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Comment by daviding | Hacker News Reader

Up here in Canada it's a question of trust, or rather the lack of it. Things are unlikely to ever go back to the way things were.

Buy, make and domestically develop drones, lots and lots of drones.

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Canada should build their own air superiority fighter, with hookers and blackjack. They can call it the Avro Arrow.

With how generous Saab's JAS 39 bid is, I doubt there's much part for our own design: https://www.saab.com/markets/canada/gripen-for-canada/built-...

Well what do you know.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-accused-of-axing-avr...

Maybe if there was some political will for building stuff but there isn't. Canada should be an absolute AI and energy powerhouse, but our politicians are some of the most incompetent buffoons on the planet.

I don't know enough about Canada to know if this is a reasonable take or not, but I think you'd get downvoted less if you took a few sentences to articulate what the politicians' main failings are.

That would take more than a few sentences, but in general there is a lack of willingness to build new infrastructure. Canada has endless opportunities to both export energy (and not just oil!) and use it domestically - we should be utilising this untapped potential to build datacenters and invest in AI companies and research. Instead we can't even build new houses or hospitals for our exploding population.

Also, there's Alberta.

I wish Alberta would diversify their industry but at least they have the right idea re. building and expanding our energy exports.

Indeed.

So the question becomes whether these countries truly want to move off of the platform, or if this is all more of a bargaining chip in the trade negotiations.

JD Vance pretty much single-handedly destroyed most trust in the US in with his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Europe (and probably Canada and Australia) were shaken for days after it and realized that the US is not a reliable ally (or even not an ally) anymore. This was confirmed by the disastrous meeting with Zelensky in the White House and the US stopping to provide intelligence to Ukraine and F-16 updates (F-16s which were provided by European countries, not the US).

The pathetic little show you saw at the White House last week (with Macron, Mertz, etc.) is just a strategy to appease the US as long as needed so that the Europe can speed up its own weapon's production, increase independence, etc. It's damage control. The reason countries have stopped buying the F-35 is because nobody trusts the US anymore. And one or two sane presidents are not going to fix it (the US elected Trump a second time after all).

It is interesting how it is basically an indictment on the ability of the american people to manage their hard and soft power and military capability. That being said, populist right wing movements are taking root in europe as well. This threatens long term strategic planning in general, not just with the US, when critical positions of world power are replaced every few years by a subset of the population increasingly liable to propaganda influence granted by technology. In some ways regimes like North Korea are the most stable on earth due to careful control of the reigns of power and lack of any possibility of inroads for third party influence.

It's crazy that you're acting like this is some kind of policy failure for the US, when this administration has been telling Europe it shouldn't rely on the United States at this level. This isn't some "gotcha" that you're describing, it's exactly what the administration wanted europe to do. Wake up and start innovating instead of being the Disneyland for American tourists.

I don't know why Europe wants so badly to be reliant on the US. It's bad for them, it's bad for us. It's embarrassing for Europe that Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe for defense. It's embarrassing for Europe how little they contribute to NATO. The US isn't a partner, it's a caretaker. And as they say, if someone provides what you need, they also have the power to take it away.

Outsourcing your defense is stuupiiid.

Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.

Defense is a bit like advertising or finance. It has some aspects of a zero-sum game and a negative-sum game. All the money you invest in it is wasted. But if your enemy/competitor chooses to waste more money, you may be in trouble.

From an European perspective, the entire purpose of NATO from 1992 to 2022 was to prevent wasting too much money on defense. Because, for some reason, Americans were willing to do it instead.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the calculus changed. Now European countries are rebuilding their defensive capabilities, while Russia is still bogged down in Ukraine. Given the lack of credible short-term threats, limiting defense spending was clearly the right choice until 2022.

After Russia took Crimea and part of the east of Ukraine in 2014, I'm not sure that calculus was valid.

Yeah, spending also started increasing steeply since 2014 already, 2022 only accelerated it.

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

Also it makes sense to have a capability only once within an alliance. If the US has the command, space and air capabilities, why would anyone else need to have this. You can add to their capability by buying F-35s and hosting their air bases.

Now that we are not allies anymore we need to wastefully build up our own command, space and air capabilties resulting in duplicated effort.

The US promised to protect Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum, for which Ukraine had to give their nukes to Russia.

It's embarrassing for Europe that Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe

Europe has spent more on military aid to Ukraine than the US now.

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...

Even though the US vowed to protect Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum.

It's embarrassing for Europe how little they contribute to NATO

Before Trump, non-US NATO spent 425 billion and the US 654 billion:

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

So it’s true that Europe/Canada spent less, but it comes with a bit fat asterisk that the US also wants to project power in the pacific/Asia, whereas European defense is primarily focused on avoiding Russian aggression (+ peace missions + supporting the US in various operations to give them more legitimacy).

Europe should be thanking Trump for waking them up to the reality that has always been the case through his boorish negotiation.

That credit should go to Putin, European spending has grown rapidly since the annexation of crimea.

The credit the Trump should get: stop buying US weapons as quickly as we can and focus on non-US alternatives. It’s going to take a while, but US material has certainly become less attractive.

> Before Trump, non-US NATO spent 425 billion and the US 654 billion:

And I bet a significant proportion of that 425 billion was spent on US weapons. I wonder if anyone has that number

Who is reliant on whom? USA is only member that actually used help of NATO.

>> Ukraine is relying on the US instead of Europe for defense.

Is it? Especially in 2025.

It is embarrassing how little of (very old) heavy equipment USA provided to Ukraine. North Macedonia provided same amount of main battle tanks as USA, Poland provided ten times more. And zero fighter jets.

Anyway, people of Ukraine are thankful for any support and USA was the biggest donor during first years of the war.

Us Europeans are just baffled by the fact that this ‘administration’ wants this. The EU is a big economy that’s relatively easy to deal with. Why would you alienate us?

But yeah so far Trump has been relatively true to his word, as far as it goes. Not really practically but going further down the road of a dare I say fascist outlook. I think Europeans still can’t believe it’s happening, much less intentionally so.

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