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Comment by anamax | Hacker News Reader

Every president after Clinton, and maybe him as well, (yes, including Obama) said that Europe had to become responsible for its defense. During that same time, Europe has insisted that it knows better than the US cowboys. And, Europe certainly doesn't like US global power projection.

So, why does Europe need/want the US in NATO?

It can't be resources - Europe is rich. More to the point, Europe has almost 10x Russia's GDP and about 2.5x the population.

So, unless Europe is worried about Germany, it can handle its defense.

Show the US how it's done.

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It's about the nukes. Europe doesn't want a world where a lot of countries have nukes so the role of the US in Nato was to provide Europe with a nuclear umbrella.

I'm a Swede and something is going on between France and Sweden related to nuclear weapons. Not sure if it's about placing French Rafael fighter jets with French nukes or some type of collaboration about Gripen fighter jets with Swedish nukes.

> It's about the nukes. Europe doesn't want a world where a lot of countries have nukes so the role of the US in Nato was to provide Europe with a nuclear umbrella.

If anything, it has been proven that unless you have nuclear weapons, your country is at risk of being attacked by nations that have them.

Ukraine learned this the hard way, so did many other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

In its defence, Sweden does have lutfisk, that's a pretty potent deterrent. Not quite as nasty as Norway's strategic surstromming stockpile, but still enough to deter invaders.

> It's about the nukes

Is the right answer.

For all the jingoism being spouted, it would be nice if somebody had a whisper in Mango Mussolinis ear as to why NATO and the post 1945 order was formed, and who benefits from it (hint: all our democracies).

NATO was formed to counter the threat of the Soviet Union which no longer exists. Russia is nothing like the same threat to the US that the Soviet Union was. The US is now more concerned about China.

Europe was economically and militarily important globally than it now is. Therefore defending it is less important to the US than it used to be, while Asia has become more important to the US.

Russia is not even anything like the same threat to Europe that the Soviet Union was. It has been further weakened by the Ukraine war and it will take many years to recover.

As for nukes, there are two acknowledged nuclear powers in western Europe.

>The US is now more concerned about China.

Ah, that's why "U.S. pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia" :)

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-pulls-last-aircraft-c...

Yeah, recent events have clarified how much Israel and Saudi (and Bahrain, Jordan etc) are real defense priorities for the US. Expended a lot of Patriot interceptors and lost several aircraft on the ground including an incredibly expensive E-3 Sentry.

> recent events have clarified how much Israel and Saudi (and Bahrain, Jordan etc) are real defense priorities for the US.

And why might that be? Presumably because the USA decided to start a pointless war in the middle east?

Yes. The real priorities are not the stated priorities because the administration is lying and/or making extremely poor decisions.

Its not the last aircraft carrier in Asia, as there are three in the Indian Ocean.

It is also a failure, not a policy, and if the US is struggling in more important regions its all the more reason to pull back from Europe.

There's no active war in the Far East, at least for the US. Of course you bring mobile assets to where the fighting is right now.

Does the US really want to be facing a Europe with multiple nuclear powers and thousands of warheads?

Europe is a sleeping giant. America has long seen it advantageous to keep the giant sleeping. Now it is dancing around shouting "nee-naw" while the giant slowly opens its eyes.

> Does the US really want to be facing a Europe with multiple nuclear powers and thousands of warheads?

Why not? There is no causus belli to fear, and Russia and China already have lots of weapons.

Europe is not really a sleeping giant. People here are in denial about the decline of the west (as shown by downvotes) but Europe is simply not the power it used to be. Just look at the GDP of Europe as a a proportion of global GDP. It has been the slowest growing region for decades.

Hence "sleeping".

A young man and an old man taking a nap are both "sleeping," but one has his life ahead of him and the other is in his twilight. Europe is the latter.

It’s going to be very sleepy even after it wakes up.

and no giant.

Should be noted that not all of the locals have always wanted the foreign military stationed there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenham_Common_Women%27s_Peac...

It is probably time for the Cold War relics to leave. It doesn't help their case that the US and Coalition spent much of the past 25 years since 9/11 engaged in an ultimately fruitless war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nobody really wants to look at the Ukraine war in Western Europe. It's very apparent that the degree of caring depends on how far east a country is; Poland are talking about getting the Bomb. The UK has provided significant technical assistance and missiles but the war really is not in the public conversation, and attempts to increase military spending or even fix the Ajax have gone nowhere. Everyone is of course obsessed with refugees, but not at looking where they have come from or what they are fleeing.

The situation got even worse with the new Iran war. Is that going to be a ten or twenty year event? Is the US finally going to get the ground invasion of Iran it has wanted since the Carter administration?

We cannot build a security architecture by looking backwards. We have to look forwards. But I'd settle for looking out of the window at the world as it is today.

> the war is really not in the public conversation

We must live in very different Europes...

That's my point. The conversation is different in different countries. I'm writing from the UK.

> UK has provided significant technical assistance and missiles but the war really is not in the public conversation

Good God! If there has been a "lack of conversation", it is simply because not sporting Ukraine would be utterly unthinkable to us. The UK support for Ukraine has been, and continues to be, one of the largest.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-support-to-ukr...

Indeed, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, UK private citizens allowed 234,000 Ukrainian refugees to come and live with us in our homes and spare rooms. Ukraine flags are flying everywhere in Blighty. Slava Ukraini!

That's what I mean! The practical support has been really good. It doesn't filter back into the Discourse. There's no "having done that, what next?" It doesn't feed into discussions about military readiness or spending. The refugee success doesn't impact the endless small boats discourse.

This is rather like the Cameron administration actually being good on Net Zero.

The US paid for its alliances, hegemony, and safe shipping lanes by providing a comprehensive nuclear and conventional security umbrella via NATO.

Framing calculated realpolitik as an act of charity that the people of Europe should be grateful for is pretty cynical. It's always been a trade-off. The president has always complained publicly about the cost, precisely because admitting that reality doesn't win votes at home, but narratives about European leeches taking advantage of the US does.

If you want to see what it will look like after the US stops paying the bill for its incredibly privileged position, you can read about how much fun the process was for Britain in the 1950s.

Yes, the USA said that, but the damage was done. For many decades any inclinations for EU defense contracts to favor EU arms, were greatly frowned upon. France was derided for having made the right decision from go.

Post-WWII USA would give you Pax Americana, as long as you had no domestic defence industry.

And yet the Europeans have built one defense system after another in that time. I get why countries want to have their own defense industries. If I were running a country I would too. But the extent to which more of those systems haven't been deployed has more to do with mis-aligned budget priorities between countries and old fashioned jobs politics. Only the largest European countries can go it alone in major weapon systems development, and the joint projects tend to founder on discussions over what gets built where. FCAS/SCAF is a perfect illustration of this.

From the US perspective, what's frustrating is extent to which European powers, particularly the largest and potentially most powerful, have allowed their readiness to decline. I remember a particular surprise readiness exercise a few years back in which the Germans were able to get no more than a dozen tanks moving within the first 48 hours. The rest were broken, undergoing maintenance, or had been cannibalized for spare parts. At the time Germany had, on paper anyway, about 300 active tanks.

It's not the sexy stuff like new missile systems and strike fighters that have been neglected. It's the boring parts that really matter like an efficient reserve system, logistics, spare parts, boots, training facilities, ammunition, fuel depots, etc.

Nobody wants to spend a lot of money maintaining a military in peacetime, but an effective peacetime military is insurance: When you don't need it you don't need it, but when you need it you really, really need it. Your country's strategic situation can change really quickly.

> So, why does Europe need/want the US in NATO?

There's is no NATO without the US, it would need to be something else and function differently. That takes years because there's too many countries involved. We would likely get two military unions in EU - North and South, North on helping Ukraine and South trying to distance itself. Furthermore the time is running out until this grows into a bigger conflict, this is just from couple of days ago: "Alarm in Denmark after Russian ship fires at military helicopter"

https://www.politico.eu/article/russian-frigate-fires/

Flares. They fired flares at a Danish helicopter.

It's possible the conflict will get bigger, but I doubt it. I think what's happening right now is all about internal Russian politics. The Russians will lose in Ukraine without a big influx of new troops, something that's very unpopular. By provoking his neighbors in a few highly publicized incidents, Putin can play into existing Russian paranoia about invasion from the west, which will allow him to conscript another half million men.

But new troops don't help him if the need for troops gets correspondingly larger. My suspicion is after Putin gets his troops most of the talk about a wider war will die down, and all those new resources will be dedicated to Ukraine.

In my opinion it's because of:

- nuclear deterrence - like other commenters said, no one really wants a nuclear arms race, but I think it's bound to happen. Poland, the Baltics, Sweden/Norway will probably need to develop their own nuclear deterrence, and obviously Ukraine.

- the US for the most part has been a good friend and ally, and has a lot of weight, and above all it helped to create the EU and wanted the EU to succeed.

- Europe has had a lot of conflicts, and a lot of parties funded by foreign states are seeking to bring EU down, including the US administration. It would be nice for Europeans if it wasn't like that.

Then why did the USA sabotaged every attempt at a European army?

The answer is because you twist American President words: they want Europe to "invest" more in its defense, but stay subversient to the US, not take more "responsibility" as you wrote. Which means, in plain terms: "buy more American weapons". There has never been any honest wish for Europe to shoulder its defense, it is a pure money grabbing scheme.

You just have to see the hissy fit they throw every time Europeans put "buy European" conditions to any rearmament program.

Europe would be fully military autonomous if Europeans listened to the French. The countries that blocked and sabotaged French initiatives and European procurement all have a "special relationship" with the US: the UK first and foremost.

>It can't be resources - Europe is rich.

Oh, suddenly we are not "Europoors" anymore. Funny, that.

> During that same time, Europe has insisted that it knows better than the US cowboys.

Uh, weren't we right? I mean, isn't "no more foreign wars" a big rallying cry of a certain president and especially vice-president that resonated with a lot of the American electorate? On what grounds are you snarky here, exactly?

(We also saw from the beginning Trump was a liar, a conman and an idiot, but I guess you will reproach us with that too)

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