Just like in 2016, there will be plenty of screeching about how EU can no longer rely on the US and bunch of buzzwords being thrown around by Brussels bureaucrats like "European sovereignty" and "strategic autonomy".
But the moment Democrat returns to White House, EUnuchs will quickly forget everything they were saying and return to their traditional submissive state.
I think this time is different.
We've seen Polish military spending more than double, and it should hit 5% of GDP next year.
The French also just announced a target to double military spending from 2% to 4% of GDP - with the explicit goal to build a military independent of the US.
In comparison, US military spending is at 3% and this will likely slowly decline from this level.
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During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, US military spending was significantly higher than in Europe.
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Novara have a podcast with the writers of "Why Empires Fall" aka the Roman Empure. I haven't finished it yet, but key points so far include:
1. When the Roman Empire collapsed, we now know that the Empire was at its wealthiest
2. However, this didn't translate into a sufficient tax base to fund a large enough military
3. The purpose of the Roman military was two-fold. Protect the local elites/landowners from foreign barbarians on the periphery and also from internal uprising from the peasants/slaves. The result was a vicious cycle where a declining tax base from the periphery means a smaller military, and that means the barbarians capture more of the local elite/landowner taxes.
4. The core of the Roman Empire was fine. It was the challenges from the periphery that led to collapse.
Call it a form of imperial overstretch
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Applied to today's situation with the USA
1. The US Empire is more of a "confederation"
2. Labour is not mobile, but capital is highly mobile. Prior to the industrial revolution, capital was predominantly in the form of land and immovable agriculture infrastructure (as befitting an agricultural society)
3. The US is selling off $1 Trillion of assets every year, so that it can continue consuming imports from abroad
4. The US manufacturing industry and tax base has been hollowed out
5. It looks like the early stages of a US debt spiral, where debt servicing costs spiral upwards
6. When the same company lists on the stockmarket, why is it valued 3x more in the USA than Europe or elsewhere? The only conclusion is that US stocks are fundamentally overvalued.
7. Just compare the prices of goods/services in China with the equivalent in the US, and you can see as China masters each new technology - prices (and therefore profits) in the USA will come down
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Today, we can see the US suffering from imperial overstretch - in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Then in East Asia, we can see that in terms of major military weapons platforms - Chinese procurement is running at parity to 2x more than the USA, depending on the specific system
Hence we see the Japanese announce a doubling of their military spending from 1% to 2% of GDP, because they know they can't rely on the USA. The caveat here is that the published spending plans for future years don't get near that 2% figure.
