The report is absolutely scathing. Some choice quotes:
But when the next crisis came, both the US and the governments of Europe fell back on old models of alliance leadership. Europe, as EU high representative for foreign affairs Josep Borrell loudly lamented prior to Russia’s invasion, is not really at the table when it comes to dealing with the Russia-Ukraine crisis. It has instead embarked on a process of vassalisation.
But “alone” had a very specific meaning for Scholz. He was unwilling to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine unless the US also sent its own main battle tank, the M1 Abrams. It was not enough that other partners would send tanks or that the US might send other weapons. Like a scared child in a room full of strangers, Germany felt alone if Uncle Sam was not holding its hand.
Europeans’ lack of agency in the Russia-Ukraine crisis stems from this growing power imbalance in the Western alliance. Under the Biden administration, the US has become ever more willing to exercise this growing influence.
Facts aren’t the issue, interpretation is.
No. Atlanticism is based on the idea of relying on the US as a military power, and, consequently, also relying on the US to be sane. It’s been a thing since WWII in the face of the cold war, a major dividing point between France and Germany (at least under CDU governments), but generally been on the decline since Iraq as Atlanticists realised that the US is not, in fact, sane.
If you really believe that Europe is “subjugated” I invite you to look at the trade wars we had with the US. Most were quite short indeed as the US caves pretty much instantly each time they are shown what we can do. Are those the actions of vassals?
“Focussing” doesn’t mean anything. Approach, confront, what? You never know with the US they don’t have a coherent foreign policy.
The US is reliant on European industry in so many ways it’s not even funny. The whole world is.
Not news. Already arrived, as said, beginning with Iraq and really driven home with Trump. Also, we’re not relying on their protection. Again: From what aliens is the US supposed to protect us. If anything is endangered on the military side then it’s resource imports, but not the continent, and even then you’d have to hit a fuckton of places at the same time for trade flow to not simply readjust, meanwhile making pretty much the whole world your enemy.
I live in Latinamerica and I have never seen any shit made in Europe except useless fancy shit, maybe you build some engine part or something? I wouldn’t dare to say the world is dependent on European industry, though, now China, we sure are dependent to them.
ASML
Ok, that’s true, but at the same time it’s not like it’s the only one and also it’s one thing. If we wouldn’t get couped every 5 second we could create a replacement.
We build the machines that you, and China, use to build stuff. We also make things which go into things that go into things. We build the measuring systems you use to calibrate measuring systems. You can also buy whole power plants, turn-key. We bore all your tunnels, build all your gondola systems and probably build your planes, and also trains (The ranking is Alstrom, the Chinese, then Stadler). We build pneumatic tube systems for your hospitals and produce the forceps your surgeons use.
We also do a lot of consumer stuff but I don’t know how popular it is outside of Europe. But I’d be surprised if you can’t find e.g. Bosch food processors all over the world. Or Siemens light bulbs. Have you ever used a BIC pen or lighter (or, of all things, surfboards yes they produce surfboards). Hardly “fancy shit”.
And that’s not including stuff produced all over the world by European companies, if e.g. BASF were to vanish over night every single economy in the world would collapse.
kkkkkkkk
What, surprised? They’ve been producing them for ages.
Estadunidense acha que ninguém conhece liquidificador. Gringo, please, leia um livro kkkkkk
Quê? Surpreso?
I’m not American, Bosch isn’t American, and no I don’t think noone else produces kitchen appliances, much less knows what they are. Your mind must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
What I did assume from your response is that you only knew Bosch from car parts, angle grinders and electrical drills, or something. But truth be told they produce about everything as long as it uses electricity.
Mate, you have to be a bit too gringo to think that whatever your conglomerates like Bosch produce can’t be produced without exporting all the wealth to the “Global North” as you people call it. Even Bosch itself has factories in China to supplement the stagnating production in your glorified peninsula. And no, we don’t need your posh “food processor” as if cheap and good mixers haven’t been commonplace everywhere for the last 50 years or so. Truth is “you” (as you put it) produce very little to the world, it is all extracted and produced abroad, be it in Asia, Africa or America (the continent), and then you get to claim glory because your patented circuit-printing facilities got to do the very last bit.
Then “you” (as you put it) try to shove these inferior and expensive products down the collective throat of the rest of the world. And then you proclaim to the world of slaves “how good we are, to civilise those barbarians”. Do you really believe us to be so stupid that we couldn’t replicate and improve your circuit boards and electronics without your nonsensical patent laws and foreign meddling? How many Chinas surpassing the USAurope do you need to call your exceptionalism into question? I have never seen a single Bosch appliance and European products are for the most part luxury goods or patent hogs. Oh no, how will I survive with my Asian imports and local production without the help of those smart Euros? All you people do is import, and you pretend that’s a good thing.
But please, educate me about the third world reliance on your tiny continent.
Fine. Convince whatever country you’re in to pass a law forbidding importing anything from highly developed nations. If you don’t want our stuff, your choice. If you don’t want to sell your stuff, also your choice. Just stop trading, I don’t care.
…what you’re going to see happening is your own high-tech sector completely folding, and you then spending the next 50 year spending tons of resources on figuring out how to build things that you can buy off the shelf from Europe, the US, Japan, South Korea, etc.
And that’d be a shame because we’d like to see you on eye level, see you carve out your own areas of excellence where you trump us. But if you don’t want to, well, we won’t force you. Because unlike Seppos we actually learned from history.
BTW, Argentina invented the ballpoint pen and Bics are produced either in Argentina or Brasil, lol.
John J. Loud patented it in 1888, the man was American. Those never took off, though, manufacturing wasn’t there yet it took 50 years so the second name you see listed as inventor is László Bíró, Hungarian… who fled to Argentina. 10 years after starting to produce his pens. Maybe read up on shit before you base your jingoism on it. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that Che is from Angola.
If you wonder how hard it is to make ballpoint pens: Very. It took China until 2017 to nail the requirements – it’s not that the concept is hard, but manufacturing at the required precision at scale is anything but easy.
When it comes to production I have no idea where you got Argentina from, BIC’s South American factories are in Brasil: Stationary, Lighters and Shavers in Manaus, Stationary in Rio.
Not actually sure whether they producing their own balls but they definitely produce their own razor blades. I mainly brought Bic up as an very good example of unfancy European engineering: Yes, you can get cheaper stuff, but you’re probably going to haul curses at it at some point in time, and end up spending more money because buying cheap is more expensive than buying once.
Worse, you could be buying Gillette or Wilkinson who only seem to produce good ole fashioned safety razor blades to make people think safety razors suck so they can sell more overpriced cartridge stuff. My Bic blades are 11ct a piece, I could use a fresh one every shave and still spend less than what those want for their seven-blade cartridges. That’s even true if you buy the cream of the cream, Japanese “let’s make the best possible product, not care about price” blades: Feather. 29ct a piece.
The interpretation is entirely correct. EU is subordinate to US in every practical way, and one has to be wilfully ignorant not to see that.
If by trade war you mean US cannibalizing Europe by luring what business is left to prop up its own failing economy then sure.
What interests has US actually caved on exactly?
Focusing means allocating resources towards Asia. Meanwhile, the fact that US does not have a coherent policy should itself be very worrisome for Europe. Having outsourced your security to an unstable and unreliable partner has put Europe into a rather precarious situation today.
It’s very clear that plenty of European states feel they need to have military parity with Russia. While the idea of a war with Russia is obviously insane, that doesn’t change the political reality of Europe. Given that Europe is in no position to match Russia militarily, it is therefore reliant on US for military strength.
Completely Seppo-brained. Being on the left doesn’t make you immune from the exceptionalism cool aid.
Russia can’t even fucking match Ukraine which is being drip-fed surplus. France alone could roll over Russia but they’d have a hard time keeping up with the Poles running on pure, distilled, wrath. The only reason they’re not in Moscow right now is because NATO is also a leash.
Hasn’t Russia been holding on to the claimed regions for almost an year now?
You mean hasn’t Russia slowly been attritioning itself in Bakhmut for no strategic gain whatsoever.
Not to mention that in the beginning Russia was claiming “Kyiv in three days”. It claimed Kherson. It claimed Kharkiv. Prigoshin wasn’t wrong when he called the whole thing a disaster in various colourful ways.
From what I gathered their demands for a peace deal for a very long time are basically for recognition of the new areas, without added land claims. This would imply that their war goal was just those. Am I incorrect there? Could you provide a source, if so?
Russia’s stated goal was to “demilitarise and denazify”, which never made any sense, but definitely involved capturing Kyiv (why else beeline for it?) and toppling the government. The actual goal seems to have been installation of a puppet regime a la Belarus.
But all that became moot as they lost the war in the first couple of days, only trouble was that didn’t mean that Ukraine won, or the Kremlin realised it had already lost. The rest of the war is, big picture, a slow Russian retreat while scorching the earth.
The reason the whole thing is still going on is the party’s utter disagreement when it comes to acceptable terms, and Russia’s authoritarian civic giving -50% war exhaustion, but that’s countered by Ukraine’s -100% temporal modifier “defence against genocide” (sorry couldn’t resist going Paradox after all).
Russia’s current stance “just give us what we have” would allow Putin to sell the thing as a win domestically, but we already see propaganda spins such as “sure we demilitarised them, now they’re not using Ukrainian but NATO hardware” which is olympic-level mental gymnastics so my assumption is that pretty much everyone but Putin (who is being fed bad info as giving him bad news gets you demoted to defenestrated) realises where this is heading.
I give it a year, tops, until the last Russian boot is out of Ukraine. Including Crimea.
So what you’re saying is that, despite the main demand for peace from Russia not being met for more than an year being that of accepting their annexations, they actually have some other unstated greater war goal? Am I really incorrect in saying that from the very beginning the main Russian demands were the control of the currently annexed lands and Crimea, demands which are still unmet today? Can you provide me any sources for that? Don’t see why it matters so much which side wins in the end for the sake of this argument.
Also I don’t think “beelining for Kyiv” is such a big tell, as since you are a paradox fan you know that taking a capital is usually a good move even if you don’t intend to control it.
Yes and no. Russia did have a greater goal, and now Putin (no “they”, any more) is left with the goal to stay in power.
Putin’s speech at the beginning of the invasion. “Denazification, demilitarisation”, and ahistorical ramblings about Ukraine not being a country, or Ukrainians an independent ethnicity, which at least back then played into popular myths in Russia (hence why Russia as a whole had a war goal as opposed to merely Putin). Also, lies about Ukraine shelling ethnic Russians in the Donbas IIRC Prigoshin actually called that one out specifically when he announced his… stunt. Not really sure what to call it.
TBH at this point in time I’m not sure if Putin survives the coming months or two, given that the sentiment among people was quite pro-Wagner, cheering them on, then booing OMON (aka Putin’s goons) as they re-entered Rostov. Or whether Prigoshin stopping wasn’t orchestrated by the FSB who didn’t mind the change in power but would prefer to do it during the next presidential elections (March 2024) instead of having a civil war, tons of reasonable speculations along various lines. One thing’s for sure there’s now an abundance of ex-convicts on the streets pissed that Prigoshin stopped, and a big crack in Putin’s air of power. Hard and brittle materials crack easily, you see.
LMFAO