“the willingness of the USA to use that power and their expertise in doing it, to protect their basic values all over the world (freedom, democracy and all that).”
This must be the silliest sentence ever written on US geopolitics…" protect their basic values". Fantastic, really…
lowandslow wrote:
This must be the silliest sentence ever written on US geopolitics…" protect their basic values". Fantastic, really…
The US has indeed done that in Europe, but that’s because their economic and safety interests in that region happened to align with their basic values.
In many other places quite the opposite has happened.
I don’t think discussing US foreign and domestic policies or their values will be a fruitful discussion and would anyways derail this thread.
In the context of this topic we can hopefully agree that the US is once again helping to provide security in Europe despite them not necessarily needing to do so go safeguard their own interests. As @Silvaire has repeatedly mentioned – echoing the thoughts of many Americans – it should be up to Europe to solve European security issues, but we as a continent failed to do so both in the Yugoslav wars and later in the containment of an increasingly imperialist Russia.
I do dearly hope that independent of what the US does or not, this current war finally is the wakeup call we need to boost our defense capabilities to the level required to defend the EU from any and all threats and quell any conflicts on European soil on our own.
The US has been a reliable ally for Europe since WWII but this cannot be counted on forever, for various reasons.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The US has indeed done that in Europe, but that’s because their economic and safety interests in that region happened to align with their basic values.
Exactly. It’s all about power and protecting ones rudimentary interests: safety, economics, stability and so on. However, when the shit hits the fan as it does now in Ukraine, even deeper elements come into play. The only true allies are those that can align those elements. A direct measure is typically the willingness to protect those values.
The US is no saint, but it’s willingness to use military force to protect its values is undisputable. Also undisputable is the ability in using that force, especially when the shit hit the fans. This is all that matters, and it makes the US the perfect ally for everyone who shares the same basic values.
Spot on.
The US has been a reliable ally for Europe since WWII but this cannot be counted on forever, for various reasons.
They keep saying that but in the end they always get stuck in 
In WW2 it took Pearl Harbour although they would have probably got involved a bit later anyway, and the Manhattan project would have delivered the goods in 1945 regardless and promptly ended the European war.
I think the US will always get involved in Europe because their basic values of freedom and democracy are aligned with (most of the) European ones. Just as well, too, since they have the industrial and military resources to do it. Otherwise, it is very hard to maintain such resources during extended periods of peacetime, and Europe doesn’t get involved in any real wars required to support the industry. Even if you had the manufacturing, during peacetime you end up stockpiling it, and most stuff can’t be stockpiled for ever. The Brits found in Falklands (1982) that with some weapons only 30% of the stock still worked. Plus, Europe has a lot of pacifism around which prevent capability being built up.
Also the US knows that it cannot exist on its own, with Europe invaded by whoever (Hitler, Putin, etc). Eventually the US would be invaded too. Its coastline is too long to be defensible. And then there are missiles… The US must fight its enemies close to where they come from. There is a great book on this theme by Robert Harris… Hitler won in Europe, and eventually got the atomic bomb. The US was then screwed because an upgraded V2 could deliver it.
I don’t think Europe will ever be able to defend itself against a Russia which has got itself rearmed, reorganised, and has another go in say 10 years’ time. Which it will do.
The US has been a reliable ally for Europe since WWII but this cannot be counted on forever, for various reasons.
Indeed. Don’t underestimate the isolationists at the far right spectrum of the Republican party, who may want to reduce military spending more than anything else? And there are more areas of potential conflict which may be a bigger priority for our American allies to attend to, notably Taiwan. So yes, time to get our act together over here. Such a shame that we will need to spend so much money and resources on building and maintaining basically unproductive stuff while we have important other areas where we need to spend our money on and dedicate our talents to.
aart wrote:
So yes, time to get our act together over here. Such a shame that we will need to spend so much money and resources on building and maintaining basically unproductive stuff while we have important other areas where we need to spend our money on and dedicate our talents to.
It does not always have to be unproductive… as we know particularly in Aviation, much of the big progress we had post WW2 had it’s origin in military designs. The Jet age almost totally started in the air forces and the early passenger jets used militarily designed engines:
The Comet first used “Ghost” engines which came from designs like the Vampire and Venom fighters, later versions used Rolls Royce Avons, which originated in many fighters like the Hunter, Canberra, Lightening and Vickers Valiant amongst others and went on to power the Caravelle from it’s first versions to the VI.
Concorde used the engine developped for the Vulcan bomber.
Also all of Space Flight has it’s origins in the Military and while many think that Space Flight is a useless costly piece of science, they tend to forget that a lot of today’s absolutely normal technology has it’s origins in the Moon Programme or elsewhere in Space technology. Most solar technology was originally used on satellites or spacecraft. (Look up Skylab and it’s solar array for one interesting bit of hardware)
But clearly, it is a crying shame that a lot of the energy needed elsewhere will once again go into the capability to kill others. Well, after all, there are those who claim that even the basic stone hammer in the stone age was most probably a weapon before it became a tool. So we will see what comes of it.
Hopefully those who are cynical enough to “hope” that the next war will decimate mankind towards one third of today’s population and therefore “safe the planet” will be wrong, but I would not really bet against it.
Peter wrote:
Eventually the US would be invaded too. Its coastline is too long to be defensible. And then there are missiles
The US coastline is extremely defensible. Any threat (aircraft) will be seen hours before arrival and tracked, and any threat for invasion which must include ships carrying troops will be seen days before arrival, and probably sunk before they get halfway across the Atlantic.
If the missiles are flying, then there’s no point – it’s the end of civilization by then.
Quite a long article in today’s newspaper about Germany “Bogarting” the tanks which they sold to NATO “partners”.
I wonder, what is Germany’s interest in prolonging this war?
I’m not sure Germany is particularly interested in prolonging the war, but I think Schulz hopes for a negotiated peace where Ukraine cedes territory to Russia as a face-saver for Putin and then a return to pre-invasion norms as regards gas supply.
Germany is more exposed to the Russian gas situation than other major European players and Schulz, new in office, cannot afford the political gamble of saying that Germans will take whatever pain comes but never buy energy from Russia again.
In essence, he wants Russia to ‘win’ because his predecessor cosied up to Putin so much that many of his country’s core interests require good – or at least not bad – relations with Russia. The counter-position to that in the rest of Europe is that given the 20th century history, it is now time for Germany to “take one for the team”.
I think it’s time for some realpolitik and a few countries to show their contempt for Germany’s position by exporting the tanks regardless, which I understand Poland may do. Again with the history, for Germany to wag its finger at Poland is a non-starter.
