Macron has proposed aggressively larger French defense spending, as part of rising European worry about the US commitment to defending Europe. He is much less popular in France than among *New York Times* readers, however, and the sheer scale of the required rearmament across the continent is staggering:
>In February 2025, the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel released an assessment of what Europe would need to defend itself against Russia, assuming an alliance without America. Given the 2024 NATO planning assumption that the 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe would be tripled if Russia attacked, Bruegel estimates that Europe will need 300,000 additional troops—and likely, north of that, because the cohesion and “combat power” of U.S. troops is greater than those from 29 separate European armies. Bruegel estimates that more tanks and artillery are needed than currently exist in the French, German, Italian, and British land forces combined. And then there are the less quantifiable areas where Europe lags America: reconnaissance, weapons production, space tech, and, of course, the all-important continent-wide nuclear umbrella.
(I was aware of the last sentence, but the statistics in the rest of the paragraph are new to me.)
Further, pro-Russian views are common among the two leading parties on the left and the right in Parliament—both with candidates to succeed Macron, who cannot run for reelection. Macron’s unpopularity makes another centrist replacing him more difficult. The French and European strategy seems to be
>The reality is that the heroism of the Ukrainian military is Europe’s strongest defense against Russia today. “Now we just try to keep the Ukrainians in the game until something in Moscow changes—someone dies or is thrown out the window, or the economy collapses,” Claudia Major, a defense expert with the German Marshall Fund, told The New York Times.
The article concludes with more cope like the above about Trump’s unpopularity and “the Russians” behind Macron’s unpopularity, but I doubt that its *bien-pensant* readers will feel much better overall after finishing it.
Acrobatic-Show3732 on
I think this type of thing is russias most successfull Warfare. They broke the internet so successfully that people really forgot how to have any common sense.
SkellySkeletor on
So we’ve made a full circle then with US claiming EU doesn’t pay enough for their own defense -> EU claims they’ll rearm and create a defense force -> EU balks at what it actually costs to defend itself without American dollars.
What is the EU’s end game here, become the continental Swiss? Distancing from the US, warming to Russia, and seemingly entirely unwilling to defend herself. It’s great to play both sides and trade with anyone, until someone bigger starts leaning down on you this time instead of Ukraine.
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Submission statement
Macron has proposed aggressively larger French defense spending, as part of rising European worry about the US commitment to defending Europe. He is much less popular in France than among *New York Times* readers, however, and the sheer scale of the required rearmament across the continent is staggering:
>In February 2025, the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel released an assessment of what Europe would need to defend itself against Russia, assuming an alliance without America. Given the 2024 NATO planning assumption that the 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe would be tripled if Russia attacked, Bruegel estimates that Europe will need 300,000 additional troops—and likely, north of that, because the cohesion and “combat power” of U.S. troops is greater than those from 29 separate European armies. Bruegel estimates that more tanks and artillery are needed than currently exist in the French, German, Italian, and British land forces combined. And then there are the less quantifiable areas where Europe lags America: reconnaissance, weapons production, space tech, and, of course, the all-important continent-wide nuclear umbrella.
(I was aware of the last sentence, but the statistics in the rest of the paragraph are new to me.)
Further, pro-Russian views are common among the two leading parties on the left and the right in Parliament—both with candidates to succeed Macron, who cannot run for reelection. Macron’s unpopularity makes another centrist replacing him more difficult. The French and European strategy seems to be
>The reality is that the heroism of the Ukrainian military is Europe’s strongest defense against Russia today. “Now we just try to keep the Ukrainians in the game until something in Moscow changes—someone dies or is thrown out the window, or the economy collapses,” Claudia Major, a defense expert with the German Marshall Fund, told The New York Times.
The article concludes with more cope like the above about Trump’s unpopularity and “the Russians” behind Macron’s unpopularity, but I doubt that its *bien-pensant* readers will feel much better overall after finishing it.
I think this type of thing is russias most successfull Warfare. They broke the internet so successfully that people really forgot how to have any common sense.
So we’ve made a full circle then with US claiming EU doesn’t pay enough for their own defense -> EU claims they’ll rearm and create a defense force -> EU balks at what it actually costs to defend itself without American dollars.
What is the EU’s end game here, become the continental Swiss? Distancing from the US, warming to Russia, and seemingly entirely unwilling to defend herself. It’s great to play both sides and trade with anyone, until someone bigger starts leaning down on you this time instead of Ukraine.
But I am le tired…