Why exactly Europeans should be grateful?
US presence in Europe is something done to serve US purposes. Let's not pretend it sets up military bases abroad out of the goodness of their hearts, to protect the world or any such bullshit.
Norway 5.4 Sweden 10.4 Denmark 5.8 Finland 5.5
Estonia 1.3 Lithuania 2.8 Latvia 1.8
Some numbers in millions vs
Ukraine 43.79 Russia 143.4
Every member state has a binding agreement of mutual protection.
Because mutual defense agreements and other joint security agreements aren’t mutually exclusive, and NATO has an integrated military command and more nuclear powers as members.
Or some of them are willing to join NATO, for their own geopolitical reasons?
And the mutual-defense agreement is not a question of "if". It is a binding agreement. It's a fact.
If you look at the polling for if Finland should join Nato there is a huge spike after 2022 [1]. Even Sweden which has a buffer between it and Russia also had a increase in polls [2]. Not that anybody does this poll, but you won't see a spike in if say Canada should join the EU. The point being, these countries do not trust that the EU will protect them.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland%E2%80%93NATO_relations...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden%E2%80%93NATO_relations#...
It has yet to be witnessed what hilarity ensues when any of them simply refuse to answer the call.
This is not the same as "the EU is a mutal-defense agreement". The EU is a lot of things.
I just googled "eu mutual defence" and got authoritative links such as https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/mutual-d...
IDK, could you have googled that?
The thing is, are you aware that most European countries are also aware of this? What do you think that they have done in response? Some kind of "unity" maybe ?
There's good reason why the EU is regarded as powerful, when Denmark isn't. There's good reason why Estonia joined, and Ukraine would like to.
It's not just small countries banding together though. Poland, 38m people was also keen to join.
Ukraine has been at war since 2014 and has hundreds of thousands of experienced reserves. Germany has an air force that can barely fly, and a few dozen tanks that mostly don't work.
They are nominally NATO, but it's only on paper and as a staging ground for other NATO countries — German armed forces are almost entirely deadweight.
Just because it's in the US interest, doesn't mean Europe doesn't benefit. And the US is paying. They aren't benefitting. They're providing.
If the burden of keeping military presence in Europe is so big, US can always leave. No one is forcing them to project their power beyond their own damn borders.
So yeah, I'm not "grateful", nor I see why I should be. I see only a superpower acting in their own geopolitical interests, doing what is better for itself, and no one else.
Of course.
> So yeah, I'm not "grateful", nor I see why I should be. I see only a superpower acting in their own geopolitical interests, doing what is better for itself, and no one else.
It is also better for Europe.
It's at most convenient.
Europe's gratitude toward the American military-industrial complex is not required, the US gets plenty out of the deal. However the only realistic alternative for Europeans is to expand their own, and boy does that come with a lot of downsides.
As someone living in Europe, I am grateful for the EU, and I wish the constituent countries to be more integrated over time.
I see no reason to be grateful for the US for its military presence here. They do it for their own benefit, and should definitely leave if the cost to them is too high for whatever benefit it gets. For Europe it's just convenient.
Part of these weapons would be nuclear. Most EU states today are perfectly capable of developing them, the knowledge was already mostly available before WW2. Nobody did, because most of EU history consists of having war with a neighbour, and this scenario with all kinds of A-bombs floating around made every country very nervous.
So some understanding was built that nobody who hadn't already done so would develop nukes, and the USA guaranteed they would not be necessary. It's a small miracle things worked out so well as they did.
Then why should Europeans be "grateful"?
> So some understanding was built that nobody who hadn't already done so would develop nukes, and the USA guaranteed they would not be necessary. It's a small miracle things worked out so well as they did.
Eh, some European countries have nukes anyway
Some European countries have nukes anyway, I think it's officially limited to the UK and France. But Germany does not, which would have been unthinkable between world wars. Belgium, my own country, has access to Uranium via Congo, has all know-how as we (oopsie) did teach Iran the necessary tricks, has good enough industry to do the job, and has nuclear reactors. All the elements are there. In fact, it's 99% sure USA nukes are in the country, and if we really wanted, we should be technologically capable of stealing them and remaking them into a usable if less powerfull nuke. The only reason Belgium hasn't any nukes is because we don't want them and do our utmost best not to have them.
Now Belgium is one of the smallest and least powerful countries. EU and NATO live here in Brussels because most other countries would become too powerful. If we can build nukes, just about any other European country should be able to do the trick. Meanwhile, the only way the USA can keep Iran and North Korea from having the bomb is because the nations are badly functioning, and there aren't much of them. If 20+ reasonably rich and open European country decided to develop nukes at them same time, there is no way stopping all of them.
BUT If that happens, the very next war would be very very ugly, and we all know it. Part of the reason for the existence of the EU is giving us a way to project global power, but another part is that after WW2, European countries had to learn to live together, or we'd make the whole continent uninhabitable. We simply can't afford a WW3, and neither can the USA.
It's just self-interest on both sides, Europe doesn't have to be grateful any more than the US has to be grateful to the Europeans for allowing bases on their territory.
They should just stop doing that if it's such a trouble.
Of course, we know they won't, because it serves US purposes. You are just too dense to either see or admit that. Keep pretending that the US is some sort of self-sacrificing entity, just to protect some ungrateful Europeans Across the pond.
We are also pretty much at the point of missing military recruitment numbers by 20-25% every year now.