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Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

reuters.com

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Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#271

Post by JumpCrisscross »

arandomusername wrote: post #247
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America negotiates a deal with Russia, then sends the deal to Ukraine and it's up to them to take it or leave it Come on. > because you don't like how the negotiating is done does not mean that US is disrespecting Ukraine's sovereignty We're treating their borders as violable in the negotations. That violates the deal. The fact that many Americans have jumped the shark when it comes to honest dealing sort of underw…

US does not force any of the deal onto Ukraine, thus not violating the deal. US has negotiated a deal and offered it to Ukraine, who, in their full right, have not signed on. US is still a reliable partner - which is why many countries continue to be in partnership with it. Fact is, US had made no promise to protect Ukraine.

> US has negotiated a deal

That challenges its borders! If I agree not to steal your stuff and you find me hiring someone to steal your stuff, and I start arguing around the technicalities of our agreement, I’m a dishonourable liar!

> US is still a reliable partner

Are you watching the markets? Are you seeing the trade barriers go up? Our export companies are crashing. Our allies are writing separate security agreements, agreements that not only duplicate our own but balance American power.

I swear to god modern America is half made up of Calvin Coolidges. I’m not quite with Thiel on revisiting universal suffrage. But obviously the law of large numbers isn’t working when so correlated by social media.

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#272

Post by tetrisgm »

Vilian wrote: post #266
tetrisgm wrote: post #157

I’m simple on that notion: Russia is our adversary. They have assassinated people in the EU and UK. Sabotaged our pipelines. Paid anti EU politicians. Threatened EU powers. Shot down civilian flights. Made plans to invade the Baltics. They are an adversary. We have weapons and an army. We should neutralize that adversary. Russia has currently lost momentum in Ukraine. So they are seeking a temporary peace, to rebuild…

The argument to rebuild don't work because Ukraine can rebuild too, and russia is advancing at snail speed but still, and a Ukraine rebuild would complete derail that advance with better defenses

The argument to rebuild absolutely works. It allows Russia to recover their frozen assets, partner with China and Iran, and work with the US leadership. Understand that NATO will be diminished if Russia claims they are peaceful.

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#273

Post by mrighele »

t_mann wrote: post #174
palata wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a more practical level, they would need to ditch the Maastricht rules on fiscal discipline I think this has been suggested by Ursula von der Leyen. Europe has to get united and get to the point where it can defend itself. The US has definitely proven that they are unreliable, so it has to be done. But it will take some time, and in the meantime Europe has to rely on the US. If not as allies, then as partners. Th…

Almost nothing of relevance can be done overnight, but the first step is always the most important one. I haven't heard of that comment by vdL yet, maybe they're ready to take it, but the proof is in the pudding.

"Von der Leyen outlined the five-point plan at a critical time for the future of Europe's security.

One of them is a proposal to suspend strict budget rules to allow member states to ramp up "their defence expenditures without triggering the excessive deficit procedure," Von der Leyen said.[1]"

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/eus-von-der-leyen-proposes-800-billion...

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#274

Post by GeoAtreides »

ssssvd wrote: post #212
yks wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The realistic answer is to say that Ukraine is going to be supplied with weapons for as long as needed, case closed. The whole Russian strategy after the initial blitz failure was to wait for Trump to get into power, who telegraphed to anyone with the brain, that he doesn't care about Ukraine and loves Putin very much. Russia can't do it forever, but it focused on appearing "strong" until the elections, the bet that…

Except Putin doesn’t need to outrun America — he just needs to outrun Ukraine. There’s a finite number of Ukrainians, and an even smaller number of Ukrainian men actually willing — or physically able — to fight. 20% of the population already left, and around 1.5 million of them went to Russia. Another 15% are stuck under occupation. Ukraine’s demographics were already a disaster after the WW2 wipe-out, the Soviet col…

> they’re the only EU country with anything resembling a real army

??????

guess France is out of EU or... ?

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#275

Post by akvadrako »

locallost wrote: post #159
TheAlchemist wrote: post #73

For several reasons, France is uniquely positioned to be the leader of Europe. Nuclear arms, a lot of nuclear energy, defense industry, food independence. All of this thanks to Charles De Gaulle, who insisted that France must be autonomous in most important domains. With hindsight, this was extremely important. Without France's nuclear energy and arms, Europe would be in a very very bad position right now.

France depends on Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Niger for uranium. At least it depended on Niger until there was a military coup that stopped further exports. If there is a large scale conflict, I would not bet on those reactors accomplishing much. Not to mention that they did not accomplish much three years ago during the biggest energy crisis in decades, and that they need humongous investments just to keep running, s…

Uranium is common, it's just not profitable to mine at current prices. But fuel costs are just a few percentage points of the total.

If there were a shortage, it's no problem to pay even 5x more. Then you'll see suppliers pop up everywhere.

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#276

Post by akvadrako »

Vilian wrote: post #266
tetrisgm wrote: post #157

I’m simple on that notion: Russia is our adversary. They have assassinated people in the EU and UK. Sabotaged our pipelines. Paid anti EU politicians. Threatened EU powers. Shot down civilian flights. Made plans to invade the Baltics. They are an adversary. We have weapons and an army. We should neutralize that adversary. Russia has currently lost momentum in Ukraine. So they are seeking a temporary peace, to rebuild…

The argument to rebuild don't work because Ukraine can rebuild too, and russia is advancing at snail speed but still, and a Ukraine rebuild would complete derail that advance with better defenses

That's only if Ukraine continues to get massive outside investments. Otherwise Russia has a bigger revenue stream and weapon factories.

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#277

Post by palata »

Vilian wrote: post #270
palata wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 is an expensive, very criticised (even inside the US) plane and the US notoriously have some kind of backdoor to it. It makes no sense to me that the EU would buy F-35 other than as a way to give money to the US ("buying protection").

F-35 is cheaper than the f14 converting, so not a good argument, the high selling numbers of it help drive the price down

My point was that the F-35 is more expensive than European planes which don't have a US backdoor.

In fact I think it was the US army that complained about the F-35 being way too expensive.

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#278

Post by pqtyw »

Vilian wrote: post #267
pqtyw wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US convinced Ukraine to scrap their nukes To be fair Ukraine didn't really have nukes. I mean they technically had nukes in their territory and maybe could have kept them if they really wanted to but it's a bit like e.g. Scotland trying to keep British nukes after declaring independence. Wouldn't make a lot sense. Economically Ukraine was in a horrible state. Nuclear weapons have extremely high cost and I'm not…

You forget that development and nuclear power knowledge comes from Ukraine, so they had nukes and were direct involved on it's creation if wasn't created by them

You forget that Britain and Canada also directly participated in the Manhattan project. Then they were locked out by Truman in 1945 and it took them another 7 years to develop their own nukes. It's just not that simple or straightforward.

Ukraine might have been in much better spot in some ways (they actually had functioning nukes) but in other ways it was simply infeasible politically (Russia was closer to being an "ally" than and adversary back in those days) and obviously economically unjustifiable.

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#279

Post by pqtyw »

Vilian wrote: post #263
tombert wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's super likely, though if our president decides to declare war to try reignite American imperialism, then it seems like it could happen. He's already talked about invading Greenland, what's to stop him from trying to invade somewhere else, somewhere with more firepower to fight back? All it would take is Fox News or OAN to start running stories about how the US is actually entitled to the land of Fra…

Isn't US military well independent? So they would just refuse in contrast with authoritarian militaries like russia where they don't have that power

> Isn't US military well independent?

Is it? I mean I don't think they could legally refuse (if use of force was authorized by the president and congress)? So it would still effectively be a military "coup" and those can obviously still happen in authoritarian countries.

Re: Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies

#280

Post by Palmik »

cladopa wrote: post #112

It is obvious that Sweden, Denmark and Norway and Germany, Poland and of course Ukraine need nuclear weapons now. They had been threatened by Russia with nuclear weapons and it looks like when push comes to shove the US is not going to defend them(go to ww3) using nuclear weapons. Trump's actions about WW3 means that countries that have nukes are first class, and the rest are third class. It looks like a Molotov-Ribb…

Why these specifically? Why Poland and not Slovakia, Romania or Moldova that also neighbor Ukraine? These countries have much weaker conventional defenses than Poland, further increasing the importance of something like nuclear weapons.

I would go even further. All countries that used to be part of the USSR and got violated by USSR for decades without any external help would be wise to develop at least the capability. In secret if need be.

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