• Tankiedesantski [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Hey this is the guy who said that all Russian citizens living abroad should be surveiled and cited Japanese internment camps as precedent.

    “I can be sorry for these people, but at the same time when we look back, when the Second World War started, all the Japanese population living in the United States were under a strict monitoring regime as well,” said the Czech president. “That’s simply a cost of war.”

    He's probably not doing this in the interests of peace, he's probably doing it because he wants to launch a race war against the Mongolian horde and the US won't play ball.

  • zephyreks@lemmy.ml
    hexagon
    M
    ·
    9 months ago

    Europe shouldn't let it's home-grown defence industries languish in the name of strategic cohesion. Europe has no domestic competition to the F-35, no cohesive military procurement strategy that rewards European businesses, and no mechanism to avoid the shitshow of being entirely dependent on US defence contractors for maintenance of key defence infrastructure.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
      ·
      9 months ago

      I hope they have no competition to the F-35 because everyone’s been saying it’s a piece of shit for the last fifteen years.

  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
    ·
    9 months ago

    Europe should have left NATO 30 years ago, when the first cold war ended, and forged its own path, instead of continuing to get its marching orders from the USA. Now Europe is getting lead into a second cold war by them.

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
    ·
    9 months ago

    lmao there's always a rogue president who says this while the rest of the EU falls in line with Washington

    • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
      ·
      9 months ago

      He's not advocating Europe separate from the US, but become a military superpower in its own right by having as large a military as the US. I am sure both Petr Pavel and Joe Biden agree on enforcing the "rules-based international order".

      To think that the EU suddenly wants to ditch the US because they see them as a burden/dangerous is wishful thinking. In fact the only countries willing to do that might be France, because the local bourgeois don't like to be limited by the US on pursuing their imperialist interests in Africa.

  • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Yet on the other hand, he says EU should hurry up at expanding and integrate Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and others. He's pro-NATO, he just thinks the EU should have more of the muscle. Either that or he's just entirely full of shit.

    • Matengor@lemmy.ml
      ·
      9 months ago

      Yet on the other hand, he says EU should hurry up at expanding and integrate Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and others.

      I don't understand how expanding EU is contradicting the headline. Care to explain?

      • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]
        ·
        9 months ago

        EU/NATO are vassals and part of the same empire as America/UK. Basically, they're all the same side. My point is that if you're against NATO imperialism, this guy isn't who you're looking for. He just wants to be a bit less junior of a partner in the empire.

        Jokes on him and the EU though, they're even more junior than ever before and getting further vassalized and de-industrialized and dependent on the USA.

  • Zimmy@lemm.ee
    ·
    9 months ago

    Lots of euro leaders have said the same over the years. The question as always is, what will you do about it?

  • jray4559@lemmy.sdf.org
    ·
    9 months ago

    Alright, Czech guy, are you gonna put your constituents' money where your mouth is and help build up Europe's defense force? Or are you not gonna change a thing because you know the US will continue to act as the world police?

    I think you know which one you'll choose.

  • tallwookie@lemm.ee
    ·
    9 months ago

    can the EU afford to reduce its reliance on American defense? like, seriously - they'd have to increase taxes and reduce a lot of the socialism. cant imagine that'd go over well

      • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        To push back on this a little, the US did intentionally create an international division of labor after WW2, where europe and the countries it just defeated (Germany, Japan, Italy) would let the US handle the war industry / being the world's cop / capitalist enforcers, so they could focus on consumer products, and serve as anti-communist bulwarks with high standards of living.

        European countries do save value by letting the US handle most of their defense, that they can then allocate to social services.

        Of course the majority of value, and their social welfare programs, still come from unequal exchange / a tax on imports on goods produced by super-exploited global south proles.

  • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Take your bets now everyone, we've got:

    • "stupidly tries to deepen ties with the cyberpunk oligarchy of China",

    • "stupidly try to deepen ties with the impotent Mafia state in Russia",

    • "stupidly try to deepen ties with petro-dictatorships/monarchies in MENA",

    • "immediately double back because they realized that reducing reliance on the US means having to actually uphold their NATO spending requirements at a minimum to replace the US subsidizing their national defenses",

    and least likely of all,

    • "actually do anything even remotely productive towards genuinely achieving strategic autonomy as a democratic superpower in the world independent of the US' trajectory."
    • zephyreks@lemmy.ml
      hexagon
      M
      ·
      9 months ago

      How can China be an oligarchy if the CCP holds all the power? Billionaires ain't got shit in China, even fucking Jack Ma was forced to step in line.

      • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
        ·
        9 months ago

        Tell me you don't know the definition of oligarchy without telling me you don't know the definition of oligarchy.

        • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
          ·
          9 months ago

          By all means, enlighten us on the proper academic definition of "cyberpunk oligarchy"

            • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
              ·
              9 months ago

              So a definition that China doesn't meet.

              I'm also curious where you got this academic definition from, because it seems to have a lot of very vague parts.