Most Europeans agree with Macron on China and US, report shows. Europeans want the Continent to cut its dependence on American security guarantees and invest in its own defensive capabilities.
Most Europeans agree with Macron on China and US, report shows. Europeans want the Continent to cut its dependence on American security guarantees and invest in its own defensive capabilities.
41 comments
I don’t think europeans want to rely on an autocratic dictatorship.
Colour me suprised
Considering that most of these countries can’t even reach the 2% target, something tells me they don’t actually want to spend the extra money needed to build their own defense capabilities.
How many times has Macron talked about building EU army and done nothing about it? It’s just theater. Their actual intension is to freeload off of NATO while selling themselves out to China. Trump was right! Hopefully Americans realize they’re being played, pull out of NATO and focus on China. Macron’s trip to China and his comments about Japan are proof that Trump was right.
Europeans agree with this one thing Macron says so that means they must also agree with this other thing Macron says.
Well most europeans must not have read all these headlines I’ve read that definitely proved Macron loves and respect Putin, China and every dictatorship. It’s sad europeans are so uninformed. /s
Do they say the same when taxes go up or other services are cut to pay for it?
As well they should. Even America wants Europe as a whole to be more militarily self-dependent.
*Western Europeans more likely
First and Mostly, a lot of people in Europe dont want to be represented by that spoiled Schoolboy Macron.
That’s nice to talk the talk but are we, Europeans, prepared to walk the walk ? I would very much like to think yes but, realisticly, I would wager it is a no in our current state.
We should definitely get out shit together. In a major war, the Pentagon clearly stated that they cannot fight a two front war and as such, we Europeans must be able to undertake that second front. Even if there is no second front in the event of a US-China war, we will surely have to provide troops and we are currently dependent on the US to ferry them (France and Italy could do some but not at the huge level required)
Well yeah, Macron never said anything overly exotic or controversial, he just suffers from the chronic inability to read a room.
Europeans want to cut it dependence on Americans but they just don’t want to pay for it.
As someone clever said – USA with population of 330milion is protecting EU with population of 450milion against Russia with population of 142million.
Russia only looks like a strong oponent when looking at it from national country level when comparing Russia against Belgium or Portugal. But Russia is just a large country with 1/3 of population and 1/15 economy when compared to EU collective. EU should be able to sort our Russia without US getting out of bed.
Yes and hopefully sooner than later
Time to bring out the popcorn and watch the larpers from oversea seethe, this thread will be interesting.
The continent is swamped with braindead people and Russian and Chinese propaganda what do you expect.
With current high inflation and high interest rates, coupled with low growth, how to Europeans want to pay for this strategic/independent defensive capabilites without raising taxes or cutting down on social programmes? How much is the EU going to borrow to fund this and will all EU27 agree to it?
France headass
I think the headline is somewhat misleading- it conflates agreement on one subject with consensus on a different subject (staying “neutral” if China starts a war).
>Close to three-quarters of Europeans — 74 percent — think the Continent should cut its military dependence on the U.S. and invest in its own defensive capabilities, a new report released Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) shows.
Nothing surprising there, every U.S. administration since the fall of the USSR has been saying that NATO’s European members ought to improve their military capabilities. The longstanding situation where the US accounted for more of NATO’s military power than the rest of the alliance combined was something that the U.S. had lobbied Europeans to change for years without much success until Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine.
>Forty-three percent of Europeans view China as a “necessary partner” — meaning they tend to agree with Macron’s stance on China — while 35 percent see Beijing as a “rival” or an “adversary” to their country, the report says.
That is a very different thing than agreeing with Macron’s acquiescent behavior towards China’s leaders and their plans for dominating the 21st century. Neccessary partner can mean different things- especially if the language of those being surveyed has an equivalent to the idiom of a “necessary evil” (which they likely will, as the idiom is Greek in nature).
Macron has this obsession with being in opposition to whatever America is doing, even when such a position adversely affects French interests. His interview with Politico after a six hour meeting with Xi Xinping where he voiced his unfounded fears that Europeans should not become “America’s followers” was laden with the implied meaning to Chinese audiences that he would be receptive to Europeans instead becoming the followers of China.
The Chinese ruling party are deeply invested in a self serving belief that the West is in decline (and China will dominate the 21st century), and Macron’s statements are interpreted either as a surrender of smaller European countries to be dominated by China or as an invitation to vassalize France – similar how parts of China fell under the rule of European powers in the 19th century as the Qing ceded Hong Kong, Macau, Tsingtao, Port Arthur, etc.
Well you better invest in the military because the French bases I’ve been to are very depressing.
This European agrees with Macron.
As an American, it would be lovely to have that money to spend on universal healthcare.
Problem is, when it gets real like in Ukraine we have French and German dithering, we go the French and German way like on Putin and replicate it with Xi then we walk in to a war over Taiwan
>The report, based on a poll with 16,168 respondents from 11 countries
And those 11 countries were Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. So out of eleven countries, only three are Eastern European, and two of them are Hungary and Bulgaria, two countries not exactly known for aligning well with the rest of EE on these things.
Not saying any of that invalidates the report, but it’s important to keep it in mind before drawing any continent-scaled conclusions from this report as Politico did.
Macron is full of shit , and a lot of european also are.
They cont want ti protect shit, hell France pulled out of NATO a few decades ago.
> The perceived closeness of Europe to the US does not translate into a willingness to support the US against China in a hypothetical conflict over Taiwan. Despite America’s involvement in standing up to Russia, few Europeans believe that they should return the favour. If a conflict broke out between the US and China over Taiwan, on average, only about a quarter would like their country, or Europe, to take America’s side, whereas a clear majority would like to remain neutral.
If the poll from the ECFR is to be believed, it more or less confirms what is widely already known amongst those in the US security establishment: That Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems. Europeans are happy with and expect US help against Russia but only about 1/4 are willing to support the US and Taiwan in a war against China. It’s pretty clear that America will not be able to depend on Europe to have its back the way it did for Europe.
Without the United Kingdom being part of the European union and doing what it could to obstruct the development of a European union army, this makes sense, and it should happen now there is a very strong business case for it, especially if a MAGA US republican gets to be president of United States, as they are currently great supporters of North Korea, China, and Russia…
The use of the term “Europe” as if its one collective makes no sense in this context.
The ukraine war is a war between 2 european countries.
Nuances are important for me in this question. We should absolutely be stronger militarily. It makes no sense that a continent this rich depends on USA for its own security. Yet I’d absolutely hold on to the strong alliance with USA and Canada.
A NATO with North America and Europe as more equal partners would be the ideal situation IMO.
Whyle at the same time all those countries were laughing when Trump asked to pay at least 2 percent to their defence budget as agreed, what a clowns…
I agree with Macron. I don’t agree with the French way of doing it. So far they sound like less US more France. But we want less US more Europe in general.
Macron the guy who loves to placate comrade Xi? That guy?
Pretty much this. Only thing which would force us, Europeans, to finally get our shit together and cooperate to that level would be facing existential crisis which would force us to either do or die (and even then some countries will not get on board and will widen up their anuses to whatever that threat is)
Not just defence. EU should not be controlled by the US when it comes to sanctioning China or other countries.
I believe our independence is necessary because we shouldn’t have to fully rely on the US for our security and on China for our tech and other needs. We want to be able to protect ourselves and not be outplayed by the tech advancements by the Chinese and the Americans. Frankly, it’s a disgrace that any moderately successful tech startup has to go to Silicon Valley to be taken seriously.
That said – I suspect you will find that the eastern part of the EU is so and so about militaristic separation from the US. Many people here in Estonia probably don’t trust the EU to act swiftly enough to protect them, especially if Germany and France are at the helm (Germany’s gotten better now). Let’s face it – NATO has a command structure, but the EU would probably spend years squabbling over who leads this potential security force (France would probably never agree to be lead by somebody else other than France, in Europe at least, and Germany probably wouldn’t want the responsibility).
Personally, I think we start moving towards a more unified security order for the EU, but do it gradually, one motion at a time. We should start with having a cross-border/cross-country sharing of information on migrants and border protection. I guess we already do share that information, but I truly believe that a person entering Estonia from non-Schengen area should pop up in Spanish border information database if they’re broken a law and are a fugitive.
The war in Ukraine has rattled quite a few people’s sense of security in Europe and the US has regained quite a bit of its image as the one that can truly protect us. If we want a unified security architecture for EU from a European perspective, this perception needs to switch from US to EU.
Warmongering dicks needs to sit the fuck down.
“The report, based on a poll with 16,168 respondents from 11 countries”. Let me guess those countries were from the West, because here in the East, you know, the place that is in ACTUAL danger people firstly look to the US and then the UK for protection.
It all well but we need to have a unity that goes beyond just values. Similar Virtues is what makes or brakes a community. If we can achieve this is don‘t see a problem achieving our goal. The problem is the European elite is to weak compared to the American. Look at the major sources for information. Everything is american controlled, even the Axel Springer SE has a majority american holding. If we want to create something on our terms we need the power to manufacture consent and have the information sovereignty.
Unless Europe is willing to spend a similar percentage on defence as the US, then it would be silly to not have the US helping.
I got downvoted to the max the last time I pointed it was the right approach.
The narrative that presents China and Russia as the same threat is flawed, and if this survey holds a bit of truth in this matter, then hopefuly, most european aren’t blind to this fact.
China does not pose a military threat to Europe. There are some issues, when it comes to commercial exchanges, but that is all there is to it.
The sad truth is that, when it comes to security and local integrity, only Russia’s closest european neighbours are really at risk. But given what we are witnessing in Ukraine, can we really say that Moscow has the capacity to be a serious threat to Europe as a whole ?
Also, the thing most anglosaxons are failling to understand, is that the fracture between the western civilisation and the rest of the world is deep. What they believe in, most people don’t. Most countries are in fact, closer to China than the US, when it comes to societal values.
Europeans should be wise to see that, and try to renew their with the southern and emerging countries. Following the US in their war driven demeneaors will prevent us to do that.
Macron may say a lot of controversial things, but this is not one of them.
What’s wrong with bolstering your countries’ own security and independence? America can pursue the wet dream of being the world’s police on their own, leave Europe out of this.
Street surveys have little value in complex topics like this where people are ill-informed. If they had told them all the tax raises (or more likely: social cuts) necessary to that end, the result would have been different.