Hey, listen here, appeasement will work THIS time, I am sure of it. Maybe the EU needs to send send back some Russian dissidents and asylum seekers, that’ll do it. Or buy some more oil.
On a more serious note, NATO does not seem to understand that “fuck around,find out” doesn’t work when the “find out” phase is just a strongly worded letter.
It’s a direct result of relying almost entirely on the US Military as the “find out” part. That was a fine policy when there wasn’t much to do, but turns out that it’s not a great idea when US domestic politics become incredibly polarized and unpredictable, and whiplash wildly depending on which party gains power. The fact that this wasn’t used as rationale to improve European defense over the last decade or so - specifically, after the 2016 election - is utterly insane to me. Now, everyone’s scrambling around and panicking about how to defend stuff without the US - that is, assuming they’ve even admitted that US isolationism is a thing that’s not going away, which is its own unique flavor of insane myopicism.
All 100% true. EU and rest of NATO giving Trump valid ammunition by not meeting spend targets and essentially giving up the defense game is one of the greatest self-cuckings of all time. Obama and Merkel sold out Crimea for cheap LNG, and EU kept doing business as usual and now the world is hyperdependent on US.
Hey, listen here, appeasement will work THIS time, I am sure of it. Maybe the EU needs to send send back some Russian dissidents and asylum seekers, that’ll do it. Or buy some more oil.
On a more serious note, NATO does not seem to understand that “fuck around,find out” doesn’t work when the “find out” phase is just a strongly worded letter.
It’s a direct result of relying almost entirely on the US Military as the “find out” part. That was a fine policy when there wasn’t much to do, but turns out that it’s not a great idea when US domestic politics become incredibly polarized and unpredictable, and whiplash wildly depending on which party gains power. The fact that this wasn’t used as rationale to improve European defense over the last decade or so - specifically, after the 2016 election - is utterly insane to me. Now, everyone’s scrambling around and panicking about how to defend stuff without the US - that is, assuming they’ve even admitted that US isolationism is a thing that’s not going away, which is its own unique flavor of insane myopicism.
All 100% true. EU and rest of NATO giving Trump valid ammunition by not meeting spend targets and essentially giving up the defense game is one of the greatest self-cuckings of all time. Obama and Merkel sold out Crimea for cheap LNG, and EU kept doing business as usual and now the world is hyperdependent on US.