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this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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I imagine he'd "pull us out of NATO" like he "pulled us out of NAFTA". Which is to say he'd slap a new "America First" label on the old organization, take a few weeks off to vacation at a bunch of European golf courses, do a big signing ceremony in front of OAN handi-cams, and yell "I Made America Great Again" into the faces of anyone who thinks this is baby-tier bullshit.
I think the real end-game is about goosing US military exports. Trump threatens a pull out, on the condition that all the member states boost their domestic military budgets. Then those member states buy more shit from American MIC contractors. The MIC rewards Trump with political capital. And Trump takes kickbacks in the form of club memberships and no-show jobs for his extended family.
My man loves to bluff about taking his ball and going home. And he'll happily sign a big executive order with an oversized sharpee, proclaiming "We Aren't In NATO Anymore!" whether or not we actually left, because it plays well with his base. But the real influence that the US has in NATO is more about Trump extending/denying France or the UK or Finland or whomever with navy and air support to hold business assets in former colonies.
Trump knows that and he knows it offers him immense leverage, given how much these other countries rely on US power projection. So he'll very likely get a new wave of EU militarization at the enrichment of American MIC, because its the only way the other NATO states decouple their reliance on the US for "free" military support.
That said, that can backfire. Several major member states of the EU are already talking about proper remilitarization that wasn't needed since the wall fell. There are nascent beginnings of a joint European army and a joint European MIC. Why would EU states spend more money on US stuff that it already thinks it doesn't need, if it can just use the same money and pour it into the FCAS project for example, creating jobs and keeping money at home?
Orbán used to be a huge Trump fan, and he actually went and started spending more money on the military when the was Trump's thing. Only it wasn't American F-35s he got, it was a bunch of German Leopard 2A8 tanks and French Eurocopter EC725 helicopters and Norwegian NASAMS launchers. There is also a stated intent to skip 5th gen and get into the FCAS if and when that materializes.
Oh definitely. US military technology is exhaustively oversold and carry enormous overhead costs that dilute their real practical military capacity. Our new war in Yemen (much like our old war in Afghanistan) illustrate the problem neatly, as we launch $10M missiles at $100 targets and still can't get the Gulf of Adan safe enough for traffic to resume.
Because they're buying a relationship with the US Military more than they are buying the hardware itself. The promise of US Aircraft Carriers and US Satellites and experienced US military leadership coming in as the primary driver of military engagement means kicking back a billion or two to keep the Americans friendly is mostly worth it.
But if the EU grows more internally coherent as a military power.... yeah, that could very easily go away. We could be staring at another Great Rival in an increasingly fractured global rat race if the Europeans establish themselves as self-reliant.