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#2 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-03-06 01:18 AM
Sounds more like the French don't have a military, and have been riding on the US taxpayers coattails to provide social programs.
That's what happens when one ignores reality and simply repeats Trump's / Russian lies.
US has 43% of global arms exports, more than 4x of next-largest exporter, France, as Russian continue to fall behind.
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Too bad they didn't spend their money to defend themselves, is that Americas fault?
They actually did spend a lot of money - buying US arms, which [BT] came with explicit and implicit "guarantees," and funds our defense industry R&D and manufacturing. If they have to spend that money on developing their own - this actually leads to the unnecessary wasteful arms race. It may not be as good as ours, but it only needs to be "good enough" to ensure that "Ukraine" doesn't happen to them.
Make America Go Alone has been a stupid idea 100 years ago... and we haven't learned the bloody lessons. America became great during and after WW2, but Putin's ------- is determined to piss it all away.
Sure, we can "take our ball and go home..." But that only means that other "kids" will eventually stop playing with us and we'll forego the opportunities to sell into one of the few industries where we [still] have the advantage, and have a "national trade surplus" - a superficial and irrelevant metric of country's economy, but one used by Trump to push his "beautiful tariffs."
That "defense" is net positive as it allows us to sell immense quantities of military goods and services, so much more than we "spend" on "their" defense comes back to us in POs... because they could rely on our R&D and production. It's an easy math. If that reliance / alliance stops, they will have to spend on their own defense but slowly yet surely we'll lose the market share to cheaper "good enough," and then your industry starts to shrink, like "Detroit"... "gradually, then suddenly."
Leadership has its obligations, but also has privileges - the "defense" role is huge in getting us not only good will, but with it a market share of goods and services - that's how it happened in Asia, as countries like Korea and India converted from mostly socialist economies.
Doesn't happen if you are transactional and only worry about "trade deficit," which really only serves to supply the counterparties with USDs which reinforces USD as "reserve currency" without domestic inflation and they, in turn, either buy US bonds/debt or buy goods and services (where we have a "national surplus") from the US... and all were happy... until Trump (and Peter Navarro) came along with goofy nonsense about "trade deficits" and tariffs as a way to "solve" them.
"Play stupid games - win stupid prizes." That's how Trump's businesses went bankrupt.
Trump is hell-bent on self-dealing and making sure that the US no longer is - and can't be relied on to be - a "leader of free world" - "America First!" In fact, his "strong-arm" tactics, language, and "tariff" games make him look no different than Putin to neighbors and [former?] allies. Long term, that's how nations and businesses lose their influence, power and wealth.
The people who can't or don't want to understand this "math" are either brain-damaged or get paid to spread Russian "Pravda" propaganda:
thehill.com - 10 leading generative AI tools advanced Moscow's disinformation and propaganda goals by repeating false claims from the pro-Kremlin Pravda network 33 percent of the time **
No wonder Trump named his website PravdaSocial.
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