It’s honestly better not to rely on the US anyways as they have been fair weather friends to Ukraine even though Ukraine was promised protection for giving up their nukes.
Europe absolutely should be capable of defending itself from a third rate military like Russia, but the security guarantees were related to not invading them, not defending them from invasion unless nuclear weapons were used.
Further, while the EU has pledged significant humanitarian support, the military support has come almost entirely from America, though Germany deserves credit for their own notable contributions, especially considering the numbers on per capita basis.
Looks like they should have kept the nukes and that the message to the rest of the world too now, without nukes you have no guarantees to independance.
As for the military aid I’m sure the US sent the most but the price tag attached is pretty sussy. The US mostly sent equipment that was too old and was going to be decommissioned anyways but looks like the prices for equipment cited was for brand new equipment. That equipment would most likely fetch 1/30 of it’s cited price if otherwise sold. Also the US military often counted the price of new equipment to replace the one sent over as part of the aid cost.
I genuinely hope that Trump wins the presidency. Nothing will nuke the US hegemony from orbit faster than not providing the protection the nations within your hegemony pay your industry for. Why allow the US to suck you dry if they don’t do their part? The EU is infested with parasites and corruption, it’ll never manage to stand on its own legs until those US agents get flushed out by the EU need to fend for itself and build its own infrastructure and army.
With the US severely weakened it won’t be able to coup another nation every five years, it won’t be able to keep installing dictators and tyrants that oppress their people, kill their rivals and sell out their nation to US interests in exchange of power, which will greatly stabilize the world. South America, middle east, all the US’ doing. Terrorist shithole nation for over a hundred years and it is slowly coming to an end.
Yes there is the risk that China will step up and be just as evil, but there is also the chance for the EU to step up and be less of a dystopian nightmare. Change that’ll get a chance to grow into something better once Trump shoots the US in the head.
I disagree with most of what you said* but your general point that America is a danger to the world via it’s unchecked aggression is borne out by numerous polls around the world.
When the question: Who is the greatest threat to world peace - most country’s people (even allies) say “America”. They certainly did before the Russian invasion of Ukraine!
So I get where you’re coming from BUT…I wouldn’t wish Trump on the Yanks and as much as I dislike US hegemony I’m sure there’s better ways of going forward than what you propose.
*Yet I upvoted you because you’re point is interesting!
You sound sane enough to engage with a topic. Wanna have an Internet conversation?
Numerous polls around the world name the US as te most hated, most dangerous nation because it is. Google Banana Republic and report back, tell me what you think. The US has been doing that for over a hundred years. Tell me three nations the US couped, tell me what you think about that. Tell me two regions they destabilized. I’m actually not joking, each of those questions are like 10 - 30 seconds of Internet search and I’m curious if any of it changes your opinion on the US being called evil and dangerious only being the result of polls instead the polls being the result of the US being evil and dangerous.
Just because Russia is a terrorist shithole doesn’t mean the US can’t be the bigger and worse terrorist shithole. I agree that there are better ways of getting rid of that evil shithole, for example by its retard population voting for a government that stops their war machine. Because, you know, at least Americans don’t have to be afraid to get vanished if they protest, in contrary to people in China, Nazi Germany, Russia. But we’re not living in a world that would allow for a better way to exist. IMHO, at least. The US collapsing under their own degeneracy is the best solution for the rest of the world. Trump would be the perfect candidate.
Nothing will collapse democracies and fuel accelerationist movements from the left or right like the collapse of what has historically been the linchpin of global democracy. “See, they couldn’t make democracy work, we should just elect the autocrat our side agrees with!”.
The movement away from the US Dollar as the global reserve currency can do much of the anti-imperialist work you’re suggesting without collapsing a country with 300 million people and potentially collapsing the global economy with it. That’s a transition that can happen gradually and gracefully. The Euro or Bitcoin is probably best suited to be this replacement. Nobody trusts the Yuan, not even the BRICS nations, and there’s really no real contenders after that. The problem with the Euro is that BRICS nations don’t want to use it. Countries with a history of being colonized by Europeans aren’t going to be to excited about it either. Many African nations are still under a form of currency imperialism via France. All their leaders who try to get out from under it somehow… end up without a beating heart.
You may laugh at Bitcoin as a suggestion, but it has had a stable fiscal policy and faithfully relayed transactions for 15 years, 24/7, no bank holidays, not a single hour of downtime, not a single hack. It has a market cap of 850 billion, that’s larger than Swedens GDP and places it in the top 25 countries by GDP. It doesn’t require rolling out a state-run treasury or stable banking infrastructure, just wireless internet.
And it’s politically neutral when it comes to countries. No country can control it, so they all can trust it. And it does this for < 1% of global energy usage and 100-1000x lower fees than credit cards or bank wires. You can send transactions in under a second for pennies in fees with Bitcoin lightning. There’s a reason small countries with little to lose are suddenly banking on Bitcoin, they don’t want to lose autonomy by relying on the US dollar. Ecuador and Argentina are controversial, but one can see the sense in their strategy. Argentina especially with how many times they have been fucked over by government-run banks and unstable currency. Bitcoin offers a way out of the debt-restructuring trap so many other small countries have fallen into with the world bank, IMF, etc.
I generally agree with your post, though “historically been the linchpin of global democracy” boggles my mind and almost had me throw your text on the same pile with other posts like rElEvAnT uSeRnAmE. I wonder how you can uphold an opinion as easily disproven than that. How many leaders does a nation have to coup before you a forced to accept the fact that said nation has zero interest in democracy? Genuinely flabbergasting.
that is a terrible idea. Even ignoring the energy use and that market cap is a bad metric for value, especially in a market with as much wash trading and painting the tape and just plain fraud as the bitcoin ecosystem.
The code base is under the control of around 5-10 people, the mining is under the control of 2-5 mining pools, with the largest two being the result of the largest pool splitting because it was too big and that’s not good optics, the majority of those pols and mining is in China. It has not reliably relayed transactions, being severely congested for weeks on end several times in its history. It does not have a “stable fiscal policy”, it has no fiscal policy. It is limited to 7-10 transactions/second (and no, lightning does not solve this, as you still need a regular transaction to settle, onboarding something the size of the EU would take on the order of 50 years until everyone has their channel, and then another 50 years if everyone were to settle their channels, along with many others fundamental problems with lightning), completely laughable if you want to use it as the backbone of the international financial system.
You want there to be a proper fiscal policy with knobs that can be turned, so you can deal with crisis/extraordinary events. For instance having your country’s currency tied to the dollar is horrible for managing that country’s economics and only done if there is no other alternative, using bitcoin as the global reserve would be that, just on crack and there’s no reason to do it unless you’re incredibly desperate, in which case the dollar is still a safer bet. You’d hand over control of your financial system to a shadow group of unelected people, so you lose even more autonomy. You want there to be checks and things like sanctions, to prevent fraud, theft and, in the case of sanctions, to have a political tool that is harsh but less so than an actual war. These things are features, not bugs. You can debate whether it’s good that the US is in control of a lot of these tools, but proposing to get rid of these tools altogether (which moving to bitcoin would do) would be even worse. There is no country that has gotten itself out of debt using bitcoin, so saying it is a solution is disingenuous at best.
These are just the same old bitcoin talking points that make it sound like it could actually work but do not hold up to the tiniest amount of scrutiny. And the end goal is always to just make the price go up so the gambling pays off, not any use case or making the world better or anything.
If the global reserve currency changing has tremendous risks of collapse to the US.
Most commodities are traded in US-dollars. This gives the US economy tremendous stability, as the stability get intertwined with the global economy as well as allowing the US to influence global ressource prices through increasing or decreasing the currency amount.
If these aspects stop working when a different currency replaces the US-dollar, it will expose the US economies weakenesses and force it to stand on its own much more.
We also saw the US to fiercly enforce the dollar as global oil currency. When Gaddafi suggested to the Arab league to establish their own currency and trade oil exclusively in that, he fell out of favor with the US again. Iran wanting to trade oil in other currencies is a strong sting to the US.
American here: EU please get your collective defense shit together. We’re going through a rough time over here, I’m not sure how reliable we can be. America needs some time to work on itself.
As a European, you’re right and I feel we’re bumping stuff up albeit slowly. Good luck with donald duck and all that facho stuff, seems like every great country has to go through it somehow before they sober up completely.
The EU should have gotten way more serious about their own defence sector. Spending large amounts of these procurement budgets within the EU means that a lot of the money flows straight back as taxes from employees, profits, subcontracting etc.
It’s time now to start rebuilding the sector again and do some horse trading with the US for inter-dependence.
Trump acts as if military power is the only thing, (it’s probably the only thing he understands) but the fact the EU is so dependent means they will follow sanctions etc more than they might have done otherwise. But Trump is not of the soft power.
But the peace dividends need to be reinvested, I suggest in best of breed stuff, manufactured in the EU.
And Trump is too fucking stupid to realize that the NATO contributions aren’t even going to the USA (or even to NATO).
It’s money paid by a NATO member country to that country’s soldiers and to private arms manufacturers (preferably also in country if it has the capability).
I think he well knows what he does. The protection provided by the US gave it immense soft power in the diplomacy with these countries, but also immense hard power, as it means military bases all over Europe.
Damaging US soft power in the world has been consistent throughout Trumps presidency. The trade war with Europe, the damage to the WHO, the repeated threats at weakening NATO. Now the calls to abandon Ukraine.
It is evidently not in the interest of the US, but it certainly helps Putin.
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