Our fight, it is no exaggeration to say, is the civilized world’s fight. It is a fight for reason and comity in the affairs of nations, against an administration whose worldview, and behaviour, is increasingly that of an aggressive dictatorship, in all its crudeness and its thuggery.
Mr. Trump, as the Prime Minister has said, aims to “break us,” a phrase with historic echoes. He has to now, or others will follow our lead. If he succeeds, then the world will be governed by nothing but force in the end, in trade as in other matters. But if we prevail, then “broad and sunlit uplands” must surely await.
The problem is that EU member states have different interests and priorities. For example, Poland don’t want to rile up Trump because Poland is reliant on the US military to deter Russia. And trying to wean off from US is risky because many EU members themselves are reluctant to invest more on homegrown European defense like Spain.
Another example is Ireland. We are too fucking balls-less to decouple from American multinationals and we’re all too happy to be a tax haven. Even after the EU court ruled that Apple has to pay the back taxes to Ireland, the Irish government is reluctant to actually pursue Apple. We’ve also become a Trojan horse for corporate surveillance. Our data protection commissioner was a Meta employee. No conflict of interests there! We are closer to Boston than to Berlin, indeed!
This is a dated mindset though. Poland has really fallen for the USA’s divide and conquer tactics, but surely even they must now see that the USA is never going to back them against Russia?
I guess from the Polish point of view, Europe is not offering an alternative for US protection. At the moment they are playing the balancing act between hoping that the US will stay and telling Trump to buzz off.
Edit: wording
They are using US weapons at the moment, though.
They are, and they’ve been bending over backwards to simp for Trump. Gotta course-correct quickly in my opinion.