The people of the USA really remind me of the people of Russia: totally depoliticized. I think in the USA many people are really focused on a pointless culture war yet aren't politically active at all.

What we witness seems to be a lack of control due to a vicious feedback loop that eliminates dissenters and reasonable, moderate people from positions of power. The longer it stays active, the worse it becomes. In other authoritarian systems this is not so noticeable because their leaders act more rationally to begin with, although they tend to lose their grip on reality in the long run, too.

Perhaps you're missing context here? The US Congress has established and frequently reaffirms a policy called the "debt ceiling", which requires the government to default on some of its obligations (including debt repayment) soon after reaching a certain nominal amount of debt. In 2023, negotiations to increase this ceiling lasted up until the week before the default would have begun, and 36 Senators still wanted to reject the deal and force the default. To me it does not seem insane or irrational to worry that next time there might be 41 Senators who want to default.

If we do simply print money to make the debt go away- foreign holders of that debt would benefit from being the first to sell for a more stable currency. The last to sell would be left holding the bag, would they not? Wouldn't this cause a run on the dollar and destabilize the world financial system?

What's a European Elite?

This is not a one sided thing. The US has been allowed to do a lot of things under the NATO umbrella that it benefited from (such as: selling a vast quantity of arms). Soft power is a thing and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being to deal with exactly the kind of situation that we are viewing today. To see the US bow out, and in fact threatening allies is duplicitous at best.

6 decades before NATO was formed, Britain was the largest economy and financial empire. The US was up-and-coming but had not yet had its war with Spain to demonstrate their arrival. Nato was formed "To keep the US in, the Germans down and the Russians out" (per Ismay). The first clause is now inoperative. The second clause is being reversed by the various Euro states and the third, unfortunately, remains.

There was also a benefit to the US maintaining NATO - it could nudge/encourage/guide other countries into doing things it wanted done (such as Afganistan). This soft power is being discarded with NATO.

Last time the US won a war without the assistance of any allies (and not against yourself), it was 1848 and you were fighing Mexico.

The US economy is only the largest if you don't adjust for purchasing power, at which point the US and EU are in joint second place way behind China, and separated from each other by a rounding error despite Brexit.

If the US wants to go alone, sure we'd miss you, but it's welcome to go in peace… so long as it doesn't steal Greenland on the way out.

I wish europe was out of NATO. It does nothing to defend europe, bring us in wars we didn't ask for, and manufacture crisis European still suffer from (Syria refugee). It force its "allies" to buy defective weapons that are basically spyware, and still spy on them just in case. It force other allies to spill their blood in the middle East.

The only "good" thing it did was breaking Sarajevo's siege in the mid 90s, but event then it isn't actually clear if the Serb wouldn't have backed off anyway at the end of the month because they couldn't progress due to the UN presence. Still saved a few hundred civilian lives, in exchange for a thousand of proto-nazi, so i can't say it was bad.

No one will attack any EU country anyway, as long as france doens't change its nuclear doctrine, which, i will state here once again, include a "warning shot".

NATO is a rootkit, a foothold for lateral movement in a literal sense, for the US in Europe. Is is not "critical" for anyone, in some theoretical sense, but it has proven very effective over the better part of a century to keep European military in check and guaranteed not to form any other alliances than with the US.

The EU itself was viewed critically from Washington until it could be proven that it had no intention of becoming a military alliance. So while it could be true that the US does not need NATO in a strict sense, the idea that it has not been net beneficial to the US is absurd. No Danish soldiers would have died in middle eastern wars if it wasn't for NATO.

> You're assuming NATO is somehow critical for the US. It is not. NATO is critical for the European powers

only 1 country invoked article 5 until today and it's not in Europe)

> The US had the world's largest economy six decades before NATO existed.

Only because Europe was intent on destroying each other.

Just a reminder that NATO troops have always been rallied by Washington and on top of that the US is the only country to have ever invoked article 5.

The European allies have put their money and more importantly blood into these conflicts.

Yes, we can all look at a geographical map and state that the USA is blessed geographically by being split by two oceans from anything major in the world and thus conclude that the US does not need Europeans to defend its borders.

In essence you're completely ignoring how US allies in form of NATO allowed US to thrive as the global military power by providing a deep web of support, logistics, bases, ports, intelligence and allowing the US to have a huge influence it has consistently leveraged for decades to its own benefit or needs. And that includes financial reasons (like buying US weaponry).

If US wants to pull out of NATO it is what it is, but this whole nonsense of NATO benefitting only the European allies when it's always Washington asking for other's blood and bases and logistics is just it: nonsense.

NATO was formed as a defense against Russia. Which is a major threat to the US so I don't see why it's useless. We operate bases in Germany, Spain, and others.

If we need Greenland so bad because Russia is that dangerous then isn't NATO important?

Borrowing money from the rest of the world is critical to the US…

USA had this because it manufactured everything and got rich doing so.

NATO is / was USAs way of controlling Europe to have something against Asia.

It's time for us / Europe to let the USA being whatever and kicking them out

We (Germany) are quite well equipped making guns and tanks.

And btw it was our strategy to try to win over countries by NOT being the big bully but sure Russia and USA made it clear that this no longer works.

I hope USA leaves NATO and we kick them out sooner than later

To be fair, the user can speak to NATO's value without assigning it a 'critical' value.

> NATO is critical for the European powers (those not named Russia).

To be pedantic, Canada is a major non-European NATO member.

And then there are allies, some of them designated by Trump:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_non-NATO_ally

Or, they were, as there is no certainty under his rule.

The US does not benefit from a stronger, more unified Europe. Thanks to NATO, "the west" has effectively become an empire in all but name, with the US having enough influence to be the de facto leaders of this empire.

If US pulls back from NATO, and Europe builds up military power to compensate, then the US loses this de facto leadership seat of an empire.

Today, the US appears in parallel to be doing two things:

1. Causing fragmentation in Europe, by promoting right-wing nationalist politics in the EU

2. Threatening to drastically reduce their role in NATO

At the very least we can both agree that these two efforts are completely in contradiction with each other, and it's very unlikely that Europeans will want to go for more fragmentation without the military power of the US on their side, right?

- USA will be free to enjoy Chinese submarines coming via GIUK gap (if POTUS keep doing what they are, these submarines will probably base directly in UK and Norway).

- If EU gets some more vertebrate leaders (something that tends to happen in times like this even in the most spineless countries), the first thing they will do is probably go get some allies in the Pacific to make up for this - and Pacific is much more sensitive to US.

Of course, all of this is phenomenally stupid and everyone will be far worse off.

Not quite... US can freeze certain assets. It did that for Iran for example. It froze the assets for a few decades (from 1979 until 2016). In 2016 it paid back the principal and interest: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-iran-an...

I think the above poster was trying to say, "there is no reason" for the US to claim Greenland. We have a treaty that allows us to build our military bases on the territory. If we want to do security stuff there, we already can.

Which more than well illustrates the absurd claims that the US needs Greenland because Europe places too little military power there.

The US has never dealt with hyperinflation.

And having armed federal agents at the polling booths won’t be a problem? Or declaring it “stolen”, or simply ignoring the results, or refusing to leave office.

None of those are much of a stretch from all the laws already broken repeatedly

Including the states that have replaced their election officials with Trump loyalists?

If that was actually being considered you don’t need to default in the first place.

"Not that easy" & EPolanski replies with 2 things the US Congress almost never does

> did they "default" on their side of the treaty?

I'm pretty sure they all answered the call when the US invoked Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, no?

> The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025.

Are you suggesting that the US has paid over $1 trillion into NATO each year? That would be difficult because the US military budget has never crossed $1 trillion. The DoD budget is going to be $900.6 billion in FY2026. [0]

[0] https://www.meritalk.com/articles/senate-passes-fy26-defense...

The share of the European countries in supporting NATO has been higher than the official numbers.

For instance, when the East-European countries have been admitted into NATO they were forced to pay dearly for this, with many billions of $ for various lucrative and overpriced contracts assigned to some well-connected US companies (e.g. Bechtel), either for various infrastructure projects or for military acquisitions.

Those billions of $ do not appear in the US budget, but they have enriched certain US businessmen.

It is normal for a regular US citizen to believe that NATO has not been beneficial for himself/herself, because this is true, but what regular citizens are not aware of is that NATO has been a great source of profits for some US citizens who are more equal than the others.

The intention of NATO is mutual support.

Did you forget that the one and only Article 5 call to date on NATO to members was for the USA following 9/11?

You're counting the entire US military budget as "NATO spending" which is not a useful way to look at things. We only contribute roughly $800M to NATO's shared budget (about 16%)[1]

[1]https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-an...

Why are we counting US spending on dumbass wars?

The senate has abdicated the power to declare war, like what else is left in terms of real power? There is no seperation of powers any more, its everything the founders feared coming true