Subject: Re: No sign of riots...
What I posted is what I think the average German is thinking right now.

None of which is relevant to whether Germany establishes greater "independence" from the U.S. The diplomatic rift that the Administration has created is wholly unnecessary to any of those points, and accomplishes nothing except to weaken our national security position in Europe.

Peace talks were making zero progress towards getting anyone to the table prior to Trump taking action. What everyone is missing is that every day the war grinds on, more people die, more stuff is blown up and the misery continues. That's the most important thing to consider here and not if some diploweenie's panties wind up in a bunch.

Ukraine could have ended the war on Day 1 if they had just surrendered entirely. When another country starts a war, sometimes it is necessary to fight that war. The battlefield deaths may be the most important thing to consider, but it is not the only thing to consider. Protecting Ukraine, and making their sacrifices count for something, matter as well.

It's not diploweenie's panties getting in a bunch, but rather making sure that Putin faces the consequence of unprovoked territorial aggression sufficient to ensure that similar acts are not duplicated elsewhere. If Ukraine and the West concede all of Putin's war aims to him at the negotiating table, then the world becomes a vastly more dangerous place.

This is the international structure that has governed the world during the Pax Americana. A global consensus that strong nations could not use their strength in their near abroad to violate the sovereignty of weaker nations. That consensus has been upheld by a willingness to use force to secure it, as we saw in Kuwait and Ukraine. The U.S. signed onto that consensus even though we are a strong nation, and thus arguably were limiting our interests by agreeing to it - but we realized that we benefited more by the global rule that limited our strength but secured more stability. The current Administration is pivoting away from that, far less willing to put our national strength in harness to secure global stability. That is a choice, of course - but I think it's a foolish one.

I think your concept of military size is a bit dated. For some euro power to dominate the globe - or even be a huge player in it - they'd need to spend 10% of their GDP or better for decades.

I'll remind you that even at the height of it Nazi Germany was NOT a global power as they never had the ability to project power outside of the European continent and northern Africa. Only the US and the UK were at the time.

And yet still plunged the nearly the entire world into warfare and chaos.

I don't worry about a country like Germany becoming a global superpower to rival the U.S. I worry about all of the various nations in Europe ramping up their militaries to the point where they are all threatening each other locally, outside of a strong NATO umbrella. The dynamic we see between Greece and Turkey, even though they're both NATO members. Because then we're back to the bad old days, where strong (but not global) powers end up forming all sorts of alliances and regional spheres of influence to protect themselves. Which then sets the world on fire when one of those alliances ends up in conflict with another.

It's better for our national security Germany being dependent and complacently following the U.S., rather than being strong and causing trouble on the Continent. There was an ocean between the U.S. and Europe during WWI and WWII as well - that didn't stop us from being drawn into the widening gyre of war. With three nuclear powers in Europe, the consequences of a war on the Continent are even more fraught.