He’s right. The US can’t be relied on for the next four years, at minimum. Hell, parts of the apparatus might be turned against European security.
Please, look after yourselves.
And what Trump is likely to destroy in the coming years will take ages to rebuild, assuming it ever is.
We all hope it will be enough to shock the European governments into cooperating for once, but the odds are really stacked against that, even if some are willing.
It’s not just about the next 4 years, we can’t base our defense on a country we can only rely on for 4 years at a time.
There were already problems with Bush Jr. then Trump once, and now Trump again.
You’d have to be insane to believe this is just a one or two off, and things will get back to normal.
Normalcy regarding NATO ended already with Bush.
The times where USA was the deciding factor in most world policies, because USA was backed up by the majority of the global economy is over.
USA loses just as much as Europe and many other US allies. Trump said our so called friends are our true enemies. Trump believes Canada, UK, EU etc are enemies, and he has said directly that Russia and China are “not so bad”. Despite Russia is invading in Europe, and threatening nuclear war, and China is behaving ever more aggressively in the China sea and against Taiwan, and in general against their neighbors.
@Buffalox @PugJesus #natoisdead died today.
I guess this will be the end of NATO. Such a dark future.
Yes Macron said this back in 2017
literally point number one:
- A Europe that guarantees security in all its aspects
In terms of defence, Europe must have a joint intervention force, a joint defence budget and a joint doctrine for action. We need to encourage the swift creation of a European Defence Fund, permanent structured cooperation, and supplement them with a European intervention initiative that better integrates our armed forces at all stages.
and what has changed since then and what is being implemented?
Any decent EU military needs a common EU foreign policy. Both of those need treaty changes. Also Macron says a lot about Europe, but when he got the opportunity for action tends to fall short. France was in a great position to lead on Ukraine aid, but did not perform that amazingly.
EDIT: EU ammo purchases for Ukraine have been launched and some EU military organizational work as well, such as EU missions in Mali, the Red Sea and some other places. Also some good cooperation such as Germany and Netherlands integrating their armies.
Organisation is actually pretty good at the battalion level, there’s plenty of EU Battlegroups integrating neighbouring armies on a deep level – or at least making them acquainted with each other. Gotta know the MRE exchange rates. And that’s not counting stuff that you mentioned, like the Dutch land army being rolled into German C&C or the German/French brigade.
What’s lacking are strategic C&C capabilities on the EU level: There’s just too few of them, there should be more cooperation on that level (member states have those kinds of capabilities) which is exactly what the “EU army” thing is about, operationally. Although it has to be said that push come to shove, with so many EU members in NATO, everyone would just re-assign everything NATO to the EU should the NATO fall flat. Armies have scrambled into fighting stances from worse positions.
Macron could lead Europe, yes, but first he has to manage to lead France.
Back then, Germany was barely warming up to the idea of a EU military. Now it seems to be a done deal, the European motor is going to churn and Poland seems to want to be part of it.
Yep. Sorry our politics are so absolutely fucked, everyone. This is the end of Pax Americana. We’re going isolationist, and probably also fascist and theocratic. I’m going to leave the country.
Europe is going to have to get proactive about it’s security too. Just defending themselves from Putin and Xi won’t be enough.
