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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

FVEY. The Five Eyes. Five English-speaking countries that share military strength and intelligence. Somehow the world simply tolerates all the blatant espionage they perpetrate with zero diplomatic repercussions. The USA alone probably has more espionage satellites in space than every other nation combined.

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> Somehow the world simply tolerates all the blatant espionage they perpetrate with zero diplomatic repercussions

Because pretty much every other country with a security service is either pursuing similar operations or wants to be. Sure when something becomes public a fuss gets made, but oddly enough no concrete repercussions ever follow.

Because other European countries know they're screwed without the US's backing. In return, those countries don't have to spend nearly as much on defense as they would otherwise. You can see why this would be politically advantageous for the Europeans.

Outside of that, who could do anything diplomatically to the US that wouldn't just be laughed off?

You do realize the EU has a mutual protection clause similar to Nato. Russia can't exactly invade. It's economy is smaller than Italy's. I don't think the EU depends as much on US defence as some Americans would have one believe.

Russia already invaded Ukraine.

Ukraine isn't in the EU, so that doesn't actually prove anything about the EU's ability to defend itself.

After the Ukrainian state was taken over by fascists in 2014 and started threatening ethnic Russians and Jews in the Donbass, a local referendum was held on whether to ask for help from the Russian Federation. After it was won, the help was provided.

Like most history, it's a bit more complicated than it first appears.

It wasn't taken over by fascists and didn't start "threatening ethnic Russians and jews in Donbass" get that imperialist propaganda bs out of here.

It let some fascist boneheads put themselves forwards as canonfodder when it was invaded which Russia loves to focus on but I can hardly blame them for that.

Ukraine isn't in EU. It was aligned more with Russia until they revolted.

USA learned it's lesson after being isolationist leading up to mass genocide and world wars. A league of nations didn't work, so things evolved into the USA being the guard dog for the world.

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