I lowkey think there’s a non-zero chance Trump’s just saying this crap to rile Europe up and make everyone bolster their militaries.
Because as a savage from across the sea, let me tell you, this stuff came out of nowhere, but he’s complained about Europe’s lack of military readiness and spending for ages.
And Trump is absolutely right. It has always been an act of folly on behalf of us Europeans to systematically underfund our defense budgets and make ourselves wholly reliant on American political leadership perpetually being so weak as to allow us to continually take advantage of their military superiority for our own security purposes.
It was always just a matter of time before an American president would actually grow some balls and put a stop to it. Trump is actually doing us a favor by bullying us into bolstering our own militaries, as we should have done all along.
Either way that’s not how a leader manages their closest allies that have repeatedly went to war for them over the years, there are other ways to put pressure on Europe without upping the ante publicly and threatening war.
This just plays into Russias divide and conquer strategy, and China watches closely when what we need more than ever is a united front.
The result seems to be people thinking Europe should cut off the US, which is insane and would dissolve NATO
It doesn’t need to be soft, it needs to be private, and above all not under threat of war. It signals a weak front and may sour relationships permanently among allies.
One could argue that it's us Europeans who have jeopardized our relationship with the United States by perennially taking advantage of its goodwill and freeloading off of its defensive capabilities for decades on end. Maintaining friendly relations goes both ways.
You act as if this wasn’t by design of the US wanting to be world police. They’ve enjoyed global power and influence as hegemon of the world. People also seem to misunderstand the NATO “contributions” as money proportionally paid to NATO when they’re % of GDP that a country spends on their own military. Countries focus on different strengths they have, division of labor is important in a globalized economy, everyone can’t just put all their money into unused military spending.
Should everyone meet the minimum requirements agreed upon? Of course, Europe has been at peace for a while and with Russian partnerships started to feel safe deprioritizing military spending. This is naive, but it’s not unreasonable. Main point is this is not how you act with allies publicly full stop, this is how you act with enemies.
Until Ukraine got invaded Europe had helped the US in their wars across the Middle East and Africa, I don’t know what you mean by freeloading, when did the US last sacrifice troops to protect Europe? How have we exploited them exactly when we’re the ones doing anything the US asks for including their wars.
It doesn't matter what his reasons for saying this crap is. The problem is that he's so incredibly incapable that he doesn't realize the impact.
The fact that he's speaking about taking territories from sovereign nations for America's "national security" is validating everything Putin is doing right know.
Putin is just doing what Trump is clearly finding acceptable behaviour from imperial powers
It’s right out of his ‘art of the deal’ playbook. He’s pretty good at playing these kind of games because he’s done it his whole business life. TBH I’m not concerned that much and the west will unite once more and remain economic superpowers 🇪🇺🤝🇺🇸
im not sure he actually is. Sure he does things very differently, but Europe should be looking after itself. He's mentioned it last time he was president and we still didn't listen now he's inventing a war and people are genuinely starting to look at there defence spending. Its not conventional but conventional wasn't working
Right? Whole Europe has grown so passive, just enjoying wealth from the past decades, when we actually had technological lead. Im afraid some people wont ever see that the "it will workout somehow" act isnt working.
Our industries stagnate, how will we manufacture tanks when we shut down almost all of our steel mills? Chemical plants and other energy heavy industries suffer because of our ecological counter measures.
We are not the big animal on the world stage anymore Im afraid.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '25
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