Again, I see no material basis for 28 administration caring about Europe. Things are only going to get worse economically in the next couple years, and the US is going to have to husband their resources that much more as a result. The rise of nationalism in Europe is also inevitable for the same reason. As the economic situation continues to deteriorate, the countries that are better off will start pulling up the ladders.

Yes, we need to do things like space exploration because these are the endeavours that advance humanity. Even in practical terms, plenty of discoveries that are useful here come from technologies developed for space exploration. If you’re really worried about unproductive use of resouces, maybe worry about how we deal with the pedo elites that rule over us and hoard resources on unimaginable scale.

That’s precisely why I pointed out that the role of Europe has changed from the American perspective in my original reply. It’s not a question of a specific leader, but the structural change in the material realities of the empire. A future president in the US may be less crass than Trump, but the policy itself isn’t going to change. The US is no longer going to see Europe as being worth the investment. The empire is contracting, and Americans will husband their resources either to dominate their own hemisphere or to try and contain China.

I’d argue SteamOS has done a lot for Wine. Nowadays, a huge chunk of Windows games works on Linux seamlessly. If governments start mandating Linux, then every company working with the government will be forced to be Linux compatible as well. That means having file formats that work natively on Linux, drivers, and all the other things that come with mainstream use.

The handful examples are incredibly consequential. Europe is basically entirely dependent on the US for energy. And with energy prices in the US being around three times lower, the US is using that as leverage to lure industry away from Europe. The US is also actively meddling in European politics and uses their social media platforms to shape public opinion in Europe.

It’s kind of hard to see what positive actions the US has taken towards Europe over the past few years. It’s an abusive relationship where Europe continues to accept one humiliation after another.

Now that the Iran fiasco looks to have failed, it’s entirely possible that Trump will remember about Greenland again. Meanwhile, there’s very little indication that EU actually does much of anything to protect any common interests. The EU immediately folded in the trade war with the US, while China and many other countries held firm.

I disagree, Europe simply doesn’t hold the same strategic relevance for the US as it did in the days of the Cold War. The tariffs under Trump and the Inflation Reduction Act under Biden were both direct economic attacks on Europe. Blowing up Nord Stream was also an attack on European economy. Europe is also one of the main victims in the current war on Iran being further cut off from energy. If Europeans still don’t understand that the US is going to cannibalize whatever industry from Europe that it can and turn it into a cheap labor market, then they deserve everything that’s coming to them.

Right, but I would imagine now there’s going to be more pressure to become less dependent on US tech with the US becoming openly hostile to Europe.

I thought this program was still going no? https://www.raconteur.net/technology/schleswig-holstein-open-source

I think that’s likely where things are going at this point.

i imagine the Gulf states must be rethinking the whole arrangement now. They thought they were untouchable under the American umbrella, but now they see they’re in fact the ones who will be absorbing most of the damage from the war. And if the US can’t protect them, then making peace with Iran is the only way forward.

Absolutely, the whole premise was that nobody would have the audacity to fight the US directly. There is a famous poker saying that you don’t bluff someone who can’t fold. Iran couldn’t fold because their survival as a state depended on it. So Trump’s made the worst possible blunder, trying to bluff against an opponent with no exit and maximum stakes.

Aside from Iran starting to charge a toll and control traffic through Hormuz, this is the other most consequential outcome of the war. All the infrastructure that the US spent decades building is now useless. Iran proved that none of these bases were defensible, and they destroyed billions, if not trillions, worth of radars and other high tech equipment, not to mention the cost of building these bases themselves. The entire US position in the region has now collapsed, and there’s no going back to the way things were before.

And yet here you are continuing to make a clown of yourself. 🤣

https://archive.ph/fjOIs

amazing

Exactly, and the war on Iran is going to act as an accelerant for the whole thing. It exposed the limits of American military power, and that there’s a severe economic cost to aligning with the US. So, even countries in the American orbit are being forced to hedge out of sheer necessity. As the western economic order continues to break down, we’re going to see more and more dog eat dog behavior from western capitalists.

I wonder if we might be hitting an inflection point where NATO no longer serves American interests. It used to make sense during the Soviet era because it kept Europe in American orbit. When USSR was the biggest geopolitical challenge to the US, keeping Europe in the American sphere of influence was critical. However, modern Russia doesn’t pose any sort of ideological challegne to the US, and China is seen as the new ideological adversary.

In that context, Europe doesn’t really have the same value to the US. On top of it, the economic dynamic is very different today. Back during the Cold War, the US was by far the biggest economic engine in the world, and propping up Europe was worth the cost. However, today, China is the bigger economy in productive terms, and the US simply cannot offer Europe anything competitive economically. Europe needs affordable goods that China manufactures, it needs renewable energy, and the ability to export its own goods to a nation of 1.4 billion people. So, if the US can’t offer a convincing economic alternative to China, then it will inevitably lose political hold on Europe going forward.

If that is the case, then there’s little value to continue dumping resources into Europe. Hence why I think we’re seeing the US changing its strategy to open predation. The US successfully destroyed European economy by cutting Europe off from Russian energy and imports from the Gulf. As input costs in Europe continue to climb, companies are starting to flee, and a lot of that business ends up going to the US where energy costs are a third of what they are in Europe.

Should the US leave NATO, then there would be a panic they can exploit as well. Europeans will be desperate to arm themselves, and given that Europe lacks a serious military industry of its own, a good chunk of that money would end up in the US.

So, that’s what I think is happening. The US is basically taking a scorched earth approach here by knee capping Europe to make sure it doesn’t turn into a competitor aligned with American adversaries, and grabbing anything of value that’s available in the process.

There is no better proof of NATO being a terrorist organization than Rutte himself.