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Comment by MaxHoppersGhost | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Europe has been mooching off US military spend for decades. I also wouldn’t expect Denmark has the military capability to hold Greenland in a war.

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Dependence on the US has been a great point of leverage, and not what I would call mooching. Also the EU and Canada have stood with the US and committed soldiers regularly to US led conflicts.

Finally, Greenland would fall under NATO protection so who exactly would Denmark need to protect them from?

"Europe has been mooching "

All of this complaining about NATO, or WTO, or IMF, etc... Any globalization.

People forget -> The US designed and setup these systems. These were all founded and built by the US, to project US power and interests. How can we complain now for things we designed and wanted.

It sounds like a bunch of whining. "Oh Boohoo, We got what we wanted. I'm the most powerful country on the planet because we forced globalization on everybody and now I don't like it, boo hoo."

The US has been one of the biggest pushers for European nations to rely on NATO.

...biggest pushers for European nations to rely on the US, to be precise. If that's no longer the objective, fine, but there's no need to rewrite history and call it "mooching". It was a strategic choice, to avoid a repeat of WWII.

Relationships change over the course of a century. The 2% GDP defense spending agreement came about during the Riga summit in 2006. So the objective did change twenty years ago and many member nations never abided by that agreement; much to the frustration of both Bush and Obama. What you're espousing is more of a history rewrite by assuming we have had a static relationship going back to the end of WW2 and that this defense spending agreement is newer than it actually is.

So the correct response to that is brownian motion in foreign affairs?

The Netherlands during the cold war had an entire tank division stationed in Germany waiting for the USSR to invade.

Where does this idea come from that Europe wasn't spending any money on defense?

The US isn’t making most NATO members in Europe not hit their defense spending targets.

Most likely they are actually, every country will have a certain "% of GDP" threshold where once they go above that number, it makes more sense for them to spend the money in their own home grown defense industry vs buying US made weapons.

It has also certainly served US interests to keep certain European countries "down" and have them reliant on the US for their security for other reasons too.

The idea that the US decided to "subsidize" European defense for multiple decades, out of their own generosity is.... nothing short of completely laughable imo.

USA is the only country that actually used NATO article 5 to drag others into the war. The mooching complaint is ridiculous since it was USA actively getting benefits.

Won't alienating all your allies lead to increased US spending in the end?

The “allies” aren’t even hitting their NATO spend targets and probably haven’t ever. Beef up their military and the US doesn’t have to stop policing their world so much (currently the US is keeping European shipping open by bombing Houthis nonstop).

So let's invade Greenland and Canada. That'll fix it.

> currently the US is keeping European shipping open by bombing Houthis nonstop).

Keeping it cheaper.

When the Suez was blocked by a sideways ship[0], some of shipping went around Africa[1].

The USA also notably made it clear to the European powers that European powers absolutely didn't have any right to be the powers who controlled the Suez[2].

I also note that the official position of the Houthis is their attacks on shipping are supposed to be about Israel, the problem from the perspective of everyone else in Europe is that they're idiots hitting unrelated ships as well[3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction#Ec...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Route

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_attacks_on_commercial_v...

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