The sustained need for artillery shells since 2022 did not arise because more countries wanted to decouple from American dependence, but because a war was started that did not allow for the typical NATO doctrine of air superiority to be used. I wonder when so many artillery shells were last used as they have been in Ukraine.
NATO has been badly out produced by Russia — and drained its collective stockpiles to dangerous levels.
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Articles pretending that this was invented in a few months due to Trump are silly — and commit a fallacy so common it has a name.
>comes against the backdrop of the refusal of British and European defense companies to purchase American equipment. This is due to fears that President Donald Trump has turned the USA into an unreliable partner.
This was just one of the many articles. You can do a quick search and the theme is decouple from the USA.
Europe: "Screw you! We'll show you! We're going to spend more money on becoming militarily independent!"
The man has an inhuman power to influence narratives.
Trump: "Buy more from us to make yourselves more military independent!"
Europe: "There is another way."
I can't imagine the EU should feel particularly different? (other than Ukraine and the recent shemozzle)
As an American I encourage every country to decouple, and as I understand every country is working on it. Mark Carney of Canada said it best, it will never be the same, ever no matter what the future is because trust that has lasted 90 years has been broken. Canada will never have the same relationship with the USA.
The British Empire was the drug dealer empire, first with tobacco and later with opium. There were also some spices in there too. But the British Empire at one point covered a quarter of the globe, leading to the double-meaning of "the sun never sets on the British Empire" (also meaning it never ends).
Rome was a little diferent because of simply looting their provinces (by demanding tributes). Instead they formed alliances of mutual benefit and provinces essentially became Romanized. This sustained Rome for ~1500 years (post-Republic, ignoring the Holy Roman Empire).
Spain looted silver from South America.
The USA is an empire but it breaks the mould by generally not using direct colonization. It's probably better described as economic imperialism. Even "global" institutions largely just project US power (eg the IMF and the World Bank).
Ultimately, the US is an arms dealer empire. What backs the US dollar is the US military and, in addition to the ability to directly project global military power, the US has a ton of influence by who it chooses to sell weapons to.
Additionally, there's soft power through things like foreign aid.
Why do I mention all this? Because despite the mantra of "making America great", the current administration is doing more to destroy US direct and soft power than anyone could possibly have imagined, more than current and former adversaries (eg the USSR, China) could ever have dreamed of doing themselves.
Abandoning Ukraine, which is what the US is really doing at this point, may in fact be the catalyst to restart European weapons production. The president may complain that Europe is taking advantage of the US with NATO and we're somehow "paying for European defense" like that's a bad thing. It's not, at least from the perspective of US foreign policy and interests. NATO is what the US uses to control and influence Europe.
If Europe becomes no longer dependant on US weapons and can be responsible for European security, then NATO doesn't really need to exist, which is bad for the US and good for basically everybody else.
Now if the goal is American isolationism then all this sort of makes sense but I don't think that is the goal. Also, it's worth adding that previous periods of American isolationism happened in the lead up to both WW1 and WW2.
The two aren't inconsistent; one of the major dissident observations that has propelled Trump is that the Not-An-Empire doesn't seem to be driving prosperity in the way people would expect. It is driving prosperity to the ... I dunno, call them imperial elites or upper middle class+. Obviously the empire is great for people like the Bush or Biden families. Not so obvious the 20 years of war in Afghanistan was a big win for everyone else or all the unrelated destruction. It stands out that China has built a US-sized economy in the last 50 years without really sending out any armies; military aggression obviously isn't the only factor here.
It is a complex issue but ultimately it is not easy to rule out the bureaucracy that manages the empire doing more damage to the US than the benefits empire brings. Voting by the numbers is suggesting that the damage has been significant.
This too has analogs in Rome.
In a present context, this is US multipolarity: focused on building the US and NA (as a modern Monroe Doctrine) while dropping foreign entanglements.
Trump’s threats against Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Panama are best understood within that context.
Least meme stock out there. Well that and Rheinmetall.
Sad situation really.
Imagine if it could be scaled down enough so a person could carry it around, just give them feedstock and the processor creates propellant.
