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
> The damage to our future world order

I don't think "damage" is the right word, especially outside of the US. Changes aren't necessarily bad, and, as someone living in the EU, I actually like the current trend.

>>usrnm+g7
As an American, I am also gratified to see the EU take steps toward independence from US foreign policy. Independence doesn't mean enmity; it just means that the EU and US should both be adults in the room, reaching decisions on equal terms.

If one takes a longer view of things, the period from WW2 to now is very much an anomaly reflecting relative European weakness in the aftermath of that war's physical and moral destruction. There is no intrinsic reason that the US should take the lead on, say, policy toward Russia. Quite the opposite.

>>kogus+g8
I wouldn't say it was weakness rather than a sense of disgust about anything war related. Europe is tired of it, and precisely because of that may well end up in another major war.

>>jacque+K8
That has more to do with their geography than their disgust no?

>>bix6+0b
I think GP means that Europe didn't intervene when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and, more generally, has done its best to limit rearmament until now. And we're going to pay for it by having a war against Russia that we might have avoided had we projected more strength.

The precedent being France and UK that were so disgusted by war after WWI (and recall that France was the historical biggest warmonger among Western nations at least since the second half of the Hundred Years War) that they didn't react to Nazi Germany annexing Austria, then invading Sudetenland, and in fact not even when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Had they reacted earlier, WWII might have been avoided.

>>Yoric+Ch
I’m Romanian, write this comment from Bucharest, a lot closer to Donbass than both France and UK. If those guys are “disgusted” about Russia then it’s their choice, but they shouldn’t re-create the Crimean War and battle the Russians on our (Romania’s) soil, with the destruction that would accompany such a war. If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West, at least Russia is the devil we know. I’m not alone here in Eastern Europe when it comes to this ideological choice, just look at what people vote (when they’re allowed to do that freely, that is, just look at the Călin Georgescu case).

>>pagane+Mx
This surprises me. Is that how you see it, that countries like UK and France may choose to battle Russia on your soil? What would forego that in your scenario?

>>mongol+jD
He would like to roll over to see Romania rejoin the new Russian empire. Click on username then comments and be amazed.

>>jacque+oT
What's to be amazed about it? If I remember right you're from somewhere in the Low Countries, correct? Which means your country hasn't been part of a big land-war since the mid-1600s, give or take.

As I mentioned in another comment, I don't want to see us, Romanians, fight the West's wars anymore (like we fought Germany's war in the 1940s), I don't want for my grand-kids to tell their kids how their grandad barely managed to stay alive thanks to some Russian peasants close to Krasnodar who brought him (me) in their home in the middle of the Russian winter, i.e. the same story that has been actually directly experienced by a person close to me (now dead, of course, as are most of the WW2 veterans) on his way back from just outside Stalingrad.

Again, I don't want for my country, Romania, to be the West's sacrificial lamb for West's interests anymore, once was enough. And you should keep your pontificating for yourself, because you Dutch colonialists didn't fight sh*t on the steppes of Southern Russia / Southern Ukraine so you don't know s*it when it comes to fighting Russia in a great land-war, you were too busy, first, getting your asses kicked by the Japanese, and second, cutting the hands off of the Indonesian freedom fighters.

>>pagane+G71
I've lived in Poland and in Romania as well, you know absolutely nothing about me but at least it's clear where you're coming from.

Major cities in 'my little country' have been bombed to little pieces during WWII, my family lived right next door to a particular bridge, maybe you've seen the movie.

All you will achieve is exactly the thing you are trying to avoid.

You're in Putin's pocket and you don't even know it. Guess who will end up fighting his wars for them? You, your grand children and so on. It's the proximity to Russia that is your problem, not the distance to the western part of Europe.

And I have never and will never make any excuses for what the Dutch have done in the past in their colonies and elsewhere, it is atrocious.