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There's an argument that the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more,
by rtsil 2y ago
There's an argument that the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more, for instance by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more I mean yes, we did. Western Europe was unifying under Berlin in the 1940s. > by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination Militarily speaking, modern Germany is irrelevant. (Partly due to how it’s been managed post-War.) Especially to Eastern Europe, whose security concerns require a nuclear umbrella.
- fatbird 2y agoIn the 90s the US scuttled an EU plan to create an EU military force that would be relatively small--around 50,000 personnel--but would be the umbrella military organization under which national forces would come together if needed. Trump and conservatives complain mightily about EU underspending on defence, but that's been by American design. While the EU was/is dependent on the American security umbrella, the US had a lot of leverage over Europe. The carrot was "you don't need to spend so much on defence, we've got you covered" and the stick was "shame if we didn't have you covered anymore, since you've been underspending for so many years.