Europe’s Future: U.S. Vassal or Independent Power?

The U.S. is calling the shots, and Europe is being sidelined. From Ukraine peace talks to tech regulations, Vice President J.D. Vance made it clear—Washington decides, and Europe follows. But with growing frustration, is it time for Europe to take control of its own destiny? Let’s break it down.

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[enque]

Give me the European Federation ASAP, and let's start with the European Army. Even my 70-year old parents have gone from EU-sceptics to "let's build an army of europe" in the last half year.

[fabio_ferrari]

Time to grow up Europe. These americans are not even trying to mask their dominance on us anymore

[lufenmartofilia]

The final isn't true, France have been advocating to be independant from USA for a decade now under E.Macron

[MrHighlander]

As a Scotsman living in the UK who voted to remain in the EU, I hope the rest of Europe as well as the UK continue to stand up to this reprehensible behaviour from the US leadership. Never felt more despair at not being part of the amazing EU family.

[EKP]

About time to protect our own European rights, no more American overlords 🇪🇺

[Aerostarm]

United we stand, divided we fall 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺

[Kazikox]

We really are at an important crossroads. Stand for united Europe, strong and connected Europe. We sure as hell can do it.

[dez]

As a Canadian, I hope Canada can work with Europe hand in hand so that all our nations can stop being dependent on the US. Contrary to the US, Canada is a lot closer to Europe ideologically, so why not collaborate!?

[HeyImRod]

As an European citizen, we had 3 years since the war started to deal with it. Just because the new kids in the block try to solve the issue doesn’t mean we can’t start doing our homework. The fact that Europe waits for an invitation from the US to deal with this is reasonable but not necessarily how it needs to be. In short, wake up Europe and take some leadership now!

[vergil]

Europe need to wake up and finally decide its own fate. Building strong military and supporting Ukraine should be on top of the priorities.

[netiturtle]

All 10 top places in Press Freedom Index are in Europe, US is at 55th place.
9 of 10 top rankings in democracy index are in Europe. US ranks 29th.
7 of 10 countries with highest Human Freedom Index is in Europe. US is at respectable 17th place.
While current government openly questions separation of powers, goes after judges, president publicly challenged unfavorable election results, pardoned the convicted who attacked Capitolium, goes after investigators who were assigned to the related cases. Etc etc
Not to say criticism cannot valid if it comes from dubious source. JD Vance had a good point or two, but he was cherry picking and grossly misleading with others

[alexop]

Trump pissed off Canada, Mexico, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Europe, Britain. Master negotiator!

[docopoper]

As a post-doctoral AI researcher in Ireland, I just want to say that the EU's AI act is much less onerous than people are making it out to be. It bans things like facial recognition and social credit scores. Which like, fine, so we just won't develop those and I'm glad not to. The "high risk" areas for AI that require approval are in areas that are already highly regulated like law and medicine (it also gives people the right to complain the authorities about AI systems in these fields, which is good too). If you're working in one of the listed areas you're well used to regulation anyway, so it's not actually going to be much of an innovation blocker. Beyond that it says things like you have to publish a list copyrighted material you trained on and you can't generate illegal things.

... And like, that's it. It's all incredibly common sense stuff. I've hardly heard researchers talking about it at all. GDPR comes up much more often, though that's one of my favourite EU laws so I also have no issue with that.

[GnosticAtheist]

Good. This is the time to begin full scale preparations.

Si vis pacem, para bellum

[PineappleSkip]

You have nailed it, most of the nails. I’d add two more things. First, the EU-US comparison overstates the relative US contribution, because it leaves out the substantial contributions of many others, notably Canada and Japan. Second, you omit Trump’s proposed security mechanism of apparently taking half the proceeds of Ukraine’s mineral wealth at the same time as it proposes to contribute nothing to defending a settlement. This is the behaviour of a robber baron, not a great power!

[Terra]

Europa must make here stand, here and now, for Democracy and for Humanity. That we shall not bow

[remivieilledent]

The problem is that JD Vance is allright in his speech on European elits. And in same time, yes, we have a problem of domination by USA. But this domination is the choose of European elits who charge US to insure their defense.
We must to change of policy and to change of elits.

[Leyfandir]

France: "told you so for the last 50 years but late is better than never i guess"

[budpbruegger]

A very helpful moment to let us see our values and strength as Europeans. Without external threat it may be easy to lose focus and get upset about little differences in opinion. I hope that like for the Canadians, this lets us see all the values we share and how strong we are as Europeans. I am surely happy to live in Europe, that my kids live in Europe, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Let's unite, be strong, and proud of our accomplishments.

[damocles]

Its about time Europe started to take care of itself. Good luck Euros.