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Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
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Not sure if tankie, but certainly very misinformed lol.
Also why even pick between USA vs PRC?
Where is the love that the EU rightfully deserves? 🥺 (GDPR, Right to Repair, etc...)
Edit: I mean, to clarify... I don't like the idea of a global superpower existing regardless.
Because those are currently the only two superpowers we have.
Yes, that's all very nice and I am immensely glad that we have at least that, but realistically we'd have a hard time against either of the others.
Because we're a fairly loose confederation instead of a single unified polity, a united Federal Republic of Europe would be an instant global power on par with the US and the PRC. That's why America has always opposed European unification.
For about 5 minutes, until the cultural differences tear everything apart.
I'm not sure it works that way. I mean, maybe, the circumstances of everyone being separated into a collective of one-culture countries instead of mixed together make the circumstances a little different, but at the same time it's definitely true that the US being able to leverage "cultural differences" to build an alloy that's stronger than the components has a huge amount to do with its strength as a world power.
(Well, strength as of 2015 or so. Trump attempting to tear down the unique benefits of a truly multicultural country is one of the reasons he is such a catastrophe.)
How, and how instant?
We don't have oil nor that much coal or sun. We don't have the shipyards. We don't have the microchip technology, we don't have the phone operating systems or market places. We don't have the entertainment IP. We are not secured by two oceans or have a billion people speaking one language.
Norway says hello. Also, as we transition away from fossil fuels, that's likely to become less relevant.
As far as I know, Italy and France have significant shipbuilding capacity. Of course, biggest producer of military ships atm is not the US, China or an EU country, but South Korea.
Neither does the US or China. That's all Taiwan.
Unfortunately, very true. Hopefully the EU digital sovereignty stuff takes off and starts making a difference.
There's some great movies, TV series and games that are made in the EU. I don't know if that's necessary to project power though.
But USA and China are close.
And Taiwan is loyal to the US to be protected from China. Can the EU offer protection, too?
Fair point. The EU at the moment is too fragmented to present a cohesive foreign policy, let alone credibly deter China.
Even without politics, could we build the production capacities and logistics to win a war against China next to China?
If we go nuclear, could we launch enough rockets to fill the sky with enough anti-ICBM satellites to survive?
Norway says that it is not part of the EU, that the numbers must be off by 1000 and that the EU needs 15 million barrels while they produce 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption