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.
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.
Now that no more protection is offered, there's no point in spending the money.
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/air-force-cancels-e-7-we...
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.
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.
A significant reduction in the quality of life for many in the 'so-called West' appears to be the unfortunate price of the world returning to a more 'normal' historical pattern of international relations.
But I think it was a pretty bad appeasement deal.
What changed is the US President saying things like, he will encourage Putin to invade countries not spending so much on military.
What also changed is the US President threatening members of the EU militarily over greenland for example.
Reliable allies don't really do that.
(you probably do not realize the shock Denmark felt over this, that went deep and the change will not happen over night, but it will happen)
The popular narrative suggests a 'United States of Europe' is forming, but this seems like propaganda when you look at the reality, nations are already returning to the historical status quo, prioritizing their own agendas and pulling in separate directions, much as they always have.
A recent, clear example is the debate over using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. That single issue exposes the deeper divides. Belgium objects because it wants to shield its own financial sector. Germany backs the idea because it would spare it from taking on more of the financial burden. France, meanwhile, has long argued for a different approach, issuing joint EU debt, an option that many financially weaker member states would favor, but one Germany refuses to accept.
EDIT. Unfortunately HN has decided that "I am posting too fast", because I wrote 4 posts, amazing work, I love getting throttled by mods with not reason! So cannot really respond in the thread. EDIT2. As always, thank you for downvoting without addressing the argument.
I'll just update this one:
> Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual > internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I > believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its > predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) > was created - specifically to avoid another war. > Your example is very on point: the member states are talking > - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
It’s really not hard to imagine this turning into something very different. All it takes is a major political shift in Germany or France, and both are already close to that point. A lot of people are still thinking in peacetime terms, but we’re past that. The parties that are likely to come to power soon are not going to keep talking about “European solidarity,” because a core part of their message is that this solidarity has come at the expense of their own country’s strength.
It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia.
You being ignorant doesn't mean there aren't real issues and real, justified fears.
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.
However, I think that many in the US are underestimating the current paradigm shift. Right now, in Europe, leaders and voters need to take decisions while keeping in mind the possibility that the US will invade Canada and Greenland while not reacting if Russia movies to Estonia.
Will it happen? Who the f*k knows? Donald Trump has made declarations very much in this direction. Also, Donald Trump has broken a sufficiently large number of treaties since becoming president that _anything_ should be considered possible.
That being said, as you mention, it's not clear that any of this is in any way related to Europe not buying the E-7.
I don't think that's true. The policy of alliance building and containment of their largest peer and competitor still makes sense. It was how the US ultimately overcame the Soviet Union, and is even more vital given the size and talent in China. A US without an alliance system will not win that competition.
What's much more concerning is that the rational interests of the US as a nation aren't reflected in its policy making any more. The 20th century had its share of domestic issues but the inmates weren't running the asylum as far as foreign politics was concerned which was coherent.
Tell me why we should care about some island on the other end of the world.
It would make sense to begrudgingly accept it, just like we did US military adventures in South America.
I don't think your narrative is as informed as you make it out to be.
This isn’t a US-only problem, and if anything the US has been more reliable on this account than some major European countries. For instance, in the first several months of the war Germany actually prohibited other countries from exporting their own surplus Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
Germany is not objecting out of confusion about past instruments. It is objecting because a broader program of joint debt would place more longterm financial exposure on Germany, and it does not want to carry that load. Other countries support the idea precisely because it would distribute that cost more widely. That conflict keeps resurfacing every time the topic comes up.
You could just as easily point to other examples that show the same thing. Spain isn’t eager to pour money into the defense of Eastern Europe because it doesn’t feel the Russian threat the same way. And plenty of countries in Central and Eastern Europe push back hard when it comes to sharing the burden on migration, because they see that as a Southern European problem.
What's much riskier to the world is the US having to take the brunt of defending Europe, the Arctic front, and dealing with a conflict in China (which is far far more serious military threat than Russia in 2025).
It's difficult medicine to swallow but that's the realpolitiks of it.
The current US government is throwing away a world power status of unimaginable costs, which literally took almost a century to build. For better or worse, but let's not spin fairy tales about the why and when.
In the mean time, most major EU countries have increased their defense budgets. Some of the larger ones, most notably Germany, are considering to reintroduce conscription. Within about five years, the EU will be able to withstand Russia without any aid from the USA.
In fact, right now, Poland would be able to withstand the Russians on their own. Mind you, they would not be able to defeat the Russians, but they would give them a beating and repel any invasion of Poland.
The fact that Americans are abandoning us in our struggle with Russia in order to pick a fight with China makes it hard to see them as reliable allies.
If you look at the short term, countries may be pulling one way or the other, but the "ever closer union" _is_ happening if you look at a longer trend.
Your example is very on point: the member states are talking - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
And that is why Germany is moving a whole Brigade to Lithuania? I think only Spain and Portugal are not appropriately concerned with the Russian threat.
It made us look weak internationally compared what could have been, and it made us weak. All that military money went into social programs and heavy lean to the left. It sort of works if you have other's umbrella shielding you, which now is questionable (but is it really, I think its more a projection how further can things go in future).
For Russia Europe never ceased to be a battlefield - eastern part of battlefield itself, western part as prize to win or conquer. Past 2+ decades of quite overt subversion, sowing chaos and discord via both radical left and right (which is hilarious, seeing 'patriots' parroting russian propaganda against their own country or ethnicity), sometimes outright attacks and assassinations.
Secret services kept reporting all this even publicly but were mostly ignored by politicians. Weak long term politicians like Merkel allowed this with open arms, hoping in vain that pure business is enough to keep psychopathic wolves happy. Well what a failure that was (yes I hate her as does most of eastern EU, leftist populist and nothing more which grinded strongest European economy to a halt).
Correction is being done, it will take decades but course is set regardless of what next elections in US brings.
As for geography - its only relevant doe to the fact we are connected by land to russia. Of course any country which has huge ocean between them and russians is much safer from them. The rest can either defend themselves or are an easy prey.
There's obviously more, like NAFTA.
The president has repeatedly been vocal about the US leaving NATO as a possibility.
If I were the EU, I certainly wouldn't be counting on the US honoring any of its agreements and I'd be planning with the assumption that they will not join a NATO response.
Germany's GDP is twice that of Russia. EU GDP is 8.5 times larger than Russia.
Yet even in the current state Russia would have very hard time fighting Europe. The Russian military hasn't been this diminished in decades. But the real issue is Europe can't easily spare stuff to help Ukraine because they don't have their own security figured out.
Also, when the Brits have a revolution (e.g., English Civil War, American Revolution) deaths never get as arbitrary and difficult-to-predict as in the French Revoution.
Another curious thing is despite how the US has been acting in this manner, their stock market still continues to outperform everybody else's
Turns out even if you have as much power as the US president with their executive orders, if you start making stupid or insufficiently well-prepared policy decisions, you have to roll them back or your country will crash into the ground.
Kind of makes me think that supposedly autocratic leaders of powerful countries have much less power than we thought - once they make a couple stupid decisions, their countries start going down the drain.
Now that NATO is in question, you'll start to hear about US manipulation of the SWIFT banking system, so Europe will start pushing for an international one, which China will eventually control.
Eurofighter is really only good for peacetime patrols, the F35 will detect and shoot down enemies in real conflict far before the Eurofighter can do anything.
In a bizarre hypothetical conflict you would certainly not want to engage a F35 in an Eurofighter, the Eurofighter would be knocked out of the sky long before it could even see the F35. It certainly couldn’t turn on it’s radar.
There are extensive public studies available from e.g. the Danish government that ended up with the conclusion that the F35 is far superior in air-to-air combat. https://www.fmn.dk/globalassets/fmn/dokumenter/strategi/kamp...
We are in a multipolar world with the dominance of China incoming and the western nations need to spread capability.
Trump didn’t break NAFTA, he renegotiated it. NAFTA remained in effect until the new treaty, USMCA, came into effect.
In international law, they were treaties. Your internal squabbles do not concern us and just make you look unreliable.
Before making chest-thumping proclamations of this sort perhaps you'd best read the text of article 5:
-- If a member is attacked, other members will take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area".
See the part where it says "such action it deems necessary"? Trump may decide that the necessary action is to go play golf. He's gone back and forth on his commitment to European defense a number of times over the years, so there's really no reason to believe that his he won't change his mind on it before breakfast tomorrow.
in reality for most of it was the fact the Russians were 50ft away, with American troops as the security guarantee
Russia in 2022 is yet another example of how rapidly despots will discard "entangled trade" for military conquest
Oh France sure how long until you can supply a fraction of what we are buying from the USA? What a decade!?!?! Ukraine won't exist in a decade if we wait and what's that you won't even ramp production unless you can get guarantees from multiple member nations? What a joke.
For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago - unclear, food has become disproportionately more expensive, housing cost has by far outpaced the wage growth, tech has become cheaper, but big-ticket items like cars are proportionally not cheaper.
From this, the person of today is poorer in tangible terms.
Did the infrastructure improve? - some, but I'd say it was a (sub)linear improvement in absolute terms - we certainly didn't build as much stuff as we did in the mid to late 20th century, and what we built before was the more important stuff, so the new stuff has marginal utility.
Did European industry and technology improve? I'd say in terms of relative importance, we regressed - there are huge gaps in European technological capability for which only foreign options exist - this didn't used to be the case.
Were there some big ticket innovations like Concorde or the Moon Landing or whatever - clearly no, the world seems to have lost its appetite for these kind of hugely ambitious projects.
This 'number go up' style capitalism is clearly not to the benefit of the individual, but I can't for the life of me think who does it actually benefit.
Why do you think a rising China is concerning to the US, but not to Europeans?
A treaty is only as good as its enforcement, and if the USA declines to uphold their obligations, who is going to force them?
The USA did not ratify
> Paris Climate Agreement
The USA did not ratify
Obama famously avoided sending either to Congress as he is legally required for the USA to ratify a treaty. The USA's "commitment" was non binding and frankly illegal for Obama to make. Hell the USA Congress even send a letter to Iran to be super explicit that the accords didn't mean shit since it's not ratified by the USA.
A mutual defense treaty is no good at all if it needs enforcement; it only works as a coordinating tool between basically-willing parties. When it becomes anything else, well, look at CSTO.
Re China: We don't share any border or ocean with them and none of our interests are opposed. To the contrary, they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously. Why would they be a threat to us?
What a joke everyone knew we didn't ratify them everyone just wanted to pretend. We even send a letter to Iran making sure they knew. The EU especially was funny acting like the agreement had any value when the USA wasn't part of it.
It only makes you look like you don't have your shit together.
This has not been reciprocated.
However the story might be different in a decade as sixth gen aircraft like Tempest are entering service and probably other modern technologies like unmanned/autonomous drones and hypersonic and directed energy weapons are more widely deployed. Connectivity between units in the field is also clearly a huge deal that is going to matter more and more and that is going to require a level of interoperability and trust that won't be kind to "partners" who aren't good team players.
On that kind of timescale I expect "buying American" will be much less attractive to most "allies" of the US than it has been for most of the past century and it will show exactly in decisions like who is making and buying whose planes.
Forget 20 years ago, you can just back 6 years is enough. Ask any person when life was more affordable and job security better, in 2019 or today and everyone will say 2019.
Graphs like GDP or the stock market going up, mean jack shit to the average person when they can't afford a house anymore.
A lot of our economic growth was just on paper through financial instrumentation.
> If anything, I’d rather actively choose Russia’s side on this against the West
Based on your comment history, you have already done so. You've been carrying water for Russia on HN for the longest time.
> at least Russia is the devil we know
Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe, but it is this mentality that stops that from happening. Russia is a terrible country towards its citizens and you wouldn't even be a citizen of Russia, you'd be a citizen of a resource for Russia, someone to be exploited or to be sent to fight Russia's wars for it. Note that this is exactly what is happening and if Ukraine should become occupied you can expect that the next wave would be Ukrainians against Eastern Europe. That is what you are hoping for here.
> 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).
Yes, look at that case, and think about it a bit longer: you've been actively recruited as a fifth column member in the army of a hostile nation. If war does break out (which by trying to avoid the destruction you are actually increasing the chances of it!) you might be found to be aiding the enemy, think long and hard about the consequences of such choices.
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.
I mean, if we're talking about Taiwan, it has strategic and commercial importance above and beyond being "some island". Certainly more than Central America ever did when the rest of the world was ignoring the US's idiotic anti-Communist adventures. Pretending that it's irrelevant because it's far away seems like a pretty big economic misunderstanding, at the least.
Only a tiny fraction of the S&P is performing, and it's because it's either part of the AI bubble or because people have memed extreme value into poorly run companies that now have absolutely insane EPS numbers. There's nothing about the US stock market that's even slightly connected to it's financial or economic performance, right now.
Against China? If you’re willing to accept a level of losses we haven’t seen since WW2, but that’s just the nature of peer to peer warfare.
I'm talking physically, for better or for worse that is still not the case. I don't want to see Romanian men (which would include me) leaving their (our, in fact) bones on the Ukrainian steppe up to the Volga, once was enough.
> Apparently, you don't know. You think you know. Romania could be the Switzerland of Eastern Europe,
Yes, I do know, and yes, and I am completely and utterly annoyed by Westerners lecturing us on our geo-strategic future.
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.
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.
WW2 was the anomaly- a conflict impacting all nations on earth, with Europe falling under a horrible regime
Since these treaties covered more than tariffs (e.g. some of them were the same treaties that ensured recognition of copyrights across borders), I'm not sure of the whole scope of these events.
It is your problem and you're not exactly being great allies to us in ours.
Please provide a verifiable reference to the specific international law or laws that says that a US president's signature is sufficient to create a binding treaty.
The US Constitution, specifically Article II, section 2, says "[The president] shall have the power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur". That's pretty clear that the President's signature alone is not enough.
> 1. A person is considered as representing a State for the purpose of adopting or authenticating the text of a treaty or for the purpose of expressing the consent of the State to be bound by a treaty if:
[...]
> (b) it appears from the practice of the States concerned or from other circumstances that their intention was to consider that person as representing the State for such purposes and to dispense with full powers.
> 2. In virtue of their functions and without having to produce full powers, the following are considered as representing their State:
>(a) Heads of State, [...], for the purpose of performing all acts relating to the conclusion of a treaty;
[...]
Again, your constitution is your business. We do not care about it and it is not pertinent to our dealings with you. Get your house in order.
I don't want to see Romanian men (which would include me) leaving their (our, in fact) bones on the Ukrainian steppe up to the Volga, once was enough.
The US has spent years begging, pleading, cajoling, and now threatening the Europeans to take responsibility for the defense of their own continent. It took the outbreak of war in Ukraine for anyone in Europe west of Warsaw to even start considering rearmament.
Also, the shitty anti-American attitude from Western Europe isn’t anything new, it existed for decades before Trump seriously entered politics. I’m just speculating here, since none of us actually know what’s said between world leaders behind closed doors, but the US wants Western Europe to rearm and Western Europe’s leaders probably recognized the necessity of doing so in 2022, so it’s pretty convenient for all parties involved that they can pretend they’re doing it to spite America rather than at America’s request.
At that point, the US was estopped from changing course. Doing so broke the bona fide principle.
Pretty much all of our problems are a direct result of your military adventurism in the Middle East. Stop fucking up our part of the world.
Also, who's speaking of NATO in this thread?