traditionally Germany got their gas from Russia. Now it doesn't. I do think it matters - there's not unlimited LNG out there.
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.
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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.
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.
Shrike's oversimplified view of the world is as follows:
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).
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.
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.
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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?
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.
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.
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.'
Interesting info, thanks.
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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).
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