> There is not much the Pentagon can do to pre-emptively shield the force from a potential abuse of power by a commander in chief.

Remember "we're going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it". That gets headlines and people talking.

Are you saying this as an American or European? Because right now most Europeans I know are looking at Russia and being very supportive of NATO.

Also, while they happily spend US money, NATO develops very different security policies and technologies so US influence doesn't seem to amount to much.

The point here is that the US isn't dropping support for NATO, and certainly not over X.

One part of NATO is a quid pro quo: It's in the interest of the nuclear powers, most of all the US, that other countries don't build their own nuclear weapons. You might say that US offers an alliance (including nuclear weapons) in exchange for Norway, Finland, Poland, Austria, Italy etc. spending their budgets on non-nuclear weapons. All of those have advanced economies and generally sufficient resources that they could build nuclear weapons, but doing it is a decade-long project.

Imagine yourself as the government of Poland. Make a choice about the 2026 defense budget. Start a nuclear bomb project that you think will take ten years, or trust that if Russia invades in 2035 the US will stand by its promises? What do you choose if you feel a tinge of doubt in the trustworthiness of half of the recent US presidents, or in the statements of many leading US politicians? That Vance person may be president in 2035, is he reliable? He spoke the words "drop support for NATO if", he suggested forcing your neighbour to cede territory, will he sacrifice American lives if Russia invades Poland?

The statement isn't some shameful secret, to be reluctantly dragged into the light by a wily interrogator, but an obvious and normal feature of an alliance which is neither one-sided nor zero-sum.

P.S.: Even among the Americans who disagree, it's usually because they consider it ineffectual, rather than nefarious. Heck, they'd probably like it more if you told them it was a swaggering tool of US hegemony.

There are at least a few of us Americans who consider The Empire, NATO, IMF, hegemony, parasitism, domination, and all those sort of things to be pure evil. Not everyone eats propaganda up like it's a plastic-wrapped chemical-infused food-like product fresh out of the microwave. Some of us internalized all that stuff about freedom. Not many, but not zero.

Are you claiming that the EU is spending US money under NATO? This is a textbook trumpian fallacy: a gross oversimplification aimed at spinning facts so they support his false premise.

Truth is that US defense spending benefits primarily US companies and US economy.

Further to this, EU defense spending also primarily benefits US companies and US economy: 63% of it actually goes to US suppliers [1].

So Trump insisting on 2% GDP spending on defense for NATO members was a pretty effective racket: forcing them to spend more of their public budgets in the US.

Incidentally, this also benefitted EU NATO members in the context of the Europe’s developing security situation, but Trump was not interested in giving his EU partners some tough love, he simply wanted them to buy more US weapons.

Now, your claim is even worse than Trump’s false re-framing: you go even further, claiming that somehow EU (NATO?) is spending US money. This fabricates an image where poor US is somehow forced to foot the bill for entire NATO, which is false, naive, and frankly ridiculous.

In reality, NATO is effectively a US-dominated organisation. The only country to ever invoke Article 5 was US in 2001, after September 11, leading to a series of devastating wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and ultimately Syria, in which US dragged its NATO partners.

NATO exists primarily because it is in US interest. I believe it is also in the interest of European member states, but the US has been driving it because the administration knows it is in US interest. In the long term, dismantling NATO, or distancing US from it would hurt US the most.

It will lead to further strengthening of defense spending by the European countries, accelerated development of EU-specific defense structures and organisations independent of NATO, and it will give tailwinds to (dominantly French) efforts to decrease European spending on US-made systems and increase buying those built at home.

This is either yet another short-sighted populist move aimed at scoring points at home, or if it’s somehow strategic, it’s a sign of US scaling down its global ambitions, realising its waning power and influence.

[1] https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240909-the-eu-buys-too-...

I'm not so sure: That rests on the assumption that the person making the statement is smart and doesn't believe their own propaganda.

OK bro

Epic clapback, but you're giggling at a name not remembered spontaneously while simultaneously not spending five seconds to check if anything actually happened.

Interesting cause the budget isn't declining. Where is the money being shifted to?

https://indi.ca/the-us-military-is-in-a-death-spiral/

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105341

https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/NDS-commission.html

File this under: The MIC is not a conspiracy theory.

What's on the decline: The value the US taxpayer is getting per dollar spent by The MIC.

Under Obama (this is mentioned inhis 2016 State of The Union) the USA spent more than the next 10 counties combined. Most of those are allies. Gawd only knows what that stat is now. If all the spending is resulting in a decline, something is wrong.

Is spending a lot of money the goal or the measurement here? If your goal is actual effectiveness, then things such as force structure, results in recent conflicts, production rates, etc. are what you’d measure. If your goal is funneling money to capitalists then yeah sure budgets and adherence to “%GDP spending targets” from your vassals is what you’d measure.

These pressures will finally push the EU to drop Office and Windows...

We'll just force the EU to do what we want or else we take our business to China! Meanwhile, we'll force China to do what we want or else we'll take our business to the EU! Plus we can throw Canada and Mexico into the mix, and show them who's boss.

There is absolutely no way this genius "alienate every viable major trading partner simultaneously" strategy could ever fail. I mean, even if other countries somehow exhibit more intelligence than a turnip and compare notes, this is America! We don't need 'em! We'll just trade with nobody and get super rich until they come begging to our feet.

Sadly, I fear the above sarcasm is closer-than-not to what some freshly-appointed folks are gonna try to do.

https://x.com/i/status/1855406084418126099

It's not about free speech, that is safe and sound in the EU.

It's about avoid that the US monopolies on Social Media don't decide what messages get propagated, while others get shadow banned at the whim of their CEO/Co-President of the USA....