Here’s a fnord for you all: the US is positioning European nations as rivals while demanding an increase in their military budgets. Think about it. What happens when countries like Germany, in a post-NATO world, start boosting their military budgets? Is… is the US happy when China increases it’s military budget? Does it leap for joy when Iran or North Korea spends more on missiles? Any increase in the military capacity of any country is contrary to the nationalistic and imperial interests of the Trump regime. The more European countries grow their militaries, the less powerful the US will be, contrary to the very foreign policy that the Trump regime is creating.
And who wants to see what my friend here in Denmark calls “a fully-activated Germany?” Part of the reason the fascist-lite AdF is so popular is due to the industrial woes of Germany. Do we really want to see a fascist party rearm Germany? I know Trump, Musk, Rubio, Hegseth, and Vance are fucking idiots, but the reason NATO’s military requirements are low and laxly enforced is, in part, because European militarism was mighty ugly in the 20th century. Even from the limited and tragic point-of-view of the MAGA crowd, encouraging the people you’re cutting ties with to build more effective militaries is multi-facetedly stupid. It is a fever-dream to imagine, even for a scintilla of a second, the briefest mote in time, that if Germany was run by a MAGA-like party that they’d be content to play second fiddle to anyone.
Of course, Germany is hardly the only European nation with imperial fantasies lurking in the dark corners of their subconscious. A century ago, the sun never set on the British Empire. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria and more still had far-flung empires of their own not too long ago.
“Oh,” you might go, “but Europe is so divided.” Well, yes, but that’s part of the reason to keep it relatively demilitarized. Arms races were invented by Europeans. The idea of the European powers racing to develop better, more powerful weapons because their neighbors are doing the same is a terrifying idea that, again, has had fairly recent downsides. I mean, if you count global wars as a downside. Maybe the MAGA guys don’t.
And the fractured nature of Europe could be a benefit for developing new and terrifying weapons. A problem the US has is that our defense sector is sluggish. The development of new weapons is mostly in the hands of five – five! – companies. These companies are deeply conservative – not just politically but also in a business sense. Innovation is low and there are no attempts to cut costs. The most significant recent military technological developments have happened in Ukraine, a poor country in the middle of a brutal invasion. Yes, necessity is the mother of invention, but that’s happening with the, well, former allies of the US in Europe. You’re making innovation necessary.
What happens when you take the highest-tech nations in the world, ones with developed industrial bases and the best-educated populations in the world, and tell them to innovate their way into more powerful militaries? Answer: they do exactly that. The most successful nations and companies will have not only have disproportionately powerful militaries – which, to repeat, has never gone wrong in Europe, right? – but become major arms exporters, with all the wealth and international influence THAT brings, but also all the risk. Additionally, all the other countries in Europe will see military development as a way to increased power and profits. It’ll create a rolling arms race. Again.
The function of NATO wasn’t “just” to present a common defense against the aggression of the USSR. It also removed military competitiveness from technologically advanced European countries as a bulwark against resurgent European nationalism. It’s bad enough that dipshits like the AdF are growing in power – something that even other right-wing dipshits shouldn’t want unless they like speaking German – but to demand that their countries double their defense spending while it happens? Madness.
To me, the finest encapsulation of this is the behavior of Hegseth. This guy has strutted around for the past ten years, waxing poetic on the glories of white American soldiers. It was like, in his mind, they were all (the original) Captain America. But his first move as Secretary of Defense was to tell the oldest allies of the United States that the US wasn’t going to honor the NATO pact while bending over and grabbing his ankles for Putin’s cock. Literally pissing off our best friends while giving in to an in-the-flesh supervillain. It displays disloyalty, stupidity, delusion, and cowardice all in one go. MAGA in a nutshell.
Bah. That’s my fnord for today, though. By both demanding European nations look out for their own defense while also breaking long-standing alliances, the US is creating a rival to the very power that the Trump regime wants in the world. Which I wouldn’t care about except it also endangers everyone else.