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I am not sure if you meant to say what you said. By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. I think it is what they are attempting to do at

I am not sure if you meant to say what you said. By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. I think it is what they are attempting to do at the moment, "stop pretending to be sovereign" and actually BE sovereign. At least that seems to be the claimed attempt. If anyone is not sure why I would say that Europe is not sovereign, I will answer that question if you ask, but considering the current state of things and even just this discussion about data sovereignty and other related topics about using and deploying European technologies; I suspect most, if not all have a sense that Europe is in fact not sovereign... and that's without even pointing out huge elephants in the room like the 275 US military installations across Europe, and not even to touch on the fact that NATO is really just ** pulls curtain back ** SURPRISE! ... America, Europe Division.

bulbar 8mo ago
275 US military installations across Europe that are not prepared or equipped to fight a conflict against the nation's military that host them.
- dmoy 8mo ago
  I don't think GP was implying anything about US military fighting against Europe? Just that having another country's military all up inside your country is weird from a sovereignty perspective.
- cgio 8mo ago
  US abducted the leader of a sovereign in a night without having any military installations in his country. Sovereignty is very brittle in this context. I am sure an unprepared installation can still be useful if need be. But in any case no need in sight. Europe is not sovereign because it’s not a nation, it’s a loose union with very limited actual integration outside the integration required to facilitate easier trading from strong industrial economies to their poor neighbours. There is nothing to be concerned about in this space for the US until someone in Europe (France or Germany) actually becomes more dangerous to Europe than the US.
victorbjorklund 8mo ago
The rest of NATO has more soldiers than US. Would US win? Maybe. But how many millions dead Americans? US lost in Afghanistan and there they just fought terrorists.
- beachy 8mo ago
  The US (like any country) struggles in asymmetrical/guerilla warfare. It always devolves to the famous statement by a US officer during the Vietnam war that “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.” If the gloves were off then the equation would be different. A fight with the rest of NATO would be conventional warfare where the US has a giant advantage.
  - watwut 8mo ago
    USA would eventually loose, because it generally looses wars in the long term. But Europeans would suffer more while Americans would consider themselves the real victims.
    - x______________ 8mo ago
      The ones that win wars are those who profit from conflict, not those who are victorious on the battlefield.
  - ben_w 8mo ago
    > A fight with the rest of NATO would be conventional warfare where the US has a giant advantage. Given NATO contains three nuclear powers, a full on fight between the US and the rest of NATO would be an "everyone loses" scenario. Even if the US did a first-strike that somehow eliminated all the French and British nuclear submarines, simply losing the EU as customers and suppliers would likely double US unemployment and push inflation to 10%/year for the next decade (hard to be sure though, see Covid influence on supply chains). Actually getting hit back by retaliatory strikes by either France or the UK independently would be in the order of multiples of US annual GDP in physical damage. France has enough that even if 80% of their missiles were stopped, they'd still be able to hit every US state capital (though why would anyone care to attack Alaska or Hawaii if they're nuking all the rest?) As per estimate from 2005, even just a single 100 kT nuke in the right place would have an impact equivalent to the US GDP at the time: The results of our analysis are shown in Figure 4. As anticipated, the economic consequences are highest for the largest nuclear weapon yield and the most conservative cleanup level. New York City nets the highest economic damage across the cleanup spectrum, because of its dense population and high value real estate. Note that the economic consequences for New York City across almost every cleanup level meet or exceed $10 trillion, which is roughly equivalent to the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the U.S. economy. - Economic consequences of a rad/nuc attack: cleanup standards significantly affect cost, page 9, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1135/ML11355A226.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1135/ML11355A226.pdf
watwut 8mo ago
> By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. The ideology that claims no one except the biggest military is sovereign ... is fascism.

bulbar 8mo ago

275 US military installations across Europe that are not prepared or equipped to fight a conflict against the nation's military that host them.

dmoy 8mo ago
I don't think GP was implying anything about US military fighting against Europe? Just that having another country's military all up inside your country is weird from a sovereignty perspective.
cgio 8mo ago
US abducted the leader of a sovereign in a night without having any military installations in his country. Sovereignty is very brittle in this context. I am sure an unprepared installation can still be useful if need be. But in any case no need in sight. Europe is not sovereign because it’s not a nation, it’s a loose union with very limited actual integration outside the integration required to facilitate easier trading from strong industrial economies to their poor neighbours. There is nothing to be concerned about in this space for the US until someone in Europe (France or Germany) actually becomes more dangerous to Europe than the US.

victorbjorklund 8mo ago

The rest of NATO has more soldiers than US. Would US win? Maybe. But how many millions dead Americans? US lost in Afghanistan and there they just fought terrorists.

beachy 8mo ago
The US (like any country) struggles in asymmetrical/guerilla warfare. It always devolves to the famous statement by a US officer during the Vietnam war that “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.” If the gloves were off then the equation would be different. A fight with the rest of NATO would be conventional warfare where the US has a giant advantage.
- watwut 8mo ago
  USA would eventually loose, because it generally looses wars in the long term. But Europeans would suffer more while Americans would consider themselves the real victims.
  - x______________ 8mo ago
    The ones that win wars are those who profit from conflict, not those who are victorious on the battlefield.
- ben_w 8mo ago
  > A fight with the rest of NATO would be conventional warfare where the US has a giant advantage. Given NATO contains three nuclear powers, a full on fight between the US and the rest of NATO would be an "everyone loses" scenario. Even if the US did a first-strike that somehow eliminated all the French and British nuclear submarines, simply losing the EU as customers and suppliers would likely double US unemployment and push inflation to 10%/year for the next decade (hard to be sure though, see Covid influence on supply chains). Actually getting hit back by retaliatory strikes by either France or the UK independently would be in the order of multiples of US annual GDP in physical damage. France has enough that even if 80% of their missiles were stopped, they'd still be able to hit every US state capital (though why would anyone care to attack Alaska or Hawaii if they're nuking all the rest?) As per estimate from 2005, even just a single 100 kT nuke in the right place would have an impact equivalent to the US GDP at the time: The results of our analysis are shown in Figure 4. As anticipated, the economic consequences are highest for the largest nuclear weapon yield and the most conservative cleanup level. New York City nets the highest economic damage across the cleanup spectrum, because of its dense population and high value real estate. Note that the economic consequences for New York City across almost every cleanup level meet or exceed $10 trillion, which is roughly equivalent to the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the U.S. economy. - Economic consequences of a rad/nuc attack: cleanup standards significantly affect cost, page 9, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1135/ML11355A226.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1135/ML11355A226.pdf

watwut 8mo ago

> By many measures Europe is in fact pretending to be sovereign. The ideology that claims no one except the biggest military is sovereign ... is fascism.