Europe can't trust the US anymore

Politics & Elections
141

All of which present concerns support the central thesis that NATO historically is an entirely voluntary, entirely defensive alliance born out of Europe’s very well-founded desire not to be invaded by Russia.

NATO was absolutely not motivated by an American desire to start a war with Russia. It’s only possible to believe this if you believe that Russia has a natural and legitimate tendency to expand into Europe, and anyone who opposes this expansion is provoking a war (as opposed to, y’know, the country doing the invading).

That’s why Europe is freaking out now. Russia wants to start expanding again. NATO is the backstop, and Trump is threatening it. This is an incredibly easy situation to understand unless you have a worldview so polluted by anti-Americanism that you’re willing to swallow Russian propaganda wholesale (propaganda which, by the way, is being actively pushed by Russia toward both ends of the US political spectrum).

If you like the dumb nunchuck analogy, here’s a better one - Russia is the barroom bully who pushes right into your chest and up in your face saying “you better not touch me or there’ll be a fight”, hoping you’ll back down or maybe trip and fall. Then you land a haymaker square on his nose and he simply leaves. That’s the way this works, it’s the way it’s always worked, and needs to keep working, otherwise he gets the bar to himself.

142

I’m sorry but I can’t allow this to stand. Numerous countries came to the aid of the USA after 9/11 - let’s not forget, the only country to ever invoke article 5 of the NATO constitution - including European countries such as my own, which has lost hundreds of military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. Your allies HAVE stood with you. The problem right now is that the US is doing its damn best to treat its allies like dogshit - WTF are you doing to Canada? To Denmark?. So if we don’t stand with you in the future, you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

143

Yeah, that’s the point. If Canada had them the US couldn’t invade without much more significant risk, especially since we share a border and there would be very little warning. Which is of course why any attempt by Canada to acquire nuclear weapons would probably result in military action.

This is completely ahistorical. Name a single war that the US has fought without the help of its allies in the last century. Not Korea. Not Vietnam. Not Afghanistan, or even the ridiculous pointlessness of Iraq. I think you’d probably have to go back to the Indian wars, or maybe the US invasions in the Caribbean to find a war where the US was on its own.

144

And, as has been pointed out upthread, the US is the only NATO member who has invoked Article 5. The ops in Iraq involved troops from the UK, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Portugal and Slovakia. The ops in Afghanistan involved troops from every NATO country.

145

Putin would say that Ukraine can’t join NATO because it would be used as a staging ground for troops and weapons to attack Russia. You don’t have to believe it, I certainly don’t, but on the surface, it’s more plausible than any of the foreign policy justification coming from the US right now. Have you heard the administration’s nonsense about fentanyl from Canada and how Greenlanders really want to join the US?

146

That is, of course, a legitimate point, but without me checking, ISTR that allowing weapons systems and/or troops to be staged in a NATO member’s country isn’t a requirement, but an option.

If this were truly the cover story that Putin were going with – and it’s surely a possibility – maybe the proactive/preemptive hosting of troops and materiel could be a point of negotiation for Ukraine.

147

The quip from some British bigwig was that NATO was invented “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down”.

148

Is it a legitimate point though? Why does Russia get the right to dictate the politics and diplomacy of its neighbors? Ukraine never threatened or invaded Russia. NATO doesn’t expand by coercion, only by request by countries who don’t want to be invaded by Russia. That’s Russia’s real concern, that it won’t be able to menace its neighbors like it has for the past 70+ years, like it’s attacking and menacing Ukraine at this moment.

This is why Europe is scared, and they have every reason to be. It’s terrifying to see the muscle of NATO aligning with Russia, the one country it’s specifically supposed to be keeping out of Europe. It scares me and I’m not even European or in Europe.

149

I wasn’t defending the point that Putin might try to make. I was agreeing with @Tired_and_Cranky that Putin might try to make that point absolutely without regard to its veracity, rationality, or plausibility.

150

At the time that was a consideration. When NATO was created Russia was officially Communist & atheist, and therefore an utter abomination to both economics and religion that had to be destroyed even if it meant humanity going extinct. “Better Dead than Red”. The Cold War was a Holy War, and was one of the few periods when the Russians were perfectly justified in fearing an invasion, or an outright attempt to genocide them.

Modern Russian is religious and fascistic, and therefore much more acceptable to America.

151

Here I will concede you a point, that although the US’s animus toward the Soviets was polarized in the right direction, it was for all of the wrong reasons. The right reason would’ve been a correct reading of history, that the real enemy is Russia’s desire to expand and subjugate. This understanding could’ve included supporting anti-colonial revolutions in places like Cuba, not being incredibly picky about whether they were communist. We could’ve said “America is all about revolution, we love casting off tyranny, so if Vietnam helps us resist Russia we’re glad to have Communist friends.”

But we didn’t. We made it all about communism, which meant that any reaction in the opposite direction was fine, so we made a habit of overthrowing whoever we felt like, with the nastiest reactionary possible. Catastrophic global effects, maybe America’s biggest foreign policy blunder and crime of all time.

Yes it had some “holy war” characteristics on both sides, but no, the Russians were not justified in fearing an invastion. Not ever, at any point. This belief is Russia’s standard playbook of massing forces on a border, then claiming they’re about to be attacked, then invading to create a “safety buffer”. Then they do it, and claim that anyone who opposes it is a “warmonger”. It’s happening right now in Ukraine. It’s not because anyone’s threatening Russia, it’s just because Russia wants more territory, and this expansionary playbook has mostly worked for them.

This is exactly what happened during the Iron Curtain partition. People get this odd sense of selective amnesia where it comes to NATO in Western Europe. “How dare the American hegemon warmonger park its dangerous nuclear forces threatening Soviet forces in Czechoslovakia”. Excuse me, how did we all forget how Soviet forces came to be in Czechoslovakia? That it is not Russia and never was, it’s is literally a sovereign country that Russia invaded and subjugated? Simple. Russian propaganda is more effective than we think, and it found many willing dupes in the west.

Take your knee-jerk anti-American view of the Cold War and try peddling it to anyone who shares a border with Russia, or anyone who was actually subjugated by them. Sweden, Finland, Poland, the Baltics. Go try telling them that the Cold War was driven by American hegemony, that NATO is an aggressive alliance, that the Russians have “legitimate security concerns” and are just misunderstood. You’ll hear some things, you might learn some things.

No argument here except with the word “modern”. Russia has always been exactly like this. It’s just the Communist Party was the most effective PR engine the world has ever seen, masking Russia’s bloodthirsty lust for genocide and expansion as a workers-liberation ideology. What you’re calling “modern Russia” is just the mask of Communism falling off to expose what’s always been there.

152

The Spanish-American war comes pretty close. Wiki lists only the Cuban Liberation Army and Phillippine revolutionaries on the US side. It was a nothingberder of a war, though, with 4/5 of the US dead from disease and 19/20(!) on the Spanish side.

153

Sure they were; much of America was slavering for it. Or just killing everyone with nuclear weapons. America was if anything more aggressive than Russia at the time (which is saying something, yes). One of the very few virtues the USSR had was that the people running it didn’t consider “kill the world, including ourselves” to be an acceptable outcome. The same can’t be said of the US.

154

Over the past two months, the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the largest military in the world has said:

  • Canada should not exist as a separate country;
  • the boundary between Canada and the United States is an artificially drawn line;
  • one of the boundary treaties between Canada and the United States, in force for over a century, should be reconsidered;
  • he will implement the tariffs which will severely weaken the Canadian economy;
  • that one of his goals is to destroy the Canadian auto industry, which is one of the drivers of the Canadian economy;
  • Canada should become the 51st state;
  • the United States should use its economic powers to force the annexation of Canada by the United States.

This is in the context of the same President threatening to use military force to annex Greenland and to reconquer Panama.

Two Canadian Prime Ministers, who have been in contact with Trump, have concluded:

  • Trudeau: Trump is serious that he wants to make Canada the 51st state
  • Carney: Trump wants to break Canada.

But sure, he’s just joking, right? Trump says things that are odd, right? Canadians shouldn’t even speculate about that military down south coming up to Canada. It’s just a joke.

If Putin had said all of those things in the fall of 2021, transposed to Russia and Ukraine, what would you have thought it meant?

Canadians would be foolish to ignore this threat to our sovereignty, and not to consider whether the United States will copy Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

155

These statements were not made by Plumber Joe but consistently by the Acting President of the United States, and have been repeated in part by the Secretary of State, other confirmed officials, and the lickspittle microbiome. They might consider “trolling the libs” to be part of their official job, as per the X White House channel, whereas previous officials would have considered this well beneath their station. Canada has no reason to take it lightly when the economic consequences are real and have already taken effect to the deafening silence of The Hill and The Courts.

156

It’s also worth mentioning that Trump has carried out his most repugnant campaign promises – at least in a cursory way.

Everything the MAGAs called either ‘bluster’ or ‘negotiating tactics’ has – to one degree or another – come to pass.

And worse.

There’s no material room for doubt that he’s taken turns in both the imperialist and autocratic direction. The only open question is degree.

And his “muzzle velocity --” as Steve Bannon once called it – is frightening.

There are any number of pending cases against his administration, any of which – should he lose – he’ll try to jawbone all the way up to SCOTUS.

At this point, unless the Democrats can make significant gains in the Congress, SCOTUS feels like our best hope.

And it ain’t much.

He should always be taken quite literally and quite seriously. With Trump, the only option is to hope for the best while planning for the unthinkably worst.

It’s a horrible way for millions and millions of people to have to live, but here we are.

157

I was (casually and not very frequently) thinking about this thread when I went down to Spain for ten days to thaw out some Nordic winter a bit early. It was interesting the read Spanish media and compare to what I get at home and things are indeed moving fast. A couple of random thoughts regarding the statement of the OP: i.e. Europe can’t trust the US anymore.

Could we ever? That might be flippant on the face of it, but countries tend to do things that serve themselves and the electorate, keeping those with power in power. The U.S. never put military bases in Europe out of the kindness for strangers. And the demands on NATO countries on spending two per cent of the GDP on defense was of course good for the U.S. military industry.

The reason my own country (Sweden) developed tanks (which were shitty) and jets (which are almost on par with American) and other military tech (e.g. Archer, which we’ve shipped to Ukraine) was precisely because we were - officially - neutral. Of course we knew that the enemy was the USSR and to no one’s surprise our coastal artillery was always concentrated on the Baltic sea. not the west coast. In spite of the neutrality, the idea of an invasive force from the UK or Iceland wa just too silly.

But the idea of having to buy everything from the U.S. didn’t sit well with the purported neutrality.

The period frpm 1945-1991 certainly tested our faith in the U.S. as “the good guys”. It tested the faith on parts of the American people too, as the whole Vietnam quagmire clearly demonstrated.. But living in a gulag was infinitely worse than having a large bully stomping around, Godzilla style, occasionally breaking things.

But did we trust the U.S?

I’d like to make an albeit horrible analogy with Harvey Weinstein.

Miramax released a lot of really great movies in the 90’s, What little we knew then about HW was not very positive, but the old debate about separation of art and artist (e.g. Polanski) rarely rose to the point when we said Enough!

And in a way, it is actually similar to how I - one person - feel about the U.S: It’s truly a fantastic country. Nature and geography is breath taking. I’ve travelled across the country a few times and have only met nice, hospitable people (being a well off Scandinavian no doubt made me privileged as compared someone who snuck across the border from the south), NY and LA are - for all the good AND awful things produced - the cultural centers of the world. U.S. universities always rank at the very top (even if many achievements at them are made by Non-Americans).

But, as with HW, there’s that nagging feeling that we can’t just look at all these shiny things. There are other things too and I think it started in the 80’s when the U.S: basically forced “globalization” on the world.

That plan has run out of steam and so the U.S. is trying to force yet a new world order on us. The shitgibbon in the WH is just a useful idiot and handy distraction. For some, he’s like the latest greatest release from Miramax (think Pulp Fiction), for others he represents all that is awful about the violence and filth coming from Hollywood (again, Pulp Fiction).

As the shitgibbon sidles up to Macron et. al. saying “Nice defence organization you guys got. Better start buying a lot more weaponry, lest something happens to it.” I can’t help comparing him to the studio big shot saying to the latest ingenue “You know, there are bigger parts and I can be a very good friend.”

I am - as the situation stands now - not the least bit worried about Russia, with or without aid from the U.S. There’s reason for caution and vigilance, but that’s always the case with the Russian bear, as our brothers in Finland are well aware of.

I am - however - at least concerned about what the greasy eminences behind the curtain in Washington are doing and what their end goal is. And no I don’t trust them to do things out of the goodness to strangers.

158

Your position is totally ahistorical.

If NATO was created to destroy the USSR, why is the entire North Atlantic Treaty worded to make it entirely about defending from an attack and supporting the decisions of the UN?

If NATO was created to destroy the USSR, why did it actively embrace the membership of countries that had no interest in such a thing, would make no meaningful contribution to such an effort, and would have refused to do so?

If it was the USA’s intention to attack and destroy the USSR, why didn’t they when they had the nuclear advantage?

Do you have ANY evidence to support your claim?

159

In order; NATO is not the US, NATO is not the US, and the madmen weren’t in charge of the asylum then. Reagan was pretty close to just killing us all for Jesus, though.

160

You weren’t talking about Reagan. You said that at the time NATO was created, the intention of destroying the USSR was a consideration. That is false. NATO was specifically created to defend from the USSR.