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Which soft power are you talking about?
by copperx 8mo ago
Which soft power are you talking about?
- kulahan 8mo agoSure, it's decreasing under Trump, but to pretend the richest, most militarily powerful, most culturally influential nation on the planet somehow doesn't have any soft power is... certainly a choice.
- pornel 8mo agoRepublicans are spending all of US's remaining soft power on stealing Greenland. If it ends with the Navy showing its non-soft power, Europe won't have any fucks left to give about some website.
- kataklasm 8mo agoWe already don't. We want the Americans to pack up their bases and fuck off. Ami, go home! They've done enough work to stir up chaos and war all over the planet in the last 7 decades.
- viking123 8mo agoYeah they should pack up and leave seriously, go serve Israel and attack Iran, I want no part in that.
- frumplestlatz 8mo agoYou’re entirely free — at any time — to leave NATO, develop your own replacement weapons programs, and fully fund your own defense. I suspect most Americans would actually be quite supportive. You’ll just have to figure out how to actually pay for it.
- jjtwixman 8mo agoThe only country Americans care about is Israel, it doesn't really matter, we get it. We don't care. Please close Ramstein :)
- frumplestlatz 8mo agoGermany is free to exit NATO and close Ramstein. I believe it only requires a 1-2 year notice period. The defense budget required to operate without US assistance is another matter entirely; you’re looking at doubling existing spending, plus hundreds of billions in one-off procurement costs — and that assumes ongoing access to US weapons systems. The US subsidizes the massive weapons development programs you currently rely on; cost sharing agreements and unit purchases do not come close to offsetting the full sunk R&D costs the US covers. Replacing those weapons programs, and the existing US industrial base and supply chain they depend on, would run into the trillions of dollars. Just the R&D portion of the US defense budget is $150B a year — the entire EU’s aggregate defense R&D spending is only ~€15B/year. A truly independent EU that did not depend on the US for its security would be a very different place.
- jjtwixman 8mo agoWe have no real aspirations for global hegemon status. Ramstein is for your benefit, really. That is the key difference.
- frumplestlatz 8mo agoYou might not, but military deterrence is what keeps those with auch aspirations at bay. If you prefer to be a Russian vassal state, that is a choice.
- jjtwixman 8mo agoYeah actually we hate you. Apparently you've still got a loft of soft power in Nigeria, though. Most Europeans are now firmly anti-America.
- kulahan 8mo agoIt really doesn’t matter, the leaders who need to overlook personal grudges are the ones who do the wheeling and dealing here. Probably worth noting that if the US isn’t at the head of the table, it’s moved to China by default, not Europe. Though their propaganda seems to be quite successful lately.
- jjtwixman 8mo agoTypical American arrogance. You assume you can treat everyone around you like shit and we'll just put up with it. Don't you understand? You're threatening to invade us, China isn't. So no matter how bad China may be, you're still worse at the moment. You're so blinded by arrogance. You cannot imagine a world in which you are hated, but it's already here.
- kulahan 8mo agoYou've misread my comment pretty aggressively. Then again, this is about the level of discourse I typically get from "amerikkka bad" commenters, so I guess I'm not surprised. Anyways, China is trying to invade other nations, so that's a super moot point.
- petcat 8mo agoI think we're all aware that EU is trying to become more independent, but as of right now basically everything they do online, or really anything with technology at all, is American in some way. That's a lot of "soft power" and it will take decades, maybe a century, for EU or UK to replace it.
- computerthings 8mo ago[dead]
- XorNot 8mo agoTarrifs cost US consumers not EU consumers. If the US wants to ban AWS from operating in the EU that's just going to accelerate the shift away, for example.
- petcat 8mo agoThere are no tarriffs being applied on digital services. That's obviously intentional considering how much soft power those services exert on countries the USA wants to maintain an outsized influence over.
- XorNot 8mo agoHow would tarrifs be applied on digital services? Tarriffs are a tax on imports to the US applied by the US government. You can't tarriff selling a service overseas, in fact since AWS in other countries is a locally incorporated entity you can't even meaningfully demand they charge more AWS in the UK is a separate corporation incorporated and taxed under UK law, for example.
- petcat 8mo agoRight, I'm aware of that. Which is why I don't know why you brought up tarriffs in a discussion about the "soft power" that US technology services impose.
- polski-g 8mo agoAnyone who wants to trade in USD. Protection of maritime trade routes. Nuclear shield. Netflix, YouTube, Nvidia, OpenAI, Amazon.
- XorNot 8mo agoWhat sort of soft power do you imagine Netflix represents? It exists but it's not leverage.
- polski-g 8mo agoIt allows export of American culture.
- microtonal 8mo agoTo be honest, only the last few holdouts in Europe still believe in the US nuclear shield. The fact that Germany is trying to make a deal with France should tell you everything. Netflix, YouTube and OpenAI are completely meaningless and we could drop it tomorrow. NVIDIA and AWS are a different story. The only problem is that once things become transactional (as opposed to mutually trusting allies), Europe can leverage ASML and possibly ARM. So it doesn’t bring much soft power anymore, only mutually assured economic destruction.
- viking123 8mo agoMore European countries need nuclear deterrent, after all that is what seemingly gets Trump to write love letters to Kim Jong-un and meet him.