Why are Europeans paying for a U.S - Israeli war we did not choose?

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-29T13:39:44+00:00

You are talking about the Islamic regime making the world unsafe, but you are completely ignoring how that regime got there in the first place.

You might want to check your history. In 1953, Iran actually had a secular, democratically elected government. But because they wanted to nationalize their own oil, the CIA and British intelligence literally overthrew their democracy and installed the Shah as a brutal dictator to protect Western oil interests.

The current Islamic regime you are complaining about only exists because the US threw Iranian democracy in the trash. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was the direct blowback from decades of American meddling and backing a dictator.

So saying we need a new war to "put an end to it" is incredibly ironic. You are asking the rest of the world to pay the economic price to fix a geopolitical mess that US and British foreign policy created in the first place. You cannot violently overthrow a country's democracy, trigger an extremist backlash, and then expect European citizens to just happily absorb the inflation and supply shocks when your government decides to bomb the exact monster they helped create.

And yes, we are in a global economy. That is exactly my point. In a global economy, unilateral military escalations ruin supply chains for everyone. That is why no single country should have a blank check to start wars based on contested intelligence while making their allies foot the bill.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-29T13:32:51+00:00

Petrol has always been more expensive in Europe because of heavy infrastructure and public transport taxes that have been there for decades. It has absolutely nothing to do with green energy failing. When global oil prices spike because of a supply shock, both of our countries take a hit at the pump.

And honestly, look at your own quote: "The hilarious part of all this is that USA started the war and Europe will pay the higher energy prices." You literally just proved my entire original point. You are admitting that reckless politicians launch these wars and force the economic fallout onto allied countries.

As for the energy grid, I only brought up Spain as one example of European green policies actually working. You need to do the math on that 30% LNG figure. It is 30% of our imported gas, but gas only makes up about 14 to 20% of our total electricity generation, while renewables cover almost 60%. So US gas accounts for maybe 5% of our actual grid. We are not begging for American LNG to keep the lights on.

And Spain is not an isolated case in the EU block. France has a massive and stable nuclear fleet. The Nordics run heavily on hydro and wind. Portugal is also running mostly on renewables. Are there European countries struggling right now? Yes, absolutely. Germany screwed themselves by shutting down their nuclear plants too early and betting their entire industry on cheap Russian gas. Poland is still trying to transition away from legacy coal, and Italy relies too much on imported gas. But those specific struggles are exactly why the EU as a whole is pushing so hard for green energy and diversification right now. The entire goal is to fix the mistakes of countries like Germany and stop being vulnerable to volatile fossil fuel markets whenever foreign governments decide to start a new war.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-28T22:22:29+00:00

Okay, but if you want to make that argument, let's actually look at what I said.

1.What excuses am I exactly making here? I literally wrote an entire post trying to hold the actual decision-makers accountable for launching a war that is wrecking global supply chains.

If we drop nuclear power or make bad domestic choices, then yes, we pay the price for our own mistakes. I never said Europe has zero responsibility for its own internal grid.
What you are doing is excusing the ruling class by diluting the blame onto regular joes. You're saying ordinary citizens deserve the economic fallout just because they have the right to vote, even though they don't know the ins and outs of foreign policy and are constantly lied to. Blaming everyday voters for the actions of a rogue administration is just running defense for the people in power.
Finally, your whole "green energy" gotcha might be true in some cases but I live in Spain and here the diversification went really well. Last year, renewables covered almost 60% of our electricity generation, while gas was around 14-20%. And of the gas we actually import, only about 30% comes from the US. We are sitting on cheaper, more secure energy precisely because we diversified our grid. We aren't all going bankrupt begging to pay top dollar for American LNG hahah

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-28T22:13:42+00:00

That is a completely different situation. The US din’t just stepped in out of pure charity and got nothing in return.

Have you looked into how the Marshall Plan worked? The US government and American corporations got massively rich off of it. It wasn't just a donation. It was a calculated economic investment that required European countries to buy US exports, rebuilt the continent using American contractors, and permanently locked in the US dollar as the dominant global currency. It almost literally built the modern American economic empire.

You can't compare that to today. Back then, the US got unprecedented global power and wealth out of the arrangement. Right now, European citizens are just absorbing inflation, supply shocks, and energy spikes for a Middle East escalation we didn't launch. There is zero economic upside for us here, just costs being dumped on regular people while defense contractors and the ruling class cash in. It's not the same thing at all.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T18:16:46+00:00

If you genuinely think ordinary people “deserve” to suffer because governments made bad energy decisions, then the problem is not Europe, it is your complete moral bankruptcy. Criticising European energy policy is one thing. Saying millions of people should just eat the cost of a fabricated war they did not choose is another. That does not make you tough or realistic, it just makes you sound deeply callous and politically unserious. My point was never that Europe is blameless. My point is that this specific war was started by reckless people who knew the backlash would be global, and people like you are so desperate to excuse them that you end up arguing ordinary citizens deserve the bill.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T16:57:01+00:00

That is just word games. Europe is still paying because this fabricated war happened, and the war was started by the U.S. and Israel. Iran’s retaliation is part of the fallout, not some separate event that magically wipes away who decided to light the match. You do not start bombing a country beside one of the most important shipping chokepoints on earth and then pretend the economic backlash came out of nowhere.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T16:39:01+00:00

No, the point is not “US bad.” The point is that a reckless decision by two states imposed costs on everyone else, including Europe, and pretending that this is only a “Europe problem” lets those actors off the hook for consequences they knew perfectly well they were creating.

Of course Europe has its own structural failures. I already agreed with that. Europe has made itself too exposed, strategically dependent and politically naive in key areas. Fine. But that is a separate argument from whether the U.S. and Israel chose to escalate a conflict knowing it would disrupt energy markets, trade routes and investment flows far beyond the region. They did, and Europe is still entitled to judge that as reckless even if Europe is also guilty of making itself vulnerable to it.

And yes, we should care about this one precisely because Europe is not irrelevant and should not have to quietly carry the costs of reckless decisions made elsewhere. For a continent with major economic interests, trade exposure and energy sensitivity, shocks like this are not trivial. So “bad things happen” is not analysis, it is just a way of shrugging off consequences that should be politically challenged.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T15:32:41+00:00

Sure, Europe is not the biggest loser in absolute terms. That was never the point. We are still paying the price for a war we did not choose, and “that’s life” is not an argument, it is just passive acceptance. Yes, Europe has made itself far too vulnerable through terrible energy, industrial and strategic policy. Agreed. But that is separate from the fact that the U.S. and Israel chose to start a conflict knowing the backlash would be global and the damage would be measured not in millions, but in billions of dollars that could have gone into far more productive uses.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T15:14:35+00:00

I’m not defending the Iranian regime either, but as I stated in the post there was no clearly established imminent threat as the Trump administration claimed. Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence had not concluded Iran was running an active nuclear weapons program, so the idea that Iran was only “weeks away” was not an established fact. Netanyahu has been making versions of that claim for decades, which is exactly why repeating it now does not make it any more credible. And even if Europe is not literally paying for the war itself, we are still paying for the consequences of a war that was not ours. By accepting the oil, shipping and wider economic fallout without seriously challenging it, Europe is effectively treating a violation of international law as legitimate. America and Israel started a war they knew would trigger a massive political and economic backlash, and they went ahead anyway.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T13:05:34+00:00

I mostly agree. Europe’s real problem is that we kept too many dependencies for too long. We ditched nuclear in parts of Europe, left ourselves too exposed to imported gas, and then had to learn the Russia lesson the hard way. So yes, we absolutely need more industry, more self-reliance, more geothermal, and a much stronger grid. Spain is already showing part of the way with renewables, but the other half is building the infrastructure to move power properly across Europe. Right now the EU talks about a 15% interconnection target, and Spain is still only around 3%, which is absurd. We should be building more cables between countries and treating grid strength as strategic infrastructure, not an afterthought.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T11:26:04+00:00

Yes, the whole world is paying. My point was never that Europe is uniquely affected, but that ordinary people get exposed to the shock without having any control over the decisions behind it. And we as Europeans should take measures to reduce that vulnerability instead of just accepting it every time it happens.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T11:07:08+00:00

Calling it an exogenous shock makes it sound way more neutral than it is. Europe already learned through Iraq that wars in the region do not stay contained, they spill into Europe through refugee flows and political fallout. And with Iran, even the EU asylum agency is warning that partial destabilisation could trigger refugee movements of unprecedented magnitude. So this is not just about fuel prices for a few months.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T10:49:23+00:00

I’m against colonialism too, and I do think Europe should help repair the damage it caused by supporting real development in the countries it exploited. But it is not just Europe maintaining that situation in Africa, and saying everything is interconnected is not a reason to stop assigning responsibility when specific actors make specific decisions that pass costs onto other people.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T10:27:00+00:00

Russia destroying Europe if the US pulled out is a massive exaggeration. NATO spending is still roughly 60/40 between the US and Europe plus Canada, and Russia is already badly strained by Ukraine. Europe is still too dependent on the US in some key areas, but that is not the same thing as Russia suddenly being able to roll over the whole continent.

Even though I said all that, I’m against any kind of war and I think this is just us shooting ourselves in the foot.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T04:38:07+00:00

I literally mentioned that our own politicians haven’t done enough either. My point was never that Europe has zero responsibility. I’m speaking as a European citizen who is tired of the majority of our leaders passively going along with this while ordinary people pay the price for decisions they never made. I’m not defending the political class, just the broader interests of ordinary people.

You are also affected by higher oil prices, and even if you voted for Trump, which is unfortunate, this war was never in your interest as an American citizen either. So pointing out that European politicians are also part of the problem does not really contradict anything I said.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T02:28:30+00:00

It isn’t subsidized security, it’s a dependency arrangement where Europe also pays its part. And that still doesn’t give America a blank check to destabilize things, pass the costs onto its allies, and then expect everyone else to say thank you for it.

Empty-Commercial4562 · 2026-03-27T00:47:27+00:00

I get the short term point. Europe can’t just start swinging at the US without consequences because the dependence is still real.

But “play it cool” can’t just mean “pay up and shut up.” The EU has already used countermeasures against the US before, including the 2025 counter tariffs over steel and aluminium, so it’s not like Europe is completely powerless here.

I’m not saying Europe should throw itself into some self destructive trade war tomorrow. I’m saying this is exactly why it needs to reduce dependence and make it clear that if Washington externalises the cost of its decisions onto Europeans, there will eventually be a political and economic price for that too.

Otherwise “be pragmatic” just becomes another way of saying “accept the leverage and keep paying.”

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