After agressive sanctions from US government for EU, the targeted EU travel ban and current presidents rhetoric, I have zero trust in any kind of mutual defense or military assistance coming from US in the time of crisis.

Remember, people of Italy are currently being helped by Chinese doctors while US president ignores and belittles the problem.

The talks between France and Germany about creating an independent defense pact also reflect the complete lack of trust into what NATO has become. So much was lost in so few years.

And that also ignores all the nasty surveillance stuff they've been doing these last few years - where the Five Eyes pact was used to surveil our own citizens by our own government by piping data through US. If there's one thing I'm sure of is that China won't share their spying data with my own government ;P

I think I'd be the first to admit that NATO has probably outlived it's useful life as a Cold War construction, but there's still a lot of history there. None of that exists with China, and China seems to be using the crisis in Europe as a means to exert its influence abroad (hello 5G rollout). Does Europe really want to trade that history for a new relationship with a country like China where the structure of that relationship is yet unknown?

Perhaps it's better to actually ask some hard hitting questions about fairness between US-EU trade relations (and admittedly since I am an American, it seems a bit unfair that the EU gets to essentially freeload on US defense in the western hemisphere and we get some stiff tariffs in return). So it seems perfectly reasonable, and probably a good thing, that France and Germany are creating an independent defense pact.

>If there's one thing I'm sure of is that China won't share their spying data with my own government ;P

And? Consider for a moment that sharing of this data between defense partners actually provides a useful signal of mutual capabilities and for what's being collected.

Its been my understanding that what we get in return for having our military everywhere is the continuation of the petro dollar and the usage of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

I'd be totally open to arguments that we see a negative ROI on this, but I dont think it's necessarily fair to say that we don't get anything out of it.

I've heard this argument before, and after reading a lot about it (and breaking out some of my old economics textbooks) I'm not really sure what to make of it. I'm undecided on if the dollar as the "world" reserve currency is actually a good thing for regular Americans. It certainly gives the American government a lever of power that other countries do not have, but where I part ways with the prevailing wisdom on this (the wisdom that insists this is a worthwhile arrangement) is when we talk about what the United States uses this power for. Folks who've lost their jobs because of crappy trade deals, or see their towns evaporate because of global capital movement, feel no comfort from the fact that foreign banks and governments "seek safety in holding US dollars".

One would expect that this power would be used to enrich America. This isn't what's happening, so I'm frankly willing to part with the whole deal.

> If there's one thing I'm sure of is that China won't share their spying data with my own government.

They'll just share it with their allies; Chinese-state hackers, Russia, Iran, and North Korea so you'll have blackhats after you instead of your government.

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

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