Hey Europeans! It’s Time to Free Yourselves from US Dependency.
Siófok, Hungary. February 17th, 2024.
Salaroche

Hey Europeans! Enough already. It’s been 80 years since the United States was wholly indispensable in bringing your continent back on its feet after the self-inflicted ravages of two world wars. 80 years! It’s about time you guys stood up on your own two feet and provided yourselves with your own continental security.

Understandably, you guys are hesitant to re-arm yourselves. Mussolini and Hitler left deep, painful, scars on your collective psyche and you don’t want history to repeat itself on your own soil. But as much as we would all like to see that human nature has evolved to the point where wars are unthinkable, such moment has not yet arrived, if it ever will.

The strong, irrepressible desire to conquer foreign lands and dominate foreign cultures is still alive and well in the minds of many powerful men and women and the need for each country to have their own military means to defend themselves against foreign aggressions is again acquiring the character of imperative.

The United States once again wants to look inward and doesn’t want to play the role of bodyguard to the rest of the world anymore, particularly NOT to Europe. You Europeans already have your own technological, scientific, and financial means to put in place your own military forces, so it’s about time you developed those capabilities to their fullest extent and stopped expecting the United States to come to your rescue whenever Russia, or eventually even China, may pose a threat to your territorial integrity.

The time for piggybacking on American military might and for depending on Washington’s good-Samaritan will is coming to an end. The times have changed and NOT for the better. Quite the contrary. America’s current neo-isolationism is part of the deep changes America is currently suffering in its ideological stance, as it now increasingly embraces a brand of neo-authoritarianism that doesn’t correspond to Europe’s Democratic values (see here)

Europe, as well as the rest of the world, should seriously avoid falling into the mistaken mindset that many non-Maga Americans are stubbornly clinging to, believing that the changes currently taking place in America are just a 4-year blip and that everything will go back to normal as soon as a Democrat is elected President in 2028 or later. They’re wrong.

The way the whole American governmental apparatus is being dismantled, and whatever remains of it is populated with Trump loyalists, means that the radical changes currently being implemented are intended to be permanent, liberal-proof measures designed to perpetuate the Republican Party in power for the foreseeable future. Thus, it can no longer be taken for granted that there will be free and fair Midterm elections in 2026, not to mention any free and fair Presidential elections in 2028 (see video here)

The alarm bells are already ringing out loud. Vice-President JD Vance has already made it very clear that the US wants Europe to give free range to local authoritarian voices such as that of the AfD in Germany (see here and here). If that’s not a wakeup call, I don’t know what is.

America is changing in unpredictable, inauspicious ways and now is the right time for Europe to seriously contemplate an amical, but gradual decoupling from the US. For starters, Europeans should begin doubling their defense budgets and start thinking of NATO as primarily a European organization, NOT a Transatlantic one.

Actually, Europeans should even start looking for longterm, gradual ways to free their economies from dependency on exports to the US and should do exactly the opposite of what JD Vance proposes, meaning that European governments should strenghten, even increase their controls over pro-Nazi, pro-authoritarian speech.

I may disagree with most of the foreign and domestic policies that the Trump administration is currently touting around, but I agree with them on a very important issue of global implications: It is high time for Europeans to free themselves from US dependency, specifically when it comes to defending their own territorial integrity. We all know the risks of having Germany develop again its formidable, fierce war capabilities, particularly now that the neo-Nazi AfD Party has such increasing acceptance among the German population. But the growing American go-it-alone stance doesn’t allow much room for any other alternative. No matter what the future may bring, it is time for a unified Europe to join the league of world-class military powers.

Salaroche