Subject: Re: More EU views on the trade deal
At present course, sure. But if they really put their resources into it, they could do it much, much more quickly. You know this. They don't have many factories making artillery shells today, because they don't need to have many factories making artillery shells. Which makes sense.

There is zero, actually less than zero, among European voters or politicians to commit resources towards conquering the continent. They'd have to sacrifice their social safety nets and lavish early retirements for that.

They won't.

But again, the downside to that is that they then all have armies that are sufficient to conquer each other. So we've had eight decades of uninterrupted peace between the countries of Europe; something which had never heretofore existed. Ever. And a huge part of that is the Pax Americana, the restructuring of European defense forces to be pieces of a military defense against invasion from the East, rather than wholly self-sufficient armed forces that are powerful enough to flex beyond their borders.

You don't think the collective memory of "twice is enough" is also present? Travel through Europe and you'll see reminders of both World Wars everywhere. They don't want to go there again.

We're too cheap to pay for that Pax Americana now, apparently.

Oh? We're currently at 3.4% of our (much larger) GDP. We also need to pivot to the Pacific urgently and defend significant assets in outer space. We've allowed our

-Front line Navy
-Shipbuilding
-Logistical support
-Support bases

...to deteriorate to the point of useless in some ways. That needs to be fixed, pronto. It means more hulls put in the water every year, a crash buildout of the F-47 and B-21, more air-to-air missiles, and even more importantly rebuilding the ability to do simple things like ship gas and beans across the Pacific.

Too cheap? No. We just have to have slightly different priorities for the next couple of decades.

It's too much trouble to be the Boss of NATO, and once we force all the other countries of Europe to step up their defense funding, they might start to question why the US is the Boss of NATO anymore.

The Russians aren't going to be charging through the Fulda Gap behind a wall of tanks any time soon. Arguing that the defense of Europe is the #1 priority of the national security of the United States was the correct philosophy of oh, 1949-1989 but not as much now.

It's not a massive ask to ask Gerhard, Nigel, Giuseppe and Francois over in Europe to spend a few more bucks a year in their own self interest.

Bringing this back to the EU trade deal - one of its more brilliant provisions was having the Europeans buy more American hardware. If they don't want to fund their own defense they can directly pay us to do it.