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Comment by dachworker | Hacker News Reader

There is a weird attitude among European elites where on the one hand, they point out how European countries have always been in a subservient position within the American sphere of influence, but then, instead of cheering that this era is ending, they seem to be all upset about it and want their collar to be put back on. Help me understand this. To me it seems that maybe the interests of EU elites differ from the interests of the EU common classes. The EU elites seem to have considered themselves as basically equivalent to American citizens in all but name, and were quite happy selling out their native countries in return for access to America.

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I don't recognize this attitude at all. But I'm no elite anywhere.

Thinking about it, it's not so weird? We beat the nazis together, we've generally enjoyed world peace, freedom, and the joys of neocolonialism. Things were sailing along just fine.

Now things are all weird and fucked up and we have to worry about fucking russia, defense spending in general, the fate of greenland, cloud computing and all that shit?

Putting it like that, I'd like things to go back to the way they were too...

Can't say I disagree.

> We beat the nazis together

If you by "we" mean Britain, the United States, and Russia. And by "we" mean the people living 2 generations earlier, then I agree with your statement.

As a side note, people who were 18 in 1940, would be 103 today. So most people who fought in the second world war have unfortunately passed away.

I personally would never say "We beat the nazis together". The only thing I did was benefit from the war that generations before me have won.

You’re forgetting Canada. You’re also glossing over the fact that despite losing to the nazis, the occupied countries didn’t exactly just roll over when they got attacked. And during occupation there were resistance movements in those countries too. So there’s definitely a “we” here.

And while of course most of those people are dead now, they were all part of cultures that still hold many of the same norms and values as they do today.

This comment is either bad taste trolling or simply insulting to anyone outside these theee countries that gave their lives to fight sgainst nazis… in Germany too there were people fighting the nazis, just as an example.

I'm from Brazil. My grandfather, along with 25 THOUSAND other Brazilians, went to fight in WW2. He saw a best friend die gruesomely next to him, and came back to traumas that affected him, my father and even me to some extent. Go learn some history before spewing nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

An important distinction is that US and EU interests aligned on many important areas up until recently. So it was less of a subservient relationship, and more of a mutually beneficial one. Now that the US wants to turn it into a subservient relationship, the EU is naturally looking for other options.

No, Europe is a de facto vassal state to US since WW2.

What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has. But now they start to wake up facing this reality.

> What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has.

France would disagree with the "didn't understand" part. They have been continuously ridiculed for holding that view, until very, very recently.

Agree, France is somewhat of an exception.

I remember during the Chirac presidency how viciously France was attacked by the other European countries, especially my own Sweden, for doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.

Jump forward today and France is seen as a protector of Europe, especially in Sweden, because of its nuclear arsenal.

> doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.

That was not the most glorious moment of Chirac's presidency, no..

However, as someone involved in numerical simulations, the argument that it was needed to calibrate their numerical models does hold (some..) water..

But Chirac did partly redeem himself by refusing to invade Iraq on bogus US claims of WMDs..

In fairness, he did so in part because this was going to go against Total's interests (see Oil, Power and War for that part of the story), but yeah, it was still the right stance to have and history proved him right.

As opposed to invading in order to support the interests of Halliburton? Tough choice..

Let's also not forget the absolutely absurd intervention of Colin Powell at the UN Security Council, holding up a vial containing the ultimate "proof" of WMD.

Good thing he didn't drop it.. /s

I think Europe was of the understanding that the "ongoing deal" was mutually beneficial.

The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world, and the peace (at least in the Western world) that US defense brought made sure both the US and the EU could freely trade and benefit financially.

What now changed is that apparently the US thinks it does not need this hegemony anymore (by forcing the EU to become a competing military power), or that they can replace the role the EU played with some other combination of countries. Or alternatively, the US is just looking for some "splendid isolation".

To European spectators, the above seems ridiculous. But who knows, maybe Trump is correct... Either way, the US had a good thing going and is now abandoning that. Not strange that Europe is surprised by that move.

>The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world

That's the thing, Americans have become very skeptical of our own influence and power, for good reason. Look what we did to the Middle East. Look at the shenanigans we were funding with USAID. There isn't actually a constituency for this imperialism stuff in the US. US voters don't like it.

In any case -- if we had so much influence, why were previous presidents like Bush and Obama unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense?

>forcing the EU to become a competing military power

It's not about competition, it's about Europe taking responsibility for itself.

You want a global cop? How about you do it yourself for a bit? It's a terrible job. Maybe you should take a turn at it.

> unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense

We did cut down too much on our defence, especially after the Cold war (not all European countries though, like Finland). But, many European countries have bought plenty of expensive US military equipment like fighter aircraft, helicopters, anti aircraft systems, etc. It’s not like those were a gift.

Yes, I agree the US should service those contracts. But Europeans shouldn't feel obligated to buy from the US over any other vendor.

Ok, let’s hope you are right on the anti-imperialism front and that the US citizens will not tolerate all that saber rattling against Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal…

or maybe you are just misunderstanding and rationalizing what’s going on to tell yourself that everything is going fine on the US politics side of things while the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that you voted a narcissistic authoritarian into office.

Let’s hope you are right!

What's a "de facto vassal state"? That's a pretty vague notion, one could fill it with any meaning. What Trump has shown is that Europe is not as dependent as to follow US politics whatever it is.

Germany is still occupied by US without a formal peace treaty, hence de facto.

The occupation of Germany ended with the two plus four treaty coming into force in 1991. It is not occupied, and there is a formal treaty.

That is the unification treaty. If you accept that as a peace treaty then you need to at least accept that Germany, and as a consequence Europe, was vassal state until 1991. Thus the idea that Europe were equal partners with US is false.

> That is the unification treaty.

Yes, among other things. It is the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany", and thing it finally settles is WW2 and the subsequent temporary arrangements.

> If you accept that as a peace treaty

The ~1955 treaties between the respective occupying powers and West and East Germany separately, which ended most of the powers of occupation but could not formally end the Potsdam arrangement because the Western allies weren't going to formalize the situation with East Germany and the USSR wasn't going to do the same for West Germany, effectively (but not completely formally) ended the occupation and were essentially peace treaties (but obviously neither addressed the whole of Germany or the whole of the belligerents against Germany in WW2.) Between 1955 and reunification, each of the Germanies was technically occupied as a consequence of the Cold War. But West Germany was generally treated as as much of an equal partner as other major Western nations with the US.

I only pointed to the 1991 treaty because it is simple and irrefutable and the most straightforward, uncomplicated way to rebut your originally clearly-wrong claim that Germany was currently occupied without any peace treaty.

How can you be an equal partner if you are occupied?

West Germany wasn't, practically, occupied post-1955. It was formally occupied because the Cold War meant the USSR had no interest in signing off on the Western settlement with West Germany, just as the Western powers didn't with East Germany, and given the Potsdam Arrangement actually formally ending the occupation required that.

You have to be either naive or a shill if you believe the US didn't leverage any political control over (West) Germany with that kind of large occupational force.

See, this gets to the point others have made in this thread. Your reasoning implies that you should be happy if the US pulls out of NATO and leaves Europe, since Europe would no longer be "occupied" and would thus be an "equal partner".

Europeans are just impossible to satisfy, from my perspective. They will complain no matter what the US does.

> Europe is a de facto vassal state to US since WW2

OP's point is this nonsense rhetoric doesn't make sense with European frustration with American retrenchment.

>A "vassal state" is a state that has a mutual obligation to a superior state or empire, similar to a vassal in the feudal system, often involving tribute payments

Europe is not like that - we don't pay taxes to the US to defend us. The US kindly did so free of charge for many years which is a different thing, more of an alliance I guess.

Now the US is kind of switching allegiances we are having to recalculate.

The “tax” is enabling total American dominance economically and politically, not to mention huge leverage over all of Europe's military with vendor lock in.

Yeah, I don't understand how those people use reason (or maybe they don't). If you look at the biggest/richest companies, it's all about US tech industry and associated, even though we have fronted a lot of the research and education.

And we ask them to pay taxes fairly they complain, and they don't want to open their stuff, they even work hard on malicious compliance. It's a pretty bad deal.

I'm the “European elite” you're thinking of. Well, not “elite” in the sense of being rich, I'm not rich, but I'm also not stupid.

It's simple: global trade is good, isolationism is bad. It's as simple as that.

The “EU common classes” don't want higher prices or poorer services. This is a fact that the US's elites in power will soon discover. And it's easy to see why this trend is a train wreck in progress: unemployment, in both the US and EU, is at an all-time low, and if you significantly lower imports via tariffs and economic wars, who do you think will work on those local products and services? Never mind that US's investments and exports are also crashing as a direct result of this administration's policies, so I'm guessing they rely on future software developers that end up unemployed to become lumberjacks.

But yes, now that the US is no longer a trustworthy ally, I want the EU to cut its tech dependencies from it for as much as possible, while strengthening ties with all of our other allies, such as Canada, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India. There's no conflict in this reasoning.

Employment stats in the EU are a complete joke and don't reflect at all real work/value creation. It's all about moving numbers from one box to another. Just because you made one more bureaucrat bullshit job does not mean you are creating any value, quite the contrary.

You seem to conveniently forget that all of this was "possible" only with heavy borrowing, and it looks like many countries won't be able to even pay the principal soon enough. When you take this into account, the "growth" has been negative for over 10 years, and it was barely stagnant for quite a while before. We exported the growth and manipulated money, now the truth appear. You can only pretend for so long.

The reality is that the value creating has been quite low in most of the EU and now that the economic engine that was Germany has stalled, everything is grinding to a halt. Germany had heavy reliance on cheap Russian gas for its chemical industry and premium car market, both are getting disrupted massively. It's actually a perfect example on why we should avoid too much reliance on other countries. The hilarious part is that in the meantime, Germany was giving "ecology" lessons to all their neighbors and the world at large. In typical arrogant German fashion, they had everything figured out, until they didn't, that is. They actually hold a lot of responsibility for their terrible leadership on the EU.

What is weird about not liking that former powerful ally is becoming a hostile entity actively trying to harm you? They are not cheering, because what is happening is loose loose situation and they dont like the loose part. Also, buying American tech und military exports in the past was not exactly something shameful. The way you write about it, as if trade was "being slave with a humiliating collar" is weird thinking.

> To me it seems that maybe the interests of EU elites differ from the interests of the EU common classes.

Common classes in EU are not benefiting from trade war, they are not benefiting from USA annexation threats and they are not benefiting from Russia expanding.

> The EU elites seem to have considered themselves as basically equivalent to American citizens in all but name, and were quite happy selling out their native countries in return for access to America.

This is nonsensical. You are making stuff up, big time. How is buying American arms a symbol of "considering themselves to be Americans"? I cant recall any call or push to be more America.

Relying on the US for military protection allowed many European countries to save billions of their own money for years. Undoing this going to be very, very expensive and there is no good understanding where all this money is supposed come from, the main idea right now seems to be massive amounts of debt, which can get very ugly in the long run. It absolutely needs to happen, but I can clearly see why many politicians are not thrilled about the whole thing

> the main idea right now seems to be massive amounts of debt, which can get very ugly in the long run

The economy, unlike one's personal finances, is a circle. Unless the Europeans buy abroad, all that money is going to stay in Europe, circulating and stimulating the economy.

Even if it's "only" arms, spending it to maintain industry is way better than many alternatives. Manufacturing infrastructure and lots of skilled jobs and workers, sounds good to me to have.

"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".

Finance/money is supposed to be the virtual control system, and the real world thing it is supposed to help to steer is everything real and what we actually care about. In all other areas we would never accept that the control system becomes the target!! The target is always the real thing, and we will adjust the control system to achieve the desired outcomes.

Not so with finance! It has taken on a life of its own, and the vast majority of people will gladly and unthinkingly subordinate the real world to its whims. Something that makes at least a little bit of sense for the individual makes no sense for the economy though.

We have people in charge who know all and care about the control system first of all, the real world outcomes be damned. If the control system says we need high unemployment and homelessness and less high paying jobs there is nothing we can do, because the purely virtual human-invented finance system is the god. But hey, religion has been on the decline for a long time at least in the modern world, right (/s)?

> which can get very ugly in the long run

Only when the people in charge think like described.

That's exactly the same reasoning we heard during Covid, injecting massive amounts of money into the economy was supposed to be perfectly safe and even a good thing. Definitely not supposed to lead to any inflation. Guess what happened next.

The argument during COVID wasn't that it was "perfectly safe", but that it was better than the alternative of leaving all the people living paycheck to paycheck get laid off and starve.

People just have short memories and see the bad outcome we did get (high inflation) and not the bad outcomes we avoided (unmitigated COVID, economic collapse).

>Even if it's "only" arms, spending it to maintain industry is way better than many alternatives. Manufacturing infrastructure and lots of skilled jobs and workers, sounds good to me to have.

As Eisenhower warned, every Euro spent turning steel into an artillery shell is one NOT spent turning steel into high-speed rail. Every worker in a factory building armored vehicles is a worker NOT being re-trained to be an elder caregiver for Europe's aging demographics. There are immense trade-offs that come with dumping capital, both human and material, into making Europe's war machine rise from the grave.

>"Debt" is just a number, and if you are in a strong enough position you can always change policies around the purely virtual "money".

Key phrase there is "if you are in a strong enough position"....and Europe isn't. Because it cut itself off from cheap Russian energy imports, the entire industrial sector is no longer cost-competitive. With the exception of highly-specialized difficult-to-copy stuff like ASML or maybe Carl Zeiss optics, etc... the European economy writ large is in a really weak position compared to the cost efficiency of China or compared to the still-large (but diminishing) political-military leverage of the US. Also, Europe looks like it is getting closer and closer to handing over the frozen Russian assets in Euroclear to Ukraine. You can expect a massive capital flight from Chinese, Mid-East, or Global South investors if that ever happens.

Looking at defense spending, I do not think it saved so much money. It mostly ensured that the US would be the only major nuclear power in the West - so the "military protection" was more something like a moat for the nuclear monopoly.

And monopolies are something the US loves (think of big tech, Comcast, etc.) and the EU dislikes ;-)

With the US stepping away from its monopoly, it is only a matter of time until more European states will enter the nuclear protection market.

There was this "end of history" idea where Europe, elites or not, believed that democracy would follow globalization and free trade. This turned out to be very naive but still common belief. Now Europe will have to fend for it self. In the long run I think this will benefit both US and Europe, but short term it will hurt both. Also I don´t think Europe will pivot away from US, we still understand that at least half of US shares our values, but US can´t be trusted to stand up for these values anymore. Same as Hungary, Turkey. I personally see it as a good opportunity to get some action going in Europe, as I discuss here in the context of building digital infrastructure: https://lnkd.in/dRNSYPWC

The people i know (except for the tankie ones such as my high school philosphy professor, that guy was goat) would have preferred a less abrupt usa exit and not one that potentially puts europe security at risk. I do not know enough about the elites to talk about it tho

I don't support Trump, but you really can't claim that Europe wasn't warned here. Russia first invaded Ukraine back in 2014. And here's Trump back in 2018, warning about German dependence on Russian gas, and stating that Europe needed to step up defense spending "immediately":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu57D9YcIk0

This has hardly been "abrupt". Even Obama and Bush were telling Europe to step up defense spending.

Honestly, Trump has said so many things that you can probably find everything and the opposite of everything coming out of his mind.

Yes, I do agree that we had been warned and since the Ukrainian invasion defense budgets of European countries increased. I also think such an abrupt change of mind from the US hurts both sides and nobody earns anything from it. Except Russia.

Even if European cointries increased spending before, the situation is changing in such a way that even nuclear weapons - something that almost no European country would have wanted if they already hadn't had them - are being taken into consideration to be developed as a nuclear umbrella from France towards other European countries.

>Honestly, Trump has said so many things that you can probably find everything and the opposite of everything coming out of his mind.

I think he's been pretty consistent on the issue of European defense spending, actually. In any case, if Trump is inconsistent, that itself can be considered a warning -- that sometimes the US elects inconsistent presidents.

>I also think such an abrupt change of mind from the US hurts both sides and nobody earns anything from it.

Nothing short of this "abrupt change" has been successful in getting Europe to take responsibility for its own security. As I said, US presidents have been complaining about this for ages. I hope you finally listen, because my enthusiasm for defending Europe (as an American and a registered Democrat even) is currently quite low: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43459774

>nuclear umbrella from France towards other European countries

We'll see if France actually commits to that, or if it is all talk. If Nation A extends its nuclear umbrella over Nation B, that basically means that Nation A is putting its own cities at risk in case of nuclear retaliation, for the sake of Nation B. As an American, it sort of boggled my mind when I learned that we were putting our own cities at risk for the sake of our allies this way.

And it seems that Europe's way of thanking us is to make fun of our healthcare system, accuse us of the non-crime of "cultural imperialism", etc... See what I'm saying about enthusiasm to defend you guys? Something needs to change in the relationship.

The issue is not only usa getting far from europe - which on itself is ok imho -, just the fact that given an existing alliance - for which europeans fought war for the us in middle east and died as well - could have been reshaped with a slower rollout. It is unclear how much and how fast things will change, and unpredictability is worse than expecting a certain outcome (just like the markets don't like trump's unpredictability in economy).

I do not see why usa should be "thanked". We have been allies for decades and now this relations are being reshaped in a way that favors no one, while a slower approach to such sensitive issues might have yielded better results (i don't know how many countries still want to buy us weapons right now in europe, maybe a different approach would have meant stronger collaboration between ue/usa companies or maybe not)

>It is unclear how much and how fast things will change, and unpredictability is worse than expecting a certain outcome

So you would prefer that the US just withdraws from NATO now, to reduce the unpredictability? That's fine by me. If unpredictability is your issue, Trump should be able to address that by withdrawing tomorrow.

>I do not see why usa should be "thanked".

If you think our involvement in Europe over the past 80 years has been positive, you should acknowledge that. If all you do is complain, it's natural for Americans to think "well, maybe our involvement in the continent isn't positive... perhaps it's time to pull out and see if they stop complaining about everything". You're not complaining about Brazil, Australia, Switzerland, or China the way you complain about the US. I think we need a reset to make the US/Europe relationship more like the Brazil/Europe relationship.

Unpredictability is the issue when paired with a us alienation from eu, and a us nato exit would make the situation more unpredictable for eu

i'm not complaining about the us just like i'm not thanking germany for being one of our commercial and sometimes political partners. Perhaps it's something more present in us discourse but most of the time we're not "thankful" to other countries, even if allied ones. It's something that doesn't really have a meaning here, even if i do agree that the usa have been important partners of europe in the past (and probably will in the future as well, although less than before)

The US isn't just a "partner", it does the vast majority of spending among NATO countries, even though NATO is an alliance that Europe benefits from way more: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...

I'm not in principle opposed to this sort of altruism in US foreign policy. I just don't want to have an altruistic foreign policy towards people that resent me. For people who resent me, I want fairness at the very least. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, so Europe should pay most of the cost. Currently we are very far from that.

This is not altruism. This strange american "look how we suffer for you"-thing is just utterly weird.

Why do you think the US has global power projection capabilities? Why do you think they can control world trade? Why is the dollar still the reserve currency?

The military "altruistic" peacekeeping is a major benefit, from better access to trade agreements to bases everywhere and military support from dozens of countries.

Nothing of that would be possible otherwise. Ending the US' protection also means taking away a massive piece of global influence the US had and turning into a "normal" country, not one the world seems to revolve around.

That's the trade-off. You can't keep the soft power without having partners who rely on you and are going to have a much, much harder stand in future negotiations.

Also, US military spending goes directly back into the US economy. This is absolutely not the same as paying other countries, it's a hidden, long-running stimulus for the MIC.

>The military "altruistic" peacekeeping is a major benefit

Sure, but I think they are waking up to the fact that they cannot afford it, at least for now.

>much harder stand in future negotiations.

Well, from what Trump is saying, it seems that US didn't get the better end of a lot of deals, so it seems that it is spending resources for this peacekeeping but not getting any of the benefits in return..

> Well, from what Trump is saying, it seems that US didn't get the better end of a lot of deals

It's funny how you are believing in a known liar to derive any argument from.

I don't want to project power globally. I don't want to control world trade. I don't want to have bases everywhere. I don't want to influence everywhere. I'm tired of this empire stuff. We aren't good at being an empire. We suck at it. I want to be a normal country, thanks. I'm tired of foreigners obsessively following our politics, offering their commentary, and resenting us no matter what we do. I want to be normal.

Switzerland is very wealthy without being a global empire. They are well-regarded and have more soft power than the US. Their currency is trusted. No one is telling them they have an obligation to support Ukraine. They have better relations with the EU. Their military is focused on self-defense. We should be more like Switzerland.

>Also, US military spending goes directly back into the US economy. This is absolutely not the same as paying other countries, it's a hidden, long-running stimulus for the MIC.

We could easily spend in a better way which also goes back into the economy -- for example, government healthcare, like Europeans are always bragging they have. Also, I don't want a massive military-industrial complex either. I favor peace.

Be careful what you wish for. If US exits that role, it doesn't make that role disappear. Something else will step into it. And we will all have to live in that world. Good luck to us all.

A unipolar world is not inevitable. We could have a multipolar world with various regional power blocs. If that leads to less war, it's a good thing.

We call a partner that spends the majority on an alliance, a partner. Just like Germany is a partner to italy, France, Spain and vice versa

If it's an equal partnership, each partner respects the right of the other to exit. If it's an equal partnership, both countries are equally sad if it ends, since both got equal benefit.

The US/Europe relationship fails both those criteria.

Usa have the rights to exit nato just like any other country, I've heard nobody complaining about how the us shouldn't be allowed to

Here's another commenter in this thread explaining how I need to 'deal with it' and be humble about the US' global position: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462237

It sure seems like they think the US has an obligation to stay. That's the subtext of a lot of what Europeans are saying online.

Well, of course by losing the global throne us will lose a lot, the biggest economy in the world can't (like, it won't happen, not like legally can't) literally be like Switzerland that is surrounded by more or less allies and doesn't have to protect much of its global interests.

By the way, your rants make me think you're spending a bit too much time online, online you'll find a lot of people just bashing whatever you say in a rude way

I'm replying to myself because my last line sounds rude. What i wanted to say is that it looks like you've been influenced a lot by online comments which might push controversial or flame content as well

>Well, of course by losing the global throne us will lose a lot, the biggest economy in the world can't (like, it won't happen, not like legally can't) literally be like Switzerland that is surrounded by more or less allies and doesn't have to protect much of its global interests.

The US economy was doing great prior to WW1/WW2, back when we deliberately tried to stay out of European geopolitics.

>By the way, your rants make me think you're spending a bit too much time online, online you'll find a lot of people just bashing whatever you say in a rude way

You didn't argue against tossandthrow. I don't see any Europeans arguing against him, in fact. I think a lot of Europeans think like he does.

>Nothing short of this "abrupt change" has been successful in getting Europe to take responsibility for its own security.

I think Europe always had the capacity for that. Russia is a nuclear armed state but as far as it's proportional spending goes it's worth noting it's economy is smaller than Italy. What it was lacking was political will and the urge to deal with fragmentation and unanimity. Especially wrt germany being slow to send weapons systems, cutting gas, Shroeder, etc All that spending on American jets or the like clearly paled in comparison to the bloc's willingness to commit and to deal with economic dependencies and would still matter less if everyone increased spending. It also lacks the push for a proper foreign policy that benefits the whole. Not letting Russia pull price politics and fighting its influence in important alternative gas routes would be huge.

>And it seems that Europe's way of thanking us is to make fun of our healthcare system, accuse us of the non-crime of "cultural imperialism", etc... See what I'm saying about enthusiasm to defend you guys? Something needs to change in the relationship.

Are your view of it on the comments of people online?

>Are your view of it on the comments of people online?

Yes, I'm noting that uniquely among US allies, the internet is full of Europeans expressing anti-Americanism. And this has reduced American enthusiasm for the transatlantic alliance. There's no sense in trying to please someone who complains about you no matter what you do.

I don't think it is just online, but the internet made it very clear to the US how Europeans feel about us. Naturally, conservatives are going to react more to that since they are more patriotic. That's why Trump has been driving the reset to the relationship.

Sorry, but I'm must write that: "the internet is full of Europeans expressing anti-Americanism" This strongly sound like Russian "the others country is Russophobic".

Internet mems site are not trustworthy, I'm saying this as Polish, basing on this kind of site I've should be the racist, but I'm not.

Poland was strongly pro american (at least in the last 35 year). Unfortunately, internet in this time must be readed with "grain of salt", there is too many trolls, bots and boring kids.

"I don't think it is just online, but the internet made it very clear to the US how Europeans feel about us." In my opinion there is somekind of "disinformation attack" to quarrel europe with USA, unfortunately, successfully because I see a lot annoyed people on both site.

Information which comes to us via media (tv, local news, etc.) probably are diffrents that this whats you get, so probably this is why you can feel that we're anti-american, but in my opion Europe and USA was in symbiosis not only economically.

I'm also want to mark that Trump from my perspective starting "false flag" operation on greenland, like Putin did that with Ukraine, what woring me because I just don't want a war :)

Sorry, for my English, but for me it's 2:18

I don't think it is internet trolls. It's been going on for a long time. I don't think a disinformation attack would be used on Hacker News. The accounts I'm arguing with have significant karma. And I don't see other Europeans arguing with the ones who express anti-Americanism, or downvoting those comments. That suggests they silently agree.

I don't think the US should be invading other countries. I agree that justifies anti-Americanism, as I stated elsewhere in this thread.

Unfortunately, it's a "bobble", politican topics always cause emotions and annoying, a lot of (if not the most) peoples when see this kind of discussion mostly don't read them for peace of mind.

My wife when is bored, usually, reading twitter and after 15min I'm hearing her crying how people are cruel for animals, but she doing that herself everytime.

The best what you can do is temporary cut off yourself from "bubble", but basing on how intesive news was last time it can be hard.

Human under emotions doesn't thing clear.

I could argue the very same about americans towards Europe. With Europe aiding the US in tradewars against japan, etc. actual wars in iraq, afghanistan, dealing with the fallout of that, etc Going against it's own foreign policy desires to appease the whims of [insert new administration] like a good set of vasals.

But basing your foreign policy on internet commenters is so deeply incredibly inane.

And get this. If you're hegemon you attract more slack no matter what you do. In many ways it involves being the geopolitical schoolyard bully and trump just makes that overtly clear. But it's not like protecting the dollars reserve currency status or any other such thing was something that didn't happen before and is now just being done to spite BRICS internet commenters.

Like what's next? Want to go to war in the middle east again because they dislike you?

>I could argue the very same about americans towards Europe. With Europe aiding the US in tradewars against japan, etc. actual wars in iraq, afghanistan, dealing with the fallout of that, etc Going against it's own foreign policy desires to appease the whims of [insert new administration] like a good set of vasals.

If you were such good vassals, why didn't you increase defense spending back when Bush and Obama requested that?

>But basing your foreign policy on internet commenters is so deeply incredibly inane.

I don't see other Europeans arguing against the internet commenters we are talking about. I think these comments are rather representative of European opinion, actually. In any case, I think if Europe wants to repair the relationship, it would be good to know that internet discourse is contributing a lot to the current situation. European users were in the habit of insulting the US long before American users started insulting Europe.

It's not just me who thinks this way. Here's a post I happened to see on Substack just the other day: https://terry264.substack.com/p/europe-youre-on-your-own

Do you think Trump administration officials like Pete Hegseth and JD Vance aren't reading this stuff? They're part of the younger generation that lives on social media. They read it, and they draw inferences about how their counterparts in Europe regard the transatlantic relationship.

>And get this. If you're hegemon you attract more slack no matter what you do. In many ways it involves being the geopolitical schoolyard bully and trump just makes that overtly clear. But it's not like protecting the dollars reserve currency status or any other such thing was something that didn't happen before and is now just being done to spite BRICS internet commenters.

I'm allowed to want to stop being hegemon. Maybe Europe can be hegemon next. You can see how much fun it is ;-)

>Like what's next? Want to go to war in the middle east again because they dislike you?

No, I don't want to go to war. I just don't believe in voluntarily supporting people who disdain me.

Or the Russo-Georgian war of 2008. European leaders have had plenty of time to react.

Just take the President of the EU commission, Ursula von der Leyen. She was Germany's minister of defence from 2013 to 2019.

Among my friends, the feeling is that the USA used to be seen as a valued ally, and now it has shown itself as a fickle and untrustworthy ally. Yes people are various shades of upset, and yes people now value European countries splitting from the USA. These two views are compatible, and have nothing to do with class.

Can you give some examples of this attitude? I'm not sure I've seen that behaviour anywhere, and it's very difficult to look up examples when your description is so vague.

With Nord Stream, the elites tried to gaslight their population using the media into believeng an stupid made-up story about how Russia blowed up their own pipe.

Very convenient for the US, not so for the EU

Only if it were Russia can Trump stay quiet about Nord Stream, which he has.

Lol. Just listen to any ‘opinion maker’ on European media - they whine about it 24/7. They’re ‘not happy’ - to say the least - that the status quo has changed.

How about the consequences of US proxy wars? Not a word about the reasons mediterranean european countries keep getting floods of displaced refugees.

Maybe if the US stopped bombing their countries, we'd stop getting so many.

The bombing of Libya was a full NATO operation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_i...

But yes, the War On Terror completely destabilized such a large area including Syria that it's been a disaster for Europe.

Correct, and that is why I argue that Europe is an vassal state, i.e. taking actions against its best interest because the overlord tells them to.

The internal refugees in Syria occurred because of multi-year drought. Burma, 2008, was a cyclone. Leaving out some theories on proxy war is like leaving out any other kind of challenge.

If the US wasn't fighting these "proxy" wars, Euroland would have a lot bigger problems. Refugees are a simple problem to fix. Don't take any.

The driver for this is clear, surely? It's that we're now unsure where the USA stands viz-a-viz Russia.

> instead of cheering that this era is ending, they seem to be all upset about it and want their collar to be put back on.

> Help me understand this

The answer is money.

All the get-rich-quick schemes/scams are coming from the US. For a very current example, look not further than Tesla vs Volkswagen valuation.

That level of dollars valuations that are completely detach from reality, and the capacity of getting real, tangible, value out of the scheme before it collapses as a house of card, is orders of magnitude above what you can get elsewhere in the world.

Hence the elites want to continue having access to that market, domestic market be damned.

Deep down the elites know this is the best thing that could possibly happen for Europe long term. Shed the dependency on the US, build your own defence economy and the myriad of parallel non military economic benefits that come from defence investment. Yes a painful transition in the short term so you have to whine about it a bit to try and limit the damage, but this US adminstration is the single best thing that has happened to Europe and the UK. This is where Europe gets reborn. In 20-30 years Europe will be a proper superpower again.

What do you do, if one of your social acquaintances goes full Kanye West?

"Anger in Greenland over visits this week by Usha Vance and Mike Waltz" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/24/greenland-usha...

It's not necessarily about being content to submit to the US, but more an ideology of globalism too good to be true. Most of the leaders in EU have some sort of collectivist mindset (either right or left, just what and the amount differ) and they apply this worldview to everything.

So when they see other countries taking the load/lead on things they don't think it's an "us vs them" situation, they think it will stay us, as in together. When everything is working ok, when everyone feel like they are getting their fair share, it works fine; but when the world becomes unstable, and they are tensions about resources and power it all breaks down.

This is the mindset that created the biggest providence state that ever was. But the problem is that it was always a lie. The thing was built on power imbalance between countries, and just because they accepted the deal when they were weak doesn't mean it will stay that way forever.

The only reason it worked in the first place is that they sold the newer generation's future, borrowing aggressively to fund a way of life that wasn't sustainable If they had thought long term, they would never have given so much power to other countries, the USA is one of them, but it's the same for China, and Russia to a lower extent. Now that those big countries are fighting for domination, they find themselves in the crossfire, just now figuring out that we are too dependent and don't have that much say because we don't have a lot of power.

You cannot solve a problem with the mind that created it, and that's the issue we face. We desperately need to think differently that what got us there, but they cannot erase their "programming", for them, it's the "right" way, it's basically the only way.

The US will fare a bit better for a while, precisely because they control important stuff, like the tech industry, decent army power and are still the de facto reserve currency. But in reality, they will face the same problems down the line if they don't change as well. The protectionism is because at the rate it's going, we will all be under China's rule before long. You can trade stuff, but never make yourself completely dependent on another country. You may be friends, until you are not. Things change, politics are unpredictable, it's a bad idea to hope for mercy when a big power is rising.

After WW2, Europe, Germany and especially France, tried to create the precursor of the European Union with a defense component. There should have been a common European army with European nuclear weapons a common command structure and soldiers from all members. When this didn't work out, NATO was intended as a European defensive alliance, without the US at first.

Why didn't those two things happen? Because of US influence: The US actively prevented any kind of military unification e.g. by preventing West Germany from going in that direction (as the occupier they could do so) and by alienating France and bribing and distracting the UK (by sharing plans for weapons such as nukes and submarines). When the NATO idea came up, the US offered their membership, but with a twist: NATO troops would always be under USian command. At every opportunity, the US made themselves indispensible for European defense and prevented any kinds of European political initiatives in that direction. That is why France rejected the NATO command structure for quite some time and was only "half a member".

This "arragement" had a downside of increased dependence and an upside of decreased spending and responsibility for the Europeans, and they got used to it. For the promise of US protection, Europe would give up its independence in that regard. Europe would be dependent on US-controlled military infrastructure such as AWACS, SOSUS, PATRIOT, and satellite coms and surveilance. Europe would be dependent on US-delivered weapons and weapons components. In many suppossedly national/european military hardware, there are some indispensable USian components like radars, engines or GPS, which is a double advantage for the US: they could sell something and have a means to stop any kind of use they dislike, either by withholding spare parts and support or by builtin remote shutdown switches. Europe participated in the occasional war on behalf of the US like Iraq or Afghanistan, and the US cleaned up some European messes like Yugoslavia.

It all seemed like a dependence that was one-sided, but still somewhat beneficial to the Europeans.

Now, the US are walking back on their promises and are actively breaking their side of the deal by e.g. questioning their future adherence to the mutual defense obligation in NATO article 5. This is a much bigger deal than it sounds at first: When you read the game theory of it, promises of mutual defense must be unwavering, there must not be any doubt in the mind of a potential enemy. If the rockets are flying, a red button must be pressed, no questions asked. Any kind of doubt will be exploited by an enemy, as can be seen by current Russian propaganda threatening Europe. In former times, the US would be first to condemn such threats and issue counter-threats. Nowadays: silence.

This means that the US effectively ended NATO. Mutual defense obligations and promises of defense from the US are now worthless. Of course nobody is cheery about that. A European common defense is years and billions (long scale) away. Of course nobody is cheery about that. After the Europeans dutifully obliged the US and accepted their declaration of article 5 after 9/11 (the only occasion where article 5 was ever invoked), the US now declare their ingratitude and unwillingness to ever reciprocate. Of course nobody is cheery about that.

same people who are convinced russia is going to lose the ukraine war and go bankrupt while at the same time endangering europe.

it's all about rhetorics being used to manipulate for personal gains of a small elite. the kind of elite who makes billion dollar contracts via sms and then accidentally loses such sms.

Those elites have known nothing but subservience. They simply can't imagine anything else.

What Trump did was to pull out the rug under the European establishment, which have all built their political existence on the transatlantic cooperation.

Who is to blame? European establishment wants of course the citizens of Europe to blame Trump and not them for not preparing for this eventuality.

But the truth is that almost all of them are responsible for neglecting what is the best interest of Europe. Thus they play this game.

Hard times are ahead if nations start to care only about their best interest and not about what is the best interest of the whole world.

Globalization died with Covid when it became obvious that the old order no longer functioned in a world with lockdowns and pandemics, it disrupted the entire supply chain.

Then globalization died a second time with the Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the emergence of BRICS and the consequences of sanctions and the breakdown of the global monetary system.

Covid was a hiccup for global trade. The just in time supply chains created by the constant whittling/looting of the MBA class were the problem.

Globalization died when the small minded monster Republicans had been farming for decades escaped its talk radio cage and found Trump. Trump (and his loser-mentality enablers) saw systems they didn't understand, and more irritatingly other parties who wouldn't just lap up shit as they were bossed around, and inferred this meant the US must have been getting a poor deal instead of an awesome one. (BuT tHE dEbT!!1!)

I think what your comment proves is that many Americans are stuck in the Democrat vs Republican mindset and thinking that kind of explanation actually works in a global context.

Pax Americana is over, US is no longer capable of dictating globalization to the rest of the world, why? Because many countries has caught up.

There's a world of difference between accepting a shift in relationships from 'dictating' to being more equal partners, versus deliberately trashing relationships and doing your best to alienate.

If the US weren't still some kind of world leader, USD would be in the toilet as other countries would have dropped most of their USD holdings. The current regime seems to be doing their best to make that happen, whether for cryptocurrencies, foreign agents, or just simple-minded looting.

I'm an American libertarian. It's not Democrat versus Republican. It's conservative versus neofascist/patrimonialist.

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