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Trump’s been committed to ditching NATO & allying with Putin, his sponsor/mentor, for years.
There’s even a bill on the table, now, called NATO, about the US ditching NATO.
Chopping social-systems will please, but NOT appease, Trump,
& it won’t change his strategic-course, to ditch NATO & piecemeal butcher it, taking Greenland as a means of strangling Canada completely, then waging war against Canada, because Canada stands in his way…
then once Canada’s down, destroying the hated woke EU in a pincer between Putin & him,
so that in the end, only Putin, Trump, Millei, Orban, etc, get to be “kings” over the butchered West, & unlimitedly unaccountable…
It isn’t a zero-sum-game they’re playing: it’s a negative-sum-game ( mass-shooting, except through legislations, instead of bullets, killing entire-populations, not mere-individuals ),
& the longer it takes for people to grok that, the greater the percentage of our countries’ lives they’ll succeed in shedding.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. […] The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.” - Eisenhower
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. […] The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.” - Eisenhower
This is just ideologically ignoring that there are distinct-dimensions in the proper question:
IF you’ve got cancer, THEN does it make sense to stop “funding” your immune-system, because the ( 10% when you’re healthy, probably 25% when you’re sick, or more ) fraction of your calories which are going to violence ought be going, instead, to comfyness??
Idiocy.
Survival IS a basic-need, as Maslow understood, & exactly as enforcement is a basic-need within your organism, it also is within countries.
And between them.
“serial-murder, treason, terrorism, etc, all just need to be made to be nice, & we’ll compromise with them, & everybody will be happy”
( I’m NOT accusing you of having spoken that, but it’s a fundamental idea behind the utopian non-reality that your, & Eisenhower’s, ignoring-the-different-dimensions-of-requirement is doing ) ignores that diversity-of-intent is an actual thing, & it ignores the greatness of that diversity.
Yes, some people actually butcher others for fun.
NOT enforcing against that, is morally criminal.
Yes, some factions, including countries, butchers others for fun/gain/profit/kicks/whatever.
NOT enforcing against that is also morally criminal.
Yes, WE ( all of our countries ) have committed evil, through our means, economic, through weapons, through selective-legislations ( ask the Indigenous people about that, sometime, if you’ve balls enough, oh readers, & the state-sanctioned slavery of Africans was only a subset of the world’s slavery that the West was profiting from, including slavery of the Indigenous people in parts of the Americas ), & countering that means enforcing accountability on our own institutions
( good fscking luck accomplishing that: Rule Number Zero in institutions is NEVER tolerate accountability, & once that’s done, then never tolerate responsibility is the next rule ),
& that requires ACTUAL Journalism, which no longer exists, among our world ( only ideological parodies of journalism remain, now. Sad as all fscking hell. “The Elements of Journalism” now in its 4th edition, NEEDS to be made a high-school requirement, xor our civilization won’t have enough leverage to be able to survive The Great Filter, this century )…
but to declare that simply deeming all military/enforcement spending to be fundamentally contrary to social-support/education/etc, is DISinformation.
Whether an organism needs an immune-system or not is dependent on its context.
Whether a country needs military-investment is dependent on its context.
NOT an ideological-belief ( either militarist or utopian ).
Ukraine’s need for military is not an ideological delusion: it is survival-requirement.
When Trump declares war on Canada, so as to take-possession of the entire-continent for himself, Canada’s need for military will be identical to Ukraine’s: extinguishment is the only alternative to fit fighting survival.
IF Trump gets through Canada ( he’s getting old: there’s a time-limit on his life ), then Putin & Trump are committed to butchering the hated woke EU.
There are many right-wingers working to butcher the EU from within, as Millei is in the process of butchering Argentina from within…
Those who are waging negative-sum-game ( mass-shootings are negative-sum-game, competitive-narcissism is zero-sum-game ) so that they can enforce that the “woke” are ALL butchered, lost, destroyed, shed, … are warring for their ideology to be the final “ruler” of the world.
It is ideological/“religious”, not objective, the real war we’re waging.
ClimatePunctuation, however, couldn’t care less about such ideologies: it’s still accelerating, & all the bullshit “consensus” that that isn’t happening is just helping obliterate more future-lives, a greater percentage of humankind. ( much of India, California, Texas, Saudi Arabia, etc, ought be uninhabitable before the end of this century: Trump’s rampaging of Canada will be goaded partly by the continuing acceleration of ClimatePunctuation )
Once our world has divided into the 4-ish alliances/empires that are the max this world can sustain, in WW3, then the REAL beat-down will begin: a whole-planet deathmatch, beginning in the early 2030’s. Only 1 alliance/empire/faction will survive, … IF any do …
NOT fighting for our lives IS obliterating our future-generations: obliterating THEIR lives, for sake of our complacent “status quo will save us” non-effort.
Anybody who pushes nonviolence against cancer/ebola/marburg/rabies/etc should be considered to be lethally-incompetent, at best ( how many lives did Typhoid Mary indirectly-destroy? There IS reasponsibility in both action & in inaction! ).
The same for any who advocate appeasing/accommodating those who are investing-in & are committed-to the annihilation of civil-rights from this planet, no matter what their “colors” or “stripe” or “flag” or ideology/prejudice/“religion” be.
Feel free to deem me evil for any/every point I put in this comment:
I expect that there will be either 0% survival of this century by our world’s humankind, … xor there will be between 1% & 2% survival, IF some faction grows enough spine to evolve, fast, relentlessly, endlessly, until surviving The Great Filter becomes for them possible.
All who reject that axiomatically put me in the dangerously-mentally-ill or the evil category, & that’s fine.
I expect there to be about 8 billion fewer humans left alive by 2090.
All the ideological “you have to be in this ideology, pushing this group’s dominion of our world” … or that, … or the other … they’re all idiotic, in my view: like idiots fighting-over which deck-chair won’t drown, while in the sinking of the Titanic.
Totally-wrong frame-of-reference.
Species-extinguishment’s the proper frame-of-reference.
Ideological-dominion cannot win, without snuffing this world’s humankind.
Only hard-objectivity/global-(not-ideological)-pragmatism can win The Great Filter.
& nobody’s accepting the evidence’s framing of it that way.
Exactly the same as nobody is accepting that the proper framing of all the geopolitical major-players is in the 3 kinds of “games”, positive-sum games ( win-win alliances, none of which are visible in the world, to me ), zero-sum games ( competitive-narcissism, which is presumed by default to be the only game in the world by us, for some delusional “reason” ), & negative-sum games ( mass-shootings, genocides, what Putin, the Republican Party, Millei, Orban, Musk, & many others are doing only matches this, or a mixture of this & zero-sum game )… nobody is accepting the correct-framing, so therefore everybody is “not seeing the forest for the trees”, & losing their perspective in the political-details…
& that is much of why I don’t believe that more than 2% of humankind CAN survive this century, now…
IF you won’t know that the thrumming in the rails is the oncoming train, AND you’re sitting on the tracks holding your sprained ankle, howling for attention ( ideological-conforming/belonging/dominion, remapped ), THEN getting splatted throughout the sky is Universe’s right to enforce on you, right?
IF, instead, you realize that the 200mph train’s coming barely in time for most of you to survive getting out of its way, but all your friends die, aerosolized by the impact… that isn’t on Nature, that’s on you, right? The telegraphing of what Nature was about to be doing was happening within your awareness’s reach, but it was your belief that was vetoing it, right?
The geopolitical-shitshow we’re embedded-in was set up centuries ago.
Our preventing this specific demise of the US of A would have required that education be nationally-organized/funded in the US for … an entire century?
Read Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” & understand that Kahneman & Tversky’s “System 1”, the imprint-reaction system, IS ideology/prejudice/“religion”'s basis.
Read “Top Brain / Bottom Brain” & understand that “System 1” is lower-forebrain.
Then understand that upper-forebrain requires LOTS of training to get it operating, its being allowed to “vote” in our world is dependent on its relative strength, compared with lower-forebrain, & that the 1st thing that Lenin, Rupert Murdoch, the Republicans, cults, religions, etc, ALL do, is they eradicate considered-reasoning from education, so as to prevent considered-reasoning/critical-thinking from gaining control, ever again…
It’s FAR too late to save the US of A’s life, now.
It may be too late to save humankind’s life…
Pretending that “there will be time: Universe will pause & wait for us, because it revolves around us!” as we’ve been doing, means that, at this point in our evolution, we may deserve Universe’s extinguishing us: if we WON’T think, then natural selection ought clean our kind off from the map.
Let some actually intelligent life evolve, instead.
Yeah, I’m getting bitter, in my old age, but humankind’s WON’T think galls, & being gaslit about it, on top, only galls more.
shrug
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Kewl. If only there wasn’t a country that invaded another country on our borders, that openly talks about invading even more, fucking about with our utilities and using spies, the internet and sabotage to fuck around even more.
A comfy life needs to be secured with military might, like it or not. Otherwise you get assholes in shitholes trying to forcefully take it from you. Rome knew that, the US knows that, the EU knows this (otherwise it wouldn’t exist - since it is made to increase bargaining power and contains mutual defense clauses).
So until Russia stops being a militaristic shithole that invades its neighbors and starts building those schools, power plants, hospitals and highways, we need to spend taxes on military. And yes, Russia is a threat - Georgia shown us, 2014 has shown us, 2022 has shown us.
I don’t disagree. But teddy had it right when he said speak softly but know when to swing your big dick
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Blame Russia.
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And there it is, everything is NATOs fault. If only we gave everything to Russia, the world would be saved.
Tell me, why are there no more Tatars in Crimea?
This is like URSS bingo:
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They were deported
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They were starved to death
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They were sent to war
…
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Tell me, why are there no more Tatars in Crimea?
There are, in fact, Tatars in Crimea.
Compared to before, no, there aren’t. There has been an ongoing genocide since the tsarist times, that the soviet union “finished”. Thousands of people completely relocated. That’s why people are “wary” of Russia - because it is a genocidal state since time immemorial.
Compared to before, no, there aren’t.
Well, that can be said about Greeks and Armenians in Crimea as well as Crimean Tatars. That’s because after Stalin’s forced movement to Kazakhstan (which is barbaric act, of course) or wherever, when descendants of those people were allowed to return, they were more likely to move elsewhere in the union. And after 1991 Greeks would often repatriate, well, to Greece, changing the ethnic character of the whole Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea coast, and Crimean Tatars to Turkey.
I think you also underestimate the role of Sevastopol. Purely due to strategic importance there’d be people coming from all parts of the empire and the union, and the “melting pot culture” there was Russian.
There has been an ongoing genocide since the tsarist times,
That’s a weird way to say this, before Crimea becoming part of the Russian Empire the actual Crimean Khanate didn’t exist for too long. It seems you have a misconception of Crimean Tatars being some sort of the native population of Crimea. They were not. They were a nomad vassal state to the Ottoman Empire, conquerors themselves. They weren’t the majority there ethnically under that khanate either.
That’s why people are “wary” of Russia - because it is a genocidal state since time immemorial.
That’s gross from someone who’s likely a US-American or a European. Also “time immemorial” doesn’t quite mean what you seem to think.
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Why did Russia league in with Nazi Germany to start World War 2?
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So they invaded Poland to get back at the US? Like they invaded Poland in 1920 when they got their ass handed to them by a newly sovereign country? Just like they are doing now to Ukraine?
but they did it first!
This is the level we’re at huh
Stop protecting yourselves! Or I’ll attack!!
Do you know why NATO exists?
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They got plenty of answers and in return get insults from you. So people don’t bother anymore, you are just one of the hundreds of tankies on this site that will completely deny truth and try to twist the narrative.
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I would love to hear your take on how NATO “coup’ee”'d Russia and installed Yeltsin. Don’t forget to include your sources 🤣
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“Everything I don’t understand is a jingloist”
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Neither of those sources mention NATO
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Oddly, there is exactly as much evidence to support the existence of that.
Yeltsin Visits the White House in 1992
That’s after the Soviet Union fell though…
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When did the US elect a COMMUNIST
Jesus fucking Christ. The fact that he is getting away with so much bullshit based solely on the fear that he might do something is absolutely infuriating. Like, I get it. I understand that it’s a complicated issue and these people caving to him are trying desperately to appease him to save their own countries or themselves. But this man, and whoever is backing him and possibly pulling the strings, is purposefully destroying society for more money and power. So much shit going backwards because less than 1% of the 8 billion of people on the entire fucking planet felt like they didn’t have enough.
And at the end of the day, when everyone is done appeasing a madman, what will be left? What kind of world will we create as we bend the knee to the man that wants us all to suffer? If you appease the madman to save yourself, the only thing you will get in return is a life of fear in a madman’s world.
Hear hear!!
( that is parliamentary-speak for “Absolutely Right!”, just in case anybody reading didn’t grow up in a parliamentary town : )
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At this point, I’m pretty sure they’re just using it as an excuse to wreck social services.
Oligarchic authoritarianism has been on the rise worldwide for the last 20 years at least and people go on about Trump like he’s the cause not a symptom. He’s about to be dead and these dumbasses will sit around wondering why everything isn’t better now that bad man gone.
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That would require them to use nato funding to invade the US. Not even if they just called it slavery straight up would that happen.
These are the same people that can’t even hold Isreal accountable and you expect them to stop the US from hurting itself ? Considering this is not the first time the US has done this to it’s citizens/legal immigrants Europe would be better off holding the US at arms lenth and hoping it implodes
The question is only posed if the US had a civil war: would NATO take a side?
WHEN the US of A’s Civil War Part2 begins, it’ll be simultaneous with the US’s waging war against Canada.
So, it’ll be saving Canada’s life, by mitigating the US’s effectiveness…
and with the US waging war against Canada ( & Mexico, Panama, etc… ), Putin will be ( with China’s & Saudi Arabia’s complete backing ) waging war against the EU/rest-of-NATO.
Trump’s a Putin-ally, not a NATO, & that’s been true since the 1980’s.
the NATO bill they’ve now got drafted in the US, in removing the US from NATO isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing: its roots go back to the Kremlin’s investment in Trump, last-century…
IF by “taking a side” you mean cheering on, from the sidelines, sure, NATO’ll take a side…
however, if by “taking a side” you mean invading, … get real.
WHEN the US Constitution is rendered completely-irrelevant ( 2028, as that’s when the required election would threaten Trump’s kinghood ) by wars against ALL neighbors, & then the CCP can carve-up Asia, & MBS can gain possession of the entire Middle-East, all of Africa, etc… ( I don’t know who gets South America, but it isn’t the West: China’s the one who’s been investing in it, & the oligarchs/far-right have been investing in highjacking it, so it’s a tossup between them, isn’t it? … oh, “Israel” won’t exist much past 2028: Hamas’s brilliant unconscious strategy was to use the life of the Palestinian people as bait, to get “Israel” to display its narcissistic/machiavellian/psychopathic/nihilistic/sadistic/systemically-dishonest/prejudice ( all dimensions that also express through other prejudice-ideologies, including islamism, white-supremacism, etc… ) & once the Muslim world no longer cared if they survived the fight, that ANNIHILATING “Israel” is REQUIRED… then suddenly “Israel” no-longer has any military “deterrent”, do they? “Deterrent” REQUIRES that opponents be deterred, right? Making them into unhesitating martyrs isn’t “deterring” them, is it? “Israel” is sooo completely prejudice-polarized that it isn’t competent to perceive that concept, apparently. So, once that tipping-point is crossed, then “Israel” gets annihilated, exactly as the Christian prophecy declared ( Matt 24, iirc ) )
WHEN the US Constitution is rendered completely-irrelevant, THEN… TrueNATO’ll have sooo many problems of its own, that the US of A will have to wage war on all its neighbors WHILE exterminating civil-rights, leftists, Christians who’re loyal to LivingSpirit, people of all other religions who’re loyal to LivingSpirit, LivingSpirit itself, if they can figure out how, etc…
it’ll simply be nazism, all over again.
Only the appearances will be different.
Will they even have giant murder-factories, as the nazis had over 1000 of?
probably…
A more important question, for the survivors will be: as soon as Putin & Trump drop ( they are old: this will happen to them ), then … will the CCP’s empire step up to be rampaging the remnant of the West?
The correct answer is yes, they will.
Fundamentally, humankind “can’t” tolerate civil-rights to rule over authority, so EVERY kind of authoritarianism is going to try breaking civil-rights from our world, completely.
White supremacism, then CCP authoritarianism… then another, then another… until either humankind’s underlying-nature is force-changed, XOR until humankind’s extinguished…
Some would say that the US of A has been providing aid to the world, all along!
Yes, simultanously with CIA treachery…
As is obvious, ALL our countries have been playing that kind of game!
Some would say that the world, endlessly-helped by the US of A, owes the US of A help in surviving its Civil War Part2…
After all the treachery that the US has enforced so as to prevent civil-rights from having real leverage in the world…
( here’s 1: Afghanistan.
Obama let it slip that there was immense mineral-wealth there…
so, how come the US of A hadn’t helped the Afghani people get a functioning government & economy built on that, instead of having opium remain the spine of the Afghani economy??
Colonialism.
Sad, or what?
Then I found out that it was Carter who obliterated the good government in Afghanistan, so as to prevent it from interfering with the US’s dominion-game…
& these are 2 of the “good guys”?? )
Humankind has NO right to claim, in G-D’s face, that it has “done the right thing”, at any scale, consistently.
Now humankind has to sort itself out.
The US of A has to sort itself out.
If the balance-of-power means that evil wins, then … then humankind needs force-extinguishment, for the Solar-systems, or/and the Galaxy’s sake.
Our factionalism will do the enforcing: no need for any “intervention”, but it’ll be humankind’s planet-scale civil-war.
& deathmatch.
War of attrition.
Either 1 kind survives, or none do.
That is the proper framing, for the entire rest of this century.
The US is just 1 little set-of-battles, not anywhere-near the whole thing of this century’s “force cleaning-up of humankind”.
The US won’t be a player in the mid 2030’s: Trump’s making certain of that.
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I sure hope so. It would be dumb to let the Neo Confederates control the whole of North America, because their tendrils would violate all the other nations that can be reached. The ocean is a barrier that will eventually fail.
The only true way to prevent Europe’s soil from being soaked with blood, is to commit to bleeding on American dirt.
They’re activelly destroying Science in the US, pretty much guaranteeing their own fatal weakening in the mid and long term if they did win and ended up controlling North America.
With the notable exception of the US ending up using nukes and causing the end of the World, there is no way Europe would lose more from merely letting present day America eat itself up than it would from militarily intervening in a civil war in the US, because even a win by the Neo Confederates would yield a weakened American in the short term (because of the destruction of a Civil War) and even more in the long term because of their anti-Science stance, and likely braindrain.
(People seriously underestimate the likelihood of rich countries regressing. To give you an example, Argentina used to be the 5th weathiest country in the World and look at them now. America absolutelly would end up regressing, FAST, if the MAGA crowd with the policies it is already practicing gained absolute power).
Not to say that many Americans who aren’t Neo Confederates wouldn’t deserve the help, just saying that pragmatically speaking letting America consume itself would be better for Europe than militarily intervening in an American civil war.
Now, if this was 40 or 50 years ago it would be different, but present day America isn’t a force for good and there being a EU gives Europe enough strength as a team to stand up by itself to powers like China and Russia if they try anything, so there both isn’t all that much good (for the World as a whole) in America to be worth saving and Europe doesn’t actually require American support.
I have to disagree about Europe standing aside and allowing North America fight itself. Ask yourself this: what if Fascism won?
While the ideological blindness would undoubtedly make a Dogey America less effective, totalitarianism has something that democratic countries lack: Unadulterated ambition and not giving a damn who has to suffer for it. I feel that your position isn’t much different from the mainstream Democrats in America, who use “compromise” to get the easiest fruits for themselves, and simply standing aside to let things progress to their conclusion.
This passive stance innately allows people of stronger intent to control nations. It would be much better if the EU was proactive, otherwise Dogey America may very well be dictating how Europeans live. Good people should be willing to impose their beliefs, even if it feels bad. The alternative is ceding control to humans who lack the empathy to care about others.
I was born in Portugal, a country which was back then under a Fascist Dictatorship.
It was a dirt poor European country were things were so bad that it got Food Aid from other countries.
Fortunatelly, there was a Revolution not long after I was born. In the 5 - 10 years after the Revolution quality of life and average wealth in my country went up dramatically.
In my own country, Fascism came to power when the Finance Minister during Republican years who saved the country from Financial Ruin, just captured power and made himself President - so yeah, starting from a very low point Fascism can improve things a bit for a while, but it doesn’t take that many years for it to turn the whole thing into shit and that’s what happenned in Portugal.
Fascists might sometimes cause a little Economic bump if they take over from a very low point (the same happenned with the Nazis in Germany), but it never lasts, and the ones in America are already going at it so ineptly and haphazardously that I bet there’s not going to be any Economic bump.
The Fascists are incompetent as fuck and seriously regressive, so they eventually drag down any nations they take over once the cummulative side effects of their actions have time to work through the system. As America is already in a post-Imperial decay stage, Fascism will just accelerate that decay.
No. It’d require them to use NATO funding to defend the rest of the world from us.
Even less likely unless the US directly attacks EU members.
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What a flagrantly dishonest way of framing what they said
No but other countries might want to take stock of what’s happening and weigh the pros and cons of increasing their defense spending.
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Worse. More like less than 0.0001% of the humans on the planet.
Don’t appease. Destroy. Did it work with you tied to appease any other dictators?
He can get fucked by a huge pine cone. He and those that back him are enemies of humanity at this point, willfully choosing to be cruel and sacrificing lives for money and power.
With or without Trump, I don’t think Europe has a choice at this point. Yes, if they US held up their part against Russia, Europe would have to spend less. That’s the one area where Trump screwed Europe, but that being the case, Europe needs to spend this much on defense. Trump can just be a convenient excuse.
Now the question is: will they demilitarize if/when the threat dissipates? Methinks the EU is repeating the fatal appeasement strategy of the 1930s.
I hope so. Though I think the only way the threat from Russia goes away is if it’s broken up into smaller states which is unlikely.
The part that really gets me with this bending the knee shit is that he can have a dementia fit the day after they cut funding for their programs and they’ll be in the same spot.
Why can’t we just distance ourselves from this? Why must we appease him!? 😡
We dont lol Americans think we are because we increase the military spending. We are also not cutting social spending
The fuck we are. This sounds like psyop
Well the UK just cut disability benefits.
France is cutting support for chronically ill people.
The swiss government is planning on removing disability benefits for young people…
Well Switzerland is hardly doing it to appease NATO “allies”. Yeah I know they are sort of allied adjacent.
I am not saying that the countries are not doing these things. But are they doing it to curry favor with TACO Trump?
Neither the UK nor Switzerland is in the EU. And I don’t see evidence to any of those claims beyond the UK going to shit either way.
The headline says “Europe” not the EU.
But “Europe” is not increasing military funding, the EU is.
UKs government is weird. How that is labor no one knows. They also are introducing mass survailance. France and germany are trying to please the fascists inside their country. And both are having neoliberal leaders. And switzerland isnt in NATO lol
100% psyop
I don’t even know why my country is still in this cesspool. NATO is nothing more than an American subsidiary that forces others to buy its shit. My country has the atomic bomb, which is the only necessary thing to guarantee our sovereignty in the very long term. No reason to invest 5% of our GDP in additional death machines, especially when our debt is astronomical.
If we don’t win this war now that it’s limited to Ukraine, Putin will spread it to first Baltics and then Finland once he his army has regained enough strength. Unless we have developed our defense capabilities sufficiently by that.
We need to be ready for the event that France and Germany decide that Ukraine should fall. And if at that point the only countries that have a serious ability to defend against the Russia are Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then the economy of northwestern EU will be in shambles. And that will definitely affect the rest of EU, including whatever country you are from.
If the whole EU is interested in repelling the Russia when it attacks, then it probably won’t even attack. But if only the countries bordering it are interested in that, it abaolutely will attack the northeastern EU. And then your bread will get a lot more expensive.
I distrust this type of article as China and Russia have lots to gain from trying to stirr up opposition or protests in Europe, especially on this topic of defense.
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Vdl is in bed with anyone that pays her. However we need the weapons. Russia and the US proofed it. We need to be able to defend ourselves from both of them.
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Give up your freedom and you can die in a russian shed lol.
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Like she’d do if we let russia invade us 😂
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These countries have publicly stated that they have a territorial claim on European countries, and have armies that can reasonably assert those claims.
No fuck you. Russia is attacking europe, planning to attack more countries in europe and you cry about making sure we can defend ourselves? Your grandma sure would be proud of you just wanting to roll over for the russians.
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Dont care
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It’s about Russia and it’s militarist expansionism, not about Trump.
Its both. But not to appease trump, but to be prepared in case of a standoff
Yeah, I suspect you’re right.
Hey European nations; Nice to know about how your sovereignty works.
Does it say anywhere in the article what social programs are on the chopping block? I’ve heard this claim hundreds of times, but so far it’s on the basis of “it’s got to come from somewhere”. What if you build military hospitals, military infrastrtucture and military schools? Wink wink, nudge nudge.
it’s not listed because this is not what is happening
italy for example put bridge construction in that military budget (as critical infrastructure)
also the subtext was “spend that defense budget in america” and this is not happening either for variety of reasons, so it’s partial failure already for them
“spend that defense budget in america”
hah, yeah, that part is hilarious. tramp already ruined the f35 program by suggesting that the ones sold to allies would come with degraded specs…why sink funding in something that you can only use with american permission exclusively for their stupid wars?
there’s a couple of big failures in american defense industry (like shipbuilding) but F35 is not one of them. the alleged killswitch is not likely a thing because first, it could be used by the most probable adversary, and they already shown capability in EW; and second, it’s not necessary because it requires constant stream of spare parts and maintenance. as if it’s worth it, ask any remaining iranian radar operator for firsthand opinion
some countries switched to euro made jets anyway, but these aren’t likely to be doing the job that F35 is cut to do anyway (SEAD)
there’s already euro alternative in development, for which americans were explicitly not invited (GCAP, FCAS). there’s also the everything else part of military, half of euro countries make now artillery (both tube and rocket) so these can be bought locally too
Yes, but israel gets the F35I variant. They are probably independent in software, targetting (and parts?), because israel as the US golden child always gets the juiciest deals. The EU, meanwhile, gets the “leeches, warmongers, pathetic freeloaders” treatment.
at minimum brits have source code. couple of eu countries make parts for it as well
russia is gearing towards Europe.
The first stage of the war is sowing discontent.
Read up on Gerasimovs doctrine.
A lot of countries got lulled into a false sense of security by USA being in the NATO and Russia not outright attacking anyone for a moment and let their defence deteriorate. And now they’re paying for it
“Russia not outright attacking anyone”
Oh so we ignore that they also didnt free eastern europe and return their indipendence like they promised? Ignoring Afghistanistan, backing the communist rebels in greece, ignoring all the supression of any protest in their red empire, ehtiopia, blockading berlins supply. Okayyy.
And we arent paying for it because of the USA said so. We are because our politicians finally realise russia never was a peaceful nation and clearly prepares a war to invate the rest of europe
I mean those countries ignored those things. I’m saying they shouldn’t have
ignoring Afghanistan
Stop right there. Your argument is over. Goodbye.
Opinion article. Also they missed many NATO Top nuances, like the whole political game. But yes, NATO members in Europe have been spending more, and more defense is and was needed.
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You really are a little kremlin bot aren’t you.
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It’s needed to appease Ursula’s little friends
Not really, NATO and EC( Ursula) are two different entities. She’s facing charges, for her vaccine deals. Nothing to do with defense.
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No shit Sherlock
Just read the article, and did it feel as though it was written by 3 different people to anyone else?
But anyway, the EU undeniably needed to spend more on their collective militaries with a hostile, expansionist neighbor on their doorstep. This is literally one of two things that Trump has been right about in his lifetime.
These days you’re lucky if there’s even one person writing it.
That’s not Trump being right, that’s Trump hanging all of America’s allies out to dry. A more serious effort to support Ukraine would make it functionally impossible for Russia to threaten Europe. More staunch support for NATO from the US would forestall any attempt at Russian aggression. The EU are setting military funding targets far beyond what Trump demanded, because this has nothing to do with Trump’s demands and everything to do with his litany of failures.
Two things can be true at the same time. But I’ll dispute that this is citizen citrus’s fault. European appeasement created the enemy they’re currently facing. Particularly merkel’s germany.
Trump is a swindler who is currently swindling. Europe is a militarily complacent economic bloc wholly dependent on the US. Frankly, this is a terrible, short sighted move, as this removes US military leverage, but it’s a very Trump move.
Don’t bow down to the psychopath! You know he’s going to just pull out of NATO anyway.
If the US dumps NATO, that’s all the more reason to increase defence funding. Either that or start learning Russian.
I’d rather he did that than abandon NATO by surprise the moment russia attacks Narva or the Suwalki gap and give “putin, the gambler” the illusion that he can win against the EU…
