…from Eric Raymond.
Hello, Europeans. The first thing you need to understand about the rant I'm about to utter is that I'm not MAGA, not a Trumpite, but a libertarian who has in the past nevertheless been strongly supportive of US military presence overseas. Because I want the wars that defend this…
— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) April 4, 2026
They have a choice. Our best allies in Europe right now are Poland, Finland, and the Baltics.
Note that “our best allies” have a strong correlation with those countries that were at the receiving end of invasions by aggressively acquisitive socialist neighbors (of both national and international varieties) eighty-five or so years ago. Peoples who had to live with the results of that for the next half century.
The Poles aren’t letting the US borrow the Patriots that were sold to them.
Operative word is “sold”. They probably decided they needed them to keep the Russians from doing anything even more stupid, and that threat hasn’t diminished in the last month.
Which is the same argument many Americans made when arming Ukraine. We saw how our European friends reacted to that.
I think this is another example of the planning thing. Getting military commitments from your allies is a thing you do before you go to war not after you get stuck. “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
Even if the European powers were hypothetically keen to get involved after the fact, nobody worked them into the plan.
And there’s something wrong with ESR’s narrative here. If these European militaries are “sacks of wet farts” then why does ESR want them? Seriously, if they are that bad then they’ll just be in the way, getting killed and harming the US military’s effectiveness – getting US soldiers killed too.
No sense in including Euro-forces in planning stage because there are no Euro-forces. Notice how Britain could not send even one Frigate to Cyprus. No boots were needed on the ground so no sense in asking Europe for those. They have a few airplanes but in reality Israel and the US Air Forces were far more than enough for the job. Far more capable. And would carry out the mission with a minimum of political whining, bitching and moaning. Euro-participation brings with it all sorts of viscosity we just didn’t need in a lightening war.
On the other hand, there are a few minesweepers in Britain and France might be able scrape up a destroyer/frigate or two and so helping to open the Strait is tailor made for the small, low capability, and inexperienced Euro-forces.
But far, FAR, more to the point is that all this was choreographed to illustrate not only just how incapable Europe is but how unwilling they are to protect themselves and their economies. Not even willing to help once the heavy lifting was done.
No….this was all very well planned…it’s just that the plans didn’t include Europe until it was politically beneficial to do so.
The message to Europe:
“We’ve made other plans………and they don’t include you.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0xZXIFScy4
Starting at the 1:07 mark.
The great Steve Landesberg playing Arthur Dietrich, doing Gregory Peck.
That was one of the funniest shows of all time; I watched it religiously. Never disappointed!
cthulhu,
Same here. And I’ve collected as many Dietrich-isms as I can. Fabulous Character, fabulously done.
Brinksedge is right. The Germans showed up for a short time in Afghanistan, but their involvement there was more in the nature of adventure tourism than a military deployment. The US had to keep getting them out of scrapes and finally decided the Jerrys were more trouble than they were worth. We also had small contingents from the Balkan states and a rather larger one from Poland there as well. These were able to make themselves useful. Ditto in Iraq.
It’s hard to know what to make of all of this European noise about “war of choice” and “no imminent threat” unless the Euros making said noises are blind and deaf. The Iranians still have a stash of highly-enriched uranium sufficient to build a dozen or more Hiroshima-equivalent devices. And those two missiles the Iranians tried, unsuccessfully, to hit Diego Garcia with – which no one seems to have known they had – had ranges plenty sufficient to reach most Western European capitals, though not the US. The TDS runs pretty wide and deep in the halls of the Eurocracy if its denizens don’t see that as an imminent threat.
And we built Aegis Ashore to protect them from Iran, which is little appreciated either in terms of capability or the threat it is intended to counter.
Didn’t read like ESR wants them.
Why would we include Europe on any plans when they are allies of Iran?
Trump is showing them how much they depend on us and how little they can do for themselves. Trump has been telling them to accept more personal responsibility for their welfare for over a decade but they don’t listen.
Europe needs to be able to pull their own weight.
Even the NYT thinks it is the North American Treaty Organization, so US progressives aren’t going to help Europe.
I don’t want to hear about “timing”. Trump warned Europe during his first term. They laughed at him and made deals for Russia’s gas. Then Putin invaded Ukraine, and all we heard was how the US needed to help, because Europe wasn’t prepared to fight Russia.
Eric isn’t saying Europe needs to commit. Neither is Trump. It is just that the US commitment to Europe is now over.
Eric isn’t saying Europe needs to commit. Neither is Trump. It is just that the US commitment to Europe is now over.
ESR wrote:
Doesn’t sound like it to me.
I’m not going to argue with you when others understand perfectly fine:
Trump tells UK ‘go get your own oil’ and warns that the US ‘won’t help you any more’ in latest tirade over Iran war:
US president tells Keir Starmer to get some ‘courage’ and and ‘take’ fuel from the Strait of Hormuz
Saying help yourself isn’t a commitment. I would suggest you do the same and help yourself, but you seem too far gone.
I hear you, bro, but a scolding from ESR? It is not like that has Messrs. Starmer, Merz or Macron shaking in their whatever pricey footware Euro-elites wear for boots.
Donald Trump has lashed out at Britain, saying the US “won’t be there to help you any more, just like you weren’t there for us” in an extraordinary rant against his allies over the Iran war.
In one breath, Trump complains about the lack of European help and then demands that Europe “get your own oil”. It’d be one thing if the Europeans had weaseled out of commitments they had made. But that’s not what’s happened here. Trump publicly threw a fit about the lack of European participation even though he did this war without European input or commitment.
Well, those countries and leaders have their own obligations to their own people. They can’t merely be Trump’s janitors, cleaning up every time Trump decides to go to war.
If this were the only time, I wouldn’t be complaining so much. But the past year has so much of this nonsense go on. Do something and then expect everyone to support it wholeheartedly.
What will happen down the road when the US needs serious help – say in a war with a powerful China? The fickle goodwill of the Middle East won’t cut it. Because of NATO, Europe has a lot of force that can be readily integrated into the US military system.
I hope Trump’s current empty threats are a distraction from the military’s real targets. Sounds like the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier may be returning to the Persian Gulf region and bring enough firepower to clear the strait. We’ll see if that happens.
Admittedly, Trump first disdaining the idea of European help, then demanding it, then pitching a fit when it’s not forthcoming is neither a good look nor reflective of good planning.
That said, the Euros are busily doing their usual ostrich act again. Unsurprising given the limited EU support for Ukraine until quite recently – a certain subset of individual European nations excepted. Iran is even farther way than Russia after all. Out of sight, out of mind.
Where US planning was most deficient seems to be in the area of anticipating just what Iran was capable of in terms of drone warfare. This was a consequence of the completely wrong-headed and stupid attitude of the Trump administration toward Ukraine. We needed to have Ukraine on-board before this thing with Iran started. We could have had that, but now we’ll have to wait in line behind the Gulf Arab states who’ve all quickly cut deals with Ukraine for anti-drone tech the US neither has nor can quickly match – unless Palmer Luckey has something suitable up his sleeve.
We will probably muddle through as we often do, but it won’t be either as quick or as tidy as it should have been. In any case, the US has now had its nose quite thoroughly rubbed in the reality that anti-air munitions really have to be available in quantity because they are munitions and not capital equipment. They need to be mass-produced and they need to be cheap. The legacy defense industrial base no longer has any idea how to do either. One can only hope the new generation of entrepreneurial defense bros can pull our chestnuts out of the fire before the next major conflagration.
What will happen down the road when the US needs serious help – say in a war with a powerful China? The fickle goodwill of the Middle East won’t cut it. Because of NATO, Europe has a lot of force that can be readily integrated into the US military system.
Europe was told to help themselves to their oil in the Persian Gulf, and they cannot do it. Europe couldn’t stop Putin. Now you are trying to make us believe Europe could help against China? 🤣
Leland is right. Not only would the Euros be no-shows if the balloon ever goes up anent the PRC, it’s hard to see what help they could reasonably be even if they somehow got past their almost complete inability to project military power anywhere near that far from home. The French can still get to Africa when they need too, but no farther. The Brits… well, the Brits of today – especially the Royal Navy – couldn’t even begin to do a Falklands 2.0 and the PRC is a lot farther away. Most of the RN’s ships are in the twilight of their years and its two new-ish aircraft carriers are drydock queens – not that they would make much difference anyway.
The only help we should be looking for from Europe is drone and anti-drone tech from Ukraine. And we need to arrange for that – particularly domestic US production – well “in advance of need” as the saying goes. Going cap-in-hand to Kyiv once the shooting starts won’t cut it.
Any significant help we get against the PRC – should that ever be an issue – could only come from two sources – Japan and India. Both are in the right neighborhood, both have good and significant navies – especially Japan – and both are, shall we say, existentially at risk from a militarily belligerent PRC. And India also has nukes.
Come to that, the Japanese have plutonium because they operate nuclear power reactors. If things were to get really frosty between the PRC and Japan, the latter could certainly run up some nukes over, say, a four-day weekend. Constitution or no constitution, I suspect the Japanese already have contingency plans to do exactly that and have even likely already made a lot of the preparations. And the current Japanese Ichi-ban strikes me as being exactly the dame to issue the needed orders should push ever come to shove.
Europe has no navies.
A war with China would involve our other friends in AUS, NZ, SK, Philippines, and Best China. We work well with all of these countries and have been strategically rebalancing our forces to reflect that..
This has been one of the reasons Europe has been so upset with us and risking the anger of our oldest friendships to meet the threat of China shows our allies in the region how committed we are.
Trump has been telling Europe to rebuild their militaries and only in the last year have they put in minimal effort in doing so.
Europe is an unreliable ally as we have seen how they have acting regarding Ukraine, their abandonment of strategic geography, the planned degradation of their militaries, their reliance on our enemies for energy, abandoning our shared values, their adoption of totalitarian progressive marxism, and refusing us access to bases and airspace that we use to deal with yet another threat to Europe.
Hey Europe,
You can’t have my grandsons to come bail you put of your stupidity. Their three lives are worth more to me than all of yours put together. You can’t have my money any more either. If you see threats to your security, that an EU problem, not mine any more.
Don Surber makes the point again with quotes from Ari Fleischer. Those quotes point out that it wasn’t Trump that made Western Europe weak.
Decline is a choice. The western European nations, along with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have chosen decline.
A lot has to do with the attitude expressed in Imagine by John Lennon. It’s a delusion: if there are no countries, then there’s no wars. If everyone is the same, then there are no interpersonal problems.
Great Britain used to have a space program, did you know that? The great artillery designer Gerald Bull was launching rockets using a cannon as zero stage. The SABRE engine was a bold idea that would make what Elon is doing now obsolete. But there was no will. They chose irrelevance.
A lot of people view recent events at an attempt to sever our relationships but I see it as tough love. Trump is reasserting American primacy in our foreign relations and letting Europe know they have to fulfill their commitments rather than expect the USA to act like superheroes and magically solve all their problems for them.
One could view Trump like Themistocles
It is tough love. Anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention knows that Trump has been trying to get the Yerpeens (Europeans) to pay their fair share of NATO money and stop relying on the US so that they can fund their long vacations. He started all this during his first term. This is not a whim. It’s an ongoing effort.
And the Yerps have ignored him. So…what does Trump do? What he has done countless times: ramp up the pressure.
Now I think Trump would have dealt with Iran just based on nukes and missiles alone. But as Trump has ALSO done countless times he saw opportunity here to achieve multiple goals. He saw he could apply even more pressure on the Yerps by the closing the the Straits. Pressure…and Humiliations Galore. Humiliation as another form of pressure. Not to mention illustrating that the Yerpeen capabilities amount to nothing.
They wouldn’t listen to him when he talked nice. Got publicly scolded by Merkel.
Ok….no prob.
So over the years he’s stepped up the pressure and the verbal assault. Until now the Iran incursion gives him a golden opportunity to step up the pressure even more.