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Comment by jonathannat | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you understand, this is geopolitics. This is the clash of ideologies. This is democracies vs dictatorships. This is market economy vs state controlled industries. This is EU, US, Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, Taiwan, India, South Korea vs China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, North Korea.

Those that say EU will side with China and go against US, don't know how geopolitics work. And haven't been paying attention to Europe standing up to China these past few weeks.

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Why not? The US sure as hell hasn't sided with democracies give the long list of propped up dictators (although said dictators are treated very disposably). Realpolitik has a long history of holding above whatever affinity "is supposed to" happen like Christian kings allying with distant Sultans and declaring war on their neighbors. Stalinists paid far more attention to Trotskyists than any strain of capitalists. Ideology while it may introduce some irrationalities tends to be a tool of the state instead of the state being a tool of the ideology.

> The US sure as hell hasn't sided with democracies give the long list of propped up

So now NATO doesn’t exist. Because geopolitics is complicated and there aren’t always good decisions to be made. And sometimes helping the enemy of your enemy makes sense, even if they’re still your enemy.

NATO also included dictatorships in its membership. Greece has been a member since 1954. It wasn't pure democracy and was more. The point is they don't always side with democracies not that thet always side with them or against them. "Locality and rivalry" have more to do with than nominal stance although some may be correlated with unfriendly actions like how nations which go communist tend to repeatably have the pattern of expropriating foreign owned and getting embargoed in response.

Essentially automatic "claimed affinity alliances" based upon any shared characteristic never work out in the absolute in practice be it race, bloodline, class, or mode of government.

So what exactly is your point? None of what you’ve said explains why the EU would ever align with China over the US. You just wanted to nitpick?

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