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Comment by true_religion | Hacker News Reader

The US is the ally of most of Western Europe (this is important because when the US invades a country, it does so with the help or at least foreknowledge of its allies)... Russia is a neighbor at best.

However, if the US invaded Italy with little warning and took over Florence because it felt it needed warm water port in Europe, or access to a better wine supply then Western Europe would rightly panic and wonder how they can disentangle themselves from US influence.

The reason the US is allowed so much influence in the first place is because its stays out of territorial disputes in Europe---heck even if one occurs, it historically drags its feet for years.

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If the US invaded Panama to secure it's warm water ...

Oh wait.

.... That's the whole point the USA doesn't invade it's European allies.

But it has allied itself with those who did. And then did not fight to liberate them...

USA invaded Europe during WWII and never left. I still consider Italy and Germany occupied countries. They are not independent, they're occupied for 76 years.

Why and how US will invade its colonies? Italy and Germany cannot resist any decision made by US. They have US military bases on their soil and their own army is deliberately made smaller and weaker than personnel of US military bases.

Germany has the 2nd largest military in Europe, just slight smaller than France.[1]

However comparing it to a superpower is nonsensical. The US has the 3rd largest military in the world, beaten only by India and China who have populations in the billions.

But just below the US is Russia with the 4h largest military in the world, and the largest (by a huge margin) on the European continent.

Now the era of colonialism was only possible due to vast technological differences between the two parties, and the good luck of the Europeans finding empires in turmoil (Songhai, Benin, Aztecs, China, etc.). It’s extremely difficult to subjugate much less rule a far off colony. The US couldn’t even manage it with Afghanistan so I doubt they’d have much luck with Germany.

On the other hand, it’s much easier to conquer your neighbor, push them back and simply put your own people in place. Russia did that for about 50 years and ruled half of Europe. I would wager Germans have more to fear from a revived Russia run by an KGB agent who grew up during the time of Empire, than a US who was most recently run by a television reality show host.

1. https://rlist.io/l/largest-militaries-in-europe

I don't know by which metrics this list measures 'large', but it seems to be wrong.

Apart from that which parts of it have more power is more interesting, but also debatable.

Anyways, apart from some exceptions (for show) the german military is mostly a very expensive army of clowns,

which can't even manage to transport its own troops reliably, or politicians for that matter.

Been there, done that in the 90ies. Meanwhile I haven't heard or read anything which would change my mind about that.

Rather the opposite.

Ukraine is not an ally of Russia.

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