EU have no hardware that can handle consumer mobile / computing. Whole world is fucked by those monopolies to be honest.
Because neoliberals get weak in the knees when fascists look at them.
In this new era, Russia, China and the US all want a return to spheres of influence and the rule of power in place of the rule of law, just with varying appetites for chaos (Russia) versus stability (China)
It’s been really annoying seeing Europeans lament the death of so-called international rule of law when, like, seriously? Tell me again how America doesn’t consider Latin America and the Middle East its sphere of influence that it gets to do whatever it wants with? Can y’all stop using “rule of law” to mean “good things for white people”?
Europe-based economic activity is among the least carbon-intensive in the world;
Isn’t part/most of this that Europe simply exported the carbon-intensive stuff abroad? Not exactly a success story IMO.
Because neoliberals get weak in the knees when fascists look at them.
nah, they say “What’s up, Dad?”
Even when you account for offshore emissions the EU’s carbon footprint has been going down since around 2010.
That doesn’t negate the existence of neocolonialism and it’s nowhere near enough to fix climate change, but the EU’s population is roughly constant, both it and China are reducing their manufacturing emissions, and economic growth in the EU has been slow and services-based. Like where would a supposed increase in emissions even come from? There’s nowhere to go but down.
I know good news feel unbelievable these days but this is one of them. Unfortunately this factually incorrect belief that emitting any less carbon is impossible without serious impact to QoL is why the european ecologist movements have lost a lot of steam in the past few years which is absolutely maddening because it’s empirically incorrect.
Because the Germans will stop at nothing to sell their fucking cars, and that’s the main driving force behind European diplomacy.
Due to the trade deficit and the service sector that America has over Europe.
They simply have more leverage
Due to the trade deficit and the service sector that America has over Europe. They simply have more leverage
The U.S. trade deficit with the EU would shrink considerably if and when we account in the service sector, so that’s a leverage the EU has over the U.S. rather than the other way around.
Because the entire point of the eu is to be a dog of the American empire. We’re supposed to be the battleground when war breaks out with China
if “we” relates to europe, at which border would the Chinese forces show up?
They go through Russia
you sound like my great-grandfather.
Because most of the western EU nations became puppets of the US after WW2 during the Cold War and then eastern EU nations following the end of the Cold War.
This is not an explanation, it’s a (faulty) observation at best.
It does explain why the countries still cower in front of the US. The EU at large still is a lapdog for the Americans. There is nothing faulty about it.
moving your goalposts? “puppet” implies remote control and a lack of agency. a lapdog however has agency.
anywho. European countries have repeatedly done things that went against US interests. Heck, France even left NATO for a time.
France is the only western country that has not completely succumbed to a vassal state. But the economy of all western countries has been subverted to American interests with the begining of the Marshal plan. There are no contracts stipulating the conditions of our countries vassalage to the US as if it were medieval times. So yes we can be all from puppets to vassals to lapdogs. They’re not mutually exclusive nor do they have to stay the same.
European countries have repeatedly done things that went against US interests.
Can you name examples? As far as I know European countries have not condemned America’s wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the broken up Yugoslavia, etc. I cannot recall a single war or coup that European states sanctioned the US for. In the larger picture the European states also were not independent and neutral during the cold war but stood on the side of the American Empire. Hell to this day they’re part of NATO, the military arm of the American hegemony. The sole exception was De Gaulle who wanted France as it’s own great power. Furthermore America holds a cultural hegemony over the western world with its media and manufactured consent production that is spread across the world through globalization.
Of course, European states were not neutral during the Cold War. For some weird reason they wanted not to become Russian vassals (and Eastern European countries followed suit as soon as they could).
But: being aligned with the US does not mean you have to be subservient or bound in any way. As you mentioned, France even left NATO for a time. Vassal states usually cannot do that (see again the Cold War for examples: Poles, Czech and Hungarians were very much not allowed to break free from Moscow).
We may be fighting over semantics here, but I think this is important. Are you member of a club you can leave anytime? NATO and EU are such clubs. Or are you bound to a pact where you get violently suppressed the moment you want to quit? Warsaw Pact was such a thing.
This is a hypocritical take. You’re specifically using the cold war as an example and claim that US vassalage is better and not actually vassalage compared to the Soviet Union. That just isn’t true.
Also you cannot just leave NATO. Leaving the EU is hard, but at least still possible. For explanation please look at the elections results of the past decades of any western country. You’d get a whopping 80-95% across the board for pro-NATO parties.
If a country were to somehow still leave NATO they’d likely face a quick invasion unless they lower themselves to ally with Russia and get guarantees.
As for the Cold War politics worked differently on both sides. The American hegemony is less implicit but still exist through it’s prevalent cultural hegemony. Consent is manufactured to stay aligned with the US up to this day. You can see this influence in official government policies, in the mass media and in the education system.
Also you cannot just leave NATO. Leaving the EU is hard, but at least still possible. For explanation please look at the elections results of the past decades of any western country.You’d get a whopping 80-95% across the board for pro-NATO parties.
“You CANNOT just leave NATO ! Because you do not WANT to leave NATO !” is … quite a galaxy-brain take.
Yes, manufactured consent is unfortunately rather indistinguishable from people having their own opinions, and if any opinion can be “manufactured”, you get to circular reasoning like “your not leaving NATO proves that you are actually forbidden from leaving”.
Because they hope to keep Trump in a boat against Russia, I find that very obvious.
I think this is a large component. I think the other is that the calculus on this from a trade perspective is that 15% is better than 50%, and there is a good chance Trump imposes 50% tariffs if no deal is achieved. This would be bad for everyone. In four years, Trump will be gone, and the tariffs will go away again. Of course this sets the precedent that future leaders of the U.S., China, and any other large trading blocks, could unilaterally impose tariffs, and the EU will just roll over. This is why temporary pain is often a better response than acquiescence. I think this is one of the failings of the EU as a governance model. It moves slowly and requires near total agreement. This limits negotiation options because at least one nation would oppose the short term pain scenario.
In four years, Trump will be gone, and the tariffs will go away again.
USA has possibly had its last free and fair election already (if it ever truly had them). And the electorate are increasingly having more balanced news sources replaced with sources bought and paid for by billionaires.
I don’t share your pessimism. If he wanted to enact a coup, he had four years and the world’s largest military to do so.
There is a strong body of research regarding the U.S. tariffs conundrum in the meantime (including here in this comm as I just read) revealing that Trump hurts the U.S. more than any other country or region. (And the EU is indeed the least carbon-intensive economy globally due its environmental laws that - as much as we need to improve also here- are stronger than anywhere else in the world.)
Op-eds like this one are being written these days on a daily basis, but they are exaggerated. The EU could maybe retaliate more (would this hurt the European economy as U.S. tariffs do in the U.S.?), but I wouldn’t say it is ‘cowering’. The Florida man says something every day, and it wouldn’t make sense imo to ‘bully back.’ Economic forecasts for the U.S. are much worse than Trump and these op-eds make it seem.
[Edit typo.]
I think the greatest concession made was that von der Leyen allowed Trump to frame this as a great victory for him. He has a fragile ego and always needs to look good. She is a much more diplomatic politician and allowed him to appear victorious. But the actual, realistic concessions are pretty limited.
I thought this was a pretty convincing argument why it’s not as bad for Europe as it looks https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sundown-on-the-potemkin-empire-trumps
She is corrupt - nothing more!
I think the underlying, but mostly unspoken, fear is that you have a mad man with nukes.
Because they are playing 4D chess against a checkers player.
… and you have to keep reminding him not to eat the checker pieces
