Comment by hnaccy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hnaccy | Hacker News Reader

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>US interventionist foreign policy, despite its terrible track record, has really put European security and US interests at risk

Isn't it the opposite? It may be too early to tell but NATO is reinvigorated, Europe is once again turned back towards the Atlantic faction, Russia's economy is faltering, Ukraine is out performing what anyone expected militarily and Russia's army looks shambolic.

I have seen that video linked often in past month and it seems like Mearsheimer's biggest miss was how weak Russia truly is and how irrational Putin may act. If we expect Russia to fiercely defend its interest in Ukraine as IR realists then shouldn't we also expect the US to use Ukraine to twist the knife in the current Russian state?

> Europe is once again turned back towards the Atlantic faction

Pardon, but in the last couple of years it was the United States that gave off more than one signal that they felt that NATO was outdated and that it would be each for themselves from now on. The EU response to that was to form a European military alliance.

I think to a large extent that was (and was perceived as) really just the administration saying that, rather than US expert and military leadership.

I think it was in response to Trump's statements about NATO being superfluous:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-presiden...

That put a fire under the whole thing and made it much more clear what the various obligations would be.

The United States gave off more than one signal that their NATO allies (particularly Germany) should stop violating the written agreement and spend the required 2% of GDP on defense. Some of our European allies were just freeloaders, taking advantage of US security guarantees without contributing any meaningful capabilities in return.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm

Germany has now agreed to fulfill their NATO spending obligations as a response to Russian aggression. Better late than never.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-commits-100-billion-to-defense...

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