Czech president Petr Pavel warned that Donald Trump’s recent comments questioning the role of Nato have damaged the alliance’s credibility more than the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has done in several years.
Pavel, a retired Nato general and former chair of the Nato military committee, also said that Trump’s criticism of the alliance over the Iran war was “to put it mildly, unfair”.
“The moment we begin to question the alliance as a single, united entity, ready to act together and very decisively then, of course, its role is lost,” he warned.
He said that Trump ‘s criticism appeared to miss the fact that Nato is a defence alliance, and “not an alliance that will automatically help in wars waged outside its territory”.
Honestly, as a European, this is a good thing. For far too long the entire western world have basically been vassals of the American empire. This is an opportunity to finally get out from under their shadow and forge our own path, away from imperialism and towards peaceful multilateral diplomacy.
Unless at least Germany and Poland acquire nukes the EU will be a dwarf in a US/China dominated world.
The main thing NATO ensured was nuclear non-proliferation.
With NATO gone everyone in Europe needs nukes to survive.
France has nukes, at least. I agree, though, unfortunately and tragically it seems that nuclear sovereignty is becoming necessary.
Unfortunately, the EU needs to federalize, obtain an EU army and EU controller nukes.
It does seem to be going that way. We certainly do live in interesting and terrifying times. Reminiscent of the build up towards World War 2, except this time, with nuclear weapons…
I wish it needn’t have happened in my time.
Yup, Europe has never done imperialism. It was all America. /s
You do get that the vast majority of Europe is trying to lean away from their respective imperialist pasts, right?
Not just trying, it’s built into our laws, at least for the countries that are in EU.
Some of the biggest companies in Germany are still owned by nazis and nobody cares
Well compared to many of the American billionaires, those Nazis look like saints.
Um they are just not loud. Lol. They are still nazis. And nazism is alive and well in germany.
Are they undermining healthcare for all? Are they destroying democracy? Are they leading massive campaigns that claim climate change is a hoax? And suppressing scientists that work with it, and the organizations they work in?
I have never seen anything in Europe that is nearly as bad as for instance the Koch brothers. And the Koch brothers are far from alone. I think we got that established with the Epstein case, that has shown that the rich in USA cooperate towards a common goal, to take ever more power.
Yes! Wtf. How do you think these far right parties are getting popular again?
I think AfD is a symptom from the old East Germany, and I think they are supported maybe even created by Russian intelligence, AfD has shown strong support for Russia, and even gathered intelligence for Russia, and worked as Russian agents. AfD is also very anti immigrant. Which is not an interest of billionaires, that generally prefer access to lots of cheap labor.
I really don’t see how the German far right is explained by German billionaires supporting them.
So yes WTF indeed are you on about?
Ehhh. The far right is doing pretty well in Europe, and they’re sorry for nothing. Across the class spectrum as opposed to just in the poor, rural and uneducated, too.
You’re not OP, so there’s the sticky wicket of what we’re comparing to, as well. The US’s actual history is as a colony that broke away, and it often took anti-imperialist stances as a result. They did some of their own as well, but never on the scale of, say, Britain or Portugal. This is Lemmy where if the US breathes it’s redefined as imperialism, though.
What a complete bullshit statement.
Yes having 5-10% of the European vote is doing well, because it used to be less, but compared to USA where Trump got the majority vote!! And Trump is more extreme than even the AfD.
In USA the extreme right is actually in power, extreme as in literally fascist destroying democracy and talking about genocide far right. Europe is nowhere near where USA and Russia are. But of course we are paying attention.
Looking randomly at France, it’s 40-50% right now, and other parties have been adopting far-right stances across the continent to compete. But yes, the US is much worse. Although that broad cross-class appeal worries me. With any luck it ends in Japanese-style democracy not Hungarian-style autocracy.
Anyway, OP came in only mentioning the US, and said imperialism, not fascism or autocracy or the far-right. Those are not the same thing.
Oh please, talk about ridiculous straw man argument. European countries have abandoned taking colonies since WW2, and transitioned completely to laws that respect international law and human rights. Which means respecting national sovereignty.
This is of course limited to the democratic part of Europe, so unfortunately Russia and Belarus do not stand by those values.
Yes, it’s not really doing imperialism now. And Russia is a completely different beast.
In the interest of only running one thread with you I’ll leave it there.
Obviously Europe is not immune to imperialist sentiment, but at the moment, America is a great, terrible evil, perhaps the worst the world has ever seen. Even if our own societies aren’t perfect, we are far better apart from fascist America than we would be with them.
They are dangerous now, that’s true, although it doesn’t seem like imperialism is the right word.
What would you call it?
You said fascist too, and that fits really well.
Imperialism is a very specific system, and while the US has started dabbling in it again, they’re still largely producing their own wealth, and have also dabbled in isolationism which is one possible opposite. In the other direction, the nth British lord of Whatevershire (or whatever Chinese or Sumerian noble) didn’t really meet the populist part of the definition of fascism, but was definitely imperialist.
It’s really a detail, so I’m kind of sheepish for bringing it up, but on Lemmy I think it’s an important one.
From Wikipedia’s article on Imperialism:
I feel like that perfectly fits the behavior of the American Empire, not just in recent years, but going back decades. Hegemony is absolutely what they’ve always been trying to build. Don’t you feel like the Munroe doctrine is an imperialist endeavor? The US invasion of Vietnam? Venezuela? The Philippines? Hawaii? Afghanistan? Iraq? Iran? The ongoing blockade and years of terrorist attacks against Cuba?
The idea that America is heavily invested in being a “world police” has been a meme going back decades. What is that, if not the maintenance and extension of power over foreign nations?
Someone is still in denial, I think. For what it’s worth, I don’t judge you for that, I totally understand it, but I think you’re doing yourself a disservice here.
Yup. They grabbed a few islands and puppeted a few Latin American countries.
If we’re talking about history, Europe blows them out of the water. If we’re talking about now, refer to last reply.
It’s not just about land acquisitions and colonialism, but also about hegemony. Again, you’ll get no argument from me that Europe hasn’t had a terrible history (and even present) of imperialism. The British Empire was unbelievably terrible, and France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, et al. all have (or had) their own imperialist interests. No argument from me there at all. I am anti-imperialist, not anti-American.
This all just feels like pure whataboutism because you’re uncomfortable confronting the fact that the United States has a long and sordid history of imperialism.