'There Is No Going Back': The Inside Story of Europe's Rupture with America | Hacker News Reader

'There Is No Going Back': The Inside Story of Europe's Rupture with America

wsj.com

70 pointsAlien1Being66 comments

The challenge for Europe is if it can actually deliver. It’s been highly dependent on the US economically, technically, militarily and otherwise for decades. Posturing on sovereignty has ramped up again but it’s not fundamentally new.

A lot of folks would take Europe more seriously if there was more substance behind the talk. If it wants to replace US tech it needs to be competitive with US tech. Today it’s light years off.

The US has its own challenges, but it’s ability to unite as a country of independent states is something that Europe is unlikely to match anytime soon and that has a direct impact on the ability to execute everything Europe is posturing about.

For any Europeans who've been tracking the issue: How much take-up have Mario Draghi's ideas for business reform gotten?

From 2024: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-r...

As far as I’m aware a lot of noise was made about a 28th Regime “eu-inc” and not much happened. It’s still a pain in the ass to start a company in too many places (albeit not all).

Draghi himself has said the EU hasn't taken the steps mentioned in the report, and that every challenge in the report has only gotten worse [0].

[0] - https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/business/20250916-mario...

It's hard for an addict to stop being dependant upon a dealer - not least because the dealer wants to maintain that dependency. We've been suckered, and fallen for it hard, but now that Trump has made it clear that the US will never again be a reliable partner, the scales are falling from even our leaders eyes.

The headline has it right - there is no going back.

We should unironically thanks to that hollow head. His lack of understanding that Our dependence on US is a weapon, not a burden is the best thing that could happen in terms of more sovereignity.

Europe is not a country. If you meant the EU, it is also not a country.

You are comparing the US to a bloc.

Each member state will likely take a different approach to independence from the US, and the bloc as a whole may offer some incentives in that direction.

One thing is for sure, any talk about independence from the US 10 years ago would be looked at with complete skepticism. People that said anything in that direction was looked at as a crank.

Now it is a much more palatable position. Change starts like that.

Will it hold? I can't tell. I think it will be very unlikely for things to go back to the previous state.

Yes and this is the point. If Europe as a “bloc” wants to put substance behind the rhetoric then it needs to get everyone running in the same direction to actually compete with the US. Until then it’s all just wishful thinking.

I mostly agree. Europe’s biggest weakness is that many nations still carry grudges against each other, rooted in hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of years of conflict. These old prejudices usually only get pushed aside when there is a serious external threat, such as the ever present possibility of a devastating war on the continent.

The US has a much more unified culture, enormous scale, and a geographically protected position, with access to vast resources. Europe has the technical talent, but much of its technology has often been bought by US firms, partly because VC funding is far weaker here. I think that is largely cultural.

At the same time, Europeans were sold the idea that the US is their friend. It is an ally, but not a friend, and that distinction matters. Now that illusion has started to break, there is finally an incentive to change.

If the EU becomes strategically protectionist in the same way the US already is, for example by preventing key IT companies from being sold overseas, it could gradually move critical infrastructure back under European control. It can do this partly by copying already proven solutions, such as AWS. Of course, this would not be easy, but Europe does not need to spend billions discovering a completely new product category from scratch. The models already exist.

Surely the first problem I mentioned will be the biggest obstacle for all of this as it is for everything. We will see what happens, but at least something has started to move. European's should unironically thanks the hollow head currently leading US, because he simply didn't understand that European dependence on US is a weapon, not a burder.

>>“Europeans were sold the idea that the US is their friend. It is an ally, but not a friend, and that distinction matters.“

This is a fair and key point and also worth considering the view from the other side of the pond. Americans were legitimately getting fed up that the ally-ship was getting too one sided on who’s pulling their own weight in the relationship. Military spending is one hot topic coming to light again now that the neighborhood is looking unstable again.

Europeans often say “but look at our social net you silly Americans.” The American view often says “your social net has all that government money because your defense is highly subsidized by us.” That’s glossing over a few points but the math is directionally correct. Europe is running the numbers and increasingly realizes this too. Reckoning with that is one of many future hurdles facing Europe.

>" ally-ship was getting too one sided"

unless you consider the world accepting USD as the reserve currency which is enormous "one sided" gift to the US. I remember how hysterical orange went with various threats when the idea of dedollarisation had started to get any roots.

That was mainly my point. If you are paying for security, you are paying for someone's obedience. Not even mentioning that European armies dependant on American weapons is gigantic security risk, which no one ever will be held accountable. This all I perceive as biggest US influence based weapon which is slowly slipping away.

I understand that politically it is sold as that European countries are leeches, which is absolutely an valid optic, but I believe this was still trade benefiting US more than Europeans.

Needles to say I would gladly see my country spend much more on military, reform pensions system which is absolutely botched and become much more self-confident.

>"copying already proven solutions, such as AWS"

Who says that copying AWS is any good. Some version of it sure is useful but the rest is nothing but arm twisting half of the world into idea that they should be paying huge rent to a giant corporation for the things that can and should easily be done without. Corporations like this are a threat to security.

Absolutely. I meant their occasionally usefull services in general like ec2, s3, etc...

They probably exists but usere still not accepted them as an standard.

You don't necessarily need to be competitive with US tech to be independent. Most countries aren't as good as the US on tech but they get by.

> If it wants to replace US tech it needs to be competitive with US tech

There has been the age-old argument of how Linux can only replace windows on the desktop if it is "good enough".

In reality it has been good enough almost from the very beginning (I've been using a company-issued work laptop with Linux since around late 1994 so I feel comfortable saying that). What people really mean when they say that is that they want it to be exactly the same as windows where everything works exactly the same and can't be bothered to do anything differently.

Which of course it won't be exactly the same. To use a different platform you have to accept some differences. That's a feature, not a bug. Monocultures are terrible, the more diversity the more resilient the ecosystem.

So no, Europe should have completely different (but RFC-compliant compatible) tech stack, not simply an identical clone of US tech. That would be a strength, not just for Europe, but for interoperability across the world.

Let's remember, that's how it used to be! Systems on the Internet might be SunOS or IRIX of HP-UX or AIX (if you were weird), or even a VAX, or any of a long tail of smaller lesser-known manufacturers. It all worked together, but different.

Europe is already competitive, or leading, in many areas.

The US only has leverage over ASML due to other ties. If those are broken the leverage disappears and without ASML Americas tech industry suffers greatly.

Similarly Rolls Royce engines and BAE manufacturing are critical to the US military. The F-35 cannot be built without critical parts made only in the UK and which have no second supplier.

Europe doesn’t need to math the US military and wouldn’t want to in 2026. Look at what Ukraine is doing to Moscow. The US military is a machine built for a war that never came and now which never will. No one wants 11 carrier groups anymore because fighting that way is the past.

Europe is in many ways a mess, and I say that as a native born European with American citizenship who’s spent my adult life in the California tech scene.

However America is totally dependent on Chinese manufacturing, global supply chains and European partners and bases. America can’t produce N95 masks, nitrile gloves, or a chip fab to compete with Taiwan despite billions in government funding to accelerate these projects as critical.

Americas situation is as messed up as Europes and the US has fewer people, less land and fewer resources as a whole.

We're paying a very high cost, but it's not something that regular Americans will notice in their day-to-day lives, which will likely mean that perception of the problem will continue to fall across ideological lines.

Either way, we're in an age of decline and fracture.

Trust is slow to build, quick to destroy.

It wouldn't make any strategic sense for Europe to wait it out and see what happens next, and no doubt it has been a wake-up call to see how quickly the US can pivot from friend to adversary.

Once Europe has severed reliance on US, then it is hard to see them reverting.

I think the silver lining here is that decentralizing power from America is a good thing, for the world, long term.

It will be interesting to see if Pax Europa can hold, or if the continent will return to its historically consistent belligerence.

Hopefully, Europe has learned its lesson. The way it was handled post-WW2 is pointing in the right direction.

WW2 was the direct result of that "historically consistent belligerence". Simplified history: lots of tension in Europe -> WW1 -> screw you Germany, we won -> Hitler: we are not having it! -> Germans: that's the guy we need! -> Oops -> WW2.

That why they did it differently post-WW2, focusing more on international collaboration (and a little indoctrination, you don't want to miss an opportunity do you?).

Also, Europe is not the center of the world anymore, they have better things to do than infighting.

History doesn't stop. Majority Muslim states in Europe might have different priorities.

If I had to pick a global hegemon, America is probably a better choice than most. But "no global hegemon" seems even better.

The last 80 years have been exceptionally peaceful compared to the rest of history, so I hope it continues despite America's loss of hegemon status.

I think looking back at history we’d generally find that the most peaceful periods coincided with there being the strongest, fewest hegemons

At least historically, this isn't supported. I'd refer to Sarah Paine's talks for more details.

More fault lines and pirates and no one to police them.

No, it isn't imho.

After the cold war has ended, the western nations focused on not giving a fuck about military strength, allies or facing opponents the size of Russia or China. Instead some small-time infantry campaigns like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were started and then basically abandoned without any decisive result or even with a total failure. But even back in the 2000s, there were no common goals and no real alliances, just some commitments to save face and keep up appearances.

So now, Russia in Ukraine and Iran in the Persian Gulf have called the bluff that is Western military power and decisiveness. I'm guessing those were just the first instances of a long line of wars that should have been prevented by the US-lead West, that are now possible because the West is fractured and aimless.

Interesting choices, to frame the US-Iran war in the same terms as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as if Iran was the aggressor, and to frame the invasions ("small-time infantry campaigns") of Iraq and Afghanistan, which led to millions of lives lost, in the same terms as the comparatively minor US intervention in Syria.

The common thing is that there were no desired results because the west decided to do some half-assed thing and just go with the minimum amount of force and troops. Also, some parts of the west decided to start/intervene/participate, while others abstained. In short, nobody cared enough about the goals and about their respective western allies to go in with a heavy force, accept some losses and do the job properly.

Of course circumstances, reasons, participants and histories beyond that were different.

The (ten) trillion dollar question is if Euro nations are going to foster fertile grounds for domestic American/Chinese competitor companies to grow, and at this point, grow rapidly. The second question is if this will be done jointly, or if old lines will come back over not wanting to be encumbered with "dead weight" in the need to move fast.

If by dead-weight you mean the two speed Europe, I don't think that's possible. That weight is what makes the EU such a large market.

This is the issue.

Both the US and China [0][1][2] are playing hardball against the EU because we both view the EU as a junior partner and tend to negotiate with individual states bilaterally.

I think a lot of Europeans also don't realize that a large swathe of Chinese decisionmakers and policymakers studied in the US since the 1980s, and they tend to think and operate in the American manner as well.

[0] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1361926.shtml

[1] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362161.shtml

[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202606/1364526.shtml

No to both in my opinion. The EU market is in reality still heavily fractured - especially in the services sector. A Hungarian construction company for example can't just easily build a bridge for a town in Italy. With Europe steadily getting older effective reforms become near impossible - especially those that would lead to large changes for workers. So Europe will forever stay in this semi broken / semi integrated state - and much higher trade barriers towards China and the US seem much more likely to me than a more competitive Europe.

Old lines were never gone. All the talk about Europeans finally doing a common thing always carry some footnotes like "the Republic of France reserves the right to deviate in matters of military, security and production of sparkling wines and demands a 45% part in all tenders". Trump just needs to threaten champagne tax and France will surrender, or car tax and Germany will. Absent outside pressure, it is even worse. European treaties consist of more national exceptions than commonalities.

Not much will be done: Europe will not manage to become sovereign and independent from the US. Things change slowly and a next Dep POTUS will come again closer to Europe. My opinion, not advice for investment.

I think the biggest issue is that Europe and the EU has gotten themselves into a position where they don't actually offer much anymore except a pretty good middle class consumer market. They've put themselves into a place where they are just very easy to squeeze, which is what is happening from all sides by Russia, China, and the US.

Trump's antics have accelerated that position, and maybe they weren't expecting it from USA, but it was probably inevitable given their long term trajectory.

US wants Greenland, Russia wants Ukraine, China wants Africa, etc. This reminds me of the intro to Fallout games, the one with "war, war never changes". The fight for the last of Earth's resources enters endgame phase.

Europe is finally breaking with America ? At least this time, nobody has to try invading France first ^^

I am not sure I understand the logic. What historical events are you referring to?

This was directly caused by a US regime which can only operate transactionally and cannot itself be trusted. Trust is highly perishable.

I think this is overly simplistic. Trump 2.0 was certainly the catalyzing event, but the issue is one of US political failure. Europe could have forgiven a corrupt regime that had an opportunity to be changed out, and was, when it became destructive to European interests. However, there is no recourse today. The US political system has demonstrated that it's corruptible and toothless in the face of authoritarian overreach, regardless of the systemic support that had to be in place for the administration to be so effectively destructive. This is the issue that is irreversible, in the long term. An authoritarian will rise again in the US, sooner rather than later.

So Putin's failure in Ukraine is balanced by his wild success in the US. The eye-watering corruption of Trump and the Republican Party has irreversibly damaged relations with the democratic allies of the US.

Well it's surely not only his doing

The way I see it is that reactionary media ecosystem made an industry out of hating the United States (for all the ways it failed to live up to conservative values), motivated by corporate entrenched interests wanting to hamstring the government so they themselves could occupy the power vacuum. But then as more and more USD-savings accrued outside of the US, that ecosystem was bought into and augmented by foreign hostile powers whose goals mostly align with the corporations. Meanwhile the executives and managers in that media ecosystem have suffered the same bureaucratic-spreadsheet clock-punching decline as other industries, leading to a tail-wags-the-dog situation where they don't know what actually putting America first might even look like.

Europe seems to have forgotten that influence is a function of power. The leaders in the article lament their ability to influence the US on policy, but what do they bring to the table to effect that influence? Military power? Economic power? Technical innovation? The only thing they have is a small amount of cultural power that they have used to shame and criticize while entirely relying on US protection.

The UK found this out the hard way after Brexit. When you go from sitting at the global table as Europe to being a relatively small island nation in the North Atlantic folks tend to negotiate with you differently.

How did the recent excursion into the Middle East go for the US. How much power did project in the end?

I'm not defending the US here. The Iran War is a good example of my point as well. Iran reminded the world of their bargaining chip - the strait of hormuz - that the world had either forgotten about or undervalued.

I would like to see Europe have influence. I think it is good for the world. But no global power is going to give them that influence for free. They need to identify and exploit their competitive advantages. Cultural power is definitely one of those advantages, but wielding that power has actually lost them some of their influence in the US. Just like the US's use of military power also has consequences.

Europe isn't as bad as you might think. Though they may not be no.1 in military economic or innovation they are still quite strong.

Ukraine is an example - when that oval office thing happened Trump thought he could cut aid to Ukraine and force it to surrender with a cut of the spoils to the US/him but Europe took over and since then have probably been doing better - I note Russia's largest refinery 2500 km from Ukraine blew up last night.

Why is everything today flagged? This is now considered to by the too much political?

>‘There Is No Going Back’

I figure there will be some going back when Trump goes. He's an unusual president.

So many people have to get burned before they realize working with a rich sociopath is a bad idea.

From the article:

> The new year was only three weeks old and President Trump, after removing Venezuela’s autocratic strongman, had briefly threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark.

Did Trump threaten to seize Greenland? The WSJ links to an article with the quotes below. The quotes reflect sheer buffoonery (as expected), but so far I haven't seen the threat to seize Greenland.

This seems to be the consensus, but its not clear to me that it happened.

From the linked article:

> During an hourlong speech at the World Economic Forum, the U.S. president said he wouldn’t deploy the military to take control of Greenland.

> It was a stark shift in tone for Trump, who just days earlier had declined to rule out using the military to secure ownership of Greenland and posted an image online of the territory with an American flag plastered across it.

> “I don’t have to use force,” he said. “I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

> “We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it,” Trump said of his desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark. “You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember.”

From the very quote you pasted:

>> It was a stark shift in tone for Trump, who just days earlier had declined to rule out using the military to secure ownership of Greenland

So the problem seems to be your reading comprehension. It seems like you're focusing on the things you want to hear from this double-talking conman, while forgetting all of the things he's said that you don't want to have heard.

(and preemptively, I don't want to hear some rationalization how declining to repudiate something is technically different than endorsing it. A statesman should project stability by reaffirming shared values, this addled buffoon does the exact opposite)

I agree that Trump is a terrible statesman! Also a buffoon, cad, lout, charlatan, and swindler.

But apparently he never threatened to invade Greenland (assuming thats the best evidence you have)

I'm a member of the grey tribe, and very disappointed with "both" factions right now.

Well it's just the evidence you yourself brought. If you're looking to get to the truth of the matter, it's odd to reject the possibility of something that is directly referenced in what you're quoting, no? That is why I responded somewhat harshly - it feels like highly motivated reasoning.

But for trying to find the truth of the matter:

> earlier had declined to rule out using the military

That's a concrete, verifiable claim. It could certainly be false! But I don't see a reason to assume it is false, and so I would ask what is your reason for simply assuming it is false?

A few minutes of digging, and I came up with this:

> Asked if he would use force to seize Greenland, the president said, “No comment,” in a brief telephone interview with NBC News.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-...

Unfortunately this is vague as well on what exactly was asked. It sure would be nice to see a transcript of that phone call! But I'd say that quote does tighten the bound of mischaracterization, in that it would have to be gross misrepresentation on the part of NBC news to have the thrust of that statement be incorrect. Such a statement is also completely in line with other maximalist quotes I found while digging.

> I'm a member of the grey tribe, and very disappointed with "both" factions right now.

Since we're talking about where we're coming from: I'm a libertarian who had never voted for a major party candidate in a national election until 2020, when I voted actually-conservative aka Democrat. I'm certainly disappointed in sensationalist blue media, prevailing blue groupthink, and most certainly disappointed in the "solutions" championed by the Democratic party. But I also don't see that there is any middle ground to be had - we're up against the law of excluded middle with supporting Trumpism (radical reactionary populism) or not. So while I've been staunchly against the status quo bureaucratic authoritarianism basically my whole life, I'm certainly not eager to throw it away in favor of autocratic authoritarianism.

Yes, he definitely refused to rule out use of military force!

But that really and truly is not a threat to use military force.

Consider the following hypothetical:

- * IF * the questioner had followed up with, "Are you threatening to use military force?" and

- * IF * Trump answered "of course not"....

Would that be a contradiction? Not at all! Because his first statement wasn't a threat.

This is literally strategic ambiguity combined with bad statesmanship. But if you look up any and every time he has been asked whether he would rule out the use of military force, I would expect that in every case he declined to rule it out. Of course he's a buffoon, so he might not have adhered to that correctly.

This is exactly the kind of sophistry I addressed in the postscript to my first comment:

> preemptively, I don't want to hear some rationalization how declining to repudiate something is technically different than endorsing it. A statesman should project stability by reaffirming shared values, this addled buffoon does the exact opposite

When the topic is the use of military force against allies, it is a leader's job to unequivocally reaffirm the partnership. Trump's non-denial is not some technically-correct "strategic ambiguity". Rather it is an implicit threat that military force may be used against an ally. The reactions to that threat were entirely justified.

It’s not a threat, and yes it’s atrocious statesmanship.

Did he hint at the use of the military? YES

Was that offensive on both sides of the atlantic, inside and outside of diplomatic circles? YES

Did he actually threaten to use the military? NO

Neither his poor statesmanship nor his lack of character change the meaning of the words, I can’t understand why you keep bringing that in.

Because, as I said, it is an implicit threat. Especially with the context of everything else he said. For example:

As quoted by The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/donald-trump...

> "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace," he wrote

As quoted by NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/world/americas/trump-gree...

> I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way

This all adds up to a straightforward threat to use military force. You are essentially acknowledging this, but characterizing it as "strategic ambiguity". What is the point of this "ambiguity" if not to carry the implicit threat?

The hard way was tariffs, you know that.

Now you’re saying he didn’t actually make a threat, but he implied one?

Which means you’re assuming his intent to be whatever makes for the most lurid headline.

Funny that these professional journalists didn’t think to ask to clarify such a monumental possibility. Or maybe the ambiguity was what they wanted all along. And apparently people (such as yourself) just eat it up

> The hard way was tariffs, you know that.

No, this was shortly after the US military had attacked Venezuela. It's reasonable to take this as a threat to use the military.

> Funny that these professional journalists didn’t think to ask to clarify such a monumental possibility

They did. They got "no comment". We covered this.

You also completely skipped over "I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace", as well as the copious other statements from Trump and his deputies implying the same thing. Those are all a mere web search away.

This is feeling like a gish gallop of highly motivated reasoning, and I am having a hard time believing your claim that you're an unbiased "grey" looking for truth rather than merely a Trump supporter in denial. If you want to pull up from this, you're going to have to start addressing the core of my point.

Reasonable and true statements:

- "He hinted at use of force" (he did!)

- "I think he's implying the use of force" (you own your thoughts!)

Problematic statements:

- "He IS implying use of force!" is actually just a guess, even if (let's say) it's 80% likely to be true. It's still a guess. It's not something you know.

- "HE THREATENED TO USE FORCE!" you've just promoted your guess into yelling fire in a crowded theater because you're a troll

None of this reasoning applies if you're a cat. For a cat, words and sentences just register as an emotional valence, with no comprehension of what it means to distinguish fact from inference.

If you are a cat, I apologize for misapprehending your lived experience.

Could this somehow be a scissor statement? This is simple logic, there is no motivation here.

HYPOTHETICALLY let's say your uncle has an 80% chance of having cancer. Do you say that he has cancer? Or would you say it's likely that he has cancer?

"Trump's pathetic attempt at saber rattling" is the truest and fairest statement on the whole affair that I can possibly muster. Which is nothing like threatening to invade. Hilarious and sad, but not frightening.

Email me we could even discuss live! sutter at gmail

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