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The tacit agreement was that they wouldn’t have to be capable of fighting their own battles (and in the case of say Germany, a lot of people didn’t want them to be capable of fighting their own battles — the memory of WW2 was still quite fresh when the Berlin Wall fell). For the sake of stability in Europe, the agreement was that countries would become semi-vassals of the US empire in exchange for the US’s protection.
Not to say that the terms of this agreement have to be binding for all eternity. If a new arrangement is needed then so be it. But this idea that European countries did something “wrong” by not maintaining a larger military presence is, I think, lacking in historical context.
Including most Germans, until very recently and possibly still.
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Was that the tacit agreement?
If so, it makes a certain limited and temporary sense for Germany and Japan.
It makes no sense at all for the rest of Europe. The US is just going to project power across the continent permanently so none of these countries need a functional military?
And we're going to do that based on a "tacit agreement"?
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It's not obvious to me that the European states are, or to my knowledge ever were, interested in behaving like good vassals to the American empire.
My mental model of 'vassalage in all but name' is the Warsaw pact. If the USSR asked one of its satellites for eggs, then my understanding is that you'd damn well better have sent them some eggs.
I also can't imagine that the Soviet empire would have tolerated its vassals becoming any shade of friendly with capitalist states.
That's the underlying source of the entire problem. The United States is an Empire, but because of WWII and Cold War we are supposed to pretend that isn't the state of the world, we don't do empires in which vassals are subjugated and have clear obligations to the hegemon. But the flip side is the imperial obligations of the United States become likewise ambiguous. The American people can appeal to isolationism because on paper we aren't supposed to be an Empire with vassals and bilateral obligations.
The United States is an empire, we do have imperial obligations, but the ambiguity of that state of affairs leads to absurd arrangements in which i.e. America abandons Europe while endlessly supporting an impudent Israel, which scoffs at any attempt by America to assert authority over it. And Europe can demand support from the US without fulfilling its own obligations.
The entire idea of this "tacit agreement" is supposed to support the useful fiction that America isn't an empire, but it leads America to shirk its own duties and leads its vassals to shirk their own duties.
Except America isn't an empire. Because the nations that you claim are our vassals are not our vassals and will not act like our vassals if pressed to do so.
Well, except Japan. Japan is arguably our vassal. Hence why they're buttering up Trump, because their future existence is actually to some degree predicated on American security guarantees.
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If nobody is holding up their end of the agreement, what exactly is the problem? If Europe doesn't want to help the US with its egg shortage, what's the big deal if the US doesn't want to help Europe with their artillery shortage?
What's there to be upset about when everyone's abandoning an unspoken agreement that seemingly never existed to begin with? What exactly is being abandoned and why should I care?
American decline and European decline. No loyalty to the American empire because even its very existence is denied. Endless quagmires like the Middle East caused by the ambiguity of America's role on the global stage, and because neither non-intervention nor subjugation are options on the table. The mandate is easily exploited by small groups of influential lobbyists because there's no real underlying direction or imperial identity.
Well, given that the US has never seemed to have any luck imposing its will over its "vassals", it isn't clear to me that the American empire is or ever was.
Pretty much this. Does SS wish the "American Empire" was a real thing? It seems to me that the current tension between the US and the EU boils down to the fact that the alliance of old was forged to create a united front against the Soviets. The Soviets are no more, and with them, an enemy that the "free world" could stand against. Nowadays, we just have a broad, semi-vague "axis of evil" of clear, yet not overt rivals. I think the only remarkable thing is that it has taken so long for the US-Europe alliance to fracture once the USSR was a thing of the past.
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A key part of vassalage is providing troops for the lord.
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In that case though wouldn't the "something wrong" that Europe did be violating their status as vassals? From refusing to stand with the coalition of the willing in the Bush administration to their frosty/hostile reactions to Trump to their overall attitude towards America they have been increasingly acting like independent states with their own priorities and not as vassals. And to be clear, I think that is a good thing. They are not vassals, they should not act like it. But if they do act like vassals then US aid is part of a deal and that's fine, if they don't then US aid is charity. And you are entitled to your side of a deal but not to charity.
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Aren't you mixing up two very different time periods? After the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR fell apart, sure, everyone was happy to let Germany disarm. But everyone disarmed then, including the US and Russia. It was a very happy time. God I miss the 90s.
In the 50s, when NATO first formed, West Germany was one of the first to join and one of its most important members. It had a national draft, high military spending, and most wargames assumed that an active WW3 would be fought mostly on West German land. It also included many ex-Naxis among its ranks, since... where else would you get people with military experience at that time? The US and everyone else was just fine with that in the name of expediency.
The FRG / West Germany has also never been able to fight her own battles in the sense that it has never been capable of waging war as a sovereign nation and has never been intended to do so, as it was formed by uniting mere military occupation zones that were under direct or (in the case of British and French zones) indirect US control – that is all the source of whatever legitimacy she ever had. You’re correct: there were times when her army had a higher level of readiness, a bigger slice of available budget and a bigger arsenal than today. But it was still only ever going to be deployed when and where the White House decided.
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