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There's talk, and there's what trump is doing. Those aren't jokes, or some trash-talk at the ballgame. When he says he doubts we will come to america's aid, insult aside, that means america possibly won't come to ours. So our alliance is worthless, and we need to make new arrangements immediately.
If he attacks greenland or canada like he threatens, it's even simpler: we'll just shoot, and people will die - maybe even a real war like russia-ukraine. It's not like Ukraine's weakness stopped ukraine from shooting back, like many thought. Or the fundamental stupidity of the operation stopped Putin from attacking.
No, that is not what that means. In fact what he is quoted as saying was
Which contradicts your interpretation quite explicitly.
Did he threaten? Or did he merely "not rule out" things. These are very different; the US has a long tradition of not ruling out things just because someone asks, and Trump knows that. He actually threatened tariffs.
The man is a raging narcissist, if you take him at his word that "he'll come to our rescue 100%", when he started all this by writing "[he] no longer thinks only of peace" because "we" denied him the nobel peace prize, you are far gone. I am not delegating my security to this child with a gun.
He lies so much that people have to invent new categories beyond "liar" for what he is, like "post-truth communicator", but you expect us to trust him, when he shows us only contempt?
Take him seriously, not literally. Suddenly what he says is to be interpreted literally? I'll tell you what he means seriously : "since we are better than them, we will do as we please."
Europe was more than happy to do so for decades, and frankly still is given the pitiful increases in military size and weapons production since Russia invaded Ukraine.
My favorites are when, roughly a decade ago, Germany had less than 10 fully armed and operational fighter jets and ZERO operational submarines.
This seemed so implausible to me that I went and hunted for accurate sources ... and found references for both claims. So... wow.
I'm also not usually a fan of the "child with a gun", but even stopped clocks get to be right twice a day. "I just really do question whether or not they'll come to [our rescue]" seems to be a reasonable concern, if not about intentions (Germany did stick it out in Afghanistan for decades), then at least about recent capabilities vs peer adversaries. They're in an at least an order of magnitude better shape now, and still improving, but is that because they've fixed the root problems or just because they got tired of being repeatedly embarrassed by leaks to the press?
Rescue from what, getting into a war on the pacific? Why should Germans, on top of being a vassal, field an army that can maintain an empire that is not theirs? It was never that great of a deal, it is an abysmal deal today, to be on the lowest rung on the likely loser side. And it's stupid framing anyhow, in an event of a serious, defensive war (trying to deny China Taiwan is not defensive), Europeans would mobilize and contribute.
Not to say I want European armies to be weak, on the contrary. Big German army, please, I'll take that risk.
I don't see how a CCP invasion of Taiwan wouldn't be a defensive war. It wouldn't be a defense of US territory as an ally, but it would be a defensive war in the same way Ukraine is a defensive war, where the odds will favor the defender rather than the invader the longer the war prolongs, since they'll be fighting a fortified island with risk of having their boats and aircraft blown up by relatively cheap sea drones and anti-air, and even if they make it onto land, they'll be sending meatwaves through mountains and into cities.
Defensive for the Taiwanese, and tactically, sure. I meant that for the US, it would an attempt to contain the Chinese, at best part of morally neutral competition, at worst aggression. Does not fit into NATO purpose, not in European interest, so we should not lift a finger; Taiwan is not a domino piece.
If the US wants to fight over it in an event of an invasion, fine, I'd even be a bit glad since I expect the US to lose. But I don't hate the Taiwanese, I know the US would try to psyop them into fighting harder than they would otherwise, give false promises, then consider it a victory if relative position of the US improves, no matter if Taiwan suffers as much as Ukraine or worse, so ideally it's peaceful reunification or swift surrender into a treaty that the Taiwanese can live with.
I could see it being in European interest to defend freedom and democracy from principle, then of course semiconductor fabrication. Of course, not that Europe has much in terms of naval assets to provide a credible contribution to Taiwanese defense.
I can't really understand how you foresee a US loss in Taiwan. Funnily, I just received a 5-year RemindMe from the old /r/TheMotte, predicting Taiwanese reunification at 80%. I feel like people are fundamentally too bearish on Taiwan. Reflecting on Ukraine, warfare seems to be broadly in favor of the defender, where expensive equipment of the invader is prone to be demolished with relatively cheap defending weapons. Additionally, I believe the US navy would still likely stomp the Chinese navy before it even came to an asymmetrical defense.
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It's not great, but in a lesser country, you don't even hear about such things.
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Yeah, the only NATO allies that would contribute any significant amount of forces and materiel are Canada, the UK, and France, but even then they wouldn't contribute much compared to the US. There are some NATO militaries like the Finns that I expect would punch above their weight, but they're too small to contribute too much. The US would be doing the bulk of the fighting for NATO in WW3, unlike WW2 when the Brits carried their own weight.
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You're complaining about what he says, and then when he says the opposite of the bad thing you're complaining about, you're substituting your own headcanon instead. This is not a valid complaint.
Clown nose on, clown nose off, shtick. If he's a clown, I don't want him in charge of our defense. If he's not a clown, he hates us, fuck him.
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So basically, you hate him because he's telling you the truth.
Your local elites are, and honestly, they have to. Imagine giving you a gun- if they started rewarding people who did that, then they'd get political power and try to compete, and why would you want subjects to do that?
But if they let the US do that- if they simply pay them as mercenaries with the odd disruption to your economy and perform/impose American religious rites on the population- your local power brokers can be as corrupt as they like. And the powerful in your nation that don't want to do that will be out-competed by those that do, so it wouldn't matter how virtuous your population at large is anyway.
Indeed.
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This is reality. Trump is dispensing with some of the polite fictions because they are distorting peoples' perception of actual reality. In reality, there are not many scenarios where Europe can possibly come to America's aid in any substantive way other than moral support, regardless of treaty obligations. That's Europe's choice, and for better or worse it makes them a much less valuable ally.
So I interpreted it correctly. Let's just wind this thing down. I am honestly tired of explaining the value of an alliance with a bloc with a huge economy and population and very similar interests. I can't do it anymore, despite being an Americanophile through and through. We are too far apart on what we think the other brings to the table. Or maybe we hate each other like an old couple.
I want merz and everyone to tell trump to fuck off in no uncertain terms and stop giving him face-saving exits. Full tariffs, leave ramstein, etc. It's headed towards it anyway. They are slowly learning to deal with Trump's trick of defect defect defect until he finds resistance.
Why would you suppose we have very similar interests?
What sort of American?
There's a considerable number of Americans who would welcome this, I'd imagine.
I don't want to live in Europe. I don't want to live anywhere like Europe. I don't want where I live to become more like Europe, even marginally. I would prefer actual war against the authorities to this happening. Your entire social consensus is inimical to what I view as fundamental human rights and basic principles of liberty. We are not friends in any meaningful sense; you are allied with my tribal enemies, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Again, Carney says it best:
I perceive integration with Europe one of the major sources of my subordination.
No matter which way net subordination actually flows, maybe it's time for a peaceful divorce then.
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You are vastly oversimplifying. There are twice as many people in Europe as in the USA - we are not 750 million clones of Angela Merkel or Schultz.
What makes a friend? Personally, I read much of what you write with interest and appreciation. Whatever you may believe, there is some level of sympathy between many Europeans and Americans like you. It's nosediving lately because so many Red Tribers are grinning and making teabagging gestures as Trump threatens to come over and take our stuff because he feels like it and we can't stop him, but it's there.
Sure, Europe and America are too integrated. That's partly because integration has been pursued vigorously by America over the last 50 years for obvious reasons, but it's likely harmful now. But there are levels of integration between 'you are allied with my enemies and I despise you' and 'Europe? never heard of it'.
Can you provide any examples of European sympathy when Thierry Breton decided to teabag Americans?
From the stuff I read:
https://unherd.com/newsroom/eu-is-spearheading-the-new-global-axis-of-censorship/
https://unherd.com/newsroom/banning-x-will-not-make-anyone-safer/
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/30/can-elon-musk-beat-the-eu-censors/
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/27/the-eus-empire-of-censorship/
Plus later:
https://unherd.com/2025/11/the-eus-new-censorship-machine/
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/25/the-eu-wants-to-censor-the-global-internet/
Broadly, it would be a mistake to:
Treat the behaviour of the EU and especially Thierry Breton as representative of the mass political will of normal Europeans. Broadly there is some correlation but the EU is famously non-democratic, and Thierry Breton is an unelected EU Commissioner. The former president of the EU Commission once said in public re: referendums, “If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'.” The anti-democratic behaviour of the EU puts the American Deep State to shame.
Treat the behaviour of the EU as being about America rather than Europe. Yes, they loathe Trump and they really don't want him in the White House, and they know Americans who encourage them in this feeling and beg / order them to do something about it. But even then, they are far more worried about X encouraging populism at home, plus they are partially responding to (some) voters concerns about social media in general. They wouldn't like X any more if it were Australian. It would be far more sensible to disengage, but because of network effects and general shitness, Europe has totally failed to make its own social media (with exceptions for some countries like I think Finland ( @Stefferi ?) and cannot do so without blanket banning American social media like China does, which is not in the Overton window. Thus the increasing prevalence of stuff like the UK Online Safety law and these attempts to regulate foreign social media in the same way they would regulate local companies.
Finland used to have a popular social media called IRC-Galleria, so named since it was originally for IRC users to post their own photos and so on. It still exists and has something of a continuing userbase from what I've understood, but basically they failed to develop their interface and usability and got quickly replaced by Facebook as the social media of choice when it became a thing.
This Instagram page posts old IRC-Galleria photos from the 00s, in case one wants a nostalgic trip to early-millennial Finland.
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oh generally, if you can like people in general. It's ideological convergence mostly: individualism, freedom (especially speech), plus a certain "moral affinity for the strong". I think american hegemony was largely beneficial.
You: have a pathological hatred of the blue tribe, which you transfer onto europeans. One day, frustrated in your attempts to provoke a civil war at home, you'll charge naked at Greenland or Vancouver. Decoupling from such volatile and extreme polarization makes sense, of course.
I do not recognize a shared understanding of "freedom" or "free speech". European governments have expended considerable effort to curtail both my freedoms generally and especially my ability to speak. They have publicly discussed why doing so is a priority to them and strategized on how to do it better.
Hatred, certainly. Sinful, certainly. Pathological... Less so.
You are supporting a tribe that does not believe I should have a career or even a job. You are supporting a tribe that wants to destroy the economies of any place where legible concentrations of people like me live. That openly supports mobs beating people like me in the street. That does not believe people like me deserve equal protection under the law, and has been working for decades to deny it to us. That openly celebrates the murder of people like me, and the death of children like mine.
You are supporting a tribe that has, in my view, proved itself fundamentally hostile to every facet of my existence.
This might be workable if people like me were some vanishing, abnormal minority. In the real world, there are several dozen millions of us, and we retain considerable political, economic, and physical power, and we are currently negotiating a consensus on how to use that power to handle the above problems. Electing Trump was an interim product of that negotiation, but if and when he is expended, we will make additional attempts until we perceive the problem to be solved or until we are destroyed.
You are wrong that I am attempting to provoke a civil war in my home. You are wrong that those who are attempting to provoke a civil war in my home are having their efforts "frustrated". You are certainly wrong that the end result of this process is going to be crazy people charging naked into Greenland or Vancouver.
Dase is correct that this Greenland affair is downstream of the culture war. He is incorrect that the Culture War has been won in any meaningful sense by the election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term. The richest, most powerful country in the world cannot reach consensus on what its laws mean or how to enforce them. Its population has lost any semblance of values-coherence, and increasingly considers fellow countrymen an existential threat. For the last decade, people here have been treating this all as some sort of elaborate silly-goosery, but our actual inability to reach agreement on extremely fundamental questions of basic coexistence is a very big problem for people like yourself, who have offloaded most of the practicalities of your physical security to our military. Most of you seem to be handling this problem by hoping it goes away, that this is all a weird, momentary aberration, and that we will go back to presenting congenial Blueness into the future. I do not think that is going to happen, but you pays your money and you takes your chance.
Again, why do you assume that I, as a european, map onto the blue tribe? I oppose the curtailing of your speech and mine in the strongest terms. Actually, I have argued multiple times in defense of free speech against you, lmao. (According to you it‘s "not real" and no one believes in it).
Europeans elect right-wingers too (especially now). Two years ago, biden was your president. As a right-wing european, should I have declared that I am therefore the mortal enemy of all americans, like you do now?
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A bit up-thread @lollol linked Issendai's deep-dive into the world of estranged parents' forums, I can't help but see echoes of it here.
Trump has been a public figure for 30+ years. he wrote an entire book about how "there are no friends or foes at the negotiating table, only competing interests", about the necessity of "doing away with polite fictions in favor of honest dialog", and the utility of using intentionally erratic and absurd behavior to to sus out hidden motives and insecurities. "Slam the door and see who flinches" is how he put it.
...and a lot of commentors, including both yourself and the OP, seem to be tying yourselves in cognitive knots to avoid considering the possibility that he might have actually meant what he said. They keep going on about how Trump is being abusive and spitting in their face but they're ultimately acting the role of the toxic parent who refuses to accept the fact that their children have moved out of the house and now have careers and families of their own. They keep trying to play the "So long as you live under my roof and I'm paying the bills you need to shut up and do as I say" card, but that's just the thing, you have not been paying the bills.
Wait, how on earth are the europeans the parents in this analogy? Rutte (who should seriously stfu) called Trump Daddy, which is imo one of the sources of his late megalomaniac bender.
I tend to side with the parents on such forums (and the mirror "my mom is a narcissist" type). My prior is that the reasons given by the kids really are stupid. Most of pop psychology consists of inventing reasons why your parents made you a failure.
Wow, that post is evil. Especially the final part where it denies the possibility of healing the relationship. Of course it approvingly cites an "Expert" anonymous psychologist (who else?), who seems to think that threatening to end the relationship with your parents is the best way of winning an argument. A mom cites a clearly stupid reason their kid hates them, people take a step back, and then go "I'd like to go back to the cornflake issue". Beyond parody.
Anyway, that illustrates that I have a moral affinity for the strong. My sympathy initially lies with the US, and also (slightly) with trump against the democrats. But his late behaviour towards us is unacceptable and I just want out. We are no longer friends, I accept that, but we are not children to be abused and threatened at will, and if he continues, then we will be enemies.
The Europeans are the parents in this analogy in part because you (that is Europe) made us. We were amalgamation of Anglo, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonists before we became "The United States" and to some extant we still are. There is still a great deal of pride in that ancestry and a strong cultural affinity even today.
But pride and affinity don't pay the bills. You ask "how on earth are the Europeans the parents in this analogy" and then go on to take the parents side. Maybe it's my own experience sharing a family with addicts and alcoholics but I am much less inclined to simply dismiss the kids as "stupid" out of hand, and maybe that's why I feel the post is relevant.
Pointing out that Europe is a weak and unreliable ally who's values often clash with ours, and who is at this very moment actively funding the ongoing slaughter in Ukraine through their purchases of Russian energy and goods is not "abuse" it is an explanation.
You might not like what was said, or who said it, but that doesn't change the fact that you know the reason why many in the US are cooling towards Europe, but Just like the parents in that post you avoid acknowledging it.
To quote the closing monologue...
You are not understanding the problem. Talking to me like we‘re negotiating the amount of the „fair share“ I should pay to you, or what I need to do for Ukraine or in our internal politics to accomodate you .
No. Listen to what I‘m saying. You say you have affection for europeans, and I feel the same about americans, but we are beyond that now. Our relationship has been irreparably damaged by trump‘s threats and insults. I am not like trump – saying outrageous things as a negotiating anchor with the intention of backing down to a lower number, or macho trash-talking, empty bragging about my own strength. I mean what I say. I want to make it official that our alliance is cancelled, and americans out of europe.
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