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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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