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Comment by rapsey | Hacker News Reader

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If by pissing off you mean "making foreign entities follow European regulations", then, yes. But also, that's exactly what US, China, and Russia do too.

Don't break the law. It's simple.

Laws are negotiable between sovereign states representing the business interests of their nations. The EU, not being a nation itself, may not get that part and may have been feeling a little too invincible as a bloc of nations, but they have still basically pissed off most of their larger trading partners and it doesn’t stop there. Qatar is threatening to stop selling LNG over some corporate sustainability directives the EU passed in 2024, since the potential fines amount to 5% of their state energy corporation’s global revenue[1].

Personally I like the way Qatari’s Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi put it[2]:

> “If the case is that I lose 5% of my generated revenue by going to Europe, I will not go to Europe," Al-Kaabi reportedly said in reference to the associated penalties back in December 2024. "I’m not bluffing.”

Now you might be thinking, well who cares? It’s Qatar! Well Qatar also supplies about 12 to 14% of Europe’s LNG imports. Europe could get that gas from elsewhere, but elsewhere kinda includes either America or Russia.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/qatars-energy-minist...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2025/08/06/europe-is...

Or we could generate electricity with nuclear, solar, wind, and hydropower.

Well, that's exactly what we're doing.

The sooner EU gets away from fossil fuels we do not have (except NO I suppose), the better for everyone.

Sure, at some as yet to be determined time in the future, gas may be supplanted by electricity, and even replace it entirely. Right now gas is still king in Europe, and most residential energy use is just heating homes.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

We're not dependent on their energy. One example: we get 10-12% of our LNG from Qatar.

No one power controls all tech or markets. There are American and Chinese tech companies who are dependent on European tech companies (ASML being one of the better known examples).

The whole point of globalization is that we're all interdependent on each other.

All that being said: Europe has a ton of work to do. The spirit of your comment isn't entirely off the mark.

Russia is still an energy provider to Europe. Do we provide any security guarantees to Qatar or can protect the shipping lanes? We can not. It is controlled by the US, which is also a major supplier.

For every political squeeze EU can do, the US can squeeze 10x as hard.

ASML also has quite a lot of US suppliers. We are all tech dependent on each other, but China is working hard to fix that and the US also.

The US is providing security guarantees to Qatar? When did the Senate vote on those?

> The US is providing security guarantees to Qatar? When did the Senate vote on those?

Treaties aren't the only mechanism of security guarantees.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/assu...

Note the word "assuring" not "guaranteeing" (or "this assurance" in Sec 2 d).

Those are literally synonyms.

They are not in this context. They have pretty specific meanings.

They have a large military base there and provide arms and training. They do the same for the rest of the Gulf countries except Iran.

Not the same as a security guarantee.

The US is the security guarantor of the worlds shipping lanes. This is a corner stone of US led globalism. Read any geopolitical comentator or book and it will be there.

How does that relate to a security guarantee for Qatar?

Last I checked, Qatar was kicking out US personnel from Al Udeid because of Trump's threats to use it as a forward base against Iran.

Qatar is obviously not happy from Israeli strikes on their territory.

> One example: we get 10-12% of our LNG from Qatar.

Qatar is a pure American vassal state.

How about you start showing how you are right? Just claiming something isn't sufficient.

EU pissed off Russia when Russia invaded Ukraine?

I have read that narrative before, in fact it was just a few days ago when Trump lied that he will be forced to take Greenland because Denmark and Norway is pissing him off by withholding the strategic location of Greenland from him.

Same same.

Maybe we need to be more confrontational to assert our own borders and independence and stop trying to please autocrats and wannabe autocrats?

The EU protects its own markets, just like the other global power. You ascribe one-sided emotional intent to something that is a cut and dry centuries old geopolitical practise and is done by every single of the mentioned blocks (and in fact: by literally every country on earth). The EU has the right to regulate what happens within its borders in accordance to international law. Just because the EU is smaller, doesn't mean it has no right to play the same game.

Unless of course it is your world view that the perceived weaker side has to eat it all up and show gratitude afterwards. On a human scale that is like telling the bullied kid to shut up and accept the beatings, not widely considered an ethically sound position.

And the US spent the last 5 years pissing off the EU, China and playing a weird game with Russia while gargling Israel balls (as usual)

What's your point?

The US has power. Military, Financial, Cultural. The EU does not.

Look into why they have such power, and look into what's happening right now. It's not like these things are god given... All of them are slowly dissolving

~100 years ago the British Empire was the largest empire on earth, now it's an isolated island nobody gives a shit about, they should keep these things in mind while they're sabotaging their own soft power... There is a bakery older than their country in my home town in France

Had the US not had a demented lunatic as a president, none of this would've happened.

Trump or no Trump, the US's ability to be Europe's security shield had to come to an end one day or another. Trump is more a symptom than a cause: the US has weakened and others have strengthened. As many are eager to point out, the game is already up. Pretending like there is a future here is pointless. America had best leave internal European civil wars like Russia-Ukraine to the locals and retreat to whatever borders she can defend.

NATO died when Europe decided to outsource defense wholesale to the US so that she could fund her retiree class, proudly advertising how she redistributes as much as possible to the aged while relying on America to defend her borders. The US could not bear that weight and now Europe must carry it on her own. Doubtless the French will riot in the streets as the retirement age rises so that France may sustain herself rather than live on someone else's dime. But if Europe wishes to be defended, then she must defend herself.

God helps those who help themselves.

Europe never decided to outsource its defense to the US.

It was the US that wholeheartedly sold quadrillions worth of armaments to the EU, in order to support the cold war remnants of its military industrial complex.

The "funding the retiree class" comment is simply silly, I will not even get baited.

Europe relies on the US less for money, and more for capabilities.

Within North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the US provides most of:

- Strategic airlift (moving large forces quickly)

- Aerial refueling

- Missile defense

- Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR)

- Command, control, and battle management

- Nuclear deterrence (via the US nuclear umbrella)

Europe can field armies, navies, and air forces, but large-scale, high-intensity war is much harder without the US.

And that surely has nothing to do with lobbying of the US military industrial complex behemoths in EU countries, right ?

They just decided to stop building things just so they can buy them from the US ?

As if the US did anything for French Defence, except infringe on Thales IPs.

What's your point, that we should all build as many nuclear icmbs as possible? Because that is the only deterrent that the Russians and Americans truly have. This is a world no sane person would like to live in. The world we should live in is where we should respect the sovereignty of others and move away from using war and killing as a threat.

sadly you are not wrong. Or at least partially not wrong.

I wouldn't say pissing off, but more like 'not in a position for negotiations'. As we speak, EU is constantly slowing down their own companies while being fully dependant on US technology software and AI, being fully dependant on China's sources, chemicals, car-parts and batteries and importing (AFAIK still) Russian gas (which does not prevent german green activists from protesting against Polish gas-port). So welcome mr Trump, mr Xinping and mr Putin, which parts of our 'sovereign' conglomerate do you want to take?

I gave you an upvote because you're correct. EU leadership has no ability to think strategically.

Compared to supreme leader trump who just strategically fucked up decades of diplomatic relationships, with allies, in a few years?

Or compared to Supreme leader putin and his very successful strategic 3 days military operation?

Actually the Green deal is an attempt at that. Masked as a way to save the planet, its goal is to get rid of deep dependencies like gas oil etc, which we in Europe don't have sufficiently.

The main issue is the way the transition is happening, because I see China doing exactly what we should be doing: build coal, nuclear, etc. while you build tons of solar panels or windfarms.

The self inflicting pain forced by radical ideas is what is killing Europe. We have lost the pragmatism that made Europe move at a crazy speed after WW2.

I never understood why energy independence wasn’t put front and center when talking about this.

Because its not in the interest of the US that EU think that way. Thats what a lot of the trade deals that the US has imposed on the rest of the world.

Because we have lost pragmatism over the last 40 years more or less. The leading politicians like to treat people in a way as if these didn't understand what's going on. So instead of saying energy independent, they call it CO2 tax. Their fake morality is what is actually causing all this.

Radical ideology has taken over, rather than pragmatic ideas. I don't know how that happened, but I know we are paying the price for it, although EU is rich enough to do exactly what China is doing. That alone would put us in a better position.

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