this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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I mean, just at Munich a few days ago the secretary-general of NATO was pointing out Europe's dependence on the US's nuclear threat and that without US aid to Ukraine the other NATO countries can't make up the difference.
This is the first year in decades Germany is meeting the 2% military spending goal for NATO (a goal now generally seen as outdated and insufficient). There's a lot of scrambling to modernize military capabilities across non-US member countries but in most cases that's 5 to 10 years away.
If you think that Europe doesn't depend on the US's military and intelligence to offset Russia and China you might want to look a bit more into the topic before assuming it's just 'Murica exceptionalism.
I don't like how this discussion is going so I'm gonna clarify. I obviously think it is true that america has a very important role in current world "balance", especially as an ally of western europe.
However, I think your original post made several stereotypical shortcuts. In particular, I don't think that "democratic ideals" are something that only lives in western countries. Also, talking from France, I feel as many internal threats to this democracy as external ones and america seems to be in a rather similar spot, if not worse (the whole Trump thing).
The worse thing that could happen here would be to discourage people of being proud of their country, we will need it to have the will to improve things.
Most of those internal threats are being instigated by external forces if you actually look into it.
And typically nationalist rhetoric and authoritarianism go hand in hand.
Arguably it'd be far more productive to recognize one's tribal group as humanity at large rather than artificial divides around where you work, what you look like, who you love, or where you live.
So while we can discuss national governments as distinct entities much like we'd discuss corporations, the people making both up are probably better discussed as people rather than any given subgroup.