.
I hate having been correct so much with my Cassandra warnings about Americans turning Fascist and against Europe. I hate having been correct with my warnings that small wars are bollocks and alliance defence & deterrence are getting too much neglected inf ace of Russian aggressiveness.
I erred on the side of caution and overestimated Russian military and military-technological prowess (which still pointing out that they weren't as strong as they pretend and are widely believed to be).
So here's a list of things we need to URGENTLY do now, exploiting that the mainstream finally woke up to 'security policy' being something deserving attention:
- Harden ourselves against American economic sabotage through Microsoft, Cisco and the likes
- Harden ourselves against other American economic sabotage such as cutting us off from
SWIFTbackoffice financial services. - Quickly create an alternative to Starlink and an alternative to SpaceX's reusable rockets for low satellite lift costs.
- Kick Russian & American intelligence and most "diplomats" out, especially stop tolerating them snooping on our telecoms. This includes closing the "Russian House"s.
- Stop relying on NATO, for it's compromised by Americans, Hungarians, Slovakians and possibly Turks
- Stop relying on the EU for security policy because it's compromised and blocked by Hungary and Slovakia.
- Establish a new alliance that's designed to neutralise 5th column (Americans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Turks and whoever might turn to the dark side) sabotage & betrayals.
- Improve nuclear deterrence based on the French arsenal (though American BMD is turning this into an elevated challenge).
- Establish conventional deterrence against the Americans (vs. American threats of naval blockade, naval air attacks and missile attacks)
- Kick American troops out of Europe.
- Effectively counter propaganda networks (Transatlantiker in Germany, Putin's stooges, European unification ideologues, Murdoch media, TikTok, Twitter) in order to create freedom of political action.
- Understand that most European nation states are capable of great efforts, not impotent.
- Reorient our armed forces to focus 99% on deterrence & alliance defence.
- Force our armed services to become more efficient (liberally fire generals & admirals), including breaking the 'miniature balanced forces' bollocks. The armed forces shall not be permitted to follow self-interest; they exist to serve!
- This includes focusing on mobilised strength, not peacetime active duty personnel strength & structure.
- Stop relying on the arms industry. Create arms & munitions production capacity outside of the sluggish established arms makers, just as we did to nowadays unfathomable success in both world wars. The artillery munition production efforts so far are scandalously inept compared to 1915ff and 1939ff.
- Understand that Putin's regime has to lose its war of aggression beyond reasonable doubt (no efforts to help them saving face!) and support Ukraine accordingly, including direct intervention. Start by telling the Russians that they have already lost now that we decided so and enact a naval blockade as a first step.
- Get ready for a new Cold War, this time against Russia and the U.S.. This goes beyond the pure defensive on the European continents and its peripheral seas.
- Stay out of East Asian great power games.
- Seek India as defensive ally to add mass and economic potential to the bloc, but be wary of them turning full (Hindu-)Fascist, for we might find ourselves in need of allying with the PRC in the worst case scenario!
- Establish a "Stay out of Europe" doctrine vs. the Chinese AND the Americans and enforce it
Please note I did not pretend that huge military spending increases are necessary or in any way central to free Europe's successful deterrence & defence!
S O
.
Nice list.
ReplyDelete"Stay out of East Asian great power games."
How do you propose this with some European** countries having legal responsibilities in that region, both directly (Territory) and treat obligations.
**including UK if it's to be included in any security deal - I'm assuming you don't want that but EU leaders seem to be onboard with it, possible for other reasons than defence.
I'm not aware of any alliance treaty obligations by the UK ro France in East Asia and such obligations could be cancelled anyway. It's a matter of principle that democracies need to be able to change policy.
DeleteInteresting times. Agree with most of what you propose here. Where do you see Canada fitting in here? We are under threat from the Americans as well, and have Russia to our north, so are horribly exposed to both of these. Could Canada have some role in (or benefit from being in) a US-free NATO substitute?
ReplyDeleteThe Americans have that myth that an armed nation cannot be occupied.
DeleteCanada needs to become indigestible. Small arms and AT equipment in all police stations to be distributed without paper trail in times of mobilisation, draft-based one-month guerilla training for almost all males and females age 18...50, remove public area CCTV and other possibly abused surveillance infrastructures.
Also, ten thousands of missiles that can f up the U.S. energy economy up to 1,500 km depth.
Break up media conglomerates (Postmedia), possibly turn all political media non-profit.
Yeah those times are there, full caesarism in the US... good point about how the defense of Europe it's not an EU thing, a part there will be not serious defense without the UK, even more if they prefer to be friends with an imperialist anti-Euro US and play the island base for them like in WW2.
ReplyDeleteStill a lot of countries rely on many US weapons systems, The F-35 is the main fighter of many air forces. Germany uses patriot batteries for air defense and is waiting for P-8 naval patrol aircrafts, etc... so basically there is billions in high-end weapons that the US could neutralize quite easily in case off conflict, by cutting spare parts or using backdoors. Those things are brand new, really expansive to replace and many times there is no producer in Europe that can make them in some numbers or at all...that's really a big problem. It will take a generation to replace everything and we need it much sooner, I think that 80 years of ''firmware'' put in all the heads of euro elites are not gonna go easily and have made the European sovereignty idea really difficult. Let's see also the talks for French Rafales with ASMP nuke cruise missiles based in Germany to replace the B61 US bombs...
#5 - I recall arguing with you about the Turks/Erdogan being a serious problem years ago Lol.
ReplyDeleteI told him exactly that about Israel/Bibi. Democracy my ass, Bibi has been in charge since 1996 and Erdo since 1997. Both longer than Putin or Luka. Get rid of Trophy, Spike and HERO. Europe should have sanctioned Israel the moment the supplied arms to Azerbayjan.
Delete1. Bolster ASML and SAP.
ReplyDelete2. Bro SWIFT is based in Belgium!
3. Bolster ESA and Airbus.
4. Tell Brits to stop hosting oligarchs.
5. 3 out of 4 countries can be taken care of. Tell BND and DGSE to stop playing with their joysticks.
6. Ditto.
7. Ditto.
8. Germany and Italy need a lot of NPPs. Stop fooling around. Make CANDUs or EPRs.
9. US will have a civil war before invading Europe of all places that's just preposterous!
Aaand gotta go.
True, mentioning SWIFT was incorrect. There are important financial background services that depend on American companies (this was apparent when Maestro was phased out), I just don't remember the correct brand names for that.
DeleteEstablishing a replacement for NATO will probably be the hardest.
DeleteGetting all major EU states to agree to a brand new security arrangement will be difficult.
It's not clear to me that the Americans have turned fascist.
ReplyDeleteHow can any of this be applied, when Europe exists in an American informational matrix, which in turn heavily influences election result?
ReplyDeleteFacebook, Twitter, Google, WhatsApp, ect...
How can a system so heavily influenced by America turn against it?
The Americans aren't able to influence anyone with it in Chinese, right? So let's think about what China did to those internet companies.
DeleteChina exists within it's very own, seperate informational sphere.
DeleteThey basicly build a replacement for just about everything the Americans offer and outdid them in several instances.
However, the Chinese are ran by a highly centralized and authoritrian party, one that is hell bent on keep China independent and self sufficent.
What China did can be emulated.
For example the EU could finance a Euro version of Google and proceed make access to Google servers difficult for Europeans (make calls to their servers very slow) this forcing Euros to switch over to the local solution.
This however requires political will, and it is very difficult to get candidate willing to do that elected in a democracy where the information flow is under US control.
A way to do this would require the cooperation of the European intelligence community, where by they would roll out candidate and do their best to secretly prop them and once a critical mass of Euro "glowie" backed candidate are in power, they begin to implement policies meant to achieve European cyber sovereignty.
Yep, and the EU will totally not start censoring these new platforms to deal with "hatespeech" and "misinformation". Yes, the US has a lot of problems and we should start to deal with our own defensive needs but giving the current EU this kind of power would be an act of utter lunacy.
DeleteEveryone censors social media, deal with it.
DeleteWhat matters is WHO is censoring and for WHAT purpose.
Currently (within Europe and most of the world), it's the Americans and they do it for the purpose of securing their geopolitical interests.
The only real mass censorship on social media is coming from sociopolitical ideologues who want the entire internet to be their echochamber. I'm not aware of any consorship to further american geopolitical interests especially considering how many people (including their own citizens) hate the US and everything it stands for and are quite openly saying so on social media.
DeleteThe EU is openly talking about alternatives to american platforms for the express purpose of censoring opinions not in line with their worldview.
"The EU is openly talking about alternatives to american platforms for the express purpose of censoring opinions not in line with their worldview."
DeleteNo, the issues are
(1) rent-seeking by American tech companies who almost very largely dodge taxation in Europe (thorugh Ireland), so they run into regulatory issues for lack of goodwill
(2) Russian and Nazi propaganda bullshit flooding Europe through American social networks, including campaigns of millions of bot accounts aiming to influence elections with bullshit propaganda
Example: To shut down the Russian government-controlled RT TV station isn't censorship - it's national self-defence.
OTOH, I don't think a politician is censoring the press when he's refusing to give interviews to certain press outlets.
Freedom of speech and the derived freedom of the press aren't absolute. To shout "fire!" in a crowded theatre is legitimetly illegal and so is some press outlet running a lie campaign to push for a war of aggression, push for nazism or to sabotage the own nation's sovereignty.
"What China did can be emulated. "
We don't need to emulate China. Just look at South Korea, American tech companies failed spectacularly there becuase the South Koreans have domestic alternatives that rule the market (especially
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakao ).
The EU is going to enforce compatibility between social messaging services. That may be WhatsApp's and Meta's downfall in Europe.
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
The taxdodging issue I'll absolutely grant you, but a european service which has to follow european guidelines or face early morning search warrants etc. is worse than the problem we have with american platforms. Bots are an issue but we see how the establishment uses bots and russian disinformation as tools to silence any serious substantive opposition.
DeleteAs to freedom of speech, yes there are limits and should be but the european mainstream establishment is drawing those borders in a way I'm extremely uncomfortable with. And thats before we even get into the revelations of these last weeks as to just how much mainstream (and in particular leftwing) media is actually being financed by our taxes in intransparent ways.
I agree with increasing our strategic autonomy but if there is a threat to our basic freedoms I don't see it coming from a supposedly "fascist" US, but from EU institutions.
Sorry, can't edit, misspoke there, what I meant was "Bots are an issue but we see how the establishment uses the excuse of bots and russian disinformation as tools to silence any serious substantive opposition."
DeleteThe "revelation" was that the conservatives didn't like getting pushback for cozying up to 99%Fascists and instead of learning not cozy up to them they went on counteroffensive.
DeleteSame story as American Fascists going on counteroffensive against Antifa, even labelling them Fascists.
The "revelations" are almost nothing. To ask 550 questions isn't the same as proving 550 times wrong subsidies. Besides, people outside the conservative bubble can see the counterpush that's about how conservatives-controlled NGOs get subsidies as well and don't behave impartial at all. This includes the farmer association, the conservatives had absolutely no issue with it organising protests against non-conservative policies.
We may have a discussion about subsidies for NGOs and how those should limit their political advocacy, but those subsidies are not a limitation on free speech at all and now is not the time to debate those.
Now is the time to remind conservatives to not repeat the inexcusable mistake of 1933. They need to learn, NOT be allowed to succeed with counterattacking after rightful criticism.
I deleted a comment because frankly, it was 90% nonsense.
DeleteSomeone badly needs to work himself or herself out of the extremist rightwing bullshit media bubble.
And the bollocks regarding European dependence on American military protection was debunked multiple times on this blog. People really need to learn to look at Russia's actual military situation instead of pretending that it's a Soviet Union modernised to 2025 technology.
Right now Estonia could overrun St. Petersburg in two days, Finland could overrun St. Petersburg AND Moscow in a week.
"The only real mass censorship on social media is coming from sociopolitical ideologues who want the entire internet to be their echochamber. I'm not aware of any consorship to further american geopolitical interests especially considering how many people (including their own citizens) hate the US and everything it stands for and are quite openly saying so on social media."
DeleteSociopilitical ideologies can be used for geo-political purposes, your statement makes no sense.
Anyhow, the US deployment of mass censorship, manipulation and narrative amplification via social media was in full display during the Arab spring as well as during election times in various countries, no democratic state can truly be sovereign so as long as Americans are allowed to retain control over the information flow.
"People really need to learn to look at Russia's actual military situation instead of pretending that it's a Soviet Union modernised to 2025 technology.
DeleteRight now Estonia could overrun St. Petersburg in two days, Finland could overrun St. Petersburg AND Moscow in a week."
Modern Russia is no modernized USSR, it's far weaker than that, but saying Finland can overrun Moscow is frankly delusional.
Prigozhin could have done it with a few thousand men.
DeleteRussia faces Finland with a husk of one brigade. Finland can mobilise to more than 200k troops within days.
Moscow would stand no chance.
Anonymous28 February 2025 at 13:56 said:
Delete"The only real mass censorship on social media is coming from sociopolitical ideologues who want the entire internet to be their echochamber. I'm not aware of any consorship to further american geopolitical interests especially considering how many people (including their own citizens) hate the US and everything it stands for and are quite openly saying so on social media."
Then what is this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cger582weplo
While I would take what the BBC says with a rather large grain of salt, if true that would be concerning. I was not aware of that, didn't real pay much attention to Gaza war since I frankly don't care all that much, they've been killing each other since before any of us were born and will still be slaughtering each other long after we're all dead and buried.
DeleteI didn't mean to imply that there was definitively no geopoliticaly motivated censorship on american platforms (I did say "as far as I know", so thanks for the links) just that the overwhelming majority is (or was) more social ideology based.
As I said earlier, the current system is far from perfect but I doubt any european system in the current political climate would less censorious.
The difference here is that the European censorship will censor in defence of perceived European geopolitical interests as well as other stupid shit.
DeleteIt won't be perfect but better than the US doing all the censorship, at least Europeans can exercise control over what the EU censors, where as they have ZERO control over what the US censors.
If one listens to the political rhetoric of both sides of the atlantic one should realise that there is more at stake than who controls the censorship, it's also about the amount.
DeleteI'd rather have some US censorship than lots and lots of EU censorship.
I could be wrong of course, however it looks like we will know in just a few years if my fears are justified or not.
You have no mean of determining how much censorship exists.
DeleteEffective censorship would lead to you being unaware that certain views are even being held by any meaningful amount of the population.
Furthermore, rhetoric is irrelevant, the facts remain Europeans can influences any potential EU censorship laws.
Where as they have ZERO influence on American censorship routines.
Regarding 15.) do you think a model similar to the German firefighters could be pulled off where around 75k are professionals (military equivalent: Officers, Trainers, Specialists) while there are around one million volunteers (military equivalent: reservists) that train regularly and get called when there is the need but work in other day to day jobs.
ReplyDeletehttps://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-militia-for-2020s-i.html
Deletehttps://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-militia-for-2020s-ii.html
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-militia-for-2020s-iii.html
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-militia-for-2020s-iv.html
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-militia-for-2020s-v.html
I sometimes post comments here, normally to disagree with you, but it's difficult to argue with any of this.
ReplyDeletecrazy that you actually were right. I was sure you went of the rails like so many others.
ReplyDeleteGermany has a couple people who talk in front of microphones about we should remember history and learn from it and it has a couple people who actually read a lot about history and learned from it.
DeleteThat's an eight in a Venn diagram.
Me complaining of the microphone users repeating 1914's mistake
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/09/overly-aggressive-allies.html
Me warning about War in Europe, with Ukraine as one of several possible scenarios
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2007/11/war-within-europe.html
(though admittedly, I blamed East-West conflict rather than Russian Imperialism)
Me warning that the small wars bollocks erodes our attention on deterrence & defence
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/10/detrimental-effect-of-isaf.html
Look at the dates.
Lists are rubbish without focus and priorities.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing Europe needs to do is stop buying Russian petroleum products and funding the war!
Second, the 'we don't talk to the Russians' is childish - at the height of the cold war the Russians had a parking spot at Foggy Bottom (U.S. State Department HQ) - the Soviets had a similar arrangement with the U.S. mission in Moscow, hopefully to prevent catastrophe.
Third, how about a little honesty with the EU public and state what forces are required, who is going to provide them, who will pay for them, how much is needed, and when will they be required.
Fourth, Further, how many more Ukrainians are you prepared to lose? What are the actual prospects of Ukraine holding out another summer? So many predictions of Russian collapse were obvious nonsense.
Fifth, no one outside the west believes the sanctimonious EU BS: there are multiple genocides going on right now and Europe has done F-all about them.