Europe is not who Trump thinks it is nor is America the bastion of freedom as claimed by Roosevelt.

We are not the Europe of the 20th century, during which in the first half, it tore itself apart as a rampant militarist nationalism took hold. The primary cause of the Second World War was the First World War; if you want to distill all of Hitler's ramblings down to a single sentence it would be "Versailles is unjust and we were stabbed in the back because of the Jews." This is a triparte statement of which there is an element of truth to the first part. Germany was solely punished because of the Kaiser's "blank cheque" promise to Austria in what could have been just a localised war between Austria and Serbia, but such was the international system that when the two alliances were called upon the whole international order kicked in. 

Weak and divided we were and then in the aftermath of the Second World War a new world order came to being in which the true victors, that being the USA and the Soviet Union divided Europe in half. The west, liberated and free was helped to rebuild thanks to the Marshall Plan and a more realistic peace than that granted by Versailles in 1919. Britain, broken and bankrupt had to roll with the punches and just if you think I was joking about the US being the bastion of freedom, Britain paid back every single penny to the US for any and all aid received. The US did not act out of moral conviction but because they saw it as a way to assert themselves and create a new world order with American Hegomony at the centre. Back to Europe, as Churchill put it, an Iron Curtain, running from Stettin (Szczecin) to Trieste descended on Europe with the states of central and eastern Europe sucked into the Soviet sphere of interest with a system imposed on them that was uninvited and unwelcome. In 1956 the Hungarians tried to shake of their Soviet overlords and so did the citizens of Prague in 1968 - both were met by Warsaw Pact tanks. Poland too would have suffered a similar fate had Jaruzelski not declared Martial Law. This is still a sore point in Poland more than 40 years later. In acting decisively, did his repression, that led to the killing of between 40 and 100 people, save Poland from worse - that being a Soviet invasion - as some have claimed? Or was it the act of a tyrant? 

But that was Europe then and this is Europe now. Despite Brexit and there being no centralised EU foreign policy much of Nato is based on its European members (with no disrespect to others) and Europe's Nato forces, despite what Trump and MAGA claim are far more capable of defending themselves.

• France and Britain have 515 nuclear warheads and 8 nuclear missile submarines.
• European defence spending hit €481 billion this year. That's more than Russia and China spend combined. The EU's ReArm Europe plan is mobilising another €800 billion. MAGA supporters like to claim that the US is subsidising European defence and while a lot of Europeans were not paying there share until Trump intervened (I actually agreed with him on this), Europe is paying more than its fair share. When MAGA quote US defence (WAR!) figures they usually quote the whole amount of US military spending which is not only NATO (eg Pacific forces)
• European countries have over 1.7 million active troops. Russia has 1.3 million.
• The EU and UK air forces fly over 1,400 combat aircraft. Their navies have five aircraft carriers, over 60 submarines, more than 120 frigates and destroyers.
• Europe has over 6,000 artillery pieces and that's before the biggest rearmament wave since the Cold War. Poland alone is adding 212 new howitzers.
• The British SAS invented modern special forces, a relative of mine was part of that initial group. The US copied them to build Delta Force. From France's Foreign Legion to Poland's GROM, Europe's elite units are among the deadliest on earth.
• Europe already has joint military commands ready to fight. The UK leads a 10-nation rapid reaction force across Northern Europe and the Arctic. Finland alone can mobilise 900,000 trained reservists all prepared to fight in arctic conditions.
• Europe has its own satellite navigation (Galileo), its own defence programme (75 active projects) and is building its own rapid deployment force.

The is the "helpless Europe" that MAGA and Trump like to portray as ungrateful in a sad narrative in which he insults us, tells us that we hide away from the front lines and then demands we help him in a war of aggression (NATO is a defensive alliance) that he started once he realised he'd got himself in a mess. Thanks to Trump we have distanced ourselves from reliance on US support, which incidentally includes European dependency on buying American weapons and relying on American intelligence, while we followed American foreign policy.

Who'd buy US weapons with a killswitch on them controlled by Trump?

And now thanks to him this now ends.

The only thing the American's still have absolute superiority over is their military logistics and their ability to move massive forces and deploy them fairly rapidy. Again some of this comes down to America screwing Britain during the Second World War in the name of help to ensure they ended in the ascendency.

History lesson over for today.

As always stay safe and well my friends.