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Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

> I am ashamed of the US.

Don't be. I'm neither American nor European, and from my vantage point this is far less America's (US) fault than it is Western Europe's. US has been asking Europe to increase defense spending for years now, and at the beginning of the war it was below 2% (Germany was spending 1.25% in 2018). Trump said this very publicly in during his first term, and he was ignored and mostly ridiculed. Same thing with the Gazprom deal.

Europe's defence should not be entirely on the American tax payer.

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This is a simplistic, even childlike, view of the relationship between the US and Europe. The situation is the way it is because the US wanted it like that. Statesman like Dean Acheson and George Marshall designed it this way. To throw 75 years of relative peace and stability away because you feel it’s unfair? A world that revolves around American military, economic and cultural power, and uses the U.S. dollar as its reserve currency unfair? It galls me that small, arrogant, petty people with no notion of history are throwing all this away because they have a schoolyard understanding of fair and unfair.

> It galls me that small, arrogant, petty people with no notion of history are throwing all this away because they have a schoolyard understanding of fair and unfair.

Or maybe your ivory tower understanding simply ignores the realities of the working class people who voted for Trump to do away with these policies.

I've got to imagine this forum is officially compromised at this point with these style of posts on here?

I'm shocked by the level of pro-Russia content coming from you and other posters. I hope it's just brigading. I'm devastated if any meaningful amount of Americans feel this way. It's a fall from grace I didn't think I'd see in such real time.

The fact that you interpret any pushback to your opinion as pro-Russia is one of the main problems in modern discourse. You're so ideologically captured that everything has become binary.

Quite the opposite. I've just come to the realization that discourse with individuals arguing in bad faith is more harmful to society than any fleeting chance I may have of convincing the individual their path is the wrong one.

Doubtful. Public discourse online is often not about convincing interlocuters, but mostly about whoever is watching/reading.

Hence why you waited to respond despite having made other posts since my response?

Long threads with little chance of convergence are boring, fewer people read them, reading new articles is more interesting, and people got shit to do. News at 11.

> This is a simplistic, even childlike, view of the relationship between the US and Europe. The situation is the way it is because the US wanted it...

People who do know history would tell you that you don't get peace by dismantling industrial and military capacity. To blame this on "because the US wanted it that way" is just naive. The US might have wanted it that way, but so what? It happened because it was easier to sell domestically compared to allocating hundreds of billions on say, 5th gen fighters.

Yeah, I am sure Poland would have been SUPER HAPPY if Germany would have invested more in military in the late 90s. France as well. /s

Crimea was 10 years ago now. And Obama at that time didn't intervene, in fact he called on Europe to spend more on defense. Europe is much bigger (in population) and richer than Russia. This is a different situation than the cold war.

> Europe's defence should not be entirely on the American tax payer

True. However.

The US has wanted to play a major role in Europe for 80 years because it meant they controlled the narrative. This, co-incidentally was favourable to European countries because they could spend their money elsewhere.

Over the past few years the US has decided that it would prefer to play in the Pacific rather than Europe and so has been edging away.

It's true that Western Europe has been slow to respond, but it's also important to acknowledge that Trump just changed the pace of this redirection and so it's not entirely on one or the other side.

> he was ignored and mostly ridiculed

Trump disagrees with you:

> So we raised [the defense spending of NATO members by] $130 billion almost immediately. We had a meeting with all of the [NATO] countries. I said, “You got to pay.” We got $130 billion more — more.

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/re...

You fell for the propaganda. The US is not spending for Ukraine the way Trump is trying to make it seem. Sending old equipment that is expensive to dispose of helps the US two-fold.

And yes, fighting indirectly with Russia is also helping the US two-fold. Or, was until Trump decided to wake up as a sleeper agent .

> ending old equipment that is expensive to dispose of helps the US two-fold.

You fell for this propaganda. That equipment is "old" doesn't mean it isn't actively being used. The US military uses and maintains old equipment where it still makes sense, and where there is no viable replacement.

I have made the same argument long before Trump was in the picture. Stop associating everything with Trump or propaganda - people can hold opinions which don't agree with yours.

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