this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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Americans will get a rude awakening if they think Europe will just lay down our arms because they say so.
If the orange one wins, that's a wedge into the divide between us.
That is Putin’s plan, of course.
Yeah, and the American election will show wether or not he runs the US as well.
Yep.
If the orange one wins, they deserve any shit that happens to them, it's not like they haven't been warned.
Well, it's a wedge between that Putin desperately wants the most. I wonder why Trump is on his side vs the US and allies...
That itself would be a victory. One of Trump's stated reason for wanting out of NATO is Europe wasn't doing their part - the treaty requires specific amounts of military spending and most members were below that. Now that Ukraine happened most of Europe is at least close to the treaty required levels (many are still below, but at least they are close)
Which is to say you can't lay down arms you don't have. If you want to leave America behind (which is both good and bad in different ways) you need to have something in place to handle potential attacks without America.
I think you may be underestimating Europe. National militaries is one thing, and pop culture understanding of the region is another, but you'll find plenty of armaments and munitions in private care all across Europe. Not to mention how some Baltic and Slavic countries are still armed to the teeth, despite having a deficit in military spending.
In any case, the complaint about Europe not spending enough on military is a tired argument, because Europe wasn't neglecting their military - Europe was literally told to remove large swathes of industrial military complexes.
For more info, ask an African, the Chinese, the global south, everyone told Europe to put their guns down - and all across Europe military assets ended up in private hands.
The joke being that in the cities you won't find much guns, but travel out to the country and you'll find large showrooms.
But yeah, if the US betrays Europe, that might be the final nail in the coffin for European and US relations, so much so that I think the CIA would just drop Trump to avoid diplomatic suicide.
If trump wins, then Europe needs to think Europe first, don't buy so much American military hardware, we make so much already ourselves, support that.
Then we can look at what we do in 4 years.
Europe has quite a bit in place to defend itself without the US. Something like a million soldiers with some pretty good equipment and training. There are issues, but the EU could defend itself fairly well without the US. It is just that having the most powerfull military behind you makes things a lot easier. The problem is that this makes things easier and the US has a massive intresst in looking strong(Taiwan for example).
Probably the main question is how long can Europe defend itself for. This conflict showed us that EU stockpiles of conventional weapons are questionably small for a real conventional war. That's the bit that we needed US for. We utterly failed to provide sufficient ammunition and weapons for Ukraine by ourselves.
When the war started pretty much every European military placed some massive orders. So new production mostly did not go to Ukraine. But a lot of weapons are domestic and built in a large quantity. Also not everything from the stockpiles was send to Ukraine. That is just too risky.
So long enough to scale up production and use the EUs large economy.
I'd imagine we will see France expanding their nuclear program or the EU as a block.
Nuclear programs are expensive and only useful in cases where things are so bad you are willing to end the entire world - including yourself. I'm not completely against France expanding their nuclear program, but I do think most of their effort should be focused on not letting things get that bad in the first place and that means enough conventional defense that they can defend themselves.
The French want to expand the programme precisely because it is expensive: Under French doctrine you don't really need more nukes to defend the continent vs. the country, but the costs can be shared.
Also there's no way to get Germany to stop buying F35s without switching Germany's nuclear sharing over from the US to France: Eurofighters aren't certified for US nukes due to industrial espionage concerns. France wants to extend their doctrine of strategic autonomy to the whole of Europe, again, costs, which is why they regularly get pissy when other member states buy US equipment.
Sure! However the whole of Europe is currently under the nuclear umbrella of the US. If trump comes back, the US will have lost their ability to be relied upon. Meaning our own nuclear deterrence is the only option. The whole US presidential race is possibly already a signal that that horse has fled the barn, so it might happen regardless.
Price wise you don't need 5k ICBMs to function. A few dozen of the modern types suffices.