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Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

What I wonder is about the second order effects. I mean, I'm pretty far from Denmark but here the talk is pretty much like an existential crisis.

Even if the US does nothing about it, seems that many people has finally realized that Europe has no allies.

This has a lot of implications regarding the Pax Americana, the US/EU financial system, Eurasia, and many others.

I don't see any positive outcome for the west in general. Europe in particular is screwed but besides short-term gains I don't think the US is going to be able to sustain anything but very fragile and transactional alliances, if any.

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> Even if the US does nothing about it, seems that many people has finally realized that Europe has no allies.

Indeed. But just because EU thinks too high of themselves and is turning down their last natural allies that is the South American/Mercosur countries. So whatever happens to EU is their own fault

Europe and the EU are two different things. The EU is already having it's own credibility crisis inside the EU, and there are already heavy pushes for reform.

The conversation is completely different in Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain, for example.

The EU has enacted pretty stupid policies but I don't think the status quo was about to last a lot. Now with the Greenland issue things are about to speed up.

My guess is that, because they shaked hands with conservative leaders in Europe, the White house thinks this is going to benefit them.

I don't think this is going to be the case mid term.

Can you give an example of natural ally in south America that has been turned down?

What are you talking about. There's little real opposition to the EU-Mercosur trade deal. It'll be ratified this year. The EU is the largest source of foreign direct investment in Mercosur.

>I don't see any positive outcome for the west in general. Europe in particular is screwed but besides short-term gains I don't think the US is going to be able to sustain anything but very fragile and transactional alliances, if any.

Europe became the forefront of human civilization, the home of the renaissance and the industrial revolution, because of internal competition between states (as opposed to the large centralized autocracies of Asia and the Middle East). In the long term more competition will ultimately be a good thing for Europe, forcing it to stop resting on its laurels, to start innovating and growing again.

> In the long term more competition will ultimately be a good thing for Europe

Leaving aside the deaths of millions of people through warfare, then, maybe, but still doubtful.

Now we compete with the whole world. I don't see much "resting in its laurels" nowadays. Have you traveled across Europe the last decade?

There's no resting, just a declive.

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