European nations will need to increase the sizes and capabilities of their militaries because the US is no longer a reliable partner, whether or not Trump gets elected again. As Trumpism has come to define the Republican Party, the US is no longer a reliable partner.
Because it is the process of years and decades, European nations need to start building capabilities now, even if Trump loses the election. The US has demonstrated that they can move to a Russian-aligned power as the outcome of a single election, which was unthinkable ten years ago.
I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around that, but every “adults in the room will prevent this” has proven very flimsy, and there’s no reason that a post-Trump Republican Party wouldn’t be subjected to the same kind of politics.
The only saving grace is that, as far as I can tell, there’s no post-Trump plan and the republicans might split into two parties once he’s no longer among the living. If that does happen, they’re going to have trouble winning national elections. Trump is such a narcissistic egomaniac that he will not have a successor designated, so it will turn into an open field.
I agree that, from a European perspective, the USA has unfortunately turned out to be an unreliable partner, mainly because of the Trumpist’s strange closeness to Russia. But I don’t see why Europe needs to massively rearm its military because of this. Europe has nuclear weapons, which makes open conflict pretty unlikely in the first place. What’s more, I don’t believe that Europe could build a competitive conventional army even with massive investment. For this reason, the path that Switzerland (not part of the EU) is taking, i.e. far-reaching neutrality with simultaneous economic cooperation with more or less all players, seems to me to make more sense. I just think that instead of spending billions on armaments, it would be much better to invest in futureproof infrastructure. There is a massive lack of this in Germany, for example - in terms of telecommunications, transport and in the energy sector. I am simply not convinced by the arguments of military deterrence, especially as I think that Europe has little prospect of ever reaching a corresponding level in conventional warfare capacity anyway - all the more so in the very unlikely worstcase scenario that is that the USA under Trump turns into an autocracy with Russia as a partner.
It’s an isolationist policy. The US military doesn’t have military bases/presences across Europe (and elsewhere) out of the goodness of its heart or to protect Europe. They also do it because their military realises that its much, much better to have bases somewhere where they can strike an international enemy quickly from. It’s a militarily mutually beneficial arrangement.
So, the US would lose that early strike capability. They’d also lose all the intelligence benefits having people on the ground brings with it. Also, should it happen and Europe was successfully invaded, US businesses would either temporarily or permanently lose access to one of their biggest trade export blocs and a large amount of access to imports too.
Seems to be a distinct possibility. Posturing prior to the election, rattling sabers, they’re spoiling for a full-on shootin’ war contingent on losing the election, in my opinion.
edit: I dare say, it might even be strategically advantageous for them to intentionally try lose, claim it was rigged, and use that to go live with the 4th riech.
If you’re OK with another self-plug then !freegames is a community I set up for posting limited-time giveaways of full video games. I now have more games than I have time to play.
!trendingcommunities is a good place to check out to find which communities are on the rise jn terms of posts and subscribers, and to discover those communities.
It would be rad for me too. I don’t wish harm to Americans of course, but I think it’s about time they start throwing hands instead of whining on the internet 24/7 about how much they hate eachother.
Seen from the outside and ignoring all the innocent people suffering, I would love one thing about the USA splitting up, it would be the perfect example of how shitty things can get when people don’t realize they live in conservative locations that depend on the goodwill of more progressive locations. Split the USA like on OP’s map and just watch as the red part devolves into a third world country.
Meta will become the champion of Open Source and near completely become as known for it as Google was in the mid to late 00’s. They will dominate AI to such an extent Facebook will be the inbred backwater project that no one thinks about when the name Meta pops up. I know it’s hard to swallow and believe right now, but the Zuck isn’t the driver that matters here. Yann LeCun is the person behind Meta AI and he is Bell Labs alumni beating the war drum of open source for market leadership, not monopoly, just leadership. The majority of the digital age exists on those credentials; a Bell Labs alumni pushing Open Source. That is worth betting big on IMO.
It may take a couple hundred years, but AGI lead government is coming, once conservative stupidity fades. A politician with infinite persistence and fractal attention is far better than anything finite corruptible humans with tiny attention spans can offer the public.
Often when I’m working on some code, all my errors are because of something much different than what the error message is telling me. I’ve learned that often, most problems have a different cause and better solution.
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