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Comment by hnthrowaway0328 | Hacker News Reader

It would be nice if EU seek independency from US eventually.

The EU is independent of the US. There's a difference between alliance and dependency (and EU isn't coextensive with European NATO, but they are pretty close.)

In most ways yes, but militarily there's definitely some dependence on the US. A lot of European militaries were found to have relatively bare cupboards when the time to donate things to Ukraine came. Germany's Army Chief straight up said the army wasn't capable of fulfilling its mission.

(And yeah the US struggled with artillery shells too, the difference is that the US has so much airpower it had a legit reason to believe it wouldn't need them very much)

Military it's inter-dependency, that' why we're allies. The whole point of an ally is to be inter-dependency of one another. I, for one, as a citizen of a NATO country, I am very happy with this arrangement.

That only works if you are filling your side of the bargain. If you depend on the US and don't have your own army equipped, and the US depends on your army and isn't equipped to rescue you it all fails.

The principle is interdependency, but in practice many European militaries don't have a ton to give. Since the cold war ended, many just sort of coasted on military spending.

Of course, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that's changed for a lot of them. There's renewed interest in taking the defense budget seriously.

> Since the cold war ended, many just sort of coasted on military spending.

So did the US until the 2001 (and, actually, the free fall in US military spending relative to GDP started well before the end of the cold war), and by the 2010s it was back falling in the US, too.

> Of course, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that's changed for a lot of them.

It actually changed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 for the non-US members of NATO (which was also the trigger for the NATO defense spending target.) It changed for the US after the 2022 escalation (US defense spending as a share of GDP declined between 2014 and the 2022 escalation.)

Yeah, no. The US reduced spending, that's true, but it never dropped nearly as low as so many European countries.

> by the 2010s it was back falling in the US, too.

Because of the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan winding down, no?

> It actually changed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 for the non-US members of NATO (which was also the trigger for the NATO defense spending target.) It changed for the US after the 2022 escalation (US defense spending as a share of GDP declined between 2014 and the 2022 escalation.)

Not really, no. The US took Russia's 2014 invasion more seriously than most of Western Europe did.

Militarily the USA has always had the need to keep stockpiles: it's been in many, many wars or performing larger military maneuvers for the past 70+ years.

European militaries didn't have to consider a large production capacity, neither stockpiling weapons since mostly weren't involved in large military actions (exceptions probably are France and the UK). In terms of efficiency that is what is expected, why waste taxes for stockpiling unused weapons?

Europe dropped the ball after 2014 on not taking note that Russia was going in a new direction, Georgia 2008 was an early warning but Ukraine 2014 should've been a massive alarm that at least some production capacity was needed. Still, it wasn't at all politically viable at the time, it'd be political suicide for any politician outside of Eastern Europe to spend more money on the military and its industry rather than education, healthcare, etc.

Since 2022 everything has changed, the change is slow but steady and will only keep happening, Rheinmetall is steadily growing production, and many other military industries are expanding across the continent, Putin made politically viable for Europe to spend on its military again.

You're just explaining why it got there, and you even acknowledge there should've been wake up calls in 2008 and 2014, but Europe collectively ignored them.

Of course I'm explaining it, because there's a reason why European countries haven't been stockpiling weapons for decades and have been dependent on the USA.

You brought up the dependence on the USA first, I explained why that is:

> In most ways yes, but militarily there's definitely some dependence on the US. A lot of European militaries were found to have relatively bare cupboards when the time to donate things to Ukraine came.

Europe ignored it because it was politically untenable to push for military spending until 2022 when it became very clear there is a threat escalating conflicts in the continent.

I really don't understand what else I should've done with my comment... Give a solution? What else did you expect?

> You brought up the dependence on the USA first, I explained why that is:

No, I didn't. Go back and read the chain again if you think I'm the first one to bring it up.

> it's been in many, many wars or performing larger military maneuvers for the past 70+ years.

Heh, which of these was Grenada ?

Cynical take: Probably a military maneuver. When the world is quiet, the USA has to pick a fight somewhere to run a shakedown of its newest toys.

The German armed forcea are really capabale of doing, or fielding, anything in meaningfull numbers ever since the end of the cold war. No big surprise here.

Yes, we surely are buying those F35's out of our own free will. /s

Unironically correct.

European defense contractors completely skipped making fifth gen fighters (other than some partnerships with the US on theirs), so there are literally no European fifth gen options on the table to even consider. This makes it pretty easy for the F-35 to cruise to victory in competitive selection processes, it's simply more advanced.

Hopefully this changes for sixth gen, with the two different European programs there. While I'm American myself, I think things work out better if there's some friendly competition.

It is expensive to make a modern fighter. However you want some competition just to keep everyone honest.

There's money to be had. I mean, all in all the F-35 has come to what, something like a trillion dollars ? That'd be $1,000,000,000,000.

There's money to be had, but also a lot of money that has to be spent. Which is presumably why European countries/companies didn't develop a fifth gen fighter in the wake of the Cold War ending. Made some sense then, but now it's left them totally reliant on the US if they want a fifth gen (or better) fighter anytime soon.

Do you explain whatever happened to Assange in Europe within the framework of “alliance”?

What does that practically mean though? Europe could stop Russia today, independent of the US. The first 18 months of ramping up production would be painful, but there is no question who would win.

Does Europe want to project force around the world? If so, why? It's much more cost-efficient to let the US taxpayer foot the majority of the bill for navigable seas.

The first thing a war usually uncovers is that a large part of the peacetime commanders, soldiery, equipment, and military industry is completely incompetent.

I can't think of a war following a long peace where this hasn't been the case.

And unfortunately, incompetence is difficult to quickly discover and replace.

Yes, but what is the threat to Europe that might cause war? Russia can't even project force to the Polish border. Certainly no military threats coming from North Africa.

I don't necessarily disagree as IMHO a diverse world that more accurately reflects the desires of local populations is a good thing, but I'd be curious to know why you would like the EU to seek independency from the US. What do you mean by that? Economic or more? Do you mean more home-grown tech companies for example?

Not the OP, but in context, the US is a huge part of NATO's overall defense (and offense/force projection) capabilities. The EU on its own would have a harder time defending itself against aggression.

It's effectively impossible to invade a country that has nuclear weapons. There might be small scale border skirmishes, but large scale organized invasions are essentially a nonstarter. The main purpose of conventional weaponry, for nuclear nations, is to invade non-nuclear nations, or to engage in proxy skirmishes to try to expand one's geopolitical power.

We're rapidly approaching a century with 0 major and unrestrained wars between two nuclear powers. That's completely unprecedented in the entirety of our history, and it's not a coincidence.

Do you think UK or France would use nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear Russian attack on other NATO members (e.g. Germany)? Are they obligated to do so?

>> Article 5

>> The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

>> such action as it seems necessary, including the use of armed force

There's no mandatory requirement to deploy specific weapons, but I believe all NATO forces would be subordinate to CMC (rotating) and SACEUR (has always been a US leader)? Inasmuch as multinational command structures work.

Right but OP said it’s “effectively impossible to invade a country that has nuclear weapons” and I’m curious how that is relevant to non nuclear NATO members like Germany.

I don’t see how it helps Germany (or Finland, Poland etc etc) that France and UK have nuclear weapons, apart from deterrence against specifically nuclear Russian attacks. A conventional land invasion against a non nuclear NATO power would likely be very difficult to stop without US support, at current defense levels, or without UK or France threatening a universal nuclear defense of other nato members.

It's ambiguous (or I haven't seen it written) under what conditions NATO would retaliate with NATO-controlled nuclear weapons to an attack on a NATO member.

But it's definitely shy of 'never'

I know during the 80s there were detailed plans to tactically nuke the larg(er) Soviet armored formations in eastern Germany et al. in the event of hostilities. I believe even before Soviet nuclear escalation.

I'm unaware of those, but I do know that US nuclear targets from the 50s were relatively recently declassified [1], and they were far more macabre.

We focused on taking out Soviet air forces (to eliminate their ability to deliver nukes of their own - as this was before the USSR had developed ICBMs), but also focused on targets marked simply as "population" as well as medical production facilities. The goal was not to just defeat the military, but to literally destroy the nation. And I'm certain the USSR had, more or less, identical plans. And I suspect those still remain the plans for both sides to this day.

Nukes aren't going to falling out in the middle of nowhere trying to take out military bases, they're going to be falling in NYC, San Francisco, Moscow, and St. Petersburg - to try to completely take out the other country's population and economy. Nuclear war is do or die. The goal is going to be to eliminate the enemy's country from the face of this Earth, so that they can't just recover to become a threat 10 years down the line.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nucl...

There are always a menu of pre-built reaction plans, because even in the days of strategic bombers over the arctic there wouldn't have been enough reaction time for anything custom + dissemination to combat commands.

Much less once ICBMs become common.

And at that point, the only requirement for a total war / civilian+industry apocalypse plan is that your potential opponent might also have such a plan.

It's tremendously unlikely to be used except in a "like for like" response scenario (absent an insane president), but if the US saw the Soviets throwing everything they had up with population centers targeted... there'd better be a ready to go plan to respond similarly.

And, as Dr Strangelove memorably quips, indeed the most effective deterrence effect of such a plan is to loudly tell everyone you have such a plan -- so they will have to consider that's one of your response options, and thus be disincentivized from starting a nuclear exchange.

By which it makes a lot of sense that even if the US didn't have such a plan, they fabricated one and announced they did!

(Not that I think they didn't. The Cold War was way too real to bet on a 0% chance that superpowers weren't going to escalate to total war)

That was not a reaction plan, it was an offensive plan. That's why they even bothered with targeting Soviet airfields. At the time the USSR had not yet developed an ICBM and so nukes would have been delivered by air. If it was a response plan, then targeting those airfields would have been wastes of nukes. The idea was to destroy their entire country and nuclear capability, before they could do anything.

Remember, there's only one country that's ever nuked another country.

That's interesting, I could see how even a vague possibility of that sort of response could be a deterrent.

I think the most likely scenario is that they would transfer control of a number of nuclear weapons to Germany in such a scenario. And that would be more than enough to end the war, or to end the world.

Which is why everyone bordering any empire currently looks for nukes or nuke eqivalents,as the American reliability falls apart. Must be fun to work at the iaa nowadays.

I’m not sure we’d have these new NATO members if American reliability were actually so bad.

This could be a good place to Post a reminder that in 1995, Ukraine agreed to hand over all its nuclear weapons to Russia in return of a promise to not threaten or use military force against Ukraine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

Ukraine had the weapons but no means to use them. Russia had the keys.

Then why did Russia feel the need to enter into the agreement if holding the keys was sufficient?

Maybe because these were radically different times, and the "we've always been at war with X or Y" is just a narrative? No, of course not, what a nonsense.

Sure, the Ukrainians would have needed some months to refit those weapons.

Not the person you responded to, but I agree that the EU needs a bit more independence from the US.

To me, it's mostly about being able to stand up for ourselves on a world stage - ideally through a common EU military that is strong enough to deter adversaries even without US support.

My main reason is the instability of the American political climate and the way every four years there's an election between a centrist and an extremist. Trump has already threatened to invite Putin to invade other NATO countries [0]. We can't risk being dependent on this madman.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68266447

Speaking as an American I want this for the EU as well. I liked the prior world order, but I think the dream of keeping it alive died when our current dumbass-in-chief pulled out of Afghanistan in the stupidest way possible. The previous dumbass-in-chief who may well be the next dumbass-in-chief if the current one loses also abandoned our Kurdish allies and is promising to do worse than that.

Also, I like Europe. I don’t want to see it falter.

To be fair, abandoning our Kurdish allies (and before them, our Hmong allies) is an ongoing American theme.

I had a good Kurdish friend who came over on a US carrier after we abandoned them after the Gulf War...

Isn't Kurdistan still currently the largest stateless state (so to speak) ?

That's probably a complicated slicing of "stateless state". Racial? Ethnic? Linguistic? Religious?

I'm guessing it would be something approaching "associated peoples who are part of a state, but who have collectively demonstrated a desire for an independent state"?

There are ~40M Kurds.

Off the top of my head, Palestinians, Uyghurs, Basques, but I'm sure I'm missing a ton.

There are 70M+ Tamils.

I think many in the US would also be happy with a stronger Europe. A friendly peer competitor to call us out if we decided to go to war to ostensibly “spread democracy” would probably be good, for example.

Isn't that how we got "freedom fries" and "with us or against us"?

We temporarily renamed some fast food that wasn’t even correctly named after them, and made a bunch of juvenile jokes about their performance in WW2 for a couple decades. I dunno, I was just a kid at the time, but I didn’t get the impression that we were taking their complaints very seriously.

I was a little bit older, and I do remember the hostility we had towards them (I was studying French at the time). But yeah, it was more like the way you'd boo the opposing sports team, not like we are at risk at war with them or anything...

For what? EU is plenty powerful enough to do that, but for what end. What would they do different that is significant. Sure there are minor differences in various policies and lots of disagreements, but overall our high level aims are too close and so the EU is better off not having to.

Have you ever heard of the military-industrial complex? If the EU wants to be independent they need to develop their own at great cost. (note that the US is already depending on EU's military industrial complex for various things, so you would also force the US to take those in-house) Which is why despite differences the US and EU are likely to remain allies for a long time - you cannot afford to go alone.

You're confused. The US doesn't control the EU in any way.

Or maybe you're not confused and you just object to the US and/or EU, but that's your problem, not theirs.

Terminology note: 'independency' is an archaic form of 'independence' which in this context means a self-governing state as opposed to being controlled by another state. This might be confused with 'interdependence' which is a natural reality of almost everything on earth, but especially those who cooperate and work and trade together.

If you define "control" narrowly enough, nothing controls anything. But if you use a plain reading of "control" as in "can and will influence the actions of", it seems like "doesn't control in any way" is trivially false.

In this context 'control' means having power over. If you're not independent then another country has power over your actions. Mere influence is insufficient since the influence runs two ways, which is the case between the EU and US.

Doesn't this imply that the EU and the US are equal powers?

They aren't, right?

For their purposes, yes. The EU has more population, and the US has more military, but those things don't matter between them.

Is a marriage unequal because the male could beat the female at any time because he's stronger?

Yes, a marriage is unequal if one party has more strength, money, guns, technology, etc. Actual equality is a really rare thing in nature. Someone always has more, whether they are currently using that against the other party or not.

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the US is still the leading superpower by quite a margin. It may not be brought up explicitly in negotiations, but that fact is always there.

Maybe I'm wrong and the EU wields an equal amount of influence over the US. It certainly sounds a little odd saying it though.

OK I'll spell it out: they're friendly nations who respect each others sovereignty. Actual power is irrelevant because it's not used. Claims to the contrary tend to be political and sometimes conspiracy theories motivated by animus. A reasonable person would readily agree they're friendly nations.

The US doesn't threaten or intimidate the EU or vica versa (Trump is an aberration).

To further make the point: NATO membership means they've undertaken to fight and die for each other's protection, how much more friendly can you get?

> A reasonable person would readily agree they're friendly nations.

Sure (although a reasonable person might quibble that the EU is not a nation). It's just that friendly nations doesn't mean what you think it means.

Relevant terms are things like "realpolitik" and "realism". Basically, countries don't do things out of the good of their hearts, because they don't have hearts, they're not people.

> It would be nice if EU seek independency from US eventually.

That would require European countries to actually fund their militaries at a level where they could realistically have independence. Which isn't going to happen over the long term.

The only reason for the current surge in funding is the active war in Europe. Once that is settled, however it happens, European countries will go back to their old ways (with the possible exception of countries that actually border Russia/Belarus).

If Trump withdraws the US from NATO going back to the old ways is not an option, at least EU doesn't want to lose its Eastern half to Russia.

> If Trump withdraws the US from NATO going back to the old ways is not an option, at least EU doesn't want to lose its Eastern half to Russia.

The tricky thing with politics is that there are always way more hungry stomachs than seats at the table. And people learned a long time ago to frame their pet issue as critical.

And the trouble with military spending is that it's never critical. Until it is. But at that point, it's way too late.

I just don't think that the Ukraine war is a big enough deal to act as a catalyst for permanent change. People have remarkably short memories when it comes to things like that - most European countries were on their way to completely normalized relations with Russia around 2020/2021; not that long after the annexation of Crimea.

I don't expect the exact same thing to happen - trade with Russia will probably be severely restricted for a very long time. But it's really easy to chip away at the military budget in favor of social programs. Especially since the benefit of the latter is obvious and immediate. And those programs will always be strained.

The funding is less of a problem. European countries spend a lot. It's just very diverse. The US has one army and one commander. Europe has 20+ armies and as much commanders. Around 250 billion a year is for example a lot more than what Russia spends. There are France and UK with nuclear weapons. Each of them has their own nuclear weapons and their own technology. Their nuclear weapons are not EU weapons, they are not designed to defend the EU. The UK isn't even anymore in the EU. The Brexit was also fueled by the UK not wanting to be part of an EU Army.

There is simply no EU army, the EU is not a nation, the EU is not a defense union. Several EU countries are neutral, several countries make their own military decisions, based on the constitutional law, etc.

For most purposes, NATO is the main international military organization for European countries, not the EU.

> The funding is less of a problem. European countries spend a lot.

Not really.

> The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, is almost equal to that of the United States. ... The volume of US defence expenditure represents approximately two thirds of the defence spending of the Alliance as a whole.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm

While non-US allies in NATO doesn't cover every European country, it does cover most of them, particularly the large and wealthy ones.

Sure it is a lot. It is extremely much. Your mistake is to compare it to the US.

The US spends more, but for its world-wide empire, much of which has nothing to do with defending Europe or even NATO.

That's not what Europe needs do.

In a way, sure. But it would also be nice if we were more codependent, in a way?

For example, it's wild to me that there's no bilateral trade agreement between the US and EU. It seems like the most obvious no-brainer you can imagine.

If the US could just stop swinging wildly between two parties who hate each other being in control every couple of years, that might get done.

These sorts of big complex trade agreements take _ages_ to negotiate and require a certain degree of stability; given the US's current hyper-partisanship it's probably not happening any time soon. Realistically TTIP was dead the day Trump was elected.

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