alt Hacker NewsEven then the US is comparable to France - the only European country that comes even remotely close to America's power projection capabilities - and significantly above Italy, a fellow G7 member and large EU member that also has power projections capabilities.
The only large European countries with a significantly better iHDI are Germany and the UK.
All this does is justify the fact that most EU member states have taken advantage of the peace dividend at the expense of countries that have heavily invested in defense capabilities like the US, France, and Italy which fuels anti-European sentiment that turned into the current diplomatic crisis.
Interesting segue from claiming Europe is 20-40 years behind the US to claiming if Europe's policy choices have resulted in any better outcomes than the US its because they're enriching themselves by taking advantage of the "peace dividend"! I guess I'd have to agree that in the current diplomatic crisis of America's making, there is literally nothing some Americans won't use to "justify" blaming it on Europe....
Back in reality, inequality doesn't have an obvious relationship with country size or power projection, countries with superior inequality-weighted HDI like Germany and Poland spend more of their GDP on defence than Italy and the strengths and weaknesses of America's business culture, labour laws, welfare state, privatised healthcare etc (higher incomes for many but lower baseline living standards) really don't have very much to do with its military spending. If Americans want their government to tackle inequality they should probably back candidates advocating European-style policy over candidates advocating anti-European sentiment.