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European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

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Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#91

Post by saubeidl »

dmix wrote: post #87
Barrin92 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The system established after WWII no longer serves the interests of its main creator I don't think that's true. The policy of alliance building and containment of their largest peer and competitor still makes sense. It was how the US ultimately overcame the Soviet Union, and is even more vital given the size and talent in China. A US without an alliance system will not win that competition. What's much more concerni…

European countries becoming more capable of defending themselves by scaling up their own military instead of being dependent on a foreign power will only harden containment of bad actors. That applies to my country Canada. What's much riskier to the world is the US having to take the brunt of defending Europe, the Arctic front, and dealing with a conflict in China (which is far far more serious military threat than R…

China might be a threat to the US, but I don't see it being a threat to Europe.

The fact that Americans are abandoning us in our struggle with Russia in order to pick a fight with China makes it hard to see them as reliable allies.

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#92

Post by riffraff »

poszlem wrote: post #55
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to me in 10 years or so. Changes can be very bad if they are rapid.

I firmly believe people are deluding themselves if they think that without US patronage, Europe wouldn't devolve into its historical norm, a state of internal warfare. The popular narrative suggests a 'United States of Europe' is forming, but this seems like propaganda when you look at the reality, nations are already returning to the historical status quo, prioritizing their own agendas and pulling in separate direc…

EU is far more collaborative now than it's ever been, e.g. joint debt was always controversial, but the EU emitted 800M of joint debt during the COVID crisis, which had never happened before.

If you look at the short term, countries may be pulling one way or the other, but the "ever closer union" _is_ happening if you look at a longer trend.

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#93

Post by englishrookie »

poszlem wrote: post #55
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to me in 10 years or so. Changes can be very bad if they are rapid.

I firmly believe people are deluding themselves if they think that without US patronage, Europe wouldn't devolve into its historical norm, a state of internal warfare. The popular narrative suggests a 'United States of Europe' is forming, but this seems like propaganda when you look at the reality, nations are already returning to the historical status quo, prioritizing their own agendas and pulling in separate direc…

Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created - specifically to avoid another war.

Your example is very on point: the member states are talking - not fighting - to protect their own interests.

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#94

Post by generic92034 »

Yokolos wrote: post #66
barbazoo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I’m not scared of China either and am excited for them to take more responsibility on the international stage. Hopefully US warmongering will come to an end too.

Yes, I'm sure all the countries around China are really excited and looking forward to this. Oh, wait ... It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia. You being ignorant doesn't mean there aren't real issues and real, justified fears.

> It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia.

And that is why Germany is moving a whole Brigade to Lithuania? I think only Spain and Portugal are not appropriately concerned with the Russian threat.

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#95

Post by krige »

petcat wrote: post #22
krige wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Europeans were paying for theirs but, once US backed out of their own purchases, the cost per unit rose sharply and was no longer sustainable.

I see so this isn't really a concerted effort by EU nations to gain independence on defense technology. It's just that USA didn't want to buy the planes anymore so it became too expensive for everyone else to as well.

Or perhaps pulling out of the program was too costly, political or otherwise, for EU and USA did them a huge favor by blundering away from it first, freeing them to pursue their goals.

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#96

Post by toomuchtodo »

myrmidon wrote: post #72
toomuchtodo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China needs Europe to support its export economy because there will never be enough domestic demand to prevent a deflationary spiral. Europe is a rational actor China can expect to act rationally in trade, and Europe can benefit from that. The US has nothing to offer Europe except LNG that Europe cannot produce itself, or obtain from China at better price or quality. Canada has ~200 years of LNG reserves and can ship…

China is not exporting LNG at all, did you mean Canada? The US is still a very large and attractive market for European exporters, and it would at the very least substantially least hurt Europeans if they had to fully substitute the US with China as a trade partner.

Apologies if my phrasing was not concise. The idea I intended to communication was "Europe can get all the LNG they want from Canada, and anything manufactured from China."

To your point about the US market, I would put forth the size of China, India, and Africa as import markets for Europe. The population of the US is ~343M, ~745M is Europe, while that of China, India, and Africa combined is ~4.6B (as of this comment, rough proxy for total addressable markets). Admittedly the latter are at various stages of development, but I am of a strong opinion they can replace the US considering demographics, proximity, rate of development and purchasing power increasing, etc. International equities have already outperformed the S&P500 this year, so this may happen faster than we might expect. China is not as quite as wealthy as the US, but India and Africa are the last of global emerging markets and where the economic growth future of the world is. Do you configure and target your export economy for growing markets? Or declining markets?

Citations:

https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3m... | https://archive.today/P2HxS ("International stocks are outperforming the S&P 500 by the widest margin in 16 years.") - November 12th, 2025

Goldman Strategists See US Stocks Lagging All Peers Next Decade - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-12/goldman-s... | https://archive.today/aINUx - November 12th, 2025

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44769439

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44455077

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#97

Post by kakacik »

Yoric wrote: post #70
bix6 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has more to do with their geography than their disgust no?

I think GP means that Europe didn't intervene when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and, more generally, has done its best to limit rearmament until now. And we're going to pay for it by having a war against Russia that we might have avoided had we projected more strength. The precedent being France and UK that were so disgusted by war after WWI (and recall that France was the historical biggest warmonger among Western…

This is all correct, as is parent's parent. There is(was) this sense of war being failures of others, fought elsewhere now and we got better and employed more diplomacy (ignoring Yugoslavia which was a civil war to begin with).

It made us look weak internationally compared what could have been, and it made us weak. All that military money went into social programs and heavy lean to the left. It sort of works if you have other's umbrella shielding you, which now is questionable (but is it really, I think its more a projection how further can things go in future).

For Russia Europe never ceased to be a battlefield - eastern part of battlefield itself, western part as prize to win or conquer. Past 2+ decades of quite overt subversion, sowing chaos and discord via both radical left and right (which is hilarious, seeing 'patriots' parroting russian propaganda against their own country or ethnicity), sometimes outright attacks and assassinations.

Secret services kept reporting all this even publicly but were mostly ignored by politicians. Weak long term politicians like Merkel allowed this with open arms, hoping in vain that pure business is enough to keep psychopathic wolves happy. Well what a failure that was (yes I hate her as does most of eastern EU, leftist populist and nothing more which grinded strongest European economy to a halt).

Correction is being done, it will take decades but course is set regardless of what next elections in US brings.

As for geography - its only relevant doe to the fact we are connected by land to russia. Of course any country which has huge ocean between them and russians is much safer from them. The rest can either defend themselves or are an easy prey.

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#98

Post by pessimizer »

bix6 wrote: post #31
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it was weakness rather than a sense of disgust about anything war related. Europe is tired of it, and precisely because of that may well end up in another major war.

That has more to do with their geography than their disgust no?

[flagged]

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#99

Post by saubeidl »

philwelch wrote: post #85
Yoric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that the sky is falling. However, I think that many in the US are underestimating the current paradigm shift. Right now, in Europe, leaders and voters need to take decisions while keeping in mind the possibility that the US will invade Canada and Greenland while not reacting if Russia movies to Estonia. Will it happen? Who the f*k knows? Donald Trump has made declarations very much in this direction. Al…

> Also, Donald Trump has broken a sufficiently large number of treaties Which?

Iran Nuclear Accords (negotiated by the EU!), Paris Climate Agreement are two that come to mind concerning the EU.

There's obviously more, like NAFTA.

Re: European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft

#100

Post by SilverElfin »

barbazoo wrote: post #77
SilverElfin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion it’s because of several things. They took over Xinjiang and Tibet, and committed large scale atrocities in both. They threaten Taiwan. They abandoned the treaties around Hong Kong. They continue to harass India - a sort of ally of NATO countries - over borders they share. Let’s also not forget crimes against Chinese people during the cultural revolution and since then. They’ve also engaged in widespread…

A lot of that context I didn’t have, thank you, I should catch up more in that regard. > But mostly because the CCP just can’t be trusted with their power, because they’re neither democratic nor support liberal values like free speech. How do we square this with the US being democratically elected (let’s ignore gerrymandering and absence of one person one vote) but the actions like the upcoming war with Venezuela, bo…

I don’t think we can square it exactly. The US isn’t perfect and has deep issues as well. But it just depends on which values you care about. For me, I think despite problems, the US has a more trustworthy system of democracy than most countries. And as far as democratic values like free speech - it’s far above literally any other country in the world in protecting those rights. These things alone make it special - I think it lets the US consider different ideas and change over time.

For Venezuela and Iran specifically - I won’t claim to be an expert on either. But I think neither the Maduro dictatorship nor Iranian theocracy are legitimate. You can read about how Maduro suppressed opposition movements and manipulated elections in many sources (example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro). As for Iran, the current theocratic authoritarian government came into power via a revolution in 1979 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Iran). Sure it replaced a monarchy, but that monarchy was actually quite liberal and photos of Iran from that era show a culture that was very different from today. That was taken away from their people, and replaced with their current rulers’ cultural agenda.

As for specifically the issue of whether people voted for something or not - well the US system and I think all democratic systems that exist today aren’t direct democracies. We give powers to the presidency and congress that let them do a lot of things. That’s by design, but it is still at the service of the people, who have the ability to alter the constitution at any time. If someone (like the president) breaks the law, we have the ability to hold them accountable. But I also know sometimes they get away with crimes. I look at that as minor flaws of an otherwise very functional system.

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