Europa steht unter Belagerung
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europe-is-under-siege
Von lolikroli
Europa steht unter Belagerung
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europe-is-under-siege
Von lolikroli
28 Kommentare
For quite some time now.
By migrants?
Under lockdown
Looking for Prince Harry
Gonna fuck Prince Harry’s butt
Yeah wild buff
This is a fairly honest article, from the American point of view, anyway. It also honest about the scope of current European thinking. At least what appears here.
The one thing it left out is the segment of the US political thinking that Europe actually wants a war to revive its economy. Not my thoughts, but it’s out there.
And this is exactly why the Mercosul agreement is so geo strategically important to us, we definitely need to strengthen ties with culturally close regions and there are not many to choose from.
Then fucking **DO SOMETHING**
I remember how in Russia around 2010 the same narrative (but of course Russia being under siege) was injected in wake of Arab Spring events as a continuation of Color Revolutions. In 2011 Medvedev (yea, that Medvedev) has shifted from pro-western to anti-western, Putin came back to power and all the bullshit around SORM, national Internet, localization of everything was pushed upon us. Crazy how history rhymes.
What a shitty website. You can’t even zoom into that map on mobile.
The proposals Noah makes are fine, more consolidation of markets and defense etc. but the question I always have is, at the end of the day it comes down to spine. You can have all the political power and gear, but are you willing to use it?
Here in Germany we in principle still have the industrial base, *right now*, to pump serious amounts of kit into Ukraine, have them strike deep into Russia etc. But if we’re not actually gonna do it, what’s all the politics going to do?
I don’t think Russia is going to be impressed by missiles if all you’re doing is putting them in a silo. If we’re not going tit-for-tat with the hybrid war provocations now, why should they be afraid? I don’t think even now military power or regulation is the problem.
Noah Smith’s piece gets the big picture right but some details wrong. Europe is under pressure from Russia, China, and an unreliable America. But „panic more“ isn’t the answer – we are already mobilizing.
America’s retreat isn’t just about culture wars. Yes, Musk tweets about civilizational suicide, and Trump’s strategy links alliances to cultural alignment. But the deeper drivers are war fatigue and the China pivot. This would happen under any president because it’s structural, not just MAGA.
Russia and China are coordinating, but asymmetrically. Chinese components fill Russian weapons, Chinese engineers adapt drones, Chinese ships cut cables. Beijing has enabled Moscow’s war. But China isn’t all – in – when sanctions hit their banks, dual – use exports to Russia dropped. Beijing holds leverage, not just partnership.
Russia’s threat is real, but Smith’s „Ponzi empire“ theory is overblown. Forcing occupied Ukrainians to fight is documented and brutal. But this isn’t grand strategy; it’s desperation. Russia has lost 400,000 soldiers and can’t recruit volunteers. Throwing prisoners and forced conscripts into battle shows weakness, not strength.
The real problem is internal division. Defense spending jumped 19% to €343 billion in 2024. NATO set a 5% GDP target by 2035. Germany abandoned its debt brake. Support is massive.
But urgency varies wildly. Over 50% in Estonia see defense as a top priority. In Italy? Just 20%. When 86% of Poles want more spending but only 12% of Italians do, you can’t act as one. That’s the obstacle, not lack of will, but a perception gap.
Economic deindustrialization is our most serious threat. German car market share in China collapsed from 27% to 13%. Our deficit with Beijing is ballooning. This is systematic displacement, happening now.
Smith’s advice to ape MAGA culture positions would backfire. We don’t need panic; we need speed. Bridging the east – west divide, consolidating our fragmented defense industry, and implementing the Draghi reforms. The money and frameworks exist. The bullies will respect capability, not anxiety. We need to move fast.
In other words, decades of being drunk on post war peace has lead Europe into a false sense of complacency.
How could war and conflict still exist in an era of human rights, liberalism, and social welfare, the elites of Europe asked?
But now that the party has ended, they have to deal with the hangover and once again forced to reckon with the harsh truth of reality.
was this article written by AI?
like every sentence is historycally wrong in the first part.
Europe is rotting from the inside, one country at a time. China, Russia or anyone else won’t have to do anything else except wait, we’re slowly destroying ourselves. Europe has never been more divided than it is now and I’m not just talking about politics. Every year people fall for the same old division tricks. I recommend listening to the 1984 interview with Yuri Bezmenov then taking a step back and looking at what the west has undergone in the last 50 years.
Noah is the dumbest person on the planet, i’m not exaggerating, i’m not using a hyperbole, the man is consistently wrong and stupid. I don’t get why he got posted here lmao
I kinda hate Noah Smith since he epitomize economics disease. He literally has a blog post arguing that infinite economic growth should be possible, despite [thermodynamics proving hard limits upon growth](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/).
That said, there is good stuff in this article, including his remarks about how Russia has traditionally used enslaved poplulation as soldiers. There are however many simplestic economist’s blind spots:
(1) „Common defense procurement“ would not yield lower costs, but higher costs & corruption, and greater capture by China. It’d also demand bigger & bigger bribes to pro-Russia nations like Hungary too.
Instead, we should buy weapons for Ukraine from the countries that produce good weapons at the prices Ukraine likes. [Russia and Ukraine both seem happy with Ukaine spending a $400 drone to kill a low level Russian soldier](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1pbltdq/414_brigade_magyar_birds_published_video_of_the/). I’d expect another 5 million Russian men become drone meat, so we need the drone costs to be low, and supply to be reliable.
(2) I doubt some „fiscal union“ would help much either, because again the EU is inherently not unified, and you’d just need bigger bribes for the bad actors. Instead, those nations who send troops to help Ukraine, and who spend on the Ukraine war, should benefit disproportionately from EU spending.
We’ll have anti-Ukraine governments in other EU members in future too, like both the far-left and far-right are pro-Russia in France. You need members to be economically addicted to supporting Ukraine. Imagine if France sends 50k troops to Ukraine, all being 50% paid for by the EU, would Mélenchon or Bardella cut those 50k jobs when they come into power?
(3) Drone manufacturing is not concentrated in China, but at small manufacturers in Ukraine. Any EU nation should desire that economic activity, but obtaining it requires learning the on-the-ground lessons. In part, you achieve this by sending troops to help the Ukrainians.
(4) „Europe needs to be able to build not just drones, but every single thing that goes into making a drone — batteries, motors, various types of computer chips, and so on.“
Amen! Also rare earth refining, cameras, and even solar. China would eventually embargo Europe to give Russia an advantage. We should’ve state owned companies for these parts however, because otherwise China would buy and coopt them, ala the recent microship fight.
tl;dr Europe should turn its inherent disunity into a strength, by supporting the nations who do the most to help Ukraine. Imposing more classical centralized governmental structures sounds like a dead end.
thanks for the eye-opening article, I just want to point out how much left-leaning, American culture trends have influenced European people since the 1960s, both in the West and the East, contributing to fall of communism and the last decades of liberal leadership of the EU, I guess we never knew that there are so many ultra conservative people in the US judging by all the cultural exports
war propaganda nonsense. fuck off
That’s one name you give to it
This reminds me of a quote taken from the „You’re Wrong About“ podcast about the plane crash in the Andes mountains. For along time they expect that someone would be trying to come save them, but they intercept a radio transmission that declared that the hope for their survival was unlikely and so the search had stopped.
And one of the people said something to the extent of: „Good. That means we need to survive ourselves instead of waiting around“
So maybe it’s about time for Europe to take some responsibility for themselves.
Bottom line: never trust the USA
Why so many Americans trying to unstable EU recently on Reddit so many post and shit post not evidence post probaganda post, since Elon was fined?? Weird huh
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was also formed to face challenges in the east – newly established Russia. The funding act is called The Union of Lublin.
Thin counties had one monarch but two parliaments (the lower chamber is still called sejm in both counties), two armies but a single foreign policy.
And this is what we need in our European Union – a single foreign policy.
The Deluge has happenned because The Commonwealth was in poor condition; peasants as slaves, mainly agriculture, technology stagnatism, magnats played own wars between theyself and king had no power.
That’s why UE must be more united to survive. Each „evil UE want destroy my nation“ is a gift for other powers.
Does OP know why the deluge happened? Go google the Polish Veto. It’s like Europeans can’t fundamentally get over this one thing and keep insisting on some kind of Rube Goldberg regulatory democracy. This is why Europe is weak.
The fuck did China do?!
Using the downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as an analogy to modern day Europe is certainly interesting. Especially considering the main thing that caused the Commonwealth to be destroyed was their peculiar political system where each member of their parliament had veto powers and power was very decentralized with an elected king rather than a hereditary one.
This effectively meant that to stop the Commonwealth from really fighting back all you basically had to do was pay off a few nobles who made sure to be there any time the Parliament would convene and just veto any proposal that would go against you as the invader.
This is essentially what Russia did especially under Catherine the Great, although there was a last hurrah where the Commonwealth actually managed to get through some very well needed reforms right at the end.
When the Polish king that Catherine had gotten elected because she thought he was loyal to her turned out to absolutely not be loyal to her at all he managed to get through a bunch of reforms that if they had happened say a 100 or so years before likely would have made it much much harder for the country to be sliced up like it was in the end.
Now I’ll leave it up to others in here to draw your own parallels to modern day Europe as I’m sure people can think of quite a few.
Lol
Under lockdown