I don't get how this isn't obvious. If you can't defend your territory without relying on another country, you are not truly sovereign. The larger union might be sovereign, but you aren't, and your protection is only as strong as the larger union.
I don't think the issue is whether or not it's obvious. It boils down to weighing the risks. It seems to me that the weight has favored dependence on another superpower for the past several decades. I'm sure everyone involved understood that the consequence of that decision was quasi-sovereignty. I'm not in Europe, so I'm not sure what the UK government has been saying this whole time, but it probably sounds really bad to admit that publicly. So, I'm sure they perform lingual acrobatics to try to reassure the public that they are truly independent when it comes to military security.
Perhaps it's a naive take, but I'm just armchairing this from the perspective of playing a 4x grand strategy game and the sort of decisions you have to make in these contexts.
Anything can be called 4D chess if we add enough layers to the logic. I agree that what you're describing makes sense; but I think it's probably more in line with the bureaucratic mindset to observe this is the result of decades of kicking cans down the road.
Yes, unlike the "player" in a 4x game, there's too much discontinuity in administrations between decades. Makes it very easy to kick the can down the road.
I don’t think you have to go quite that far. NATO was intended to provide cover against the other superpower bloc in Europe. That superpower isn’t really a superpower anymore, but the remnant that legally succeeded it still has a lot of nukes.
Arguably in a world of superpowers, only superpowers have total sovereignty under your definition, hence why I said it was a sliding scale. 95% of any individual nation or most configurations of alliances you could technically (though maybe not plausibly) come up with would still get crushed by the French military in a mano a mano military conflict. They can defend themselves, but what if they have to defend themselves alone vs the United States, Russia, the PRC, or a medley of European great powers? NATO keeps them from having to go it alone, and NATO plus the EU takes a couple of those possibilities off the table, at least for a while, but in Charles de Gaulle’s time, France still had a colonial empire they were trying to keep together (and they still have a fair number of overseas territories outside of metropolitan France) and the plausibility of NATO keeping it together was all up in the air.
Throughout the duration of the Cold War, I don’t think you can make a winning argument that on balance the US was ever a bad ally, but as an old European leader, he was definitely right to be skeptical about the tradeoffs, and right to think that if France has more power, then it wouldn’t need to cede sovereignty or at least much sovereignty to all these newfangled international institutions popping up across Europe.
At the end of the day, countries have no choice. Compared to the United States military spending, they have spent trivial amounts on their own defenses, and now their economies cannot support spending at the levels required for them to catch up, without serious cuts to citizens quality of life.
Much of the world is now at the mercy of the United States, they must bend the knee.
Europe doesn't want to run an empire nor go to war with China. Defending the borders is enough.
And a few hundred nukes targeting US cities just in case.
Germany can barely construct an airport today and now you think they’re going to develop hundreds of nuclear warheads from the ground up?
They don’t even have nuclear power anymore - they shuttered the last of their nuclear power plants. The entire supply chain will need to be developed and tested without running afoul of the test ban treaty.
Besides, nuclear weapons are almost worthless without submarines to carry them. They’d only be useful against an unsophisticated adversary.
How much of the European capabilities do you think would remain after Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Broadcom, Google, etc drop poisoned updates on to them at the next update/connection, scramble all the data, trigger endless bootloops? Disable Azure, AWS and iCloud for European IPs. Some messing with DNS and Cloudflare, along with using the flying stingrays (Starlink Satellites) to mess with mobile communication. Also pile up all Teslas at important traffic intersections into huge lithium battery fires.
Basically, it would send Europe back into the stone age, I fear. In under a week.
It's not quite that simple, even if they had spent more, the US made itself the centrepoint of post-WWII institutions because of the Cold War. As I heard put quite succinctly, on one European podcast this week, even if you have 20 European nations spending more, their current military strategy has always been based around integrating into a combined NATO led force, dominated by US command and control structures. Those 20 European nations therefore would need a total strategic rethink of everything. Purchasing decisions would be totally different - like the British storm shadow missiles gifted to Ukraine that rely on GPS - apparently now will not work.
BS. They can "print" all the money they want. What they really need is: industrial capacity, raw materials and enough ppl. willing and able to turn that into tanks.
"Compared to the United States military spending, they have spent trivial amounts on their own defenses"
Strictly said, the US does not spend that much on its defense either. Most of the expenses go into projecting power afar.
Strategic goals of, say, Poland, are different. They won't be fighting China over Taiwan, and so they don't need aircraft carriers or a chain of bases around the world.
They might invest in an atomic bomb of their own, though.
"Much of the world is now at the mercy of the United States"
In what sense? If the US starts another hot war in, say, the Middle East, I suspect that the outcomes won't be much better than they were in Iraq.
"they must bend the knee"
This only works if the giant has some consistent goals. The current US administration seems to flail around instead of pursuing some particular intelligible path.
Instead of bending knees, a dozen countries will start developing their own nukes. Non-proliferation might not be dead, but it is certainly critically ill.
A lot of the opposition to it might be Democrats, but that doesn't mean Democrats are generally opposed. When Democrats are in power, you don't see them pushing massive military cuts or anything else aimed at dismantling the MIC.
Well, we saw another simpleton destroy Russia position as a major supplier to the world. He's not only done that. He's had his navy sunk by a country that doesn't own battleships, an enormous arsenal of tanks and guns turned to scrap metal, lost so many troops he's had to ship in battalions from other countries, and had to abandon satellite states like Syria and watch then descend into chaos.
I get it, Ukraine is pushed to the brink. But Europe isn't - and have you looked at the state of the other side?
As for simpletons - did you see the people pushing for Brexit? Or the moron Australian Prime minister who tried to the couuntry from upgrading from ADSL? It appears the world has no shortage of simpletons.
It also appears democracy doesn't prevent you from electing them. I would not blame the yankies too harshly for electing one. We all do it. What democracy does is let you get rid of them. If it doesn't, you, like Russia, don't have a functioning democracy.
> and now their economies cannot support spending at the levels required for them to catch up, without serious cuts to citizens quality of life.
There's a long history of crippling economies to fund armies and buy weapons.
Frankly, that's how US military spending has worked as well. The country would be much wealthier if it hadn't squandered so much on military spending. We just overlook that effect because the country looks so wealthy overall.
US military flights are EXTREMELY expensive. Deny the US bases close to the place the US cares and you can DRAMATICALLY drive up military costs instantly. We have an incredibly soft underbelly because we have allies and don't have to worry about a lot of details. If suddenly we start getting pressure at every possible pain point/cost point we'd be fucked.
Prevent US naval supply. Push American hubris and drive the US into thinking they are doing some 'Berlin Airlift 2.0' and gung-ho Americans will burn through our military $$$s. There's thousands of ways to 'death by 1000 cuts' America's military budget. We take for granted our partners support and can't afford our military without it. Make each and every base an island that has to be completely provided for by the home country, in every detail, with military resources. No civilian transport of supplies for anything. Force it all through military ports/military airports, every last drop of diesel, every moving electron, we'll see how for the US military budget goes.
LOL, maybe Europe could sign on to China's Belt & Road initiative instead? I mean the terms are probably going to be worse than if they decided to dump the US earlier, but now that may be more attractive than antagonizing Russia & China ... and being ignored by their previous benefactor, the US.
Haha. And Trump's winning over Canada with his tariffs. And Canada has no choice to become the 51st state. Yall live in dreamland and are the ones is some coosh comfort zone where you image we have all the cards and are guaranteed to come out on top.
If you don't think there are buttons that can paralyze/impact the US more than those forced to bend the knee you aren't looking. That the only one pushing this game is US doesn't mean we have the inherently stronger hand. And at some point if we keep pushing others will start stabbing our soft underbelly and we are absolutely fucked.
I believe the idea is that your submarines aren't vulnerable to a first strike, since any competent government will figure out where your land based silos are.
EDIT: Oh I see you're saying in general they shouldn't have nukes. I mean, I don't like that anyone has them but I get why they do
There's only one country that's given up nuclear weapons, and that was due to racism. Even if Britain was no longer given the missiles, can you really see the country not developing an alternative delivery mechanism?
With 'only one country', I assume you refer to South Africa. Are you aware that the ANC itself approved of nuclear disarmament?
If you look at the Budapest Memorandum, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine also voluntarily gave up their nuclear arsenals by becoming a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in exchange for security guarantees.
The only reason nuclear weapons are a thing is because of imperialism. Stay in your fucking borders and nobody gives a shit.
Russia is the reason why the west has nuclear weapons, and now the fascist US is reviving its imperial ambitions, with threats of annexation to Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Palestine. Sounds to me like the entire fucking world should be scrambling to become a nuclear power.
They face a nuclear armed, rogue military power,intent on invading and occupying other weaker nations. I think they need a stick to deter that particular nation from doing anything silly to them.
Extremely unlikely. Any backdoor could be in theory found by an enemy - that's an horrible idea. As for outright prevent spare parts - these aren't systems in, well, active use. Effects would be tiny over long term.
> Any backdoor could be in theory found by an enemy
In theory.
In reality, it took Snowden leaks for some of the smartest and most motivated people working in technology to discover they had been backdoored by a third-party.
>As for outright prevent spare parts - these aren't systems in, well, active use. Effects would be tiny over long term.
Experts disagree with you, at least over the "long term".
>Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet secretary, Robert Armstrong, told her that “in the inconceivable case of a future US government deciding to cut off supplies of components”, there would be “no sudden effect”, though over “two or three years” the deterrent’s effectiveness would “begin to fall off”. In 2006 Commodore Tim Hare, a former nuclear-policy chief at the Ministry of Defence, told the Commons Defence Committee: “If, over a very long period, we became deeply estranged from the Americans and they decide to rat on their agreements, we would be in…great difficulty.” But the risk was “very low”.
>Sir Lawrence reckons that were that to happen there would not be a “cliff-edge” loss of effectiveness, “but over time we would be scrambling to keep it going”. The biggest problems would be replacing the Kings Bay missile storage and running out of critical spare parts.
I'll grant that, though I think that when countries want nukes they get/keep them unless strongly opposed (and usually even then...) - so I don't think US can deny the system in practice.
My understanding of the article is that it was about shutting down the program that keeps the nuclear navy afloat, not about a backdoor with a switch to turn off the arsenal
I suspect that US has kill switches in place to ensure that their tech cant be used against them. Should they come up against F-35s they sold to another nation, it would make sense to have a mechanism, unknown to the purchaser, that would render it usesless against the US.
If that happened the stock value for every single US weapons manufacturer would drop like a stone.
I think SAAB is already reevaluating the choice of a US engine in the Gripen fighter jet, as the US is talking about blocking their sale to Columbia. The next version won't have a US engine.
The stock prices of US defence companies have been falling for the last few weeks because of the cuts to the defence budget by Trump. Conversely the values of European defence companies have been shooting up. Primarily because of the re-armament. That wont be of much consolation to the US defence companies though, they're very likely to be excluded from the process. More fuel for the recession it seems.
These weren't cuts, but an overall redirection of budgets inside the Pentagon. Over the long term, US defence companies have a very profitable future ahead (and a fair amount of European rearmament will involve buying stuff from US due to obvious industrial capacity issues).
They can drop more, orders aren't being cancelled. Imagine that the UK needs to launch an F35 against, let's say Argentina, and the US says no and prevents that plane from taking of to defend the Falkland Islands. Would Germany, Denmark, Norway, the UK and others still want the rest of the planes they ordered, or will they cancel?
Another nightmare scenario. If the EU has to fly combat missions against Russians in Ukraine and the US decides that in the "interests of peace" to deactivate European F35s. Not a possiblity that can be dismissed.
I saw somewhere that Britain and Israel are in more independent positions than other F35 buyers. Britain got control over the software and has developed some of their own, while Israel has been able develop their own electronics for it as well.
They both might be able to avoid the remote off switch, but others could be a bit nervous.
> The US also has tight control over mission data files (MDFs), including electronic order-of-battle data. MDFs for the UK, Italy, Japan and other F-35 operators are exclusively generated by the USAF’s 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing at Eglin AFB, Florida.
A weaker US defence establishment would be something that the Russians and other enemies of the US could only dream about a few years ago. Its suddenly becoming a reality.
Could the USA still turn on Selective Availability for GPS? I am not up to date with the newest satellites, but to me this is more of a threat than anything else. I know there are alternative systems, can most GPS devices use GLONASS or Galileo signals as well?
I care more about airplanes, ships, trucks, and things of that nature. People will be able to get along fine with no GPS, a large ship transiting the Panama Canal will NOT be fine without GPS.
GPS has two modes of operation, one low precision and one high precision one, which can optionally be encrypted. It would still be usable for military, but not for others. The low-precision mode might still be available publicly.
You're confusing selective availability, which is on the civilian side, with bands.
There are four civilian bands, with a fifth in the works for critical uses. There are two military bands, and they are encrypted.
The military bands (two) have always been encrypted and being on different bands, cannot be received at all by civilian receivers, though I imagine it's mostly a firmware change with some minor hardware changes.
Don't talk about things you wildly do not understand or know anything about.
I would have thought the USA government wouldn’t shoot itself in the face, but look at the current stuff going on. I’m not sure they wouldn’t fuck over all the users of GPS at this point, including themselves.
> United States President Bill Clinton signed a bill ordering that Selective Availability be disabled on May 1, 2000; and, in 2007, the US government announced that the next generation of GPS satellites would not include the feature at all.
Also, SA just meant you couldnt resolve with an accuracy less than 100 meters. It didn't mean "turn off GPS in a part of a world".
I believe they could select the level of degradation with SA, you could even turn the non encrypted channel off IIRC. Luckily, it seems they stopped including the feature in newer satellites, so that’s good at least.
> To quote Drummond again, he also said today that he believes it to be “extremely unlikely” that Trump would cut off UK access to Trident missiles since it would be a “strategic betrayal on a grand scale that would damage him and America”.
I'm gonna take a stab and say there hasn't been an immediate, sharp increase in public desire to completely destroy relations with Europe. Certainly, the Ukraine war is very polarizing, especially in the U.S., but I don't know how far I would read into it to determine overall European sentiments.
I'm specifically thinking outside the confines of Trump, who is a wildcard, and pointing more toward public sentiment.
We havent seen or heard any great public outcry about what Trump is doing, we havent seen any reaction to his betrayal of Ukraine. The impression we get is that the US public just dont care. Domestic issues, primarily economic are whats most important to them. If the US cut off access to Trident for the UK I doubt there would be much of a reaction from the US public.
A lot of Americans see Europe as degenerate, immoral, holier-than-thou, and leeching off of US largesse. They'll probably cheer anything that sticks it to Europe and looks like it would save money for the US. There's a lot of overlap with Trump supporters in this group. (To be clear, I'm not one of them, that's just a sentiment I hear from certain quarters.)
I've been lamenting the actions by the new administration with my European friends on Telegram. Do you have a lot of friends here in the US?
I'm curious if your impression is mostly informed by what media have told you about how we feel, or if you have talked to any Americans about how we feel about the current administration...
To be clear, I'm against U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine, but I still very much respect my European friends. I was just travelling there not too long ago. I think sometimes people with my perspective get locked into the "anti-European" group due to our views on the Ukraine war.
From my understanding, it seems that's the direction Ukraine's European allies are heading. I'm possibly wrong. I'm just saying that's where I draw the line for me, personally.
Dudes just a concern troll. Old boy just wanted in to re-enforce the fear that US involvement = US boots on the ground even though it makes no sense in reality or in the context of the conversation at hand.
We can all see that Europe _could_ have done much more for itself and Ukraine - we see that - but chose not to, despite American requests for over a decade.
In Europe the UK were the only nation to take the Russian threat seriously, they trained and armed the Ukrainians as best they could. France was trying diplomatic means to persuede Russia to curtail it hostilities. Germany just ignored them because cheap natural gas for their industry. Post invasion though they've given significant amounts of aid, but it was rather later than they should have.
>France was trying diplomatic means to persuede Russia to curtail it hostilities.
There were two years between these diplomatic efforts and now. What happened in the meantime? It's obvious EU could have invested more in defence. How come they get outcompeted by _North Korean_ defence industry?
Another thing - it's actually very easy to help Ukraine and punch Putin. Just place EU troops in Western Ukraine, to free up Ukrainians for the war. Putin will find out he has to agree to security guarantees otherwise he'll get literal troops in his face. EU statesmen are pressuring US for guarantees they are unwilling to give themselves, when they ought to do it for their own interests.
I think Trump is very very crass to say the least, but you also need to look at underlying realities, and EU behaviour has been poor.
The EU didnt take the threat seriously because they couldnt comprehend Putin jeapordising trade relationships with the rest of Europe. Putin in turn thought that Europe would roll over like they did with Crimea, they'd also be scared to lose access to Russian gas. Both sides were wrong. Putin was stupider than the EU realised and Russian gas was not as indispensible as he though it was.
We can also see that a decent chunk of Europe went into Afghanistan with us, and even some into Iraq, when they could have easily stayed home.
It's not just the military. For example, a common argument I see for why the US can't have proper universal health care when so much of Europe manages to do it is that Europe is (supposedly) free-riding off of US medical R&D.
I'd also wager that a large part of this group doesn't think anyone should be helping Ukraine.
>We can also see that a decent chunk of Europe went into Afghanistan with us
There's a difference between big EU countries (which have been skimping), and the small E. European countries which are more realistic about defence. Note Ukraine itself did a lot here.
>a common argument I see for why the US can't have proper universal health care when so much of Europe manages to do it is that Europe is (supposedly) free-riding off of US medical R&D.
US actually spends more. The trick is seeing where this expenditure goes ('greedy CEOs' is technically accurate, but not the biggest reason).
>We havent seen or heard any great public outcry about what Trump is doing
The police are threating to kill us if we protest.
Our students, normally the readiest to protest, face threats of expulsion and deportation if they attend a protest that is deemed "illegal".
Most of our working class are living paycheck to paycheck. In this job market, that means missing even a few days' work to protest means looking for a new job. With a lack of real social support programs, a large scale protest means hungry children. Maybe even homeless children.
What would you like us to do?
I think the protests will start in earnest once there's a large unemployed population. How long will that take, though?
This was the reason that was given 8 years ago the last time Trump was in power. We couldnt understand why the US public werent packing the streets in protest,like they would have in France or Germany or Italy. And the same reason was given, it was economic, people couldnt afford to take the time to protest. And he we are 8 year later and hundreds of thousands of people are about to be fired, democracy is and the rule of law are under threat. Which is what we said to them back then, if you dont do it now you wont have the chance next time.
We've had hundreds of protests since then, with no executions that I'm aware of. You can't possibly be putting this one case forward to justify that the US is executing protestors? That was clearly a cop with a murderous intent, which isn't uncommon these days, unfortunately.
That's not the impression that I (as a Dane) get, far from it. But it just doesn't matter that many people in the US are upset, they are as powerless as we are in Europe.
We've entered the era of the nightmare scenario. Under the current US regime, use of Trident cant be guarenteed. We would never have used them independantly before, but with the US abandoning the western alliance and Europe facing Russia alone, that possiblity is more real now than ever before. We either need to develop our own launch capability or cooperate with the French and use theirs.
Whatever happens, we need to break free of the USA for defence procurement.
Has Europe been in the Western Alliance in the past 2 decades? The US has been shouldering the costs of this alliance while all Europe does is criticize the US while giving empty promises for military investments. This weakness opened the door for Putin to invade Ukraine, something he would never done if Europe had done what it promised. Trump was literally laughed at in Germany when he complained of its reliance on Russian natural gas combined with its weak military investments.
The US has been giving this feedback for over a decade. While I don't necessarily support the President's posture, it took these extreme measures for Europe to start listening. Europe and US are natural allies, but it must be an actual alliance.
What you're advocating entails nuclear proliferation, thus increasing existential risk. This should give you pause and cause you to reflect upon how you arrived at your conclusions.
It very much looks like Europe and US are not allies anymore. I don’t believe there’s a strategy here. I believe that Trump and his electorate are simply much more closely aligned, ideologically speaking, to Russia than to the EU.
It’s short sighted to say Europe should spend more on defence. Europe is now going to move away from US weapons and develop its own systems.
That’s a net loss for American defence companies and jobs in the USA. For the US military, costs per unit will go up, because they aren’t mass producing these systems at the same scale.
Trump didn’t just step back from an alliance that existed for 80 years, he also burnt the bridge by destroying trust.
For Europe, it’s probably a good thing to kickstart a new economic recovery, e.g. German automakers can switch to tanks and IFVs.
> he also said today that he believes it to be “extremely unlikely” that Trump would cut off UK access to Trident missiles since it would be a “strategic betrayal on a grand scale that would damage him and America”.
Brits unironically assume Trump and his followers care of their reputation?
Didn't JD Vance dismissively call UK 'a random country' like a few days ago?
All this worry mongering about Trump / MAGA is just political ignorance.
As the oldest democracy in the world, with a deliberate 2 party system that is essentially ideologically similar, the US political system is quite resilient. Yes, a "deep state" or a "military-industrial complex" does have enormous influence over the country - but there's nothing truly insidious about it when you realise that it is a part of the US political system. It is somewhat undemocratic, but it still acts as one of the checks and balances of US political system to ensure the US remains a superpower (i.e. it only comes into picture on superpower politics). It is composed of the core of the US capitalistic system, whose leaders also have a lot of political influence. Both the US political parties understand that you need this "deep state / MIL complex" to continue to be a superpower, and so a US President is only ever allowed to freely exercise his democratic powers domestically (i.e. in America) and for routine foreign diplomacy. For anything else related to superpower politics, the President of the US does not have a free hand in any manner of speaking - it's a 100+ year old idea and institute that has ensured the US becomes the eminent (and now sole) superpower in the world.
And Trump is going to be a President only for a few years. (Again, note, by design - term limits in the US political systems ensure authoritarianism cannot flourish).
Moreover, many might not remember that once the US developed nuclear weapons during WW 2, with the help of British and other European scientists, it immediately expelled British scientists from its research labs and worked to deny this technology to the British. The British had to do their own research to create nuclear weapons. (But they still chose to be dependent on the US because they understand the value of alliances - it's always better to fight a war alongside someone, than alone). The delivery systems for nuclear weapons are much easier to create, especially when you have wealth and help from others (alliances). Even if by some rare and extraordinary fluke, the US explodes from within, the British can easily catchup.
I am talking about international politics and you are talking about domestic politics. (Even with domestic politics, the political institutions of America are quite robust, and can withstand an assault on it. Not saying it won't hurt, but no long-term damage that can't be easily addressed is going to happen in America.)
Respectfully, we are in the comments section of an article about international diplomacy and the parent commenter really went out of their way for their comment to be exclusively about US foreign policy.
It’s also worth discussing domestic policy, that’s just not this thread.
Who do you think is setting foreign policy? How sure are you that "Trump is going to be a President only for a few years"? Even if elections proceed as normal, how sure are you that JD Vance, for example, won't win the next term? You don't think JD Vance's foreign policy would be different, do you?
Brits who were just told their boys dying for the US when the US asked means nothing don't agree with you. Those watching America throw away an entire country don't agree with you. "Ah the good old American's up to their old tricks" isn't gonna cover this one.
Nothing is going to happen that's gonna cause any long-term political damage to the alliance. It's all superpower politics at work here - the 800 billion that EU countries are now committing to bolster their military is exactly what America has been asking for decades now from its NATO allies in EU. (To understand politics, don't look at what politicians say, but do - the actual political actions they take reveal their true goals / intentions).
Bullshit. Germany, France, and the UK ALREADY meet their NATO commitments.
You are excluding trust and relationships. You can't just ignore the impact of
both of those. Those are gone and aren't coming back.
It is not 4d chess to achieve something that was already occurring PRIOR to the 4d chess move. It is a petty asshole being petty, and it will cost the US dearly.
> Germany, France, and the UK ALREADY meet their NATO commitments.
And are they the only members of NATO?
> You are excluding trust and relationships.
No. All that talk is just a hype in the western media to make the increase in defence spending more palatable to European citizens. The European politicians know nothing really has changed in the strategic relationship with the US. In the short-term, yes, there will be some small damage. But both sides consider it minor and acceptable to the larger goal of pumping more money into their military alliance.
> he believes it to be “extremely unlikely” that Trump would cut off UK access to Trident missiles since it would be a “strategic betrayal on a grand scale that would damage him and America”.
Has he been paying attention to the past couple months?! Strategic betrayals that damage America have been one of the few consistent themes. Every single country in the world is foolish to rely on the US for their security going forward. This is an incredibly grim development that will leave every single country less safe and prosperous but it's simply the reality.
It's not just weapons of war either, pretty much all serious threats are now higher. The US killing disease prevention and research efforts in order to cut the budget by 0.0001% will make pandemics more likely to hit every country. The lack of even a token effort to safely regulate AI increases the risk everywhere. The list goes on...
Countries should start addressing the new risks now, or face much steeper costs down the line. Hoping you can wait out the next four years and things will just bounce back is beyond reckless. It's much easier to break things than to build them up and the amount of breakage after the next four years is going to be enormous. Even if a sane regime takes power in four years, which is a massive 'if', there won't be a way to reset much of this damage and after so many lines have been crossed there's a high likelihood they will be crossed again or worse.
Turning off weapons we're providing to others would be devastating for the domestic defense industry, right up there with the shot to our own foot that kicking Russia off the SWIFT system was. Trump may be okay with aggravating our allies, but killing faith in our defense industry is an unforced error I don't see him likely to make.
Now, if the UK were to turn against us militarily (yet again), it'd be a different story. But in lieu of that, the reputation of American industry is likely to be the incentive that keeps them functioning.
The more nukes hanging over the fireplace in the first act increases the likelihood of their use in later acts. More nukes are on the way, it's inevitable.
It seems more and more that France will be the center of European power going forward. They have nukes, they export energy, they have UN SC veto. Hell they even have their own cultural independence.
Interesting observation that the "UK doesn't even own its Trident missiles". Legally, they do. They bought title to 58 missiles, in what's effectively a co-mingled inventory. They're not leased, they're not borrowed, and it's certainly not charity.
I am sceptical of Elwood’s claims that the UK trident cache will outlast Trumps presidency. Since next generation subs and missions are in the design phase, I would hope that UK government decides to dial down dependence on US for delivery tech.
I am also concerned about US ability to ground the F35B fleet since these need a software update after every mission that can only be deployed by US contractors. Hopefully Starmer will dust off plans for a Typhoon successor that has no US reliance - Japan, Italy, Germany could partner.
Basically anything that can run code or needs maintenance or parts is a vector for the US to control use.
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[ 22.2 ms ] story [ 1332 ms ] threadPerhaps it's a naive take, but I'm just armchairing this from the perspective of playing a 4x grand strategy game and the sort of decisions you have to make in these contexts.
Arguably in a world of superpowers, only superpowers have total sovereignty under your definition, hence why I said it was a sliding scale. 95% of any individual nation or most configurations of alliances you could technically (though maybe not plausibly) come up with would still get crushed by the French military in a mano a mano military conflict. They can defend themselves, but what if they have to defend themselves alone vs the United States, Russia, the PRC, or a medley of European great powers? NATO keeps them from having to go it alone, and NATO plus the EU takes a couple of those possibilities off the table, at least for a while, but in Charles de Gaulle’s time, France still had a colonial empire they were trying to keep together (and they still have a fair number of overseas territories outside of metropolitan France) and the plausibility of NATO keeping it together was all up in the air.
Throughout the duration of the Cold War, I don’t think you can make a winning argument that on balance the US was ever a bad ally, but as an old European leader, he was definitely right to be skeptical about the tradeoffs, and right to think that if France has more power, then it wouldn’t need to cede sovereignty or at least much sovereignty to all these newfangled international institutions popping up across Europe.
Much of the world is now at the mercy of the United States, they must bend the knee.
They don’t even have nuclear power anymore - they shuttered the last of their nuclear power plants. The entire supply chain will need to be developed and tested without running afoul of the test ban treaty.
Besides, nuclear weapons are almost worthless without submarines to carry them. They’d only be useful against an unsophisticated adversary.
Basically, it would send Europe back into the stone age, I fear. In under a week.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdtafGdIVM
Strictly said, the US does not spend that much on its defense either. Most of the expenses go into projecting power afar.
Strategic goals of, say, Poland, are different. They won't be fighting China over Taiwan, and so they don't need aircraft carriers or a chain of bases around the world.
They might invest in an atomic bomb of their own, though.
"Much of the world is now at the mercy of the United States"
In what sense? If the US starts another hot war in, say, the Middle East, I suspect that the outcomes won't be much better than they were in Iraq.
"they must bend the knee"
This only works if the giant has some consistent goals. The current US administration seems to flail around instead of pursuing some particular intelligible path.
Instead of bending knees, a dozen countries will start developing their own nukes. Non-proliferation might not be dead, but it is certainly critically ill.
You’re thinking of the actual left.
I get it, Ukraine is pushed to the brink. But Europe isn't - and have you looked at the state of the other side?
As for simpletons - did you see the people pushing for Brexit? Or the moron Australian Prime minister who tried to the couuntry from upgrading from ADSL? It appears the world has no shortage of simpletons.
It also appears democracy doesn't prevent you from electing them. I would not blame the yankies too harshly for electing one. We all do it. What democracy does is let you get rid of them. If it doesn't, you, like Russia, don't have a functioning democracy.
There's a long history of crippling economies to fund armies and buy weapons.
Frankly, that's how US military spending has worked as well. The country would be much wealthier if it hadn't squandered so much on military spending. We just overlook that effect because the country looks so wealthy overall.
Prevent US naval supply. Push American hubris and drive the US into thinking they are doing some 'Berlin Airlift 2.0' and gung-ho Americans will burn through our military $$$s. There's thousands of ways to 'death by 1000 cuts' America's military budget. We take for granted our partners support and can't afford our military without it. Make each and every base an island that has to be completely provided for by the home country, in every detail, with military resources. No civilian transport of supplies for anything. Force it all through military ports/military airports, every last drop of diesel, every moving electron, we'll see how for the US military budget goes.
Yeah, and the world is going to react. This situation might benefit the US economically in the short run but it sure won't in the long run.
If you don't think there are buttons that can paralyze/impact the US more than those forced to bend the knee you aren't looking. That the only one pushing this game is US doesn't mean we have the inherently stronger hand. And at some point if we keep pushing others will start stabbing our soft underbelly and we are absolutely fucked.
Yes. Can you explain why Britain needs nuclear missiles that can be launched from below the surface of the sea?
Maybe one less nuclear power isn't a bad thing?
EDIT: Oh I see you're saying in general they shouldn't have nukes. I mean, I don't like that anyone has them but I get why they do
Let Russia de arm first. They are the ones using their nukes as cover to steal land from other countries.
If you look at the Budapest Memorandum, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine also voluntarily gave up their nuclear arsenals by becoming a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in exchange for security guarantees.
Russia is the reason why the west has nuclear weapons, and now the fascist US is reviving its imperial ambitions, with threats of annexation to Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Palestine. Sounds to me like the entire fucking world should be scrambling to become a nuclear power.
In theory.
In reality, it took Snowden leaks for some of the smartest and most motivated people working in technology to discover they had been backdoored by a third-party.
Experts disagree with you, at least over the "long term".
>Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet secretary, Robert Armstrong, told her that “in the inconceivable case of a future US government deciding to cut off supplies of components”, there would be “no sudden effect”, though over “two or three years” the deterrent’s effectiveness would “begin to fall off”. In 2006 Commodore Tim Hare, a former nuclear-policy chief at the Ministry of Defence, told the Commons Defence Committee: “If, over a very long period, we became deeply estranged from the Americans and they decide to rat on their agreements, we would be in…great difficulty.” But the risk was “very low”.
>Sir Lawrence reckons that were that to happen there would not be a “cliff-edge” loss of effectiveness, “but over time we would be scrambling to keep it going”. The biggest problems would be replacing the Kings Bay missile storage and running out of critical spare parts.
https://archive.is/Qz2lI
>Effects would be tiny over long term.
The experts I quoted:
>over a very long period, [...] we would be in…great difficulty
>over time we would be scrambling to keep it going
"great difficulty" and "scrambling to keep it going" isn't "almost" the same as "Effects would be tiny "
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-...
I think SAAB is already reevaluating the choice of a US engine in the Gripen fighter jet, as the US is talking about blocking their sale to Columbia. The next version won't have a US engine.
These weren't cuts, but an overall redirection of budgets inside the Pentagon. Over the long term, US defence companies have a very profitable future ahead (and a fair amount of European rearmament will involve buying stuff from US due to obvious industrial capacity issues).
e.g.
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/pentagon-seeks-to-shift-...
They both might be able to avoid the remote off switch, but others could be a bit nervous.
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/the-only-way-is-tempest/
F35 SaaS.
The Gripen engine is US-designed, but licensed and (AIUI) built by Volvo:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_RM12
The JAS 39C/D is using the Volvo RM12. JAS 39E/F is equipped with the General Electric F414.
There are four civilian bands, with a fifth in the works for critical uses. There are two military bands, and they are encrypted.
The military bands (two) have always been encrypted and being on different bands, cannot be received at all by civilian receivers, though I imagine it's mostly a firmware change with some minor hardware changes.
Don't talk about things you wildly do not understand or know anything about.
Can't see why I wouldn't on a tech forum. Certainly not because some rando on said forum instructs me so. Good day.
> United States President Bill Clinton signed a bill ordering that Selective Availability be disabled on May 1, 2000; and, in 2007, the US government announced that the next generation of GPS satellites would not include the feature at all.
Also, SA just meant you couldnt resolve with an accuracy less than 100 meters. It didn't mean "turn off GPS in a part of a world".
I'm gonna take a stab and say there hasn't been an immediate, sharp increase in public desire to completely destroy relations with Europe. Certainly, the Ukraine war is very polarizing, especially in the U.S., but I don't know how far I would read into it to determine overall European sentiments.
I'm specifically thinking outside the confines of Trump, who is a wildcard, and pointing more toward public sentiment.
I'm curious if your impression is mostly informed by what media have told you about how we feel, or if you have talked to any Americans about how we feel about the current administration...
There were two years between these diplomatic efforts and now. What happened in the meantime? It's obvious EU could have invested more in defence. How come they get outcompeted by _North Korean_ defence industry?
Another thing - it's actually very easy to help Ukraine and punch Putin. Just place EU troops in Western Ukraine, to free up Ukrainians for the war. Putin will find out he has to agree to security guarantees otherwise he'll get literal troops in his face. EU statesmen are pressuring US for guarantees they are unwilling to give themselves, when they ought to do it for their own interests.
I think Trump is very very crass to say the least, but you also need to look at underlying realities, and EU behaviour has been poor.
It's not just the military. For example, a common argument I see for why the US can't have proper universal health care when so much of Europe manages to do it is that Europe is (supposedly) free-riding off of US medical R&D.
I'd also wager that a large part of this group doesn't think anyone should be helping Ukraine.
There's a difference between big EU countries (which have been skimping), and the small E. European countries which are more realistic about defence. Note Ukraine itself did a lot here.
>a common argument I see for why the US can't have proper universal health care when so much of Europe manages to do it is that Europe is (supposedly) free-riding off of US medical R&D.
US actually spends more. The trick is seeing where this expenditure goes ('greedy CEOs' is technically accurate, but not the biggest reason).
The police are threating to kill us if we protest.
Our students, normally the readiest to protest, face threats of expulsion and deportation if they attend a protest that is deemed "illegal".
Most of our working class are living paycheck to paycheck. In this job market, that means missing even a few days' work to protest means looking for a new job. With a lack of real social support programs, a large scale protest means hungry children. Maybe even homeless children.
What would you like us to do?
I think the protests will start in earnest once there's a large unemployed population. How long will that take, though?
How many protestors have been executed by police in France or Germany or Italy in the last decade?
Whatever happens, we need to break free of the USA for defence procurement.
The US has been giving this feedback for over a decade. While I don't necessarily support the President's posture, it took these extreme measures for Europe to start listening. Europe and US are natural allies, but it must be an actual alliance.
That’s a net loss for American defence companies and jobs in the USA. For the US military, costs per unit will go up, because they aren’t mass producing these systems at the same scale.
Trump didn’t just step back from an alliance that existed for 80 years, he also burnt the bridge by destroying trust.
For Europe, it’s probably a good thing to kickstart a new economic recovery, e.g. German automakers can switch to tanks and IFVs.
Brits unironically assume Trump and his followers care of their reputation?
Didn't JD Vance dismissively call UK 'a random country' like a few days ago?
As the oldest democracy in the world, with a deliberate 2 party system that is essentially ideologically similar, the US political system is quite resilient. Yes, a "deep state" or a "military-industrial complex" does have enormous influence over the country - but there's nothing truly insidious about it when you realise that it is a part of the US political system. It is somewhat undemocratic, but it still acts as one of the checks and balances of US political system to ensure the US remains a superpower (i.e. it only comes into picture on superpower politics). It is composed of the core of the US capitalistic system, whose leaders also have a lot of political influence. Both the US political parties understand that you need this "deep state / MIL complex" to continue to be a superpower, and so a US President is only ever allowed to freely exercise his democratic powers domestically (i.e. in America) and for routine foreign diplomacy. For anything else related to superpower politics, the President of the US does not have a free hand in any manner of speaking - it's a 100+ year old idea and institute that has ensured the US becomes the eminent (and now sole) superpower in the world.
And Trump is going to be a President only for a few years. (Again, note, by design - term limits in the US political systems ensure authoritarianism cannot flourish).
Moreover, many might not remember that once the US developed nuclear weapons during WW 2, with the help of British and other European scientists, it immediately expelled British scientists from its research labs and worked to deny this technology to the British. The British had to do their own research to create nuclear weapons. (But they still chose to be dependent on the US because they understand the value of alliances - it's always better to fight a war alongside someone, than alone). The delivery systems for nuclear weapons are much easier to create, especially when you have wealth and help from others (alliances). Even if by some rare and extraordinary fluke, the US explodes from within, the British can easily catchup.
You are saying this as if it hasn't had very real consequences already?!
Except people are going silent, cowed into submission by threats of violence: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/trump-democra...
They're "scared shitless": https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-congress-politic...
And this has been going on for a while: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/mitt-ro...
Trump's already tried to overthrow one election and he's already talking about trying to get a third term.
He may even try to confect an excuse to stop midterm elections. I wouldn't put it past him.
It turns out it matters who runs the country and how they run it.
It’s also worth discussing domestic policy, that’s just not this thread.
This is precisely this thread.
You are excluding trust and relationships. You can't just ignore the impact of both of those. Those are gone and aren't coming back.
It is not 4d chess to achieve something that was already occurring PRIOR to the 4d chess move. It is a petty asshole being petty, and it will cost the US dearly.
And are they the only members of NATO?
> You are excluding trust and relationships.
No. All that talk is just a hype in the western media to make the increase in defence spending more palatable to European citizens. The European politicians know nothing really has changed in the strategic relationship with the US. In the short-term, yes, there will be some small damage. But both sides consider it minor and acceptable to the larger goal of pumping more money into their military alliance.
Has he been paying attention to the past couple months?! Strategic betrayals that damage America have been one of the few consistent themes. Every single country in the world is foolish to rely on the US for their security going forward. This is an incredibly grim development that will leave every single country less safe and prosperous but it's simply the reality.
It's not just weapons of war either, pretty much all serious threats are now higher. The US killing disease prevention and research efforts in order to cut the budget by 0.0001% will make pandemics more likely to hit every country. The lack of even a token effort to safely regulate AI increases the risk everywhere. The list goes on...
Countries should start addressing the new risks now, or face much steeper costs down the line. Hoping you can wait out the next four years and things will just bounce back is beyond reckless. It's much easier to break things than to build them up and the amount of breakage after the next four years is going to be enormous. Even if a sane regime takes power in four years, which is a massive 'if', there won't be a way to reset much of this damage and after so many lines have been crossed there's a high likelihood they will be crossed again or worse.
Now, if the UK were to turn against us militarily (yet again), it'd be a different story. But in lieu of that, the reputation of American industry is likely to be the incentive that keeps them functioning.
I am also concerned about US ability to ground the F35B fleet since these need a software update after every mission that can only be deployed by US contractors. Hopefully Starmer will dust off plans for a Typhoon successor that has no US reliance - Japan, Italy, Germany could partner.
Basically anything that can run code or needs maintenance or parts is a vector for the US to control use.