Europe is still too dependent on the US military to decouple and be more independent own, unfortunately. The EU agreed to a trade deal/not-trade deal (according Von der Leyen) with Trump in European investment in the US military. I know Europeans were angry at that, but in the near term the EU doesn’t have the capability to arm itself sufficiently, while simultaneously arming Ukraine. IMO that deal was buying time for the EU to remilitarise independently (I’m not a fan of remilitarisation as a Euro but what can we do).
Europe doesn’t have the same size of military industrial complex that US has at the moment.
I think it’s for the best. The US military industrial complex is not something that I would like to see replicated in Europe. Of course if the American standard is “police departments should have armored vehicles” then we are not on the same “level”, but do we really need that in order to have an effective military?
Your choices are to not decouple from the US or have a comparable MIC as a collective. You don’t have a comparable MIC because the US does it for you. But if you’re against the Trump administration, you have to support getting one.
I won’t go as far to say Europe “can’t survive” without the US, but Europeans seem to think the transition away won’t significantly change things and that’s not realistic.
Europe is still too dependent on the US military to decouple and be more independent own, unfortunately. The EU agreed to a trade deal/not-trade deal (according Von der Leyen) with Trump in European investment in the US military. I know Europeans were angry at that, but in the near term the EU doesn’t have the capability to arm itself sufficiently, while simultaneously arming Ukraine. IMO that deal was buying time for the EU to remilitarise independently (I’m not a fan of remilitarisation as a Euro but what can we do).
I often read “Europe needs the US military to defend itself” online, but is it actually true? Or just the US themselves saying that?
For now at least. Europe doesn’t have the same size of military industrial complex that US has at the moment. Europe needs more time to gear up.
I think it’s for the best. The US military industrial complex is not something that I would like to see replicated in Europe. Of course if the American standard is “police departments should have armored vehicles” then we are not on the same “level”, but do we really need that in order to have an effective military?
Your choices are to not decouple from the US or have a comparable MIC as a collective. You don’t have a comparable MIC because the US does it for you. But if you’re against the Trump administration, you have to support getting one.
I won’t go as far to say Europe “can’t survive” without the US, but Europeans seem to think the transition away won’t significantly change things and that’s not realistic.
Again, says who? I do not believe we need to have a comparable spending, when that spending is >20% of the GDP during times of “peace”.
I guess I’ll backpedal on “comparable,” but still bigger than you have.
My instinct is to be in favor of increased European military spending because in a saner world this would reduce US military spending, but I doubt it.