Very funny how America spent 8 decades making Europe a client state and then suddenly just cut them loose lmao
The funny thing about this is that if you go to hyper liberal, atlanticist or pan european spaces you have this enduring discourse about Putin’s Russia and Trump’s America being a anti-european conspiracy. But this sort of mask off moment does actually create an imperative for european elites to get their shit together and actually do something akin to federalizing Europe.
This ‘C5’ has one American vassal in the form of Japan but no stakeholders from Africa or Latin America. It’s like having one’s cake and eating it too. The US gets to claim that ‘the big boys all have spheres of influence’ but then bring in a vassal state of theirs into the discussion. The Europeans aren’t being discarded, they are just not relevant since the front for imperial competition should be anywhere but Europe.
What’s not clear here is why the US thinks Russia and China would be at all interested in this arrangement. It’s pretty clear that both are doing just fine without trading with the US. I imagine they’re going to keep focusing on developing BRICS instead. They’re probably going to make some deals with the US just to keep Americans pacified, but I doubt there’s going to be any sort of a strategic partnership there.
I think the most we can imagine is the idea of a plan for a new security council. Meaning that Russia, China, India and the US would recognize each other as ‘Great Powers’ with their own ‘Spheres of Influence’. Why this is being discussed is more or less purely ideological. It’s not part of a grand strategy to extract more from Europe, secure Latin America or seek cooperation with China, India and Russia as traditional channels already exist to do all of that. They are just not being leveraged properly or being disregarded, again, due to ideological reasons.
Its a reflexive harkening towards old american isolationism, which was not isolationist at all and entailed the US ‘retreating’ to an already globe spanning empire that included the entire Western Hemisphere as well as the Phillipines and islands in the Pacific. The thing is though that just like with Britain before it, the people talking about pivots or downscaling or focusing forces away from being a global American Empire don’t actually mean it.
I think that’s the most realistic scenario. The US, China, and Russia will negotiate their respective spheres of influence going forward. Although, I’m don’t really see Russia and China agreeing to leave Latin America which is something the US seems to be insisting on.
I think the open question is more towards to what extent the US will demand exclusivity. The Chinese and the Russians have complimentary spheres of influence in Central Asia in no small part because the Russians do not have the heft to be an economic guarantor and the Chinese do not have the desire to be a security guarantor in the region.
The US is a financialized oligarchy. The system of banking and finance which powers Chinese and Latin American investment and trade is theirs to destroy. They can’t help themselves when it comes to, say, Venezuela’s shitty oil reserves because stuff like that is easy to pillage and dole out in a centralized manner but I don’t think anyone would dispute that China injecting US denominated capital into the continent to increase trade in US denominated debts, assets and goods makes the US stronger. And yet sanctions are issued anyways because at the end of the day the american oligarchy is not monolithic and the american state isn’t supposed to plan or actually control anything.
People will say that the current deindustrialization of the US is untenable to the military caste and the working classes of the US so its politically unsustainable for the US to go on to remaining the asset manager of a world centralized on East Asian manufacturing. But, well, this whole Trump America First onshoring plan is turning out to be just another financial scheme to pillage the american commons and centralize assets in the hands of a sector of the ruling class. Much ado was spoken about grand plans to turn the world economy on its head but at this point if you only disregard personalized schemes like Lutnick’s tariff deal it does genuinely seem like the US oligarchy just wants to use import taxes to ensure lower taxes on the wealthy which, incidentally, is the latin american way of doing things.
Agree with all that, the US is ultimately a kleptocracy and oligarchs at the levers of power are only looking after themselves. That precludes any coherent strategy a national level, hence why we’re seeing the empire flailing. The big question is what arrangement they’ll be willing to come to in the end.
Libs turning on the US for not being interventionist enough is pretty funny, like at least they’re turning on the US I guess?
It’s useful to draw a distinction here. American Liberal-Conservatives will always disapprove of Conservative-Liberal leadership and vice-versa. It’s like how in the Obama era the Liberal caucus summoned incredible bloodlust towards Libya and Syria - their guy was warchief at the time so war was gucci.
Europeans on the other hand need this as a coping mechanism. The Reactionaries among them will rally against stupid shit like The Globalists because they can’t reckon with the fact that Thatcherite and Reaganite Conservative World they live in economically hollowed out Europe together with Britain and the US. The Liberals meanwhile are married to the ongoing war in Ukraine in a way that the Reactionaries aren’t, so they have less room for maneuver. Cue a discourse of European Nationalism of ambiguous strength and purchase outside of reddit adjacent spaces. Europeans by and large like the EU and european integration. Nationalist and Fascist politicians always turn flacid towards Brussels for a reason and that reason isn’t just the will of the capitalist oligarchy that they are a part of.
I always knew the US was a BRICS country at heart
BRICSUS
G1
And it’s just China
So if the US cuts ties with the EU, what are the odds the EU tries to re-establish ties with Russia?
There would need to be some significant political shift in Europe to patch things up with Russia, but China seems almost certain. That said, if the US actually bailed on Europe then I expect the current neoliberal parties to collapse and the EU along with them. At that point, individual countries could start making deals with Russia, especially if nationalist parties get in power.
I don’t think theyd align with China either. The whole point of he EU was to maintain defacto independence during the cold war. If anything I expect them to invest more into ECOWAS and possibly try to stabilize + integrate Libya into their order.
When all else fails, the European solution: colonize.
that’s what I expect as well
France is already using Nigeria to recolonized the AES. But the EC was created to coordinate european armies against the soviet union (there was a failed european defense community that would have made a european army subservient to the commander of NATO), independence from the us was only a goal by french and british (at first) elite. European unity has it historically developed to further US influence.
At the current rate, 0%. Part of the reason the United States wants to cut ties with Europe is because they’re rabidly anti-Russia and actively attempting to sabotage any peace treaty with the Russians.
Which is incredibly funny because US spent last 80 years trying to make Europe exactly like that.
Lmao Europe is too racist to ever do that. They’d rather continue shooting themselves in the jugular
Who would even be left?
A person who served in the White House in the first Trump administration, granted anonymity to discuss closed-door conversations, said the idea of a C5 (the U.S., China, India, Japan and Russia) was not completely shocking.
Europe completely caving to Trump’s demands, eating tariffs, and then him cutting them out of various things (NATO, G7) out of petty spite would be hilarious
Trump respects strength; caving to his every demand shows you’ve got no leverage, and therefore aren’t a player.
These are the top 5 countries in terms of PPP
Yeah a consortium of these does make sense, just funny to not include the EU as a political entity (which if included as a single political entity would be #3, behind only China and the US). Also Germany as of 2023 had a higher GDP PPP than Japan, so funny it’s not on this list.
Because the EU isn’t a real geopolitical entity, as much as the current Brussels elites wish it were and are working overtime to try and force it to be while pretending it already is one. The EU is an economic entity, and the more they try to force it to be something else the faster the whole thing will fall apart as more and more member states rebel. The idea of “federalizing the EU” is and remains a Brussels technocrat pipedream.
Prefer this. Majority are global south.
The US, Israel, various islands in the pacific, maybe the UK
PLEASE please kill yourselves further
Is this a reaction to the Finland president calling to take the veto away from the UN security council and expand it? His essay “the west’s last chance” or whatever it was called?
Seems like several different factions with different ideas for reshaping global institutions (or building whole new ones) and power groups are emerging.
I think this primarily stems from Europe losing its strategic value for the US. When it was a powerful bloc that was becoming economically integrated with Russia and China, that was something the US was deeply invested in preventing. However, now that European economies are ruined, the US isn’t really worried about Europe being a problem anymore. Their shift is towards figuring out how to deal with Russia and China.
Quite notable that europe isn’t even being considered as “core”.
lol right
They didn’t even get a seat at the recent meeting between the US, Russia, and China.
It’s worth noting that Europeans largely played themselves by being completely intransigent.
as a yuropean im shitting my pants at the very idea lmao bring it
i swear these people are kindergarten level mindset
