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Comment by DrillShopper | Hacker News Reader

> "we pay for people to arm themselves against us"

Sounds like you want a completely isolationist trade policy. How has that worked out for the US in the past? The only way to never pay another country to arm themselves against us or any other country is to never give them money, and unless we force them at gunpoint to give us what we want that is not going to happen.

> "we pay for the defense of people who won't pay to defend themselves"

The EU doesn't spend 0% on defense. Many of them are NATO members who are increasing their spending and who have demonstrated that they'll follow us into war after we are attacked (Afghanistan as an example). The US gets far more in soft power/geopolitical benefits out of our European allies and NATO members than we put in.

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>Sounds like you want a completely isolationist trade policy

No. You made this up.

>The EU doesn't spend 0% on defense.

They don't spend their full NATO commitments. And they are only increasing their spending because the current POTUS is bullying them into it.

>soft power/geopolitical benefits

People love talking about this but hard power is better.

> They don't spend their full NATO commitments.

Some do and some don’t. EU is not one country. But in general it’s a bit strange that we didn’t start increase spending already around 2014.

Americans enjoy their current (highly subsidized) standard of living in large part because we produce a surplus of goods and services that we export to the rest of the world.

If a good chunk of the world turns against the US, such that they refuse to consume our goods and services, then Americans will not be able to continue to enjoy their current standard of living.

This is why "soft power" matters, and it's why would-be contenders such as China have invested as heavily as they have in building up their soft power in LatAm, Africa, and elsewhere.

So yes, enjoy your "hard power," but you'll probably be poor.

China is using soft power because they don't have hard power, especially not enough to compete with the US. But they are using profit from the soft power investments to fund their hard power ambitions.

As somebody whose work is closely involved with the US military, particularly INDOPACOM and SPACECOM, I can assure you you don't have the full picture.

China is plenty capable of competing with us in a high-intensity conflict, especially regionally, but also in space, and they can even hurt us in the home front, if we're being perfectly honest.

Sure, the US might ultimately "prevail" such a conflict, but it's not a conflict US war planners or anybody with a clear picture of the situation is in any hurry to jump into.

You should pray that such a war never comes to pass, because it won't be pretty for any side, and has the potential to be especially dicey for the US if domestic politics are as inflamed as they are today.

> They don't spend their full NATO commitments.

Did something change? Nearly all of the EU allies in NATO were expected to hit the 2% commitment last year.

And then there's countries like Poland that spend more than the US as a percentage of GDP.

https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...

>> Sounds like you want a completely isolationist trade policy

> No. You made this up.

Okay - then square the circle for me. How do we buy things that China makes and be 100% sure none of that money goes to buying weapons to be used against us? Extend that to every business we deal with outside the US. The only way to get to the point where we're not know for sure that we no longer "pay for people to arm themselves against us" is to never trade with them.

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