> On the economic front, China’s new economic strategy — a combination of shutting out European products, sending out a massive wave of subsidized exports, and putting export controls on rare earths — threatens to forcibly deindustrialize Europe
This is definitely a problem. China wants to freely operate in foreign markets, but wants to also lock others out of their own market, or control their companies to a level where they can perform intellectual property theft, or commit straight up asymmetrical warfare (like cyberattacks). But competitiveness with China requires more than fixing those problems - it also requires plain old effort - and the culture of work and social safety nets in Europe (the pension problem mentioned in the article) are difficult to fix.
Finally, I wonder who Europe can partner with now - not China, and obviously not America. Does that leave India as the only alternative? Because it doesn’t appear to me that European leaders or its citizens are very friendly towards them either. Maybe Southeast Asia or South America could also be partners. But the geopolitical strategy of Europe seems non existent. The American dependency has been destroyed but what fills that empty space?
India is not going to partner militarily with anyone, European or not, for the exact reason that Europe now find itself in.
> The American dependency has been destroyed but what fills that empty space?
This is honestly a bit crazy right? You can depend on yourselves? I can't believe I need to tell Europe that they should look into the meaning of swaraj.
> India is not going to partner militarily with anyone, European or not...
India will partner with those nations that align with reducing India's biggest security threat - a two-front war against Pakistan and China.
This is why India has been building close defense and economic ties with Greece [0] and Cyprus [1], because it allows India to put pressure on Turkiye which has increasingly armed Pakistan and now-ambivalent Bangladesh. It also gives India two additional vetoes in the European Council on top of the French and Italian vetoes due to economic and MIC ties. It's also why Israel is also building close defense ties with Greece+Cyprus [2][3] as well.
And this is why the EU is becoming increasingly dysfunctional - individual nations like the US, China, Russia, the Gulf States, Israel, Turkiye, India, and others are using state-level ties to either steamroll their strategic goals through the EU or block those of their competitors.
What do you mean by alliance? India already has defense agreements with Greece, Cyprus, and France that consist of intel collection, IP transfer (in the case of France), and free naval berthing rights along with dual use ports port development deals in the Mediterranean.
Anything beyond that at this stage would be unnecessarily hemming both India as well as France, Greece, and Cyprus' relationships in their backyard.
The deals with Greece, Cyprus, France (and the United States btw), are for defense cooperation (i.e. training, supplies, war games, etc). Yeah sure. They'll cooperate. An alliance means mutual defense. India is not going to sign a treaty saying they'll come defend you and you'll come to defend it. That's just never happening.
> Because it doesn’t appear to me that European leaders or its citizens are very friendly towards them either
There's a reason the EU is finalizing an FTA with India [0], with the backing of France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and others. India also has a multiple veto in the EU now thanks to France, Greece [1], and Cyprus [2]. India is also heavily investing in France's MIC leading to Safran [3], Thales [4], and Dassault [5] transferring IP to Indian SoEs and setting up shop in India.
But this inevitably gives India an indirect veto position like China and the US, because of India's hard anti-Turkiye stance aligns with Greece and Cyprus' national security needs (ambivalent/indifferent about Russia but antagonistic to Turkiye) and subsidizes a large portion of France's industrial base. Essentially, it allows India to use pressure on Greece and Cyprus to influence the EU the same way China uses pressure on Spain and Hungary to influence the EU, and the US uses the CEE and Ireland.
I’m not an expert on India-Europe relations, but online I’ve seen a lot of hateful talk towards them from content creators and politicians. I don’t know if that is a misrepresentation but I’ve got the sense that there is hostility. Some of this is cultural animosity but I think it’s also economic - like around having to compete on labor costs. Is it really viable for European politicians to partner with India in that environment? And will India go for it or will they distrust Europe? I think the same question could be asked for Southeast Asian countries too but they’re smaller and maybe are less of a focus in geopolitics.
> I’ve seen a lot of hateful talk towards them from content creators and politicians. I don’t know if that is a misrepresentation but I’ve got the sense that there is hostility...
> Is it really viable for European politicians to partner with India in that environment? And will India go for it or will they distrust Europe?
It doesn't matter.
The decisions that matter to India can be forced through the European Council, and even in those countries with nativist sentiments like Croatia [0], Greece, Cyprus and Italy [1], India increasingly uses it's monetary power to extract the deals it wants - especially because China has decided to increasingly consolidate it's investments in Hungary and Spain instead and OBOR funding in much of Europe has been scaled down [2][3] so the only large economy left that can help.
On top of that, European countries like France are using India as a backdoor for continuing business operations on dual use technology like Safran-UAC's SJ-100 commercial jet project [4].
Essentially, those politically unpopular decisions that require public consent go through the European Council, and everything else is done via business and state-level engagements.
It's the same model China used in the late 2000s and early 2010s when it was at the stage that India is at today.
> I think the same question could be asked for Southeast Asian countries too but they’re smaller and maybe are less of a focus in geopolitics
ASEAN nations like Vietnam already have FTAs with the EU [5] and are conducting influence ops within Europe with impunity [6]
This is why I made an earlier comparison to the EU with the Qing and Mughal Empires - both federal empires collapsed because individual European states made deals with those empires subnational units, which undermined both empires.
The US is aligned with the US. We don't have significant cultural ties with Europe on either the DNC or the GOP side anymore.
The pivot to Asia began under Obama 16 years ago. Russia simply isn't viewed as a threat worth expending resources on given that China is across the Pacific. And the era of European born-and-raised foreign policy advisors like Kissinger, Albright, or Brzezinski is over. Most Americans in the 2020s either never had or lost close blood ties to Europe, so the sympathy that allowed Atlanticism to form instead of the more heavy-handed approach used in Asia doesn't exist anymore.
A lot of Europeans (from policymakers all the way down to citizens) really overestimate how Americans view ties with Europe. We have stronger soft power relations with Asia or Latin America than we do with Europe now.
If European nations like France, Germany, or the UK shift right, then when the Dems return to power they would also be cold-to-hostile to Europe.
Believe me, I wish that were true, but Trump's approval rating is in the low 40's right now.
He's also obviously not making it to the next election, and JD Vance doesn't have nearly the same pull or unifying ability.
I think it's much more likely the right wing splits into subfactions over the matter of Israel than having another red sweep like we saw this past election.
It looks like dems are slowly pulling their heads out of their assess too, so there's a decent chance they'll be more unified come election night.
A reduction in appetite to fund European social programs under our security umbrella is not the same as being "allied" with Russia. They're big boys and girls and coming on a hundred years after their disastrous warring, it's about time their federated economy step in/up. Can the alliance not survive without our patronage?
1. It's not like America didn't benefit from the arrangement.
2. While it's fun to kill geese laying golden eggs, the question Americans should really ask is what awaits them on the other side of their actions, and whether the upcoming arrangement is really going to benefit them more.
This is insane. The US is simply not aligned with Europe. This makes a lot of sense. Europe is increasingly illiberal and incompatible with American understandings of freedoms. What Europe perceives to be an 'alliance' is simply treating Europe the way the US treats every other country.
We are fine operating under highly regulated censorship laws, as American companies operating under India's IT Acts has show.
We are against the DSA because it is a de facto non-trade barrier to American services exports becuase of it's tax implications.
And it's doesn't matter that Trump is in office - a Harris administration would have played hardball against the EU as well, as was seen with the Biden admin perusing lawfare and lobbying to make an example out of Canada for their attempt at a digital services tax.
It's the same reason the Obama admin lobbied hard for the TPP to not include a digital services tax and harmonize with American IP law.
Russia, China, Brazil, India -- all have similar censorship systems but Americans don't find it as troubling because those countries aren't part of the same shared cultural identity known as "The West".
Americans simply aren't qualified to talk on matters of censorship or surveillance, period. Post-Patriot Act, you are a slave to the NSA with zero legal or technical recourse that would afford you privacy.
Be careful throwing legislative stones from glass houses.
Nope. It's because we don't have to pay a digital service tax in any of those countries (except in Russia, where American companies no longer operate due to sanctions considerations). And it's always been about DST [0][1].
No one in the policy space who is able to reach a position to affect power gives a s### about ideology unless it is a deeply personal issue for that person, and for most policymakers (who are overwhelmingly non-technical in my experience), digital free speech absolutism just isn't something they care about at a personal level.
> Nope. It's because we don't have to pay a digital service tax in any of those countries (except in Russia, where American companies no longer operate due to sanctions considerations). And it's always been about DST [0][1].
Then your government should pass BEPS Pillar 1, so that this doesn't happen. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Comparing Brazil and India to Russia and China is just retarded.
Also India is more liberal than western Europe in a lot of ways.
For example, French laicite means no display of religious symbols publicly, while India allows a wide variety of religious symbols, having some of the largest mosques, churches and temples in the world
Moreover, in India people openly criticize other religions, while England jails people for such things. This idea that Europe is liberal and no one else is just myopicism
European hubris makes them believe that they are uniquely liberal. European countries can hardly deal with a small number of other cultures.
I honestly don't see anything particularly strange about it. The only thing I can see that would actually impact any of the businesses is the requirement to provide a complaints procedure.
Note that I worked in one of the major targets of this law (Meta) for many years and I don't see anything there that amounts to a trade barrier to US service exports.
Can you help me understand the concerns here?
Like, to my mind, the DMA is a much bigger deal but US peeps are way more upset about the DSA.
And like, the US runs the Banking Secrecy Act and weaponises the dollar system on a completely regular basis, so I'm honestly flabbergasted that they object to other companies enforcing their laws extra-territorally.
> And it's doesn't matter that Trump is in office - a Harris administration would have played hardball against the EU as well, as was seen with the Biden admin perusing lawfare and lobbying to make an example out of Canada for their attempt at a digital services tax.
Yeah this I agree with.
But unfortunately, because most tech/pharma company profits are booked where the IP is located and this is easy to move, digital services taxes are going to happen over the next decade. I understand why the US government doesn't like this, but it's either that or actual trade barriers to these companies. (And I say this as a citizen of a country that benefits massively from these shenanigans).
40 years ago, those were the same people who "hated" how cavalier the French supposedly were regarding marriage and sex. That is to say, these are people who don't really care about Europe in the first place. They weren't watching French cinema or mingling with Parisians then, regardless of France's actual culture, and they're not watching Eurovision now.
They're already just nationalist folk reaching for for an example of what makes their culture the better one. Those people exist all over the world, and will always exist in some influential share, and don't change their mind based on fiddly little details like who wins a little talent search pageant they never cared about in the first place.
These people do need to be engaged with if we want international fraternity and open trade and stable military relationships, but that engagement is about finding reasons for those nationalists to think bigger to to make sure they can see benefits to pursuing those ends with weirdos half a world away, because the people half a world away are always going to look like weirdos when that's what you want to see.
I believe if Americans want to abandon their allies because of the culture war propaganda, they should be also shown how much of the labor force in their new, alleged white savior friend, Russia, is made up of non-white people.
I think if America were whiter there would be a more unified desire to intervene in Europe. As it is America is not simply European ancestry . You underestimate how much sway the Latinos and blacks have. I can tell you that they literally do not care about Ukraine or Russia... Why should they? There's no historical link, and the ones that do exist are negative.
There is a difference between white and non white Americans and their views on Russia and Ukraine. To the point where a minority of black and Latino voters believe the cost of defending Ukraine is worth it, while a majority of white voters agree
You appear to be talking about Conchita Wurst? He was 11 years ago and there's no need for the veiled transphobia, he was just a regular drag queen.
It really says a lot about you, to be frank, that this heady geopolitical topic comes up and the most relevant thing you can think of to talk about is the winner of bloody Eurovision in 2014.
In fact, ties to Europe are increasingly fringe - either alt-right "White Christendom" types or "I support Scandinavian socialism" types (yes ik Scandinavia is not socialist).
A major reason cooperative Atlanticism emerged instead of a more hardline psudeo-colonial approach like the US took in Japan, SK, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, and Thailand during the 1950s-90s was because some of the most important foreign policy decisionmakers in mid-late 20th century America were 1.5 or 2nd Generation immigrants from Europe - think Kissinger (born and raised in Germany), Albright (born and raised in Czechia+Britan), or Brzezinski (born and raised in Poland+USSR) - and had some amount of sympathy for individual Europeans as a result.
In the 2010s and onwards, most Americans (and especially those of us who worked on the Hill) either never had blood ties or have extremely distant blood ties to Europe.
From a soft power perspective in the US, Asia and Latin American has a stronger foothold compared to much of Europe - Korean fashion like bucket hats are becoming common, Anime has become mainstream, and Reggaton and Latin Pop like that composed by Bad Bunny or Luis Fosi (Despacito) has become mainstream.
And when European nations take a hard-right turn (eg. an AfD, RN, or Reform victory), when Democrats eventually return to power, we'd shun Europe as well because racism is still alive and well in plenty of Europe, and South Asian and Arab Americans are overrepresented in policymaking roles in both parties, and those of us who enter the space are very aware of how our ethnic peers are treated across the pond. There's a reason our parents immigrated here instead of London or Frankfurt. And that resentment bleeds into ambivalence/indifference about Europe.
The strongest military in the world and a traditional supporter of Europe is of no use to you. Right now. I'm curious to see how that works out for you.
The quietly released (no fanfare) 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America that dropped a few days ago explicitly steers the US away from traditional European allies and embraces Russia.
So Putin will have American help. Which hardly comes as a suprise.
America is cooperating with Putin. It is literally doing Putins bidding.
Conservative view is that europeans vote for Nazi too little and Europeans need to vote for them more.
Conservative view is that extrajudicial murders are cool and manly. And that rih high levels criminals should be pardoned. Conservative view is that corruption is ok if you are republican.
Conservative view is that women shouls be stripped or rights and freedom, made poor and helpless, so a guy can feel manly and free to abuse them.
I agree that a man with a beard in a dress is shocking and perhaps even radicalizing to many or most people - not just in America but Europe itself. The trans issue remains a big controversy. But most Americans have probably never even heard of Eurovision. Maybe they saw a meme about it or something like that, but I don’t think this is what causes Americans to criticize Europe. In recent times, I would say the biggest topics are crimes committed in Europe by Islamic Arab refugees/immigrants (especially against women and minors), and attacks against American companies or free speech.
There is a lot of truth and justification for Americans to be concerned about both these topics - but judging by the kind of things posted by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the web of politicians/businessmen connected to them, I would say a bit part of why Americans “hate” Europe is simply because they have been radicalized by the extremist rhetoric used by the people they follow or look up to.
It's kind of wild reading the writings of a neoliberal who wishes that the clock could be turned back to the Clinton or Obama administration. I think the worst part is that his own cherry picked quotes don't really support his thesis. His quote from the Economist doesn't even really focus on free trade, it focuses more on how China is outsmarting Europe.
We'll pass on Clinton's NAFTA, in fact, we probably want to dismantle NAFTA nowadays given that it had created the massive Rust Belt in the Midwestern States of US.
All I can say as an American is that the Europeans did it to themselves. They have not been strategically serious countries for almost a century and have not had to compete with the rest of the world as a de facto US protectorate. Now they are discovering the consequences of spending 40% of their GDP on social programs.
This criticism may be correct on its own, but I would say it still unbalanced because it leaves out some relevant things. America has a lot of debt and a lot of spending on social programs as well. There is debt everywhere - the federal government, states, cities, companies, and people. This will become a problem soon. It is propped up by the reserve currency status of the Dollar but that may go away before the end of this century or a lot sooner.
Calling Europe a de facto US protectorate is also ignoring the fact that the US has a geographical advantage of being relatively separated from hostile world powers, which let it avoid most of the effects of the world wars - and that’s really pretty recent in historical terms. Is that really something America gets credit for, or is it just luck?
Finally, the US had benefited a lot from immigration but the most vocal American voices that attack Europe seem to ignore this reality, and are also clamoring for a shutdown of programs like F1, H1B, etc. - despite half the biggest American companies being founded by immigrants or their children. If you glimpse into the future, is America any more “strategically serious” than Europe? Or is it just another has been that turns to racism and isolationism to deal with its problems?
America has guns and is willing to use them which is really the only thing that matters. The issue with Europe is that they were idealistic enough to actually buy the whole 'rules' based foreign order nonsense while savvy people realized that rules and firepower mean the same thing to the guy holding the gun.
This is definitely a problem. China wants to freely operate in foreign markets, but wants to also lock others out of their own market, or control their companies to a level where they can perform intellectual property theft, or commit straight up asymmetrical warfare (like cyberattacks). But competitiveness with China requires more than fixing those problems - it also requires plain old effort - and the culture of work and social safety nets in Europe (the pension problem mentioned in the article) are difficult to fix.
Finally, I wonder who Europe can partner with now - not China, and obviously not America. Does that leave India as the only alternative? Because it doesn’t appear to me that European leaders or its citizens are very friendly towards them either. Maybe Southeast Asia or South America could also be partners. But the geopolitical strategy of Europe seems non existent. The American dependency has been destroyed but what fills that empty space?
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