Unfortunately with both China and America not respecting the rules that's not realistic for Europe at the moment but one can dream.
It's a much worse feeling being threatened with military invasion by someone your own government tries to continue insisting is a close ally
European countries have been your allies for over 70 years, they've been molded by your policies on trade, to consume and to provide what you consumed.
And now you (and quite many others) come back to complain that you're being mocked? Yes, you are being mocked because your country behaves like a spoiled brat, a fickle-minded nation which only manages to measure "progress" through "how much money you make", a nation who decided to spread the motto "greed is good" without caring about your own citizens for the past 40+ years.
You do not survive alone, you cannot sustain your level of development without allies, and even adversaries, participating in the game you created to become a supremacy, and you are choosing to destroy this out of a sense of entitlement?
Your kind of comment is exactly why Americans are losing respect outside of your own borders, you are behaving as if the world was the same as in the 1980s.
The more I see this kind of comment the more I wish for the USA to meet its reckoning, to lose its status and meet reality. You're not what you once were, the greed game has eroded your society, your businesses, your infrastructure. Yes you are wealthy with some of the highest market cap companies in the world while having a sick, divided society, you fight amongst each other because unlimited greed will cause that: fractures, anger, and immense wealth for a lucky few.
You could be better yet you choose not to, repeatedly, and for what? More money? At some point that ends, it always ends...
When Russia started the war with Ukraine, they we're saying that it would be a blitzkrieg. It wasn't. And we're talking about a country which doesn't have any nuclear weapons, who's fighting with shitty FPV drones.
And you're here, telling us that Russia would even dare to set a single foot in any of the European country ? While they're in reach of French nuclear arsenal ? Without the ability to even know where "Le Terrible" is on earth ?
Come on kid, be serious for a minute.
Why the hell is the US on the hook for practically 2/3rds the cost of a system that monitors the entire worlds' ocean?
2. The EU claims the EU as its sphere of influence. The U.S claims The U.S and Central and South America by virtue of the Monroe Doctrine.
3. The U.S wanted to be in charge and be big and important, so if you want to be big and important you gotta do more.
4. The EU has military bases in the EU and the waters which touch the EU. The U.S has a military presence in every Ocean of the world.
UK/France and I’m sure others have bases all over the world.
Here is a list, by the way: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/overseas-...
Something else: Let's also ignore (or not) that the headline of the submission is waaayyy too grand for what's actually in the article. It's only about meteorological data collection. As important as it may be, there's a lot more science than that.
outside of France and Italy it seems all EU countries that have overseas military bases still have those bases in the EU, furthermore looking at that list you can see that the U.S has significantly more military bases in Europe than the EU countries have military bases outside of EUrope.
on edit: so in conclusion I am sorry about forgetting that there was in total 6 military bases outside of Europe maintained by EU lands (hopefully haven't miscounted here)
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy from the 19th century. A lot has happened since then.
> The U.S wanted to be in charge and be big and important
The EU isn't a sovereign country unto itself, so it either must be "big and important" or it has no other reason to exist. The EU is the second or third largest economy by GDP and not far off from the U.S. but it expects the U.S. to pay disproportionate levels for everything as if it's still 1946.
> The EU has military bases in the EU and the waters which touch the EU
The EU doesn't have military bases.
Like Kennedy invoking it during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Now it's true that John Kerry said the Monroe Doctrine was over in 2013, but John Bolton said it was "alive and well" in 2019. Bolton being National Security Advisor at the time to the guy currently occupying the White House.
>The EU doesn't have military bases.
hmm, you're right - obviously the EU should pay less.
on edit: added "at the time"
Kennedy didn't significantly reference it as far as I can tell:
https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-k...
The one question asked on Monroe Doctrine was not answered with precise reference to Monroe. Either way, JFK was responding to the challenges of the Cold War, which were altogether different than the circumstances under which Monroe opined on the Western Hemisphere. The Cuban nuclear missile crisis was sufficiently terrifying on its own, there was no need to harken back to Monroe to justify action there, even if he did at one point or another.
Part of Monroe's doctrine was for America to stay out of Europe and for Europe to cease colonizing the Americas. A lot changed since then, including World War I and World War II and then the ensuing Cold War. We ended up fighting two wars in Europe and establishing military bases there to fend off the USSR after WWII.
When Monroe Doctrine is invoked, it's usually in reference to maintaining influence and dominance in the Western Hemisphere. WWII forced our hand to extend our power projection to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The most significant evidence of this is NATO, of which the U.S. carries 68% of the defense spending.
> Now it's true that John Kerry said the Monroe Doctrine was over in 2013, but John Bolton said it was "alive and well" in 2019. Bolton being National Security Advisor at the time to the guy currently occupying the White House.
Right, because Monroe Doctrine is just an opinion on how foreign policy and strategy should be played out and not a binding law of any kind, it can be invoked or uninvoked arbitrarily depending on whatever is convenient for the administration in power.
>The EU doesn't have military bases. > hmm, you're right - obviously the EU should pay less.
The OP article references deep water buoys being deployed for oceanic temperature measurements under the Argo program, with the primary aim being scientific and having nothing to do with national defense. If you want EU to pay less, this should probably just move to NOAA and cease to be an international collaboration.
https://www.wunderground.com/article/storms/hurricane/news/2...
It more than likely has uses in defence?
Hegemony isn't free.
- Still buying Russian gas
- Dependent on U.S. Military bases for their own security
- Dependent on Chinese manufacturing for consumer goods
- Dependent on the U.S. for software and cloud infrastructure
- Dependent on the Chinese for computer hardware
Best of luck Europe, you've had a good run, but you've gotten yourself into a fine mess here.
The EU countries are, right now, pumping up their military budgets. Russia has just spent several years destroying it's huge stock of soviet era equipment. 25 years ago, that equipment was in better shape and the EU was reducing military budgets all over the place, and Ukraine was closer to Russia's sphere of influence - potentially far less safe but nobody knew it?
75 years just isn't that long in geopolitics, and it's a hard ship to turn around. Only 25 years ago the relationship between the US and Europe was still very strong and it didn't look like there was any pulling back.
You mention buying Russian gas. Again, it's very hard to suddenly stop that gas flow. Even Ukraine didn't shut down the gas pipelines going from Russian to Europe while they had existing contracts in place, it's happening this year. Gas from Russia was 40%, is now less than 11%, is forecast to drop much further this and next year. These kind of economic dependencies also continued for surprising long in previous wars between countries that were actually in hot wars with each other.
The kind of changes you're talking about are slow. The US also has it's dependencies on Asian manufacturing that it is also now trying to turn around, and that will also be slow.
As an American, I think the US as EU scapegoat mechanism is so cute.
No history, no bad blood. Those centuries old rivalries and wars have all been forgot about lol.
So isn't it optimal to depend on science someone else does? They spend the money, but you both reap whatever knowledge is obtained.
Or do you mean there are spinoffs? But then how is science supposed to be superior at producing these compared to directed development of actually useful things?
Hitchen's Law can be applied to such assertions. "That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." It's an article of faith or of personal preference masquerading as an objective truth. Because there is no evidence backing it up, if some political party comes into power and wants to slash funding, what are you going to do to fight them? Proclaim your opinion more loudly?
> computer science
Wouldn't this have (and wasn't it largely) developed anyway once computers were being made for practical reasons, like thermodynamics came along because of steam engines? In any case, isn't math and CS theory a great example of the point that you can let someone else do it and then get it for free? If I invent an algorithm or prove a theorem, if it has any value other people can take it and run without my permission or knowledge. What I get is the ego boost of having been first, but is that sort of historical vanity a justification for expenditure of public resources?
You’re assuming that modern programmable digital computers would have arrived at the same point in time even if the theoretical foundations from Frege and Babbage onwards had never been laid (and that we would have had just as much success programming them to do what we wanted). Possible, but hardly something that can be assumed. And of course, Church and Turing’s seminal work predates the advent of programmable digital computers, contrary to what you appear to be suggesting.
As for computer science, the US made the biggest investment in it and got the biggest rewards. It doesn’t seem like an example that supports your claim.
WW2 was 80 years ago. It's time for Europe to reprioritize in favor of economic growth and development; deprioritize protectionism and bureaucracy; encourage investment in small businesses; unite politically instead of pretending to unite; and let go of the cultural past by looking to the future.
The U.S. is always changing, and will always be changing. That's the nature of the country and the source of its strength.
I'm ready for the downvotes--but I haven't said anything that is not true.
We can also add “unite politically” to the list.
Making Europe pay more for its own defense is one of the few smart things Trump has done. The rest is almost universally harmful to both America and rest of the world.
givemeethekeys•6mo ago
surfsvammel•6mo ago
xyzzzzzzz•6mo ago
whynotmaybe•6mo ago
3 days after the start of the invasion, Germany announced a €100 billion increase to military spending.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitenwende_speech
tharne•6mo ago
vikaveri•6mo ago
chrisco255•6mo ago
The 100B euro investment was also a temporary one-off budget allocation that had been distributed over the past 2 years and to little effect: https://www.grosswald.org/eu100-billion-later-fixing-the-bun...
[1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/debating-defence-budgets-why-... [2] https://militaryppp.com/blog/
seydor•6mo ago
We europeans are having a really hard time breaking our US addiction. I mean what are we even doing in here
bpodgursky•6mo ago
It's not a time to be playing political games buying sub-par weapons. Bad for Saab, but that's reality. The world is dangerous again.
alimw•6mo ago
bpodgursky•6mo ago
It sounds hypothetical but seriously, what would Gripen do if tactical nukes were dropped on Estonia and Putin threatened the same on Sweden if they didn't back off? I don't know, and you don't either.
*I've not seen credible accusations this is possible, but assuming it is
jltsiren•6mo ago
givemeethekeys•6mo ago
inejge•6mo ago
(EU already did it, however partially, with its own satellite navigation system.)
pfdietz•6mo ago
Any. Day. Now.