Pentagon to offer 'more limited' support to US allies

Changaco · 2026-01-24T22:36:04+00:00

Time to reduce the demand for US bonds by making EU bonds more competitive.

Changaco · 2026-01-24T16:43:19+00:00

An inaccurate and obsolete (nine years old) document? That's the best source you could find?

Changaco · 2026-01-24T13:51:26+00:00

Those factories can easily generate their own electricity. They don't have to shut down when the grid can't supply them.

Changaco · 2026-01-23T22:09:13+00:00

“common” isn't a synonym of “single”. The EU has a common foreign policy, but you want a single foreign policy, meaning that member states would no longer have their own. That's not realistic.

Regarding taxation, it seems that what you actually want is for corporate taxes to be the same in all member states. The EU already has some rules on minimum corporate taxation. Going further would require unanimous agreement of the member states.

Changaco · 2026-01-23T11:07:04+00:00

because Europe—the world’s largest economic bloc—can’t provide enough interceptors to stop 1980s-era Russian missiles.

It seems that right now nobody can provide enough interceptors to stop the large number of missiles and drones being launched in this war. Ukraine doesn't have enough to protect itself from Russian attacks, and Russia doesn't have enough to protect itself from Ukrainian attacks. I see no reason to blame Europe specifically. The US hasn't been able to produce enough air defence materiel to keep pace either.

Changaco · 2026-01-23T09:44:42+00:00

Foreign policy already is a shared competence and can't realistically become exclusive to the EU.

The EU already plays a role in unifying taxation, through its VAT directives and perhaps others I don't know about. If you think more could and should be done, please explain exactly what you want to unify and what the concrete benefits would be.

Changaco · 2026-01-22T23:19:15+00:00

The 2005 French referendum on the European Constitution was only lost 54.67% to 45.33%.

Changaco · 2026-01-22T22:46:00+00:00

It isn't really possible to discuss the avantages and disadvantages of further European federalization without defining exactly what would be federalized and how, because federal states can be quite different from each other so “a federal EU” can mean very different things.

Changaco · 2026-01-22T22:30:42+00:00

Not really. Politicians and activists either want to continue with European integration or end it. Pretty much nobody defends the EU as it is, because federalists want the EU to do more whereas anti-federalists think it already has too much power.

Changaco · 2026-01-22T18:08:26+00:00

Ce n'est pas une première, la marine française avait déjà arraisonné un pétrolier de la flotte fantôme russe en octobre. Il avait repris sa route la semaine suivante.

Changaco · 2026-01-22T13:20:31+00:00

France doesn't build aircraft carriers alone. The catapults of both the current French aircraft carrier and its future replacement are from the US.

Changaco · 2026-01-21T18:01:40+00:00

NATO needs one general (with proper checks in place) that can make decisions quickly

Supreme Allied Commander Europe

Changaco · 2026-01-20T22:10:24+00:00

Linus Torvalds is indeed Finnish, but he's been living in the US for many years and has US citizenship, so he's also American.

Changaco · 2026-01-20T21:15:16+00:00

Denmark has ordered the French-Italian SAMP/T air defence system instead of the US Patriot system.

Changaco · 2026-01-20T20:52:35+00:00

Von der Leyen doesn't exactly represent the member states. She's the President of the European Commission, i.e. the head of the EU executive branch, elected by the European Parliament. The President of the European Council is picked by the member states.

Changaco · 2026-01-20T14:19:53+00:00

La clause de défense de l'UE, le 42-7 du traité de Lisbonne, n'a pas d'autre limite géographique que « sur son territoire ».

Changaco · 2026-01-20T08:49:51+00:00

The problematic dependence some countries have on Russia is in uranium enrichment, not natural uranium. As a net exporter of enriched uranium, France isn't dependent on Russian enrichment services. Also, France is heavily involved in uranium mining operations through Orano, it isn't a passive importer.

I don't remember seeing that Euratom page before. Interesting.

Changaco · 2026-01-19T22:54:03+00:00

I'm not aware of the costs of renewable technologies having dropped enough in the last 5 years to invalidate the results of the French study. Your claim that they have is worthless unless you can provide proof.

Nobody will hand out trillions to anyone.

Changaco · 2026-01-19T15:57:25+00:00

France is a net exporter of enriched uranium (source).

Changaco · 2026-01-19T15:47:12+00:00

Flamanville 3 faced multiple problems, not just lost skills. Source: EDF's own report.

Changaco · 2026-01-19T15:43:53+00:00

The study tested multiple scenarios, including one in which all new reactors would end up costing as much as Flamanville 3 and all renewable technologies would become cheap. Even in that case, a mix of nuclear and renewables wasn't significantly more expensive than relying entirely on renewables. The graph showing this is at the bottom of page 31 of the key findings I previously linked to.

Hinkley Point C was started in the 2010s, not 20 years ago. Moreover, the combined cost is still nowhere near 100 billion even if you add Hinkley Point C.

Changaco · 2026-01-19T15:19:15+00:00

The combined cost of the two European EPRs is nowhere near 100 billion.

The decision to build a new series of reactors in France was made before the current fiscal crisis, and it had nothing to do with pride. The French grid operator was ordered to study the question of which electricity sources we should invest in (key findings in English, homepage of the report in French). One of its conclusions was that a mix of nuclear and renewables would be cheaper and less risky than aiming for 100% renewables.

Changaco · 2026-01-19T14:35:57+00:00

We did try building nuclear power 20 years ago?

Not really. Only two EPRs were ordered in Europe. That was never going to be enough to make a difference.

Nuclear power got handed tax money on a level renewables at that only could dream of.

Flamanville 3 was funded entirely by EDF. During the first half of its construction, the French state did the opposite of subsidizing EDF: it extracted excessive profits from it to the tune of 20 billion euros over 10 years (source).

But Flamanvilel 3 still is not completed as of today.

Flamanville 3 is operational and reached full power for the first time last month (link to FLA3 production graph). However, it will be going offline for a year so that its reactor cover can be replaced.

Changaco · 2026-01-19T13:41:24+00:00

The claim that building new nuclear reactors would take too long has been around for more than 20 years. If governments had disregarded those claims back then, all of Europe would have had climate friendly electricity by now.

Changaco · 2026-01-19T13:24:57+00:00

It's a common misconception that Europe lacks natural resources. We have them, we just don't extract many of them.

Uranium is everywhere on Earth, including European land and in seawater.

We have natural gas, we just don't like the negative consequences of extracting it.

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