[somenameforme]

I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty. However, the only thing unique about Trump is that he doesn't play the typical games and makes no effort whatsoever to let them save face and pretend to be sovereign. We created a system where Europe is economically and militarily dependent upon the US, which means on issues we truly care about - they have no ability to say no. They're going to do what he says -- they know it, he knows it, and now everybody else also knows it because he loves to gloat about it and make it unambiguously clear that he's imposing his will on them.

The great empires of old, dating back to at least Alexander the Great and almost certainly before, all learned a simple truth. The way you create a stable empire is by giving those under your control so much as freedom as possible to maintain their own ways. We simply took this to the next logical step and created an empire no longer defined by borders.

[WJW]

> I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty.

How do you define "sovereignty" here? Because (for example) many European countries have made it crystal clear that they will continue to support Ukraine whether or not the USA continues or not. That's not something they could do if the US had taken over their sovereignty. There are plenty of other demands that Trump makes which the EU is going "lol nope" about, like adjusting its own taxes, selling Greenland, or lowering food safety standards so American foods could be sold here.

Does the US have a lot of influence? Sure. So does the EU over the USA, though the EU has long preferred soft power over military presence. China has a lot of influence over the USA too, simply by having to power to meaningfully harm its economy (although at significant cost to itself too). Does that make the USA "not sovereign"? The US has a lot of influence over Russia's economy too, but nobody would argue that Russia is "not sovereign" because they're under sanctions. By that logic even the USA is not fully sovereign because it's "forced" to spend time and money to counteract the countries out there defying its will. Defining sovereignty is very tricky in a globalized world.

[somenameforme]

Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want. On the contrary, that clearly became his plan once it became clear he wasn't going to be able to get a cease fire. Now he simply wants to get out of Ukraine without it being a huge L on his legacy like Afghanistan was for Biden. So how does he plan to do this? Just dump it on Europe. This started out with calls for the EU to 'pay their fair share.' It's now been made clear that "their fair share" is 100% of the cost of the war. We get out of the war, it's no longer tied to Trump, and the MIC lobby still gets filthy rich because the EU funding for Ukraine will go straight to the US MIC anyhow.

And what does the EU get out of this? Local economies that are already headed into recession now expected to pay dramatically more for Ukraine to the US, skyrocketing energy costs owing largely to being compelled to purchase US natural gas, getting to deal with jacked up tariffs to the US, and eventually being the ones that get to take the L over Ukraine. This is not "influence" - this is countries being dictated to act in a way that runs completely against their own self interest.

[overfeed]

> like Afghanistan was for Biden

wut? It was Trump[1] who invited the Taliban to Camp David, negotiated with them sans-Afghan governenment, and started the process of withdrawal with troop reductions, a deadline and everything.

1. https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal...

[somenameforme]

Absolutely, and it was Bush who started it. But Biden oversaw the retreat and it was our biggest failure since Vietnam, and so it will always be his loss. This is also why LBJ is 'LBJ's war' even though he, too, did not start it. Trump's well aware of this reality which is why every interview he does he tries to stress that Ukraine was Biden's war, but he knows that in the end he inherited this disaster and so, in the end, he'll be the one associated with it, so he wants to 'cleanly' wash his hands of it as quickly as possible. And since Zelensky seems increasingly delusional, it's likely that giving it to Europe is his only real out.

[WJW]

If I were to summarize:

- Europe chooses to fight a war it wants to fight;

- with the weapons it has decided are the best choice available at the moment (even though many of those are not yet produced domestically and so need to be imported);

- while hugely increasing its own weapons manufacturing;

- paid for by its own money. (aka the factories built and new weapon systems introduced will not be controlled by the US)

You seem to argue (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this is somehow a huge win for the USA and proves the European states have barely any sovereignty as in your previous post. But the more logical result of all this would be that the European countries come out of this war with a significantly larger defense-industrial base. In addition this bigger DIB will be used to shift away the composition of EU armed forces away from American systems and towards domestically produced systems. Like you mention the USA will not pay for anything anymore, but as the saying goes "the one who pays is the one who gets to decide". Pulling support also means you no longer get a say in decision making. Finally, the USA not helping in Ukraine makes it much easier for politicians to say "no thank you" when the US wants help in a future Taiwan conflict. None of these things improve US influence over Europe.

Tariffs are completely separate and are mainly a US thing being paid for by US importers to the US government. Natural gas imports are Trump overstating his dealmaking skills: countries do not buy gas but companies do, and the global energy companies are not bound to this trade deal.

Finally this:

> Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want.

Yes he did. He proposed a peace deal to Putin in which Ukraine would basically surrender, then tried to pressure Zelensky and the EU leaders into going along with this. This very much included Ukraine giving up the fight and EU halting support. Obviously, this didn't happen and now Trump tries to pretend he meant this occur all along.

[somenameforme]

Your entire argument hinges on the claim that Europe is choosing to do these things which I think can be plainly falsified by looking at what they're agreeing to. Here are the notes [1] on the recent trade "agreement" with the US.

------

US gets:

- EU investment of $600 billion in the US, invested at Trump's sole discretion

- guaranteed sales of $750 billion in US energy resources at a nice fat premium

- guarantee sales of an unstated other than "significant" amount of US military equipment

- elimination of all EU tariffs in many sectors, including on all US industrial goods

EU gets:

- Pay new and increased tariffs to the US, ranging from 15-50%.

------

Claiming anybody is choosing this is simply unbelievable.

[1] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-th...

[WJW]

Picking a White House publication is going to give you the rosiest picture imaginable. Let's pick some claims apart a little bit to see how it might not be as rosy as you seem to imagine:

- The mentioned EU investment is not at the discretion of Trump. Not even the White House statement says that. In addition, for one party to invest the other has to be selling. It's not a gift. The EU buying factories etc in the US (and shipping the profits back home) is hardly being dominated. Neither is it guaranteed: there are hundreds of ways to delay or cancel such investments. In most US places, just encouraging the local NIMBYs will be enough.

- Energy imports from the USA over the last 2 years already stood at ~30 billion per month. The 750 billion is over the remaining term of Trump, so very roughly 3.5 more years. That means the EU committed to spend ~215 billion per year, which is actually less than it has been spending on average anyway over the past two years. No premium was agreed in regards to energy prices. Don't know where you get that from, the linked publication does not mention anything like that.

- As stated before there are plenty of things we'd actually want to buy from the US, such as weapons for which we're still building our own factories. The Patriot missile factory under construction in Germany is one such example. While it is not yet done, we want to buy missiles to send to Ukraine. So this is a "concession" to do what we were already going to do. Also note that almost any amount can be construed as "significant" if you're a politician.

- The EU commits to "work to address a range of U.S. concerns" regarding tariffs. Quoting from that White House publication, we'll even provide "meaningful quotas". What does that mean? Which timescale? How high will the quotas be? Does "supporting high-quality American jobs" mean 5 jobs or millions of jobs? This is just a thing negotiators stuck in there so both parties could claim victory.

Finally tariffs are a big nothing burger when it comes to this discussion. It clearly has nothing to do with the EU being a US vassal because every country in the world is being tariffed, up to and including those poor penguins in the pacific. Unless you claim that China and Russia are also not sovereign countries? They have tariffs too. The phrasing of "Pay new and increased tariffs to the US" is also incomplete. The importer of the goods pays the tariffs, and most big companies have already indicated they will raise prices in the US to compensate. In effect US consumers will simply be paying an extra tax to their own government for the privilege of buying goods produced abroad.

In short, the EU negotiators got some of the lowest tariffs in the world in exchange for things they were already doing, were going to do anyway, or will not have to do. The negotiators did a rather splendid job I'd say.

[somenameforme]

You're misunderstanding the agreement. This is what the EU agreed to with Trump - it's not a legal text that you get to angle shoot out of. If Trump doesn't like the way the EU is enacting the terms, then they get to pay even higher tariffs, all at his discretion. My comments are not based solely on that source. For instance here [1] is another source mentioning that "Trump said the investment was at his discretion, with 90% of the profits going to the U.S." And that fat markup on LNG? Current spot price for wholesale LNG in the US is $3 vs $11 in Europe. The profit margins are juicy. [2][3]

By contrast you're throwing out numbers and claims without sources, which are wrong. For instance the entirety of all EU imports from the US are less than $30 billion per month [4], of which energy is but a fraction. Them meeting his demands there will be a dramatic increase in imports, to the point that it's not clear if this is even possible.

---------

[And this mess is part of the reason I don't cite everything. This is just ugly]

[1] - https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-tariffs-trade-u-s-inv...

[2] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_pr...

[3] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/europe_natural_gas_price

[4] - https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/imports/united-s...

[chrisco255]

I'm with you all the way up to the last paragraph.

There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.

You do realize that EU support and weaponry is completely insufficient to fight Russia, right? Their military is far stronger than anything you've got. The only reason Ukraine has been doing as well as it has is because of American training, intel, weaponry, drones, etc. If America walked away, Ukraine would collapse quite quickly, regardless of empty pledges by the EU.

[WJW]

Interesting statement, and I think this shows how different the viewpoints are on both sides of the pond. First off obviously, the EU absolutely doesn't see its pledges as "empty". If anything, the amount of weapons being used in Ukraine are by now 80+% produced either in Ukraine itself or somewhere in Europe. Artillery shell production has increased fourfold over 2022 and will double again this year. US weapons deliveries are nice and everything is welcome, but it's mostly (Patriot) air defenses that Europe cannot yet produce at sufficient scale. There are huge training missions for Ukrainian soldiers in eg France and the UK where the US has basically zero input. American drones are crap compared to what the Ukrainians build themselves, to the point that the US is importing drone knowledge from there these days. All new fighter jets for Ukraine have been donated from EU countries, not a single one by the US. The Ukraine collapsing without the US is simply not true, and that is why so many of Trumps diplomatic advances have failed so far: he doesn't hold the leverage he thinks he does.

The relative strength of the combined armies in Europe is also something that we apparently think very different about. There are certainly strategic deficiencies: we'd prefer to have a more robust domestic nuclear umbrella for example, and the US has an advantage in things like intel satellites. In terms of regular weaponry though, we have more than enough "stuff" to win, especially with Russia severely depleted by several years of attritional warfare in Ukraine. The numbers gap is already big enough, but most of the Russian stuff is decades old by now while the European countries are mostly rocking up with extremely modern equipment.

[somenameforme]

European production is mostly a mixture of a myth to an outright lie. For instance as of late 2024 the commissioner of defense for the EU stated that only 20-25% of EU supplied weapons come from the EU. [1] And similarly EU claims of artillery production were dramatically exaggerated [2]. The EU 'military industrial complex' remains mostly going unsustainably deep into debt to buy US arms. Energy costs alone likely preclude any large scale manufacturing with any degree of efficiency.

[1] - https://kyivindependent.com/eu-to-produce-2-million-artiller...

[2] - https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-weapons-shells-european-unio...

[withinboredom]

> There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.

I think you've been watching US propaganda? This "deal" explicitely happened, there was a lot of "wtf" moments at that. It was a thing that sparked protests.

[BartjeD]

This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.

I think the party in the USA has ended. And I'm definitely not investing there again until there is some clarity about the next regime.

[andrepd]

> This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.

Do you mean the people? They don't matter, the EU is not a democracy that has to answer to its people.

Do you mean the leaders? They just signed a treaty to agree to 10x tariffs for their goods, 0% tariffs for the USA's good, and to buy a trillion dollar's worth of energy and arms. Doesn't sound like "bye bye USA".

[baobun]

> This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.

Is it? I'm (somewhat shockingly) not really seeing any willingness to detach from US Big Tech or even consider thinking what's behind the curtain. The collective delusion is surreal (or should I say hyper-real).

[chrisco255]

Ok, good luck fighting Russia on your eastern flank and whatever spills over in the coming years from the middle east and northern Africa. And good luck funding your defense without making serious cuts to your entitlement programs. And good luck sorting out the internal tension in the EU in that context.

[amanaplanacanal]

I haven't seen much evidence the current US administration is interested in defending Europe from Russian expansionism. Trump tried to give Putin everything he wanted in Ukraine.

[watwut]

Trump has made it clear America is his dictatorship and his own only. Republicans like it. That does not mean America already descended as much yet, it is just expression of Trump wishes.

> They're going to do what he says

Except they ... did not. He is loosing influence. He is getting face saving deals for himself, but that is about it.