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>> but it needs to remain in EU's good graces, if it wants to maintain its hegemony.

I dont think that is true, and in reality hitching our (the US) future to the EU's idiosyncrasies will likely lead to the US losing power not keeping it

EU is at best a Fair weather ally to the US. UK rightfully saw the problem with the EU and pulled out, I personally that that was the right move for the UK.

I think NATO is a better organizing body, and alliance than the EU. I think we will continue to see EU as a governing body reduce in power. Economic Free Trade and NATO will remain but there are structural issues with the EU as a Federation or what ever they consider themselves

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> I dont think that is true, and in reality hitching our (the US) future to the EU's idiosyncrasies will likely lead to the US losing power not keeping it

Hard disagreement. The US is becoming less and less economically relevant, with the rise of the developing world. It used to be nearly half of the world's GDP - over two thirds, when combined with Western Europe. It's now at under a quarter (much lower when adjusted for PPP), and is utterly reliant on developing world supply chains for its most basic products - and its not doing so under the kind of gunpoint trade terms that the colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries could impose on their subjects.

If Europe's status drops to being an ally of convenience, I expect the sun to set on the American empire in about two decades.

I think that is likely going to happen anyway, The political leadership of the US has no desire do to what is required to keep power. They like the business world are too focused on the short term, in the case of politicians it is the next election, in the case of business it is the quarterly earning statements

Neither are looking at a 20, 10 or even 5 year picture.

US politicians publicly say they have a short-term focus, but the bureaucracy (Department of State, in particular) has a much longer view that has very little bearing on political campaign promises.

On the first week of the war, I thought that NATO was played like a fiddle. On the second week of the war, when the US demonstrated its ability to galvanize most of the world into unprecedented, crippling sanctions, it became clear to me that it still punches way above its weight, when it comes to soft power - because of its allies.

Yep. Never underestimate soft power. The UK managed to stay relevant for much longer than reasonable thanks to soft power. Even France, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, managed to survive being invaded by all of Europe, solely on soft power.

It's interesting, because the EU also considers the US at best a fair weather ally, when not a bully. And that was before Trump.

During the Trump presidency, the EU was strongly considering the fact that the US could turn into an enemy any day, without any further warning. Kinda what happened with Russia, who was an economic partner and turned into an enemy without any further warning.

There was plenty of warning that Russia was turning into an enemy but the Europeans (at least west Europeans) decide to ignore it.

Absolutely. That is why I wrote no "further" warning. I could probably have been clearer.

It's unfortunate that this was the take by EU politicians when everyone's favorite villain, Trump, was telling the EU nations to increase its NATO spending to the 2% guideline and was telling Germany to get off its Russian gas addiction or face the consequences. [1]

Well, Germany (and its politicians: shown laughing at Trump in the video) are now paying the consequences of blindly walking into yet another trade deal with yet another autocratic power. [2]

You'd think playing host to the horrors of WWII would have taught Germany a lesson or two of the consequences of such powers but no, it's business as usual. [3]

The naivety of the EU in global politics would be laughable if it wasn't directly funding the artillery barrages and murder of more than a hundred children now by Russia.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3148374/an...

[3] https://stopgas.org/

I had several paragraphs to try and explain how scary Trump was for the rest of the world. I've deleted them because I don't want to enter an endless debate.

Just know that, for dozens of reasons, in Europe, the Trump administration was seen as irrational and dangerous to his allies. These views were shared by both Progressives and Conservatives, throughout Europe, even to a large extent in the UK. In comparison, Putin was seen as more rational, hence a more measurable danger.

It is now clear that the latter assessment was wrong. Regarding the former, the jury is still out.

Both assessments were clearly wrong, Out side of Harse words on twitter I would love to have anyone point to actual policy positions / actions that the Trump Administration took that put the world or the EU in greater danger?

In immediate danger? Absolutely not.

This was an attempt to predict future behavior of Donald Trump based on past/present behavior, taking into account the possibility of Donald Trump remaining president for a second mandate.

If you recall, as seen from Europe, Donald Trump was:

- exhibiting a number of traits typically attributed to fascism (using Umberto Eco's classification, I count a perfect 14/14 for Trump, based on speeches I've seen him deliver);

- friendly relationships with many authoritarian/dictatorship governments (including Putin's Russia), hostile relationships/threats towards democracies (including most of the EU);

- a tendency to betray allies and leave them to die (I'm thinking of Kurds, but abandoning Afghanistan is a joint Trump-Biden venture);

- generally, a strong tendency to use international relationships as a pedestal to cater to the subset of his supporters that had no clue about international relationships and cheered him whenever he rattled his saber, threatened his allies and started a trade war that absolutely no sense.

While none of these points definitely meant that Donald Trump was dangerous to the EU, at some point, EU leaders started wondering exactly on which side the US were. They would have been crazy not to.

>>- exhibiting a number of traits typically attributed to fascism

Only if you actively misunderstand, or more likely only listen to selected clips by mainstream media

>>- friendly relationships with many authoritarian/dictatorship governments (including Putin's Russia), hostile relationships/threats towards democracies (including most of the EU);

Trump foreign policy was returning America to what it should have been all along, Free Trade with all nations, entangling alliances with none. Heeding the words of our first president. Clearly he could not just pull out of decades of entangling alliances but he was signalling a desire to reduce our entangling alliances, and increase our trade. I support that, and I can see why the EU would worry about that but not for the reasons you seem to think

>>- a tendency to betray allies and leave them to die

You believe that started with Trump? That has been a mainstay of US foreign policy at least since WWII, it was not even the first time we fucked over the Kurds.

As to Afghanistan, I lay the blame for that about 80% at the feet of biden and 20% at trump, The pull out could have been done ALOT better, and I think a Trump administration would have done a better job of it.

I 100% support the decision to leave.

>>- generally, a strong tendency to use international relationships as a pedestal to cater to the subset of his supporters that had no clue about international relationships and cheered him whenever he rattled his saber, threatened his allies and started a trade war that absolutely no sense.

I disagreed with the Tariffs, however I absolutely supported his desire to increase our manufacturing base in the US, and hold other nations accountable for their abuse of trade policy at the expense of the US which has been going on since at least Bill Clinton if not longer. The US has and continues to be asked to "sacrifice" our prosperity for the good of the world while other nations refuse to do even a fraction of what the US does, and even when we meet the goals often the rest of our "partners" like the EU pants the US as a bully, as evil, as the problem. Frankly we need a president to stand up for the US.

>EU leaders started wondering exactly on which side the US were

The side of the US citizen, first time in a long time the US President stood up for the US Citizen, not global corporations, or globalism

> Only if you actively misunderstand, or more likely only listen to selected clips by mainstream media

I watched entire speeches by Donald Trump. Were they representative? I have no idea. Were they scary? Not all of them. But a sufficient number that I stand by my estimate of a perfect 14/14. I'll let you check on Umberto Eco's scale to see if something is missing.

> Trump foreign policy was returning America to what it should have been all along, *Free Trade with all nations, entangling alliances with none*

(emphasis mine)

Interestingly, this is exactly what the EU has been moving towards for the past few decades. Hence the attempt to not be economically dependent from the US. Hence the refusal to take part in the trade war against China. I remember how France was – and, to some extent still is – covered with mud in US media for refusing to take part in the Invasion of Irak (forgot whether it was the first or second), but that was also a symptom of the same. Hence the balancing act with buying some things from Russia that the EU could also have bought from the US.

Selling weapons to Russia and buying gas from them? Didn't turn out so well, we can all agree. The alternative to buying gas from Russia was nuclear power, which would have been much better, but got much maligned after Three Miles Island, Tchernobyl and Fukushima. This will happen, eventually, but too late.

> I can see why the EU would worry about that but not for the reasons you seem to think

I realize that the way I wrote my post could have been clearer. While I can't escape writing some of what I think (in particular, the Umberto Eco scale of fascism), the general idea was to explain what EU leaders think, as far as I understand.

These worries are not personal to me.

On the other hand, yes, what you're pointing out is also true. Life without an alliance with the US is a scary perspective. And the EU has been quite slow to build its own army, relying too much on the fact that it is a nuclear alliance and has a large intersection with NATO.

I believe that, if Putin's invasion hadn't happened, EU countries would slowly have left NATO and concentrated on building a unified army. I hope that the latter will happen nevertheless.

> You believe that started with Trump? That has been a mainstay of US foreign policy at least since WWII, it was not even the first time we fucked over the Kurds.

Maybe? Also, you already pointed out (with different vocabulary) that, under Donald Trump, the US preferred isolationism. Does this mean that we agree that the US is not a reliable ally for Europe, especially under Trump?

> I 100% support the decision to leave.

I actually support that decision. But I think we can agree that leaving could have been done much, much better.

> I disagreed with the Tariffs, however I absolutely supported his desire to increase our manufacturing base in the US, and hold other nations accountable for their abuse of trade policy at the expense of the US which has been going on since at least Bill Clinton if not longer. The US has and continues to be asked to "sacrifice" our prosperity for the good of the world while other nations refuse to do even a fraction of what the US does, and even when we meet the goals often the rest of our "partners" like the EU pants the US as a bully, as evil, as the problem. Frankly we need a president to stand up for the US.

I had a scathing (and, frankly, rather stupid) reply for this.

And then I realized one thing. I find this line of "The US has and continues to be asked to "sacrifice" our prosperity for the good of the world while other nations refuse to do even a fraction of what the US does" extremely interesting. Because I've heard this line being repeated over and over:

- in the US, recently, by Trump-style Republicans;

- in the EU, recently, by far right parties;

- in the UK, recently, by the Brexit party (didn't Thatcher use that line, too, some time ago, now that I think of it?);

- but also in the EU, for decades, by socialists and communists of various shades of pink-to-red.

Of course, you need to substitute "good" and "bad" actors when you cross the Atlantic or the Channel. Bad actors (which can be the EU, the US or the UK) abuse "our" (insert whoever you are) good faith while "we" need to sacrifice our prosperity (the exact definition of prosperity may differ slightly between left and right) for the sake of others while other nations refuse to do even a fraction of what "we" do.

It would be interesting to try and see where this discourse originates from.

I suspect that it's largely propaganda, though. Have you ever had a single representative ask anybody to sacrifice prosperity for the good of the world? What I have seen aplenty, on the other hand, are political figures promising to create/return prosperity through $(magical cure of the day).

> The side of the US citizen, first time in a long time the US President stood up for the US Citizen, not global corporations, or globalism

So, if I understand correctly, you're basically agreeing with EU leaders that Trump's US was not a reliable ally? Perhaps not an ally at all?

>> Trump foreign policy was returning America to what it should have been all along, Free Trade with all nations, entangling alliances with none

> (emphasis mine)

> Interestingly, this is exactly what the EU has been moving towards for the past few decades. Hence the attempt to not be economically dependent from the US. Hence the refusal to take part in the trade war against China.

This fits with my original conclusion that the EU is hopelessly naive when it comes to global politics. Imagine someone with the bright idea to "diversify" so for the sake of diversity they sell half their energy imports to a dictatorship (this is actually what Germany did). It's quite obviously unwise, at least but they do it anyway because of that magic word "diversify".

If I can compare it to my own profession it's like a DevOps guy coming up with the bright idea to go multi-cloud, a tarpit where engineering hours go to die and which most often makes the stack more brittle not less.

Let's move on to Merkel and her magic stroke of genius to sell the EU on more of China, not less. Another bright mind walks in and declares, "with China on our side, we'll never have to worry about those bastards over in the US, protecting our ocean trade with their carrier fleets". Yet China is not a good partner, we know this already from their too-sensitive reproaches to such sovereign nations as Australia.

Every time the EU gets bit. It's as if they don't realize that the foundations of autocracy are poison and any partnership, especially one that puts the junior at risk of coercion, is doomed.

When will they ever learn? When will Germany, a land with personal experience in power-mad dictators learn that the price you pay for throwing your lot in with such company is paid for in blood?

You are right, obviously, but I suspect that you're underestimating the complexity of the situation.

On one end of the spectrum, one may imagine Europe allying entirely with Putin's Russia (or with China, or with any other dictatorship). That's obviously bad. You can live like this for a very long time, but that way leads eventual subjugation, through violence or otherwise. That's the choice of countries that join the Silk Road.

On the other end of the spectrum, one may imagine Europe letting the US take all the decisions and being entirely dependent on the US for many critical imports. In other words, becoming a dominion of the US. Certainly better than an invasion, but a far cry from independence.

To illustrate, I have heard it said and repeated that the UK has stopped being independent. That any meaningful choice on British policy is actually taken in Washington. I have no clue whether that is actually true, but let us assume for a second that it is, or may be in the future. If that's the case, this means that voting for anything other than local elections is pointless. That the UK is in a limbo, not a democracy anymore, not really a police state, either.

Again,let me emphasize: I do not claim that this represents reality. I only claim that this something that many countries around the globe fear when they talk about the US. And, let's be frank, many of these countries also fear it when they talk about European countries.

So, if you're a democracy, in Europe or elsewhere, how do you remain independent? Obviously, you want to ally with a strong country (e.g. US) against known predators (e.g. Russia) and suspected predators (e.g. China, Turkey). But you also want to guard against too much dependence on your protector (Russia, China, but also the US and European countries, for instance, have been known to use and abuse leverage for political control). You also want to guard against election interference from the your protector (European countries have been doing this all over Africa, while CIA declassified documents confirm that CIA has been involved in election interference all over Europe since its founding – undoubtedly also true of KGB/FSB, but they don't declassify their documents).

Of course, if you spend too much time looking over your shoulder at your allies because you don't trust them, you risk delivering yourself to your predator.

Remaining independent is a complicated balancing act that most countries, not just Europe, play as well as they can. Germany's recent fumble shows how complicated but not that it's unnecessary.

>you check on Umberto Eco's scale

I will freely admit I am not versed on that, however in my very very brief reading of the idea's I think there is a lot of subjectivity in application, and one it seems to me right now one would have to look at Trumps words in the most unfavorable understanding of them to achieve that score, you have to weak man his speeches and rhetoric to get there. You have to come into the speech looking for anything to justify the score.

I would have to research more to say more, but when most people hear fascism they think Nazi's... That is also what the US Media rhetoric was for 4 years. I however see non of that in the Trump presidency, nor do I see any policy positions that were wildly different that other presidents or even Biden today.

In fact some of the immigration policies that the media and others lambasted Trump for as "fascist" or "Nazi" have been continued and even expanded by Biden, others were carry overs from Obama so....

So while you may get that from Umberto Eco's scale, for which I am unfamiliar, I do not see it or accept that conclusion on a layman's view of fascism

>> EU countries would slowly have left NATO and concentrated on building a unified army.

Germany would love that, and that is one of the reasons UK left. If it happens the EU needs to reform under a more Federalist model like the US. Its current model it would be a disaster to form a single military

The EU either needs to reform its governance to a Federalist Republic like the US, or it needs to take over NATO like structure for is over arching military.

Attempting a single defense structure under the current European Union structure would never work

>It would be interesting to try and see where this discourse originates from.

Many many many things, on core one was the shipping and outsourcing of middle class jobs via unfavorable trade deals allowed by a government that supported globalism and global corporations over the needs of the citizens. That would be where the issue started. I would say it really kicked off in the 1990's when trade started to ramp way up with China.

But there are other examples, most recently Climate Change is a good example. US has improved and continues to drastically improve its carbon footprint, but no matter what we do it is never enough, no people want us to hamstring our economy, wants us to kill our economic output, and want us to lower our standard of living

While making exceptions for other economies for all manner of seemingly rational reasons. However rational they are the end result is the same, the sacrifice of US prosperity

Then of course you have the topic of expecting to be the world police and then called a bully if we take any action, The world wants us there to Stop Russia, but they expect us to do that with out thanks, with out having any input to their actions, their governance, or etc... Hell they want us to thank them for the privilege of being able to send our citizens to die for their nation....

>>So, if I understand correctly, you're basically agreeing with EU leaders that Trump's US was not a reliable ally? Perhaps not an ally at all?

I guess that would depend on what you mean by an "ally". If you mean trade partner and willing to come to the EU defense military if needed provided they at least tried to defend themselves... I think the US under Trump would make a fine ally under that definition

If you mean a EU doorstop, to provide the common defense of the EU, asking or expecting nothing in return, and allowing the EU to ignore our national interests on the world stage while they enjoy the protection we provide... then no Trump would not have made for a good Ally.. and the EU is used to the former, where I would prefer the former

> In fact some of the immigration policies that the media and others lambasted Trump for as "fascist" or "Nazi" have been continued and even expanded by Biden, others were carry overs from Obama so....

I'm not going to defend media. I think that most of them are doing a very bad job, whether they're catering to left-wing bubbles or right-wing bubbles. This seems to be worse in the US than in Europe, but we're getting there, too.

Now, I do not know exactly why you and I focus on different things in political figure's speeches, but you seem to be very much more of a (political) believer than anybody I know. While I always vote, and while I grudgingly respect some candidates, I know that I haven't trusted anyone in a while. In particular, whenever I read the written statements of a candidate (and I pretty much always do before voting) or when I listen to their speeches (less often), I always work at decoding them. I listen to what they say, to what they imply, to who they flatter, to what they don't say, to the promises they make because that is what they intend to do and to those they make simply to sow doubt in the opposition. So far, while I can't claim perfection, my decoding of elected officials has proven fairly accurate.

If you're interested in such an exercise, I suggest reading propaganda from other countries (that helps keeping it dispassionate) and/or older historical periods. It's very interesting. For one thing, it's pretty much the same propaganda, repeated all over space-time, just with some name-changing.

> So while you may get that from Umberto Eco's scale, for which I am unfamiliar, I do not see it or accept that conclusion on a layman's view of fascism

That is, of course, your right. But, out of curiosity, how would you detect if a US candidate was actually a fascist? Or, maybe, to keep it more remote and make things a bit less passionate, if an Austrian candidate was actually a fascist?

> Germany would love that, and that is one of the reasons UK left. If it happens the EU needs to reform under a more Federalist model like the US. Its current model it would be a disaster to form a single military

I happen to be in favour of that, so I'm not going to contradict you :)

> Many many many things, on core one was the shipping and outsourcing of middle class jobs via unfavorable trade deals allowed by a government that supported globalism and global corporations over the needs of the citizens. That would be where the issue started. I would say it really kicked off in the 1990's when trade started to ramp way up with China.

Maybe, but I'm fairly certain that I already heard/read such speeches from the 80s. I don't claim that this is when they started but my personal suspicion is that Reagan/Thatcher both giving such speeches and ramped up globalism and that the reason for which they were adopting such language is the oil shock of the mid-70s, which caused stagflation, hence discontent among the lower- and middle-classes.

> But there are other examples, most recently Climate Change is a good example. US has improved and continues to drastically improve its carbon footprint, but no matter what we do it is never enough, no people want us to hamstring our economy, wants us to kill our economic output, and want us to lower our standard of living

I've heard Donald Trump make such claims. I actually have no clue where he gets that from. My suspicion as a cynical middle-aged guy is that this is more part of a strategy to cater to specific groups of voters (e.g. everybody whose living is based on coal, directly or indirectly) and build a shared identity as victims of bad actors than actual fact.

It's interesting, because on the same topic, in Europe, with the exception of far-left and far-right, the overall message is closer to "let's create jobs with green industries". And recently, of course, "let's use green industries to reduce our dependency towards Russia without increasing our dependency towards US".

On the other hand, both far-left and far-right use pretty much the same rhetoric as Trump: "stop annoying us with Climate Change, we're doing so much better than everyone else and you're taking away our jobs".

It's really funny to see European communists and US Republicans saying the same things, just with different names.

> Then of course you have the topic of expecting to be the world police and then called a bully if we take any action, The world wants us there to Stop Russia, but they expect us to do that with out thanks, with out having any input to their actions, their governance, or etc... Hell they want us to thank them for the privilege of being able to send our citizens to die for their nation....

Yes, being world police is a complicated position. For better or worse, no country wants to lose its independence, even to the US. European our South-American citizens, for instance, have never been very happy at US election interference on their territories (some of which is now declassified – of course, the KGB/FSB won't declassify their own election interference). Just as African citizens aren't very happy at European (and Chinese?) election interference on their territories, because let's not forget that European countries haven't entirely stopped played world police and that China has started, too.

On the other hand, it's hard to overstate the kind of power granted by being king of the world, or of a region. Grant it to any country, whether a dictatorship or a democracy, and you can be certain that it will use it for its own gains. European countries did, and still do. The US did and still does.

It's not by accident that China is attempting to grab every bit of soft power that the US is letting go.

Trump-style (or Lindbergh-style, etc.) isolationism is about giving up both the responsibility and the power. It is a valid choice, but it is full of consequences, some of which are hard to fathom.

> I guess that would depend on what you mean by an "ally". If you mean trade partner and willing to come to the EU defense military if needed provided they at least tried to defend themselves... I think the US under Trump would make a fine ally under that definition

Maybe. I don't think that EU leaders saw it that way.

One of the many examples of interesting choices in international relationships during the Trump admin was when, during the same week, Trump was:

- demanding that EU countries ramp up their investment in NATO;

- essentially trying to disentangle the US from NATO;

- mocking EU leadership (I think it was Macron at the time?) for attempting to improve European defenses;

- trying to convince some Eastern European countries (I forget which ones) to leave the EU.

The overall message for this was not that of a potential ally. At best, a competitor probing for weaknesses.

> That is, of course, your right. But, out of curiosity, how would you detect if a US candidate was actually a fascist? Or, maybe, to keep it more remote and make things a bit less passionate, if an Austrian candidate was actually a fascist?

Gasp, too late to edit this.

Well, I wanted to emphasize that I do not believe that Trump is a fascist, per se. Unfortunately, it's not as much of an endorsement as it sounds: I also do not believe that all the leaders of the various fascist parties that took over Europe around WWII were necessarily fascists themselves, just as I do not believe that Stalin was particularly communist. I believe some of them were power-hungry sociopaths who saw an opening created by fascists (or communists, for Stalin) and used it to climb to power.

Now, what I do believe is that Donald Trump is employing the entire fascist vocabulary, in an attempt to voluntarily cater to the people who really are fascists (or close enough that the distinction is pointless) among both his voter base, his militants and his election machine. I have no idea how many people this represents but I believe that Donald Trump does. And I believe that using the real fascists in an attempt to reach/keep power is at the very least irresponsible, because it mechanically gives some power to the real fascists, as well as a very real path to ultimate power.

That feels as dangerous as, say, buying gas from the neighboring expansionist dictator.

I also believe that people should keep calling each other fascists/communists (am I being guilty of that?), especially without understanding what it means, but that's another debate.

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