You may not think there's a game, but both Putin and Xi are playing one. You may want to live in peace, but they may not give you the option.

Militarily, what we really need is some strategic nuclear ability. So we have the ability to destroy Russia if they bother us. It will be enough as a deterrent so they won't. It's kept us all safe for 80 years.

Part of the problem is that the US has always opposed us having our own nuclear deterrent. They've always opposed France and have hamstrung the UK's options. That

> what we really need is some strategic nuclear ability

France has nukes.

Absolutely but not nearly enough.

France only has one sub guaranteed to be at sea at any one time. That's not a credible deterrent, one torpedo and it's gone.

We need to build that out to be much more resilient against counterattack.

This is why several countries are partnering with France now too build this out.

France has 280 nukes and bombers to deliver them. France launches satellites, so it's not a stretch to think they could do ICBMs in a hurry if they wanted or needed to.

I'm sure they could but they don't have them ready to go.

In case of a nuclear attack there is no time to build stuff obviously. A deterrent needs to be ready 24/7.

And bombers only really work when aerial supremacy has already been achieved. The US still operates some but constant flights were dropped in the 60s like chrome dome.

For Europe to be completely independent from the US for its deterrent (and thus not being able to be blackmailed by Trump) we'll need our own ICBM platform and more subs.

There is a reason why Europe was thoroughly disarmed and pacified

https://youtu.be/821R0lGUL6A?si=TKfi83pBlcMEqQg4&t=366

Europeans are genocidal lunatics. There were incidents of ethnic cleansing as late as the early 2000s. Telling countries like germany to rearm is lunacy

I am in Germany and I can see this is true. The general attitude here is quite nasty towards other countries, it's only tempered by lack of ability. If there is a need for defense then Germany should be contributing more money to shared defense projects rather than having a large army of its own.

That part about not trying to win or rule the world makes sense, but to live in peace, on has to have the basic ability to defend oneself, which doesn't seem to exist because the EU chooses to spend money in other domaints.

That's the problem. When you don't raise a military (for example) you get conquered by someone who did and the same principle is true in economic warfare. Look at France, the government can't afford schools because it gave so much money to American billionaires, without using the same strategies to extract the same amount of money back from America.