NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has told Europe it should “keep on dreaming” if it thinks it can defend itself without the support of the United States.
“If anyone thinks here again that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can’t. We can’t. We need each other,” Rutte said during an address to the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday.
The NATO chief warned European nations they would need to increase defense spending to 10% if they “really want to do it alone,” adding they would need to build up their own nuclear capability, costing billions of euros.
If the US wants to invade Europe it can, there is no point in trying to outspend them.
However they struggled to occupy Afghanistan that spends a fraction of the money the US does, I think they’d have trouble holding Europe.
Afghanistan and Iraq both had governments the US effectively destroyed and replaced with something worse. They then occupied each of those territories for decades.
Neither had infrastructure, roads, or active US military bases that the EU has. Neither are conveniently located near bodies of water where the US has 7 of the 10 aircraft carriers that exist on the planet. Neither were convenient to invade and dispose the government of, but the US is literally batting 1000 on doing that to whatever nation it wants no matter how remote and inhospitable its terrain.
That’s what you should be taking away from Afghanistan. Not that the US occupied it, that they easily fucked it up for generations. Something they’re now doing domestically, and loudly announcing they want to export.
Though to be fair we have a tad less caves and shitty geography to resist the Afghan way.