ECFR: with possible exception of France, whole of Europe “has almost completely renounced the idea of greater strategic autonomy.” “We are so vassalised that we can’t even admit to it. If we did, then people might figure it out and that would be terrible.”
A lot of these “news” articles read like Russian propoganda trying to drive a wedge between allies because they are desperate.
It’s kind of bizarre. The original article says (in a very repetitive and long-winded way) Europe needs to step up its military spending and send more of their own troops to the eastern borders to be able to counter Russian aggression on their own in the face of a potentially unreliable US who may be more focused on China. I honestly don’t think the US would disagree here. Strong allies aren’t a bad thing.
Economically it argues (again, in very unnecessarily long wording) the US will make decisions regarding protecting itself from a rising China without concern for Europe.
My opinion, this is probably true, although Europe might want to be concerned about China in its own right. Again, I’m not convinced the US wouldn’t want strong economic partners either. This only gets into disagreement territory if the EU intends to partner with China to counter the US. That will go about as well as it did partnering with Russia for their energy dependence.
Bottom line the article makes just two arguments that I’m fairly sure the US would agree with, in an unnecessarily inflammatory way that does seem intended to drive a wedge between the US and EU. I’m not sure if they’re just being salty, just trying to use emotion to rile people up to get things done, or if their goal is the second argument, an economic wedge, in which case they’re arguing to tie themselves to another despot.
I think they make a good point, regardless.
No, not really. They are a few years too late with their conclusion. The topic of US military dependency came up a couple of years ago and the EU decided to take steps against it. And with the invasion of Ukraine, this is only taken more seriously and urgently. The article also doesn’t bring up that many points. Only
The paper also compared Germany’s previous unwillingness to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine unless the US agreed to provide its own M1 Abrams vehicles to the behaviour of “a scared child in a room full of strangers [who] felt alone if Uncle Sam was not holding its hand.”
and
“encouraging European nations to ban Huawei sales in Europe”
Germany has been hesitant on taking a leading position in anything military due to history. And taking the step of becoming more involved in a war wasn’t that simple. But again, they came around and acknowledged that they have to.
And trying to argue that restricting the sales of technology that most likely is used by the Chinese government to spy is a rather weird way of saying it’s becoming a vassal of the US.And then the article only goes on about how the word “Vassal” is triggering people. So I don’t see the good points you are talking about.
Think that points to it being Chinese propaganda. Russians don’t bring up the Huawei thing, they don’t understand it enough.
Lovely racism!
Exactly, Putin is constantly describing Europe as a vassal state of the US and tries to drive wedges between European and US cooperation, especially when our interests clearly align like in Ukraine. In fact the biggest per capita contributions to the Ukrainian defense effort come from European countries. It’s not like the US dragged Europe kicking and screaming to defend Ukraine, it’s pretty obviously even more important for Europe than for the US. This is why so many European countries like Germany have made major ramp ups in military spending and defense. All these calls about Europe being a vassal state are basically telling Europe to shoot itself in the foot to show how independent it is. If they want a more unified foreign policy, the answer isn’t stopping cooperation with the US and the defense of Ukraine. The answer is they have to work on more cooperation with their own member states so they can speak with a unified voice. Something Russia in reality actively works to prevent, using influence in countries like Hungary to drive a wedge in the EU and preventing unified foreign policy in the EU and from them becoming a more independent player.
Ugh, what piffle.
Cooperating on shared values isn’t “vassal” behavior, it’s cooperation. The only country on Earth that thinks for example that nations ought to be able to redraw their borders by military force is Russia (and its vassal Belarus). The fact that the nations of Europe are united with the rest of the West in opposing this is sensible in terms of maintaining sovereignty.
“That word ‘vassal’ really did trigger some people […] It sounded like they were basically saying: ‘You’re right, but don’t talk about it this way.’”
That’s exactly my view too, stop calling us vassals, we’re literally hostages 😭
“becoming”
eh… what?
