Buy European

Yup yup... A little scary though...

I'm glad Europe is finally getting it's act together on trying to defend itself.

But i'm not a fan of the EU itself being too involved - the EU is not democratically representative enough to be getting involved in military stuff. If the EU is going to militarise, then the commission and the president need to be directly elected by the people, and the parliament needs to be given proper power.

Instead we have the continued messy system of horse trading of power between governments based on national interests rather than the overall interests of EU citizens. And also we have Hungary which has slipped into an authoritarian regime, and Poland that has just skirted past descent into a right wing nightmare (it's not even clear yet if the current centre left government can undo the damage wrought by right wing, nor what will happen in the next election).

Personally I don't want to see the defence of our continent in the hands of the EU. Either it should stick to running the single market OR it should be a fully democratic superstate. This in-between quasi nation state is undemocratic and constitutionally weak. it has no way of dealing with Hungary, it had no way of dealing with Poland, it would have no way of dealing with France should Le Pen win power.

I'm in the UK; I'd support the EU becoming a full superstate and I'd want my country to rejoin. But I can't trust what the EU is currently is to achieve that. We've all seen in the last year how weak the US constitution really is - it's enabled an autocrat to take power. The EU is weak too - it can't be taken over directly by an autocrat which is good, but it's failed to deal with Putin up until now (Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine again in 2022), it's unable to do anything about Viktor Orban in Hungary. Hungary has already held the EU's response to Ukraine back, and the Czech republic looks set to elect a pro-Putin populist party to power too.

European defence being dependent on an organisation that is unable to be decisive and is unable to be truly representative is weak. We need decisive and unified decisions in an emergency, not paralysis and not to be held back by outlier nations.

If you want to see why the EU is not the route to go to strengthen defence just look at the calls already to use the supposed defence spending boost to instead shore up healthcare spending. It's a laudable aim but when the wolf is as the door this is crazy way to divert defence spending.

For the EU to be a super power, it needs to first become an actual superstate. It needs to be the democracy it purports to fight for.

The EU is definitively a world power or great power. The EU might rise to the level of superpower, which is where the US is.

Being a great power just means that you can exert influence over events on the world stage. Having a meaningful say in how international organizations are run, or the ability to influence conflicts outside of your direct realm of control.

The EU is not yet at a point where no power can take a meaningful action on the world stage without considering how the EU will react to that action, which is one of the defining criteria of a superpower.
Despite having burnt an enormous amount of soft power for no reason, the US still holds a position where they can't be disregarded. EU military spending patterns are changing because the US is changing it's stance on a conflict they aren't really involved in beyond a "superpowers are involved in everything" sense.

Being either type of power has benefits beyond what it gives to those in control. In general, the leverage is used to effectively bribe the populace of the power. Pushing international organizations to prefer vendors from your country, driving business to it. "Thank goodness that agricultural development program bought their equipment from us, we had a great year, our jobs are intact and we actually hired more people".
It also brings cheap goods preferentially.
The benefit to the people in control is that it simplifies distributing favors to the people who keep them there, which in part includes the general population. "I'll let you buy these tractors from me on the condition you sell me every mango in your country for a decade. I'll even give you the tractor money back over the course of the decade. If you don't accept the deal no one will make a different one with you for fear of me not renewing my contract with them".

You don't have to have our broken internal culture to be a power. That only makes it so people take our position for granted.

lol yea. I’m an American and fully support other nations boycotting our goods but I’m noticing an overlap with these boycotts and nationalist-imperialist sentiments.

Seriously. Why do people genuinely think this is a good idea? Colonialism and imperialism is bad.

People should have learned after the US's faults, and overreliance of it due to being a world power; but people just want to do it again???

You're looking in the wrong place. Several EU members have far right leaders already, many more are moving right. The EU (and UK) are about 4 or 5 years behind the US. Don't confuse disagreement with Trump over Ukraine with meaningful ideological differences.

And I say this as an European and somebody who would stand to gain indirectly from Europe going systematically (it’s already done by businesses and some governments in it, just not openly and systematically) into the business of exploiting non-Europeans.

One great myth of imperial power plays is that the exploitation benefits the imperial power. It often doesn't. The scramble for Africa, for example, was a net economic drain for all the great powers that participated. Every little thing they gained was generally lost as they spent immense amounts of money on being manipulated into useless conflicts by client chiefs. Similar dynamic for England in India during the later periods and associated areas (the British conquest of Myanmar was particularly useless). The only real benefit is economic dominance and the ability to trade (like that was seen in Singapore and Canton). For all it's imperialism and interventionism from the Philippines to Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, America hasn't seen a gain. Most of the moves by the great powers only benefits a select few of private citizens while the state spends lives and treasure on conquest and subsequent administration for an illegitimate government that becomes corrupt and fragile.

Heads up, I can assure you the Lemmygrad and Hexbear folks are not trolling. They are legitimate believers of Chinese/Russian/North Korean talking points, and some of them even live there

Welcome to the federated Internet

UK is an a rosy position right now politically. Can play friends with both US and Europe, like a Cinderella at a ball

cause they didn't trust each other (understandable given the >shared history of the continent).

Oh man, don't you ever underestimate the most important rule of all time.

Like who? Which bloc is economically as large as the EU and is considered a full democracy. Like we’ve seen what happens when an economically powerful nation with a weak democracy becomes a super power.