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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

There’s a difference between a foreign adversary and a foreign ally who’s subsidizing most of your defense.

So I guess for most of Europe and the US you would be right. Thankfully that's just a relatively small part of the world though. If anything, all things considered having the US as your adversary is much much more risky. so outside of US vassals/allies, I think picking China as your poison in terms of spyware is the least risky option. China might like to pretend they are on the same level as the US but they absolutely cannot project their strength (or meddle in domestic affairs of other countries ) in any similar way.

China is actively helping Russia. They’re not neutral, and they’re not simply opportunistic like India. I don’t how much clearer it needs to be aside from China invading Taiwan.

exactly

As an individual, most threat I have will be from my own govt. and politicians/police by simple virtue of overlap and the authority they have to mess my life. So given choice, I'll prefer minimum additional info to my govt.

For a German, both of those are both foreign adversaries and foreign allies, at the same time. One is not "better" than the other.

Yes, one is not better than the other until there’s a security issue in Europe that actively threatens the EU. Then miraculously Western Europeans will suddenly remember that the US is an ally. This is exactly why many US voters are growing tired of subsidizing the EU’s defense.

I guess your media conveniently skips the part where joining NATO means destroying your own long range weapons. This is what they forced Bulgaria to do and they made a very big deal out of it.

I'm not American, but here you can read some extensive American reporting on it: https://nonproliferation.org/bulgaria-reaffirms-plan-to-dest...

What you're skipping over is that the reason the US asked for their destruction is that having a NATO ally with weapons that violated the INF treaty with Russia wouldn't have been good idea.

Thanks for the link but surely you are not implying this is what the general public over there is being fed

Yes, Russia and the US are equivalent.

"Ally". The US has not exactly always been friendly to Europeans.

To be fair, there weren't tons of reasons for the US to be friendly with Germany, historically speaking.

We have subsidized your defense for decades now which is a big reason how entitlements like socialized healthcare was able to work in the EU despite not having the long term birthrates to cover it. It’s a much bigger gift than cheaply produced goods. Also every time there’s a mess in Europe, we have to clean it up without getting paid unlike the CCP with their low cost goods. The cost in blood and taxes would be much easier to swallow for Americans if there was at least some gratitude from the Western Europeans.

> We have subsidized your defense for decades now which is a big reason how entitlements like socialized healthcare was able to work in the EU despite not having the long term birthrates to cover it.

No, socialized healthcare works in Europe because its cheaper than the US system, massively so. The US just chooses to waste extra money to assure that large segements of its population lack access to quality healthcare.

Having hostile neighbors you either need to spend real % of GDP to protect yourself or have a powerful ally , any other way of thinking is delusional. So yes, your medicine goods are at least partially sponsored by US

> Also every time there’s a mess in Europe, we have to clean it up without getting paid

You're too high on your own supply if you really believe this to be the case... The reason Europe has proper healthcare is because the US has a huge army? Give me a break...

Please, start provide some actual backing by numbers of what you're saying if you're gonna try to spread propaganda around here.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/11/30/record-increase-in-eu-mi...

It’s simple. You have finite resources and you have to choose where to spend those resources. The EU has chosen healthcare and pensions which leaves almost nothing for defense. Guess who has to make up for the shortfall?

> Also every time there’s a mess in Europe, we have to clean it up without getting paid

No, you don’t have to but you choose to because it’s good for your business.

In my opinion, the US is as much a foreign adversary as China. The US isn't subsidizing defense, its occupation and hegemony.

Oh yeah , and what happened to Europe , when they pray to share more money to Ukraine because EU was eating cheese , drinking beer and not thinking about defense , maybe except Poland . And meanwhile also let corrupt themself and give away their energy market to Russia . Oh well Russia bought lots of weapons on this money to start attacking EU

One reason Germany has been able to afford more entitlements for its citizens like socialized healthcare is due to the fact that it virtually had no defense expenditures for decades. We can say the same for most of Western Europe. The US has subsidized the defense of the EU for decades.

As for occupation, I wonder what Germany did in the 20th century to merit it?

No one is forcing the USA to keep it's European military bases, and no one is forcing the USA to spend 3.5% GDP on its defense budget. You do that out of your own free will. And you spending that amount of money on military, has no bearing on whether you could have free health care or not, the obstacles to that are purely political.

You will get what you wish sooner than later because our defense spending is unsustainable and we won’t have a choice in the end. We’re starting to see the cracks with terrorists hijacking cargo ships without repurcussion.

You really have to understand and look at the numbers, and also model the economics of what you're writing about, to get a sense of how wrong you are. May i suggest you start on this big quest by looking up how inflation gets imported and exported?

Yes, tell me why I am wrong instead of just alluding to it

Not in a post, but here's a few books for you: Seignorage on a global reserve currency: read "the global minotaur", the story of oil: read "Oil, Power, and War" by Matthieu Auzanneau, and for completeness: "The brothers" by Stephen Kinzer.

That’s not telling me why. You’re simply using a distraction because you’re unable to summarize the main ideas of those books

unwilling: no time! Happy Holidays! :-)

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