zlacker

>>saubei+(OP)
There will be a lot more decisions like this one. For the war in Ukraine and anything immediate they will buy American stuff if there is no EU alternative (and for many things there just isn't right now, there are too many dependencies). But the tide has changed, for 'in' it is now to 'out'. It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally, and that it will use all kinds of strings attached to hobble what they sell to be able to exert political pressure. Besides the obvious problems with the political system internally to the USA I think it is the external effects that drive decisions like these.

I see the same happening with choices about other suppliers. The EU is a very large trading partner to the US and what is happening right now is unprecedented in the last 75 years or more. The damage to our future world order is incalculable and the fact that it all seems to be by design bothers me greatly.

The lyrics of Alan Parson's 'Children of the moon' have been spooking through my head lately.

>>jacque+U4
> It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally

An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.

What has changed is the US has become more realistic and up front about the limitations of its reduced military. It’s not healthy, for the US /or/ Europe, to indulge the imperial fantasy that US forces in Europe (token deployments in Germany and Poland) are sufficient to defend against Russian attack.

Trump is not the first US president to push Europe to do more of precisely what it is doing here (spend its own money on defense). Being clear about limits is what a reliable ally does.

Europe ordering an Airbus AWACS instead of Boeing now that the US stopped subsidizing them is not surprising nor does it mean the sky is falling.

>>educti+Jc
The unspoken truth here is that there are inner and outer members of the NATO core. Estonia, I’m sorry to say, is not a country the United States would go to WWIII over. The core members of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and possibly the Uk remain. Followed by a few others, and then there’s the rest where if Russia invaded journalists across the eastern seaboard would furiously rush to Chat GPT to find out where it is on the map.

All that aside, and regardless of your views on this administration’s posture toward NATO, Europe needs to revitalize its defense industry as there’s been a much remarked on free rider problem for a while. Robert Gates made a now infamous speech about this problem on his way out of office as secretary of defense.