Let's talk about Trump and what Europe can do in response.... - Belle of the Ranch

[TexasTowelie]

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about Trump and what Europe can do in response.

Trump has announced his intention to impose more tariffs in an attempt to force the takeover of Greenland. I've talked about how the likely outcome of this is longtime allies starting to forge economic ties with adversarial nations. This has prompted some fun gotcha questions, but it's also made me realize that people may not have a firm grasp on the foundation of military alliances.

If you read the NATO treaty, you'll find economic cooperation listed before the famous military defense agreement that defines NATO in the public's mind. Military alliances are based on shared interests, and that often means shared economic interests. I think it's important to understand how devastating a NATO breakup would be for American security.

So, here's a cutesy gotcha. Who cares if they refuse to trade with us? We'll build it here. Germany can sell their chocolate to the Chinese. Really, they don't have the military power to fight us and they don't have anything we have to have.

Without economic ties, our alliance would fall by the wayside because our national interests would diverge if our economic and then national interests diverge our military ones would as well.

Let's forget about the stereotypical products from each country. Let's not talk about German chocolate. You know what? They could sell--airplanes. Who cares, right? The US owns the sky. We don't even have a mortgage. We own it. Their planes won't match us.

I'm not talking about them selling their planes. I'm talking about them selling ours. The F-35 to China. American air supremacy gone overnight. They could sell the physical planes to their new trading partners along with the quality control measures. If that's not enough, they could sell the specs and physical copies of all of those high-tech toys the American nationalist loves. They could share our various contingency plans that they know about. They could brief their new trading partners on actual, not public, US strategic positions and plans. It could revoke access to the bases in their countries and thus remove US capability to put forces on the ground anywhere in the world quickly. They could burn thousands of intelligence assets around the world overnight. They could do all of this without firing a shot.

Our military capability and theirs are intertwined. If somebody says the US doesn't need NATO, they don't understand how our military is structured. They focus on the toys. Our B2s own the sky. Cool. When they hit targets in the Mid East recently, where'd they take off from? Diego Garcia is a British possession. They don't have to do much to us because the mere act of separating from NATO degrades our capabilities more than any current opposition military ever could. The US will be the first superpower to meme itself into irrelevance.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.