Both Spain and France refused to let US forces use their countries in the attack against Iran. Germany’s AFD party, supposedly their right of center party wants all US troops out of Germany. I say we focus on Space force and pull all our troops from Europe. Give them what they want. Europe won’t last 5 yrs without turning into a totalitarian state.
However, that’s not Americas problem. We focus on our hemisphere, we take Greenland as our exit prize for giving the Europeans what they want. We continue to build our country and focus on MAGA.
Better to be a hot cheerleader with options than to be a wife to a worthless cad. Alliances tends to limit America’s freedom of action. They should instead ape Elizabeth I. She played all her suitors off each other to buy time and benefits with a little trouble.
NATO is a defensive treaty. That got debunked when one Nato nation refused to loan another nato nation one anti-missile battery.
I've long said we need to pull our troops back home and strengthen our own borders, then use diplomacy to bring South America to our side. We share a common religion, common language (even if it is Spanish) and common goals.
We should have done that instead of worry about Fortress Europe.
this is an incredibly misguided, incorrect and biased view as some others have pointed out in this thread. America is the only country that invoked article 5 of NATO- ever. soldiers from poland, australia, canada UK and many more came running after 9-11.... to fight a misguided war in iraq under false pretenses. Thousands died for that cause in a war that did not have any WMDs. the world learned a hard lesson then as did the people of the US actually who wanted and voted for "no more foreign wars". this current administration lied to us.
the US has been backing off protection of the eastern european flank since trump came back into power and he has been railing against NATO. NATO is a defensive treaty not a mercenary unit to be summoned at will bc the US feels like it. US and Israel illegally invaded a sovereign foreign nation (just like Ruzzia invaded Ukraine) and europe is supposed to believe that the US will come to defend them when ruzzia comes knocking? the US did not bother warning or consulting any of its supposed "allies" before bombing Iran, instead berated them backwards and forwards and insulted them. The iran invasion is something which not only the rest of the world condemns but the American people are 60+% against this war. Poland, (like spain, like UK, france, and others) have the right to do what is in THEIR best national interest and protect their own sovereignty and national security, which right now is to protect its eastern flank against the russians and their allies. Ruzzians have been handing targeting data to Iran and yet the US wants us to believe they will defend europe? Poland would have had to be braindead to effectively commit harakiri to give up missiles that it needs to defend against ruzzian incursion (plenty of illegally crossed airspace by russia and drones and ground sabotage on polish soil). In Iran the US was the aggressor. Iran did not invade the US or actively threaten it (listen to Joe Kent). There was no invocation of article 5 bc the US is not under attack it's placed itself into a powderkeg in iran against ALL MILITARY ADVICE and intelligence. based on what exactly should Poland believe its back would ever be protected by the US? roosevelt and stalin and churchill signed poland and eastern europe and the baltic states to the USSR at Yalta bc it suited them. Poland learned its harsh lesson once and as the 4th largest economy in europe it's not about to surrender to the whims of a wannabe american authoritarian. why would they?
i will say the best thing trump did for europe is to show europe Americas true colors. they have indeed ramped up their own defense spending by large amounts and are actively cutting their interconnectivity and dependence with the US... isnt that exactly what america wanted?
why don't they ask Hungary for missiles ? oh right bc hungary is on ruzzias side and we wouldn't want to inconvenience them.
America is an example of the idiom "the appetite grows with eating". also i suspect Muse is a russianbot bc it hasn't replied to a single response yet has received a lot of engagement. Internet takedowns of poland are quite popular by the former soviet union, no surprise there.
In other news…COVID made us realize that while we were fighting terrorism in ME, we sorely neglected our supply chain in which China was more than happy to take over and made it incredibly cheap to do so. “Everything is made in China”. Yep, it appears so. So let’s say we take the “isolationist” route…pull ALL our troops home - FOB America, we’ve more than done our share. Fuck ‘em. That includes you, Canada. We’ll save a lot of dough (possibly) and the countries we leave are going to take a small/medium hit to their economies. Are we pulling everyone? Or just those in Europe? Maybe we can shift more people to Pacific Asia before China takes the godamn Marshall Islands…and the Taiwan Straight.
How will that affect our trading partnerships in those countries? Will it? Perhaps that’s where the rubber meets the road, and countries like Germany, France, Italy will acquiesce - meaning they will begin to stand on their own as Eisenhower mentioned. Still have that damn supply chain issue tho. That’s going to take years to fix, assuming we can. And now we are forced to build larger bases or new ones to accommodate our incoming soldiers.
Do we need to take the isolationist route in the first place? Cause these countries don’t give a shit…until they do. But I’m tired of playing patty cake with these assholes.
Because we have PAVED this road…patched the potholes, repainted the lines. This IS a good solid road. And it’s cost us a small fortune. Are we willing to tear it up? We pull out of Europe and we know what will happen- we good with that? Good, bad or indifferent…that’s not us. It’s never been us. Sorry, but we ARE the gold standard whether we like it or not (wouldn’t have 11M illegal immigrants otherwise). Just considering the consequences if in fact there are any.
The mythical "Russian threat" has long since been debunked. Afghanistan, the collapse of the U.S.S.R., and the protracted Ukraine invasion have demonstrated that Russia isn't- and hasn't been- the formidable military force we once assessed it to be.
This, of course, doesn't mean that the Russians are incapable of conquering Western countries. That would depend on how much the Russian leadership was willing to sacrifice in blood and treasure in order to effect that conquest. And even without an American-led NATO, the Russians would still need to factor in the possibility of the U.S. coming to the aid of Europe under attack.
At this point, American expenditures on NATO are wasteful and counterproductive. Eisenhower was right. Western Europe is capable of standing on its own and must be expected to take the responsibility for doing so.
I can think of many reasons Poland's decision might have been A) Reasonable considering how few of those weapons it can expect to ever replace before Russia makes the moves the writer acknowledges are coming within 3 years, and B) not as particularly significant or symbolic as repeatedly stated here. I don't see any firm substantiation of it being so. I don't disagree that Europe should be more able to defend itself, but it's obvious the profit-oriented nature of the US MIC has been an equal force in keeping the arrangement going all these decades. The US never cut off Europe from its arms subsidy, and arrogantly ignored Russia's security red lines, out of baked-in financial incentives to keep some very big gravy trains rolling along America's byways.
It looks like NATO is in for a change, yes. Europe has to consolidate and rearm, yes. The nukes are an issue. Turkey shouldn't be a NATO member as an islamic state. Turkey is the only backstop for a kurdish state, which would make a far better NATO member.
It was the US’ choice to maintain its outsize military over the years, as it was their choice to maintain European bases as key projection points into the Middle East and Central Asia. Europe, however imperfectly had found peace unknown in decades and had achieved a working compromise with Putin’s Russia.
Things went south when the Bush Junior presidency pushed hard (against the advice of Angela Merkel) in 2008 for Ukraine in NATO followed by figures in the Obama administration being heard in Ukraine in 2013 talking about supporting “their man”.
That is not to give Putin any excuse for what he has done, but the US as the dominant NATO member committed to and sought commitments from allies on Ukraine that Trump has done everything to reverse.
To be fair, a Trump presidency in 2008 or 2013 would have done things differently with Russia and perhaps we all would not be where we are if that had happened. But that is not what happened.
The European perspective, which includes that of Britain, which may surprise many Americans here, is as follows.
First, Europe is very grateful for US material and capability support in Ukraine but has now stepped up to the point that it provides the greater part of material to Ukraine. Second Europe and Britain are disappointed at the Trump about-face on Ukrainian support. Third, Europe and Britain do not understand why the US is not more suspicious of Russia given well evidenced sabotage efforts against undersea cables, murders of Russians abroad and the use of chemical weapons against people living in Britain.
Fourth, European nations and Britain in particular were deeply offended by the words of VP Vance demeaning their military prowess when over in thousand servicemen and women died in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Fifth, Europe and Britain have been deeply troubled by belligerent talk from the Trump administration calling for the seizure of Greenland. Existing treaties with Denmark already allow the US to surge forces into Greenland in the event of threat.
Sixth, the US did not initiate this war against Iran, an offensive action, with NATO. It did not consult or plan this with NATO. Now, if media is to be believed, Trump wishes to conclude this inconclusively leaving those same nations to pick up the economic cost of a war they had no say in.
I live in Britain and have had the good fortune through travel and work to have spent a year of my life in total in the US in perhaps 20 states. It saddens me to read so many Americans view the Old World, Britain and Europe, almost as an enemy. We are not. Cut through all the party political verbiage and we are the same. We worry about job security, prospects for our kids and retirement.
I think I can safely say that the reason we Americans have begun viewing our NATO allies "almost as an enemy" is due to European governments turning on their native populations, facilitating a Third World invasion, excusing the "rape culture" they've invited, and resorting to draconian, totalitarian tactics against anyone who speaks against them. Videos of police in the UK, Ireland, and on the continent ARRESTING people for saying something Muslims find "offensive" are not going to endear your governments to the American people.
Thank you for your concise and direct comments. I recognise the themes in what you say. They are echoed by some but not all people in Britain and Europe and I disagree with the magnitude of those sentiments and the broader context. For the record I am white, politically right of centre, live in Britain with ancestry in Ireland and wider family in Britain, France and Denmark (as well as across the US and Canada).
If I’ve understood you properly, you point to four broad themes.
Theme 1: European governments turning on their native populations
We hear this from thinkers on both the farther Right and farther Left. A while back, a French writer coined the phrase “great replacement theory” and another these days (Douglas Murray, an Englishman you may have heard of) writes of “Eurabia”. These phrases are unhelpful in describing what is going on.
Europe, insofar as one can speak of it as a single entity (which we really can’t) is not seeking to replace its native populations with non-Christian / non-whites. It is not seeking to create apartheid schemes that downgrade “natives”. It is not seeking is put Islamic or other non-Western concepts into its legal codes.
The presence of communities from outside Europe, living within Europe is not a recent development. However, as you allude to, there ARE major problems of integration, both of long-established immigrant communities as well as new arrivals.
Up to about 1962, Algeria (part of North Africa) was constitutionally part of France. Physically separate from France (like Alaska is for the US) but part nonetheless. When France departed from Algeria it allowed Algerians especially those of mixed parentage to come to France, and also accepted native Algerians as economic migrants doing lower class labour. France also has long-standing close economic links to West Africa and the Sahel (sourcing oil and uranium there) and over decades has accepted migrants from there. About 10% of France’s population is Moslem. Economic deprivation is heavily concentrated in this element and they are effectively ghettoised in what the French call “banlieues”. The deprivation is multi-generational. There is a great French film from 1995 called “La Haine” showing these.
In Germany, the biggest non-German ethnic group is Turkish, numbering in the millions. They are mainly descendants of guest workers invited into West German from Turkey from the 1950s as the German’s economic miracle took off (and thanks to America). I have not lived in Germany but I understand Turks are still looked down upon. Apparently, when David Bowie went to West Berlin in the 1970s to record some of his best music, he lived in a Turkish quarter.
In Britain there have been waves of immigrants. From the 1950s it was the Caribbean. From the late 1960s it was West Africans then ethnic Indians thrown out of African countries (having been moved there by the British). From the late 1960s Pakistani men were invited to Northern England as only they would work for the low wages in Britain’s dying textile industry. Then there have been waves of Hindus and Sikhs (the latter especially loyal to the British State and Monarchy). A lot of Britain’s Hindu and Moslem population tend to live in the North of England.
The situation is complex but in this 21st century we have seen more familial related migration into Britain from the Indian sub-continent. We are also seeing:
• More urban areas of Britain especially England which are ethnically and linguistically “foreign”, mainly the Indian sub-continent and Pakistani in nature
• Evidence that some immigrant communities are doing better than “natives” in educational achievement
• Pressure on schools having to cater for different dietary requirements, female school uniforms and changing facilities
• Greater visibility of ethnic dress codes especially veil wearing
This is a phenomenon that has been building for quite some time.
In Britain we are now seeing within the 2 most right-wing parties (Reform, led by Nigel Farage) and Restore (led by Rupert Lowe) calls for forced repatriation of those lacking British values. Their unhappiness stems from a few things:
• The sluggish British economy and a view that migrants are a huge drain
• Security fears over migrants post 9/11 (although over the long run Irish, Basque, Italian and German terrorists killed as many Europeans as Islamists)
• Distaste for migrant cultures and their insistence on retaining their languages
• Distaste for Islam and fear that political Islam is a force in Britain (but it is not)
• Fear that Sharia law is being used for dispute resolution, contracts, family law (Sharia law can stand behind certain transactions but English law remain prime)
• Pining for a Lost England.
The reality is that migrants (as you can see from the ethnic makeup of the British Conservative Party) are well integrated into Britain at all levels of society. They are very well represented in the professions (I think you are seeing that in the US too). Migrants more widely are a key part of the British labour force. British businesses and institutions (whether the British Armed Forces or National Health Service) have significant dependencies on them. Migrant labour is especially important in hospitality and old age care sectors. But no-one in Britain wants to pay the higher costs that would arise from their removal.
Britain has an odd relationship with its migrants. Back in the 2000s the fear was cheap labour coming to Britain from Bulgaria and Poland: white, Christian in one form or another. That fear was an engine of Brexit. Yet advocates of Brexit said Britain should instead source migrants from the former empire and this is exactly what it has done since 2016, leading to significant increase in non-white migration.
Britain is happy to build extensive dependency on migrants, yet every now and then decides it is not. Yet it has not built a coherent non-ethnic concept of British citizenship and civic requirements that immigrants could aim for. And as this week’s edition of The Economist magazine points, out, Britain has for decades deliberately declined national ID schemes which would enable it to identify who is in the country. Most people (as opposed to the Government) don’t want this.
Let’s now focus on Europe, which is not a single entity. Not all countries in Europe are in the European Union (EU) and at its centre the EU is in fact quite weak with far less coercive powers compared with the US Federal Government. Both inside and outside the EU, migration and migrant integration remains with national governments. Sweden was the most liberal or permissive, taking the greatest relative numbers. Its immediate neighbour to the South, Denmark, has the least migrant-friendly regime. Germany, under Angela Merkel in 2015 opened its borders to 1.5m mainly Syrian refugees. A deeply controversial decision although Syria is a neighbour of Turkey and some may have hoped this would ease integration. Some have integrated into Germany, mainly younger people. Many are now moving back to a stabilising Syria. Britain as we have seen has a chaotic and non-thought through approach, but this is not just the fault of the Government but its people who don’t engage with what an immigrant-hostile friendly environment means.
Europe and the EU certainly have their problems. One is worsening demographics. Europe is getting older. Women are having less children. This is because of woefully high levels of unemployment and high renting costs. Migrants are not causing this. The cause is wider economic malaise in the region. The Euro as a currency has helped the northern industrial economies like Netherlands, Denmark and Germany but straitjacketed the Southern Mediterranean economies.
Europeans, like Americans, are unhappy with their governments for reasons of inflation, lowering prospects, high housing costs and the like. Immigrant presence and outlay is certainly a factor (fighting over shares of a smaller cake), not the primary one, and a mass expulsion of same would not fix Europe’s core issues. Europe has problems with integration, but then again so does the US, especially when it comes to African Americans.
No country seeks to be invaded. As I have written, Britain and certain European countries have over the long term allowed people from countries they either colonised or had close links with to migrate to them. This was not a favour or gift, it was done for hard-headed economic reasons, namely the host countries wanted cheap labour. The US has done this with (up to now) a permissive approach to the use of migrant Latino labour. We have seen videos on this side of the Pond of US farmers saying they cannot produce food economically following the hard line taken by ICE.
Outside of gradual / economic migration, Europe has faced crisis-type pressures to accept other migrants from (roughly) the following sources:
• Syrians and Afghans fleeing their failed states, for reasons we all appreciate
• Refugees from Western / Sahel Africa and Horn of Africa (Sudan / Somalia): some of the population displacement and war is Islamist, some is starvation and climate change driven. But in 2011 NATO, fronted by France and Britain (the US took part but was a bit sceptical) launched a 6-month bombing campaign against the forces of Gadaffi, who was killed. Unfortunately, because of this, Libya has moved from being a unified (albeit nasty and troublesome) dictatorship which did not allow people-trafficking into Libya and into the Mediterranean and Southern Europe, to a failed state that allows exactly that.
Libya is a major jump-off point for trafficked African refugees taking flimsy boats north to Sicily, the Italian mainland and the Greek islands. These places have been overrun with such desperate people and hundreds if not thousands have been drowned in the Mediterranean, with corpses washed up on beaches. It has been an utter human tragedy. Based on what I have read, Europe has finally stabilised the situation.
The point I am making is that Europe did not invite in people from the Third World. Those poor humans, the victims of cynical geopolitics, resultant conflict and environmental degradation sought, and in some cases European military action inadvertently created, an apparent way out of their suffering.
This is not an exclusively European problem. The US withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975 led to the Vietnamese Boat People. At this moment the US has tightened its economic blockade of Cuba, with the power grid and hospital generators starting to fail. If the Cuban economy collapses, Cubans may try to flee their island. The US especially Floridian coast is not far away. I hope things do not come to that.
Theme 3: Excusing the “rape culture” they’ve invited
This brings to my mind the sex attacks in the mid-2010s against women in German cities, as well as the more recent allegations in Britain that men of mainly Pakistani ethnicity systemically vulnerable women and young girls. The British government is organising a nationwide enquiry into this and is widely seen as dragging its feet on the matter. It also appears that those crimes may have occurred in parts of Britain where there is more pronounced poverty and less protective services (not that this is an excuse). Sweden however, the country with the most open (previously) immigration policy CLEARLY has problems. That being said, one of my family travelled in Sweden recently and said it was not the warzone portrayed externally and was actually very pleasant.
We know awful things have happened, but can we say particular ethnic groups are more likely to offend (with the exception of Sweden)?
Accusing ethnic groups of being a threat, whether sexual or otherwise, is one of the oldest dirty tricks in the book. It was used against Jews ahead of the Holocaust. Against African Americans in US. Against Hindus and Moslems by the British after the Indian Mutiny.
Rape and sexual crime are crimes of power, not ethnicity. Britain and other countries have seen no shortage of white sexual crime and institutional cover-up. Britain’s BBC and Jimmy Saville, the Catholic Church, the failure by police forces to investigate rape allegations or do forensic tests. In Britain the greatest criticism of more assertive protection of women has come from parts of the more extreme Right. In America, genetic studies (that I have heard of) suggest significant white male parentage in African Americans in the past, not likely to have been consensual. And finally there is the Epstein Affair.
Europe did not deliberately invite rapists. It did, in certain cases invite / accept ethic groups some of whom have committed serious crime.
Theme 4: resorting to draconian, totalitarian tactics against anyone who speaks against them
This brings to my mind the case of a British politician’s wife who in July 2024 tweeted a message calling for immediate deportation AND hostels holding illegal migrants to be burned. She took the tweet down shortly after but it was widely seen. Mobs (of whites) showed up at these hostels trying to burn them (they had immigrants in them at the time) and injured British police trying to maintain order. That is incitement, by any measure.
The woman was convicted and jailed and she has been flagged as a martyr by some on the more extreme Right.
Whether you agree or not, the British State takes it upon itself to judge that certain information (numbers and location of illegal immigrants, immigrant status in legal proceedings) should not be in the public domain because it thinks a part of the population cannot be trusted to act calmly and stay reasonable once it has this information.
I cannot speak for other European countries on freedom of speech, and by nature I am more supportive of the US approach on this, and this is where it gets interesting. Under English Law, the dominant source of law in Britain, you have no rights and so you have no right to freedom of speech. Technically what you are allowed is freedom of expression, and this is itself heavily qualified. “Hate speech”, “encouraging terrorism” count among those exceptions and have landed people in British courts. The British Parliament increasingly writes law vaguely, not defining precisely what is acceptable or not under those exceptions. The most aggressive attempted prosecution by the British Government has been against British people (many white and several British Jews) protesting Israeli behaviour in Gaza (simply waving banners or wearing t-shirts, all non-violent). A further example of how restrictive the British State can be on speech and experssion was at the coronation of King Charles III in mid-2023. A number of republican-minded White Britons gathered along the procession route wearing “Not My King” t-shirts. They were silent and non-disruptive. British police arrested and cuffed them and detained them at unnamed locations away from the Coronation before releasing them hours after without charge. Bystanders seeking to film police removing the protesters were threatened by the police with detention. You can look this up online.
Britain is peculiar with it comes to expression and speech and I think it should be more libertarian, but it is not biased against “native” populations in favour of “outsiders”.
A further bit of recent engineered grievance on the part of some in Britain has been to claim they are persecuted for waving or painting English Cross of St George flags. To previous generations of Britons, the key flag was the Union Flag, known informally as the Union Jack. It was treated with reverence, not painted on walls or traffic signs or embossed on t-shirts or underwear. The Cross of St George has a slightly more problematic recent usage, having been in some cases co-opted by football hooligans and the Far Right. The usage has been become more normalised recently and this is a complex area, but the flag has Crusader context. Depending on one’s view, this is something to create or avoid inter-community tensions.
Summary
For all their differences, the US and the nations of Europe still form part of the West and what it means to be Western (alongside Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Their problems, when you drill down through them are quite similar. I don’t think we should be drifting apart and I hope we don’t.
There are calls across Europe for expulsion or “remigration” of people who do not fit. The AFD in German, the Front Nationale (FN) in France and especially Restore in Britain. My sense is that AFD and FN have ethnic groups in mind. Restore in Britain are more interesting in a disturbing way in that they want to be rid of people who do not share British values. However, Europeans whether continental or say Irish may have different political outlooks, may not be monarchist in their views…so I don’t know where that leaves them. But having seen the anti-European sentiment before Brexit and the anti-non-British sentiment after Brexit, nothing will surprise me.
Once settled in Britain, migrants do get the vote and my sense is that some on the harder Right (and maybe some on the extreme Left) think migrant votes (especially Muslim) would not vote for them. Accordingly, they might like to narrow the franchise. In Britain’s volatile first-past-the-post Parliamentary voting system this could have significant impact on who gets to lead Britain.
The question of citizenship and by implication voting is of course being considered by your SCOTUS at this moment. The US and Europe again walking similar if separate paths.
The author would bolster his argument better if he used accurate data. The USA never lost “millions of men” in WW1 + WW2. At most, total US casualties for both world wars were ~ 522,000.
1/ Turkey has been vague about the missiles - both their launch sites and targets.
2/ Iran has denied responsibility. What would they gain by firing a few missiles at Turkey? Pinpricks that could only bring another nation into action against them.
3/ The obvious beneficiary is Israel. False flag attacks have proved effective across history. This is their classic form.
Both Spain and France refused to let US forces use their countries in the attack against Iran. Germany’s AFD party, supposedly their right of center party wants all US troops out of Germany. I say we focus on Space force and pull all our troops from Europe. Give them what they want. Europe won’t last 5 yrs without turning into a totalitarian state.
However, that’s not Americas problem. We focus on our hemisphere, we take Greenland as our exit prize for giving the Europeans what they want. We continue to build our country and focus on MAGA.
Turkey should have never been allowed to enter NATO.
Better to be a hot cheerleader with options than to be a wife to a worthless cad. Alliances tends to limit America’s freedom of action. They should instead ape Elizabeth I. She played all her suitors off each other to buy time and benefits with a little trouble.
NATO is a defensive treaty. That got debunked when one Nato nation refused to loan another nato nation one anti-missile battery.
I've long said we need to pull our troops back home and strengthen our own borders, then use diplomacy to bring South America to our side. We share a common religion, common language (even if it is Spanish) and common goals.
We should have done that instead of worry about Fortress Europe.
this is an incredibly misguided, incorrect and biased view as some others have pointed out in this thread. America is the only country that invoked article 5 of NATO- ever. soldiers from poland, australia, canada UK and many more came running after 9-11.... to fight a misguided war in iraq under false pretenses. Thousands died for that cause in a war that did not have any WMDs. the world learned a hard lesson then as did the people of the US actually who wanted and voted for "no more foreign wars". this current administration lied to us.
the US has been backing off protection of the eastern european flank since trump came back into power and he has been railing against NATO. NATO is a defensive treaty not a mercenary unit to be summoned at will bc the US feels like it. US and Israel illegally invaded a sovereign foreign nation (just like Ruzzia invaded Ukraine) and europe is supposed to believe that the US will come to defend them when ruzzia comes knocking? the US did not bother warning or consulting any of its supposed "allies" before bombing Iran, instead berated them backwards and forwards and insulted them. The iran invasion is something which not only the rest of the world condemns but the American people are 60+% against this war. Poland, (like spain, like UK, france, and others) have the right to do what is in THEIR best national interest and protect their own sovereignty and national security, which right now is to protect its eastern flank against the russians and their allies. Ruzzians have been handing targeting data to Iran and yet the US wants us to believe they will defend europe? Poland would have had to be braindead to effectively commit harakiri to give up missiles that it needs to defend against ruzzian incursion (plenty of illegally crossed airspace by russia and drones and ground sabotage on polish soil). In Iran the US was the aggressor. Iran did not invade the US or actively threaten it (listen to Joe Kent). There was no invocation of article 5 bc the US is not under attack it's placed itself into a powderkeg in iran against ALL MILITARY ADVICE and intelligence. based on what exactly should Poland believe its back would ever be protected by the US? roosevelt and stalin and churchill signed poland and eastern europe and the baltic states to the USSR at Yalta bc it suited them. Poland learned its harsh lesson once and as the 4th largest economy in europe it's not about to surrender to the whims of a wannabe american authoritarian. why would they?
i will say the best thing trump did for europe is to show europe Americas true colors. they have indeed ramped up their own defense spending by large amounts and are actively cutting their interconnectivity and dependence with the US... isnt that exactly what america wanted?
why don't they ask Hungary for missiles ? oh right bc hungary is on ruzzias side and we wouldn't want to inconvenience them.
America is an example of the idiom "the appetite grows with eating". also i suspect Muse is a russianbot bc it hasn't replied to a single response yet has received a lot of engagement. Internet takedowns of poland are quite popular by the former soviet union, no surprise there.
In other news…COVID made us realize that while we were fighting terrorism in ME, we sorely neglected our supply chain in which China was more than happy to take over and made it incredibly cheap to do so. “Everything is made in China”. Yep, it appears so. So let’s say we take the “isolationist” route…pull ALL our troops home - FOB America, we’ve more than done our share. Fuck ‘em. That includes you, Canada. We’ll save a lot of dough (possibly) and the countries we leave are going to take a small/medium hit to their economies. Are we pulling everyone? Or just those in Europe? Maybe we can shift more people to Pacific Asia before China takes the godamn Marshall Islands…and the Taiwan Straight.
How will that affect our trading partnerships in those countries? Will it? Perhaps that’s where the rubber meets the road, and countries like Germany, France, Italy will acquiesce - meaning they will begin to stand on their own as Eisenhower mentioned. Still have that damn supply chain issue tho. That’s going to take years to fix, assuming we can. And now we are forced to build larger bases or new ones to accommodate our incoming soldiers.
Do we need to take the isolationist route in the first place? Cause these countries don’t give a shit…until they do. But I’m tired of playing patty cake with these assholes.
Because we have PAVED this road…patched the potholes, repainted the lines. This IS a good solid road. And it’s cost us a small fortune. Are we willing to tear it up? We pull out of Europe and we know what will happen- we good with that? Good, bad or indifferent…that’s not us. It’s never been us. Sorry, but we ARE the gold standard whether we like it or not (wouldn’t have 11M illegal immigrants otherwise). Just considering the consequences if in fact there are any.
I wish it was easier to see if @muse responded to the critics.
The mythical "Russian threat" has long since been debunked. Afghanistan, the collapse of the U.S.S.R., and the protracted Ukraine invasion have demonstrated that Russia isn't- and hasn't been- the formidable military force we once assessed it to be.
This, of course, doesn't mean that the Russians are incapable of conquering Western countries. That would depend on how much the Russian leadership was willing to sacrifice in blood and treasure in order to effect that conquest. And even without an American-led NATO, the Russians would still need to factor in the possibility of the U.S. coming to the aid of Europe under attack.
At this point, American expenditures on NATO are wasteful and counterproductive. Eisenhower was right. Western Europe is capable of standing on its own and must be expected to take the responsibility for doing so.
I can think of many reasons Poland's decision might have been A) Reasonable considering how few of those weapons it can expect to ever replace before Russia makes the moves the writer acknowledges are coming within 3 years, and B) not as particularly significant or symbolic as repeatedly stated here. I don't see any firm substantiation of it being so. I don't disagree that Europe should be more able to defend itself, but it's obvious the profit-oriented nature of the US MIC has been an equal force in keeping the arrangement going all these decades. The US never cut off Europe from its arms subsidy, and arrogantly ignored Russia's security red lines, out of baked-in financial incentives to keep some very big gravy trains rolling along America's byways.
It looks like NATO is in for a change, yes. Europe has to consolidate and rearm, yes. The nukes are an issue. Turkey shouldn't be a NATO member as an islamic state. Turkey is the only backstop for a kurdish state, which would make a far better NATO member.
NATO is a ratified Senate treaty. 32 nations. 75 years of collective defense. Nuclear sharing agreements. Trump just said he can withdraw alone. No vote. No Congress. "I can make that decision myself. "A democracy where one person can say that and mean it has stopped functioning. Full stop. 🔗 https://sheikhrakeshzaman.substack.com/p/i-dont-need-congress-trump-threatens?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Trump is the commander in Chief of the US military. Yes of course he can make the decision himself. Yes we must leave NATO.
The US is a republic.
What? And put America First? What crazy idea
It was the US’ choice to maintain its outsize military over the years, as it was their choice to maintain European bases as key projection points into the Middle East and Central Asia. Europe, however imperfectly had found peace unknown in decades and had achieved a working compromise with Putin’s Russia.
Things went south when the Bush Junior presidency pushed hard (against the advice of Angela Merkel) in 2008 for Ukraine in NATO followed by figures in the Obama administration being heard in Ukraine in 2013 talking about supporting “their man”.
That is not to give Putin any excuse for what he has done, but the US as the dominant NATO member committed to and sought commitments from allies on Ukraine that Trump has done everything to reverse.
To be fair, a Trump presidency in 2008 or 2013 would have done things differently with Russia and perhaps we all would not be where we are if that had happened. But that is not what happened.
The European perspective, which includes that of Britain, which may surprise many Americans here, is as follows.
First, Europe is very grateful for US material and capability support in Ukraine but has now stepped up to the point that it provides the greater part of material to Ukraine. Second Europe and Britain are disappointed at the Trump about-face on Ukrainian support. Third, Europe and Britain do not understand why the US is not more suspicious of Russia given well evidenced sabotage efforts against undersea cables, murders of Russians abroad and the use of chemical weapons against people living in Britain.
I meant to add….
Fourth, European nations and Britain in particular were deeply offended by the words of VP Vance demeaning their military prowess when over in thousand servicemen and women died in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Fifth, Europe and Britain have been deeply troubled by belligerent talk from the Trump administration calling for the seizure of Greenland. Existing treaties with Denmark already allow the US to surge forces into Greenland in the event of threat.
Sixth, the US did not initiate this war against Iran, an offensive action, with NATO. It did not consult or plan this with NATO. Now, if media is to be believed, Trump wishes to conclude this inconclusively leaving those same nations to pick up the economic cost of a war they had no say in.
I live in Britain and have had the good fortune through travel and work to have spent a year of my life in total in the US in perhaps 20 states. It saddens me to read so many Americans view the Old World, Britain and Europe, almost as an enemy. We are not. Cut through all the party political verbiage and we are the same. We worry about job security, prospects for our kids and retirement.
I think I can safely say that the reason we Americans have begun viewing our NATO allies "almost as an enemy" is due to European governments turning on their native populations, facilitating a Third World invasion, excusing the "rape culture" they've invited, and resorting to draconian, totalitarian tactics against anyone who speaks against them. Videos of police in the UK, Ireland, and on the continent ARRESTING people for saying something Muslims find "offensive" are not going to endear your governments to the American people.
Sir,
Thank you for your concise and direct comments. I recognise the themes in what you say. They are echoed by some but not all people in Britain and Europe and I disagree with the magnitude of those sentiments and the broader context. For the record I am white, politically right of centre, live in Britain with ancestry in Ireland and wider family in Britain, France and Denmark (as well as across the US and Canada).
If I’ve understood you properly, you point to four broad themes.
Theme 1: European governments turning on their native populations
We hear this from thinkers on both the farther Right and farther Left. A while back, a French writer coined the phrase “great replacement theory” and another these days (Douglas Murray, an Englishman you may have heard of) writes of “Eurabia”. These phrases are unhelpful in describing what is going on.
Europe, insofar as one can speak of it as a single entity (which we really can’t) is not seeking to replace its native populations with non-Christian / non-whites. It is not seeking to create apartheid schemes that downgrade “natives”. It is not seeking is put Islamic or other non-Western concepts into its legal codes.
The presence of communities from outside Europe, living within Europe is not a recent development. However, as you allude to, there ARE major problems of integration, both of long-established immigrant communities as well as new arrivals.
Up to about 1962, Algeria (part of North Africa) was constitutionally part of France. Physically separate from France (like Alaska is for the US) but part nonetheless. When France departed from Algeria it allowed Algerians especially those of mixed parentage to come to France, and also accepted native Algerians as economic migrants doing lower class labour. France also has long-standing close economic links to West Africa and the Sahel (sourcing oil and uranium there) and over decades has accepted migrants from there. About 10% of France’s population is Moslem. Economic deprivation is heavily concentrated in this element and they are effectively ghettoised in what the French call “banlieues”. The deprivation is multi-generational. There is a great French film from 1995 called “La Haine” showing these.
In Germany, the biggest non-German ethnic group is Turkish, numbering in the millions. They are mainly descendants of guest workers invited into West German from Turkey from the 1950s as the German’s economic miracle took off (and thanks to America). I have not lived in Germany but I understand Turks are still looked down upon. Apparently, when David Bowie went to West Berlin in the 1970s to record some of his best music, he lived in a Turkish quarter.
In Britain there have been waves of immigrants. From the 1950s it was the Caribbean. From the late 1960s it was West Africans then ethnic Indians thrown out of African countries (having been moved there by the British). From the late 1960s Pakistani men were invited to Northern England as only they would work for the low wages in Britain’s dying textile industry. Then there have been waves of Hindus and Sikhs (the latter especially loyal to the British State and Monarchy). A lot of Britain’s Hindu and Moslem population tend to live in the North of England.
The situation is complex but in this 21st century we have seen more familial related migration into Britain from the Indian sub-continent. We are also seeing:
• More urban areas of Britain especially England which are ethnically and linguistically “foreign”, mainly the Indian sub-continent and Pakistani in nature
• Evidence that some immigrant communities are doing better than “natives” in educational achievement
• Pressure on schools having to cater for different dietary requirements, female school uniforms and changing facilities
• Greater visibility of ethnic dress codes especially veil wearing
This is a phenomenon that has been building for quite some time.
In Britain we are now seeing within the 2 most right-wing parties (Reform, led by Nigel Farage) and Restore (led by Rupert Lowe) calls for forced repatriation of those lacking British values. Their unhappiness stems from a few things:
• The sluggish British economy and a view that migrants are a huge drain
• Security fears over migrants post 9/11 (although over the long run Irish, Basque, Italian and German terrorists killed as many Europeans as Islamists)
• Distaste for migrant cultures and their insistence on retaining their languages
• Distaste for Islam and fear that political Islam is a force in Britain (but it is not)
• Fear that Sharia law is being used for dispute resolution, contracts, family law (Sharia law can stand behind certain transactions but English law remain prime)
• Pining for a Lost England.
The reality is that migrants (as you can see from the ethnic makeup of the British Conservative Party) are well integrated into Britain at all levels of society. They are very well represented in the professions (I think you are seeing that in the US too). Migrants more widely are a key part of the British labour force. British businesses and institutions (whether the British Armed Forces or National Health Service) have significant dependencies on them. Migrant labour is especially important in hospitality and old age care sectors. But no-one in Britain wants to pay the higher costs that would arise from their removal.
Britain has an odd relationship with its migrants. Back in the 2000s the fear was cheap labour coming to Britain from Bulgaria and Poland: white, Christian in one form or another. That fear was an engine of Brexit. Yet advocates of Brexit said Britain should instead source migrants from the former empire and this is exactly what it has done since 2016, leading to significant increase in non-white migration.
Britain is happy to build extensive dependency on migrants, yet every now and then decides it is not. Yet it has not built a coherent non-ethnic concept of British citizenship and civic requirements that immigrants could aim for. And as this week’s edition of The Economist magazine points, out, Britain has for decades deliberately declined national ID schemes which would enable it to identify who is in the country. Most people (as opposed to the Government) don’t want this.
Let’s now focus on Europe, which is not a single entity. Not all countries in Europe are in the European Union (EU) and at its centre the EU is in fact quite weak with far less coercive powers compared with the US Federal Government. Both inside and outside the EU, migration and migrant integration remains with national governments. Sweden was the most liberal or permissive, taking the greatest relative numbers. Its immediate neighbour to the South, Denmark, has the least migrant-friendly regime. Germany, under Angela Merkel in 2015 opened its borders to 1.5m mainly Syrian refugees. A deeply controversial decision although Syria is a neighbour of Turkey and some may have hoped this would ease integration. Some have integrated into Germany, mainly younger people. Many are now moving back to a stabilising Syria. Britain as we have seen has a chaotic and non-thought through approach, but this is not just the fault of the Government but its people who don’t engage with what an immigrant-hostile friendly environment means.
Europe and the EU certainly have their problems. One is worsening demographics. Europe is getting older. Women are having less children. This is because of woefully high levels of unemployment and high renting costs. Migrants are not causing this. The cause is wider economic malaise in the region. The Euro as a currency has helped the northern industrial economies like Netherlands, Denmark and Germany but straitjacketed the Southern Mediterranean economies.
Europeans, like Americans, are unhappy with their governments for reasons of inflation, lowering prospects, high housing costs and the like. Immigrant presence and outlay is certainly a factor (fighting over shares of a smaller cake), not the primary one, and a mass expulsion of same would not fix Europe’s core issues. Europe has problems with integration, but then again so does the US, especially when it comes to African Americans.
Theme 2: Facilitating a Third World invasion
No country seeks to be invaded. As I have written, Britain and certain European countries have over the long term allowed people from countries they either colonised or had close links with to migrate to them. This was not a favour or gift, it was done for hard-headed economic reasons, namely the host countries wanted cheap labour. The US has done this with (up to now) a permissive approach to the use of migrant Latino labour. We have seen videos on this side of the Pond of US farmers saying they cannot produce food economically following the hard line taken by ICE.
Outside of gradual / economic migration, Europe has faced crisis-type pressures to accept other migrants from (roughly) the following sources:
• Syrians and Afghans fleeing their failed states, for reasons we all appreciate
• Refugees from Western / Sahel Africa and Horn of Africa (Sudan / Somalia): some of the population displacement and war is Islamist, some is starvation and climate change driven. But in 2011 NATO, fronted by France and Britain (the US took part but was a bit sceptical) launched a 6-month bombing campaign against the forces of Gadaffi, who was killed. Unfortunately, because of this, Libya has moved from being a unified (albeit nasty and troublesome) dictatorship which did not allow people-trafficking into Libya and into the Mediterranean and Southern Europe, to a failed state that allows exactly that.
Libya is a major jump-off point for trafficked African refugees taking flimsy boats north to Sicily, the Italian mainland and the Greek islands. These places have been overrun with such desperate people and hundreds if not thousands have been drowned in the Mediterranean, with corpses washed up on beaches. It has been an utter human tragedy. Based on what I have read, Europe has finally stabilised the situation.
The point I am making is that Europe did not invite in people from the Third World. Those poor humans, the victims of cynical geopolitics, resultant conflict and environmental degradation sought, and in some cases European military action inadvertently created, an apparent way out of their suffering.
This is not an exclusively European problem. The US withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975 led to the Vietnamese Boat People. At this moment the US has tightened its economic blockade of Cuba, with the power grid and hospital generators starting to fail. If the Cuban economy collapses, Cubans may try to flee their island. The US especially Floridian coast is not far away. I hope things do not come to that.
Theme 3: Excusing the “rape culture” they’ve invited
This brings to my mind the sex attacks in the mid-2010s against women in German cities, as well as the more recent allegations in Britain that men of mainly Pakistani ethnicity systemically vulnerable women and young girls. The British government is organising a nationwide enquiry into this and is widely seen as dragging its feet on the matter. It also appears that those crimes may have occurred in parts of Britain where there is more pronounced poverty and less protective services (not that this is an excuse). Sweden however, the country with the most open (previously) immigration policy CLEARLY has problems. That being said, one of my family travelled in Sweden recently and said it was not the warzone portrayed externally and was actually very pleasant.
We know awful things have happened, but can we say particular ethnic groups are more likely to offend (with the exception of Sweden)?
Accusing ethnic groups of being a threat, whether sexual or otherwise, is one of the oldest dirty tricks in the book. It was used against Jews ahead of the Holocaust. Against African Americans in US. Against Hindus and Moslems by the British after the Indian Mutiny.
Rape and sexual crime are crimes of power, not ethnicity. Britain and other countries have seen no shortage of white sexual crime and institutional cover-up. Britain’s BBC and Jimmy Saville, the Catholic Church, the failure by police forces to investigate rape allegations or do forensic tests. In Britain the greatest criticism of more assertive protection of women has come from parts of the more extreme Right. In America, genetic studies (that I have heard of) suggest significant white male parentage in African Americans in the past, not likely to have been consensual. And finally there is the Epstein Affair.
Europe did not deliberately invite rapists. It did, in certain cases invite / accept ethic groups some of whom have committed serious crime.
Theme 4: resorting to draconian, totalitarian tactics against anyone who speaks against them
This brings to my mind the case of a British politician’s wife who in July 2024 tweeted a message calling for immediate deportation AND hostels holding illegal migrants to be burned. She took the tweet down shortly after but it was widely seen. Mobs (of whites) showed up at these hostels trying to burn them (they had immigrants in them at the time) and injured British police trying to maintain order. That is incitement, by any measure.
The woman was convicted and jailed and she has been flagged as a martyr by some on the more extreme Right.
Whether you agree or not, the British State takes it upon itself to judge that certain information (numbers and location of illegal immigrants, immigrant status in legal proceedings) should not be in the public domain because it thinks a part of the population cannot be trusted to act calmly and stay reasonable once it has this information.
I cannot speak for other European countries on freedom of speech, and by nature I am more supportive of the US approach on this, and this is where it gets interesting. Under English Law, the dominant source of law in Britain, you have no rights and so you have no right to freedom of speech. Technically what you are allowed is freedom of expression, and this is itself heavily qualified. “Hate speech”, “encouraging terrorism” count among those exceptions and have landed people in British courts. The British Parliament increasingly writes law vaguely, not defining precisely what is acceptable or not under those exceptions. The most aggressive attempted prosecution by the British Government has been against British people (many white and several British Jews) protesting Israeli behaviour in Gaza (simply waving banners or wearing t-shirts, all non-violent). A further example of how restrictive the British State can be on speech and experssion was at the coronation of King Charles III in mid-2023. A number of republican-minded White Britons gathered along the procession route wearing “Not My King” t-shirts. They were silent and non-disruptive. British police arrested and cuffed them and detained them at unnamed locations away from the Coronation before releasing them hours after without charge. Bystanders seeking to film police removing the protesters were threatened by the police with detention. You can look this up online.
Britain is peculiar with it comes to expression and speech and I think it should be more libertarian, but it is not biased against “native” populations in favour of “outsiders”.
A further bit of recent engineered grievance on the part of some in Britain has been to claim they are persecuted for waving or painting English Cross of St George flags. To previous generations of Britons, the key flag was the Union Flag, known informally as the Union Jack. It was treated with reverence, not painted on walls or traffic signs or embossed on t-shirts or underwear. The Cross of St George has a slightly more problematic recent usage, having been in some cases co-opted by football hooligans and the Far Right. The usage has been become more normalised recently and this is a complex area, but the flag has Crusader context. Depending on one’s view, this is something to create or avoid inter-community tensions.
Summary
For all their differences, the US and the nations of Europe still form part of the West and what it means to be Western (alongside Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Their problems, when you drill down through them are quite similar. I don’t think we should be drifting apart and I hope we don’t.
There are calls across Europe for expulsion or “remigration” of people who do not fit. The AFD in German, the Front Nationale (FN) in France and especially Restore in Britain. My sense is that AFD and FN have ethnic groups in mind. Restore in Britain are more interesting in a disturbing way in that they want to be rid of people who do not share British values. However, Europeans whether continental or say Irish may have different political outlooks, may not be monarchist in their views…so I don’t know where that leaves them. But having seen the anti-European sentiment before Brexit and the anti-non-British sentiment after Brexit, nothing will surprise me.
Once settled in Britain, migrants do get the vote and my sense is that some on the harder Right (and maybe some on the extreme Left) think migrant votes (especially Muslim) would not vote for them. Accordingly, they might like to narrow the franchise. In Britain’s volatile first-past-the-post Parliamentary voting system this could have significant impact on who gets to lead Britain.
The question of citizenship and by implication voting is of course being considered by your SCOTUS at this moment. The US and Europe again walking similar if separate paths.
Happy Easter to you and yours.
The author would bolster his argument better if he used accurate data. The USA never lost “millions of men” in WW1 + WW2. At most, total US casualties for both world wars were ~ 522,000.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL32492
While at least 655k lives were lost in murderous tyrant Lincoln’s war of northern aggression.
Better end NATO soon. Europe is becoming another Islamist cult state with nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Let’s try not to be gullible.
1/ Turkey has been vague about the missiles - both their launch sites and targets.
2/ Iran has denied responsibility. What would they gain by firing a few missiles at Turkey? Pinpricks that could only bring another nation into action against them.
3/ The obvious beneficiary is Israel. False flag attacks have proved effective across history. This is their classic form.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/world/middleeast/turkey-nato-iran-missile.html