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The US has become unreliable and erratic. Countries aren’t cutting ties or anything, but certainly investing to reduce exposure to capricious US leadership. Muc
by brookst 1y ago
The US has become unreliable and erratic. Countries aren’t cutting ties or anything, but certainly investing to reduce exposure to capricious US leadership. Much of Europe is increasing domestic military production rather than just buying more from the US precisely because the US has publicly discussed leaving NATO and/or not honoring its guarantees.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoIncreasing domestic military production is actually a great outcome. Obviously Wall Street would have preferred purchasing from US-listed/owned arms companies, but from the perspective of a military alliance, having well-armed allies is the main point. It's really hard to argue with Trump's methods if they led to Europe finally spending on their own defense.
- markdown 1y agoYou've moved the goalposts
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agosorry nope. I said that we haven't broken up an alliances and that our allies are now investing in their own defense.
- antonvs 1y ago> It's really hard to argue with Trump's methods On the contrary, his methods are ridiculous. He could have achieved similar ends without kowtowing to Russia, without squandering the opportunity to further weaken Russia’s military capacity, and so on. Something similar applies to pretty much everything else he’s done. He incurs collateral damage on everything even when it’s completely unnecessary to do so. It’s a definitional example of egregious incompetence.
- brookst 1y agoThat’s moving the goalposts. The fact that they are doing this because they don’t trust the US to honor its commitments is a very different proposition from “maybe it’s for the best”. And if you’re familiar with world war 1 and 2, you might doubt that significant increase in domestic military production is a wholly good thing. But point stands: it’s an example of formerly-strong alliance that is no longer trusted.