by pantsforbirds | 2026-03-13 20:01:23+00:00
You can't simultaneously argue that NATO is a "protection racket" for the US to sell weapons and control European foreign policy, and also argue that the EU would be in trouble without the current levels of US participation. Either NATO is a scam that exploits Europe, or it's a security umbrella that Europe needs.

The "protection racket", in particular, is very dishonest. The US has spent 3-4% of GDP on defense for decades, outspending the rest of NATO combined, while the majority of NATO members continuously fail to meet their monetary contributions. Most of America's allies would not be able to fund their generous social programs if the majority of their military capabilities weren't directly tied to the implied threat of the US military interceding.

America's allies haven't necessarily been that reliable for us either.

During Operation Prosperity Guardian, Houthis started attacking commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea, directly threatening European trade routes, and the US could barely get token naval contributions from allies. The US deployed an entire carrier strike group while Norway sent ten staff officers, the Netherlands sent two, and Finland sent two soldiers. France, Italy, and Spain refused to participate; Denmark contributed a single staff officer while being one of the primary beneficiaries of the US naval protection.

With Operation Epic Fury, the US asked to use jointly operated bases for staging, and Spain banned the US and then demanded that the American tanker aircraft leave. The UK refused to provide any support until drones hit a UK base in Cyprus, and even then, their mobilization was extremely slow. They weren't even able to deploy their carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, without getting an escort from France. Canada praised the removal of Iran's nuclear capabilities, while providing no support and heavily criticizing the operation itself.

Can we actually be clear on "reliability"? There is not a single defense analyst in the world who seriously believes the US wouldn't IMMEDIATELY defend Canada if Russia launched an offense against them. The unreliability comes from trade policy (which I think is mostly dumb, but is also very much not a one-way action), hesitancy to fund Ukraine at levels that aren't being matched by NATO allies, and Trump's blustering about "adding a 51st state" (no one seriously believes the US is going to annex Canada).

America will continue to act as a deterrent against military action for her allies, and said allies will still not have to commit to the spending that would be required to field a military that is actually a near-peer to China or Russia.

Having said all of that, I 100% support America's allies building out their own cloud infrastructure and bringing defense R&D and manufacturing back locally. Israel has been moving to cut direct dependency on the US and instead acts as a partner in new joint defense capabilities. I think a similar strategy for Canada and Europe would be best for all.

I'm honestly not sure how practical an EU counterpart to Starshield is, but maybe a partnership with SpaceX would allow them to more realistically diversify while the EU builds up its space capabilities.