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I’m sorry why exactly would Europe need to build a new military after the US leaves? Are they gonna take EU armies with them?
UK and France have nukes and aircraft carriers, Poland and Germany building up their continental forces, Sweden is no joke either.
If Europe wanted they could defend Greenland. I don’t think the US would be ready to use the necessary resources to win that fight.
The US is integral to NATO's logistics, equipment and vital components for maintaining it is only made in the US.
The entire command structure of NATO is dominated by the US, without the US, you don't have armies, you have some soldiers and officers.
Even then, you seem to imagine a fair fight, between spherical soldiers, in a vacuum, not a fight between Europe, and the guys who spent the entire cold war influencing European governments and embedding right-wing militias just in case yall decided to be insufficiently anti-communist.
They are next to the country that spends 10x more on the military than all of you combined. America's only rival is China.
When Trump is telling Poland, Germany, and Sweden to increase military spending, and they listen, it's not because they want to have someone to fight for greenland, it's because the US expects to use yall to fight its own enemies and your rulers are planning for as much.
Or Afghanistan. Or Vietnam lol
The US would not be able to occupy mainland Europe in the same way it can occupy Greenland. This is closer to the invasions of Grenada or Panama.
Yeah, three aircraft carriers between them. The US has eleven.
People don't understand how staggeringly powerful US military is. The top six most powerful air forces might give you an idea of the scale we're talking about:
Absolutely no chance for Europe to even come near Greenland, if the US doesn't want to allow it.
The US has resources to maintain war with two relatively equal in strength superpowers (until recently that was assumed to be russia and China) outside the continental US. That's their doctrine, and that's what they built their military for. Even if the EU banded together with China, russia, and India, I still wouldn't necessarily bet against the US.
Huh so somehow that all powerfull US military couldn't beat Afghanistan but China or Europa gonna be easy peasy? lmao
Of course!
First of all, Afghanistan was supposed to be extremely limited, with relatively minimal resources expended. As in: they didn't draft anybody, they used volunteers. Sure, the fact that it was as response to 9/11 helped getting droves of volunteers, but the point stands. In case of an all-out war with the EU/China, it would be "everything and the kitchen sink goes", so the scale would be completely different.
Secondly, Afghanistan is famously difficult to conquer (the British tried and failed, the USSR tried and failed, etc.).
Thirdly, even with the above, it took them THREE MONTHS from the first SpecOps actions, to the moment when Hamid Karzai was sworn in as the head of the interim administration. Nobody else on the planet came even close to this.
The US completely botched the strategy of holding on to Afghanistan, as well as made a mess of instilling democratic values, completely ignoring the tribal structure of Afghanistan, but it doesn't change the fact that, militarily, it was done and dusted within three months.
And, yeah, sure, the Taliban continued to fight, but it was all limited to basically terror attacks with little meaningful impact. They weren't capable of retaking the country and as soon as any larger group was detected, it was eliminated on sight.
But the EU can't default to guerrilla fighting against the US in what would effectively be an offensive war (we'd need to move troops over there do defend Greenland) on the sea (kinda' difficult to strike from the caves in the open ocean).
Vietnam, Korea ...
In fact the US never fought a war against a major power that wasn't won by other major powers.
Ah, right! Forgot about that.
You're absolutely right - if the EU fights 50 year old American military, it'll clearly come out on top!