alt Hacker NewsThe U.S. Is Bullying Europe Like Never Before
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Unfortunately Europe and the EU have allowed themselves to be squeezed on all sides by USA, China, and Russia through several decades of short sighted policy and extreme over-reliance on globalism.
The financial crisis in France and Italy, and the general societal unrest everywhere has not just come out of nowhere. Europe is just simply not competitive in the industries of the next 50 years and that is very unsettling to people.
Yes, we love bullying places that have 100 million more people us but also $9.3 trillion less GDP than us. It appears the "sick man of Europe" is…Europe? Heal thyself. We need you guys back in the game.
You can’t “bully” a continent that is entirely dependent on you for its security. The Ukraine war has proven that Europe is utterly incapable of putting out a fire in its own back yard without American military and financial support.
To be blunt, the major countries in the EU have not adapted to their diminished status in a world where economic and military power have concentrated elsewhere.
The EU has lagged the US in economic dynamism (link below). This deficit drives the inability to project economic or military power, forcing the EU rely on the US to support its foreign policy objectives in Ukraine - a conflict considerably more relevant to the EU than to the US.
Couple that with unaffordable, state-funded entitlements, and massive immigration significantly burdening (some) exchequers, and you end up with active urban conflicts in major EU cities, forcing a diversion of resources, and even more dependence on US military support.
None of this comes for free.
And Applebaum, playing the role of a wide-eyed ingenue, claims that the EU is "being bullied", instead of presenting it as the inevitable result of decades-long unwise, failing stances taken by the bloc.
A more interesting question is whether the current political, economic, and social model of the EU is compatible with the desire to be a major global power.
https://nextbigteng.substack.com/p/american-vs-european-star...