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“Finland’s Mika Aaltola of the European People's Party claimed that the U.S. ‘has given us three weeks to agree on terms for Ukraine’s surrender,’ referring to a proposed peace deal aimed at ending the war.
‘If we don’t, the United States will withdraw from Europe,’ Aaltola added.”
Right… off you fuck, then.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-europe-troops-ukraine-peace-deal-2033823
@aral
You do understand, that if Russia moves on to Baltic countries, even current plans assume loss of that part of EU.
@mikalai Why’re you telling me this, exactly?
Hopefully *someone* in the EU understands that calling the bluff is the only way to deal with numbnuts like
Trump, Vance and Musk.
@johnzajac @aral It's not a bluff. They truly do not care. They only care for their own power base, which includes Taiwan (for now). EU is dependent on them and does not posses any leverage.
Give it time and they will bully TSMC into relocating to the US and then they will close up completely to finish domestic purges.
It's entirely a bluff.
The United States' economy and 'soft power' halo relies almost entirely on EU compliance with their wishes. We "guarantee" EU security with our bloated, corrupt, graft-filled military-industrial complex, and they "guarantee" that the US retains the reserve currency of the world.
But the US economy teeters on the brink at all times; most of it is gas held up by other nations' work and obeisance and sense that "they need us". Absent that sense, we're toast
@johnzajac @aral Not any more. Musk, Thiel, Andreessen want to use crypto, not USD. US is a competitor to their neufeudal plans and all they want is to destroy it's ability to oppose their network state arrangement.
That's why some old school conservatives are regaining their senses. They want conservative society, but retain republic. Neo-feudals do not.
Neu-feudals want robotic slaves, not people.
But right there is why their network state literally cannot, at least with current players, become a durable concern.
Blockchain tech cannot replace the US dollar as reserve currency because *it relies on the US dollar as reserve currency for its own value and tradeability*. It's a con, and always has been. There's no 'there', there.
I'm not saying *they* don't think crypto can replace everything; I'm saying what they think and reality aren't the same.
@johnzajac @aral What's the difference? If they believe it will work and give it a shot, that the plan will likely fail doesn't save Europe from Russia.
The dirty secret here is that Europe doesn't need to be "saved" from Russia. Russia is a failed empire with very little money and an unwilling conscripted military with bad equipment and poor training.
They're at a stalemate in the Ukraine despite having 10x the soldiers because of that. Putin needs Trump to bully Europe into abandoning Ukraine, because he's reaching the end of his rope, and China's gonna start taking pounds of flesh soon for their openness to trade.
@johnzajac @aral Yeah, but if US decides to duke it out with China over Taiwan, EU has no trade partners left. And we've lost 90% raw material production base and 60% processing due to idiot neoliberals.
Meanwhile Russia can buy in China and promise future profits from former EU.
So it's highly probable EU leaders will fold and buy US weapons instead.
Why can't the EU trade with China? IF the US has become Europe's adversary, why wouldn't they build alliances elsewhere?
The idea that China is somehow a worse partner than the US is propaganda. Both are empires who act like empires. But at least China acts in their own self-interest, which means you can predict to a certain extent what they're going to do. The collapsing US is chaos incarnate.
Anyway, if the US "dukes it out with China" we are well and truly fucked.
Because the US relies on China for basically everything from semiconductors to raw materials to medicines to clothes. China is the manufacturing center of the world, and without it Musk and his techlords won't have the *parts* to build their technoempire.
Reality is a bitch in this instance. Not that Musk or Trump have any appreciable connection to reality. But that doesn't impact reality; just them.
@johnzajac @aral I am not saying China is a worse trade partner. What I am saying is that US naval blockade of China won't allow for any trade with them and the northern silk road runs through Russia and the southern one does not have the capacity and is running through countries besieged by Russia. Also through Turkey.
This all relies on US influence staying the same, which isn't a good bet imho.
A couple points:
1) A "blockade of China" is basically impossible. You're talking about a 32,000-km long coast with hundreds of industrial ports. And you'd have to blockade China's allies in SE Asia, Africa, etc.
2) Lot's of airspace between the EU and China.
3) Russia relies on China for basically everything. It's simple for China to expand the northern land route.
On top of that, the *US doesn't exist without China*. Any plan that cuts the US off from China completely is a non-starter.
The dirty secret of the last 40 years of neoliberalism and global commerce is that China's the cat's meow; they're the US in 1950: the only nation with legit manufacturing muscle left in the world.
There's no real contest between China and the US, because China is much more powerful in reality, esp if the US destroys its soft power and economic empire.
@aral
Do you have friends in Baltic countries? What do they say? How do they feel?
Ukraine should have kept them.
@aral They are going to leave anyway. Part of Trump's agenda to screw all his allies. So set terms you can work with and don't give in. We're all going to be stepping up defence spending.
@aral It's good to see who they're pressuring first: Denmark and Finland. Both pretty solid anti-Russian states.
@aral Why do anything with an enemy - which is what the US is becoming for much of the world. MAGA - Make allies grovel again. Make allies grimace again.
«Either you agree to us selling you out to Russia or we will stop "protecting" you from them!» is some excellent logic.
@aral will they also leave all the NATO bases in the Mediterranean that they use to bomb SWANA countries to make a “Middle East Riviera”?
@aral blank files are safer than unreliable ones.