alt Hacker News> Europe and the Gulf diversifying both their investments and defense purchases.
With what? The euro, yuan? Or weapons from france?
I hate to admit it, but it's much less that the US is great because it's the reserve currency, and much more that the world reserve currency is the dollar because the US is what it is.
Weapons are expensive, and it only makes sense to buy them from a country that specializes in them. And a country that makes weapons at huge scale is likely to be big enough tilt the direction of the country to be all the ugly things the modern US military industrial complex is.
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I'm having trouble reconciling this comment with reports that US stockpiles are already being depleted by the Iran war. At this point the US weapons production seems relatively specialized and inefficient, not "huge scale." Someone more informed care to weigh in?
Weapons are only expensive if you want them to be expensive.
Ukraine are butchering Russians for 870 USD per dead soldier.
The USA has the most expensive weapons in the world, the problem is that much of it is obsolete.
The US is defaulting on military orders to Europe and Germany just announced a 1 trillion euro rearmament plan. Europe is manufacturing big time. The Gulf states as of yesterday are now buying from Ukraine for fucks sake.
The US isn't delivering Patriot missiles to Switzerland. Switzerland froze paiements. The US unilaterally took the money Switzerland escrowed to buy F35s, put them towards paying for Patriot missiles they won't deliver, and asked Switzerland to refill the F35 escrow account. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been siphoned off.
https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2026/article/les-usa-detourne...
The US is not a reliable weapon supplier anymore. Contracts don't mean anything anymore.