What Europe didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand was the US agenda differs from Europe agenda , always has. But now they start to wake up facing this reality.
France would disagree with the "didn't understand" part. They have been continuously ridiculed for holding that view, until very, very recently.
I remember during the Chirac presidency how viciously France was attacked by the other European countries, especially my own Sweden, for doing nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
Jump forward today and France is seen as a protector of Europe, especially in Sweden, because of its nuclear arsenal.
That was not the most glorious moment of Chirac's presidency, no..
However, as someone involved in numerical simulations, the argument that it was needed to calibrate their numerical models does hold (some..) water..
But Chirac did partly redeem himself by refusing to invade Iraq on bogus US claims of WMDs..
Let's also not forget the absolutely absurd intervention of Colin Powell at the UN Security Council, holding up a vial containing the ultimate "proof" of WMD.
Good thing he didn't drop it.. /s
The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world, and the peace (at least in the Western world) that US defense brought made sure both the US and the EU could freely trade and benefit financially.
What now changed is that apparently the US thinks it does not need this hegemony anymore (by forcing the EU to become a competing military power), or that they can replace the role the EU played with some other combination of countries. Or alternatively, the US is just looking for some "splendid isolation".
To European spectators, the above seems ridiculous. But who knows, maybe Trump is correct... Either way, the US had a good thing going and is now abandoning that. Not strange that Europe is surprised by that move.
That's the thing, Americans have become very skeptical of our own influence and power, for good reason. Look what we did to the Middle East. Look at the shenanigans we were funding with USAID. There isn't actually a constituency for this imperialism stuff in the US. US voters don't like it.
In any case -- if we had so much influence, why were previous presidents like Bush and Obama unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense?
>forcing the EU to become a competing military power
It's not about competition, it's about Europe taking responsibility for itself.
You want a global cop? How about you do it yourself for a bit? It's a terrible job. Maybe you should take a turn at it.
We did cut down too much on our defence, especially after the Cold war (not all European countries though, like Finland). But, many European countries have bought plenty of expensive US military equipment like fighter aircraft, helicopters, anti aircraft systems, etc. It’s not like those were a gift.
or maybe you are just misunderstanding and rationalizing what’s going on to tell yourself that everything is going fine on the US politics side of things while the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that you voted a narcissistic authoritarian into office.
Let’s hope you are right!
Yes, among other things. It is the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany", and thing it finally settles is WW2 and the subsequent temporary arrangements.
> If you accept that as a peace treaty
The ~1955 treaties between the respective occupying powers and West and East Germany separately, which ended most of the powers of occupation but could not formally end the Potsdam arrangement because the Western allies weren't going to formalize the situation with East Germany and the USSR wasn't going to do the same for West Germany, effectively (but not completely formally) ended the occupation and were essentially peace treaties (but obviously neither addressed the whole of Germany or the whole of the belligerents against Germany in WW2.) Between 1955 and reunification, each of the Germanies was technically occupied as a consequence of the Cold War. But West Germany was generally treated as as much of an equal partner as other major Western nations with the US.
I only pointed to the 1991 treaty because it is simple and irrefutable and the most straightforward, uncomplicated way to rebut your originally clearly-wrong claim that Germany was currently occupied without any peace treaty.
Europeans are just impossible to satisfy, from my perspective. They will complain no matter what the US does.
Furthermore, my strong suspicion is that there is actually a great deal of overlap between the Europeans who used to say "America is exploiting Europe through its presence there", and the Europeans who now say "America is exploiting Europe by pulling out". There seems to be a surprising amount of continuity behind Europe's anti-American thinking, even when it points in diametrically opposite directions. The "de Gaulle was right" Europeans never actually argue with the Europeans who say "the US needs to stay", even though they would appear to be taking opposite sides of the issue. Somehow, anti-Americanism is a far more powerful force than the major underlying policy difference between these two camps.
Anyway, I appreciate your comment. I'll try and link to it elsewhere to explain why we're leaving. Hopefully it will help clarify for some people.
OP's point is this nonsense rhetoric doesn't make sense with European frustration with American retrenchment.
Europe is not like that - we don't pay taxes to the US to defend us. The US kindly did so free of charge for many years which is a different thing, more of an alliance I guess.
Now the US is kind of switching allegiances we are having to recalculate.
And we ask them to pay taxes fairly they complain, and they don't want to open their stuff, they even work hard on malicious compliance. It's a pretty bad deal.
A very quick search; https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/18/men-and-w...
https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latin...