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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

What does action (i.e. not-strongly-worded-letters, i.e. not words) look like?

Capture Trump?

Invade the US?

The idea the EU is some bureaucratic hellhole incapable of anything is really odd and nigh-universal - I'm used to righties adopting it from Brexit & antipathy for social demoracy, but I'm not used to see it as a despondent wailing from people otherwise sympathetic to it.

Note no one even mentioned the EU - it's so universal a reaction to "US is acting bad" that it came out of nowhere. Not to pick on you: when I was first replying, I also replied as if it was the EU! Had to go back and read the comment I was replying to and corrected myself before posting.

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> What does action (i.e. not-strongly-worded-letters, i.e. not words) look like?

Europe withdraws from the non-proliferation treaty, publicly resolves to building and maintaining a European nuclear deterrent and greenlights members who have been militarily threatened (the Baltics, Poland and Denmark) to start clandestine programmes.

The last part doesn't even have to happen. Hell, none of it has to happen. But that would be playing from strength.

Unfortunately, Europe is not politically unified enough to do this. (Same for Asia.)

There are much faster responses available.

For example France could gift or sell Denmark some nukes, possibly with a Rafale as a launch platform. Denmark would be an instant nuclear nation-state.

I'm not sure there is the political will though.

One non military but economical retaliation that would affect our industry is to stop respecting American’s intellectual property. Some variation of the trade bazooka. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Coercion_Instrument

Isn't this comment just confirming GP's sentiment that the EU is a toothless sitting duck that's begging to be plundered? Yes, when another country threatens your sovereignty you're supposed to vigorously defend it through shows of force, prepare for war and possibly impose economic penalties on the aggressor. The most the EU can do is put out some mild condemnations on Twitter (without mentioning Daddy).

Action probably looks like crash-starting multiple nuclear weapons programs. With or without the help of the british/french. Probably with.

I'd imagine programs from: the Nordics and Poland+Baltics. Maybe Germany, probably not.

What happens when you start making nukes and the US doesn't want you to?

Ssetting aside the whole non-proliferation thing, or expense (see NK), etc.

Let's get serious, please.

Sanctions come to my mind.

We would then hack you.

Why set aside expense? You do it anyway by whatever means necessary, like the DRPK. And if you’re a “western democracy” (also known as capitalist dictatorship) and you’re part of the ruling class, you still have the incentive to protect your assets, things you exploit in your country, land, natural resources, etc, that the US won’t be sharing or that they want to decrease supply when they take over through puppets or multinationals, and you can always force the public to pay for such a project, like all the times western peoples had to bail out or spend their taxes to benefit private corporations, but now it would look like it’s to protect sovereignty, which is a bonus of course, it would be to protect the local ruling class’s interests, but anyway. It’s clear the Americans will stop at nothing to acquire whatever it is they want, including indirectly violent means like ordering their financial institutions and tech giants to destroy whoever is on the way. The monster was always there since the Cold War and just now it dropped any pretenses.

Any sort of pushback at all would be an improvement.

Even now, the EU Commission is trying to 'defuse' the Greenland situation by trying to invoke NATO's fifth article, as if that's worth anything without the will of the USA behind it. You know, instead of like actually drawing out plans for a military alliance, economic retribution (remember all those sanctions against Big Tech which fell apart the moment Trump made even the slightest comment against them?) or… just about anything.

Laws are worth even less than the paper they're written on, and no amount of naïve idealism (and calling it that is me being generous!) will change that. NATO membership is worthless other than as an aesthetic signifier.

The EU aren't a member of NATO, so that's simply not true.

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