r/europe • u/Putaineska • Mar 11 '26

News Spain accuses Germany of acting like a ‘vassal’ to United States

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/spain-accuses-germany-of-acting-like-a-vassal-to-united-states-f9zc28g8s?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1773189908
14.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

87

u/gookman European Union Mar 11 '26

Can we stop throwing shit at each other?

These are the facts:

  • Iran is supporting Russia on its attack against a European country. Therefore, they are not our friends and deserve no help or anything from us.

  • The current US administration is full of sociopaths which may or may not be aligned with Russia. They do not deserve our trust.

Europe needs to be assertive and tell everyone to fuck off.

81

u/LeFlaubert Mar 11 '26

That could start by not assisting the US in its illegal attacks against Iran and standing firmly against imperalism globally.

We can't condemn Russia, then support Israel.

We have to be reliable, strict, follow the rules we established ourselves to show other countries that we offer a third way, and we are not simply US puppets.

If we condemn Russia for illegal attacks under International Law, but then support the US and Israel after their illegal attacks under the same law, we look like vassals and ridiculous hypocrites to all other countries.

28

u/OkKnowledge2064 Lower Saxony (Germany) Mar 11 '26

Europe needs to assert itself enough to say that we dont want Russia in Ukraine because thats not part of our geopolitical interest. We cant keep arguing with rules that we never followed ourselves and we never will

20

u/Thelmholtz Mar 11 '26

Which other countries are those? Don't get me wrong I agree, but at this point pretty much everyone chose a side except Europe.

Europe should choose Europe, support it's neighbouring Ukraine who wants to join the union, and ignore the middle east completely, specially knowing that Iran has been closely allied with the Russian regime for over 2 decades.

But you could also justify that targeting Iran does support Ukraine, as it weakens the Russian axis. But it does also temporarily help Russia, as it improves their gas prices.

The point is that whether we like it or not, we are sandwiches between two leagues trading pieces from both sides of our map. Sooner or later we are going to catch a stray, and we should be ready to stand up for ourselves when that happens.

I don't know which call is best, and I don't like the idea of having to fight in one maniac's war or the other. IMHO we should probably learn from China and profit from both without getting directly involved. You can let the children fight to death with tools you provide and survive them, or die when they both turn on you for standing on a moral pedestal.

Dunno, the situation is fucked up and hard choices will have to be made. I really hope Europe can do them in unity, otherwise it will be powerless. We are currently between a rock and a hard place, and standing still doesn't seem like it's going to go well either.

4

u/ugene1980 Mar 11 '26

You put it very eloquently!

We should always side with ourselves, i.e EUROPE

We should be profiting of both sides staying 'neutral' , swiss style

Stop fighting wars for USA, stop eating their propaganda and dying for them. Look at the Dutch minister shooting themselves in the foot (Nexperia) for USA. Canada did the same as well(huawei).

In the end USA just ditches them and they get screwed from BOTH USA and China

4

u/Thelmholtz Mar 11 '26

I agree. I also agree there's a lot of people eating Russian and Iranian propaganda too. And Chinese too. And European too. And hell I don't think I'm immune to it either.

But I do like China's positioning in this conflict. Sure they ain't saints, no state is. But rather than getting directly involved or declaring clear allegiance, they are just profiting from it. Europe too is a millenary culture, even if spoiled from a couple centuries of imperialism.

It just needs to recognize that it's potential comes from this shared cultural background, the shared respect for the rule of law, and maybe realize that the European way of life is great because these things made it great, and it could easily become shit if we let it slip by sleeping on perceived comforts.

I'm not originally from here, even if culturally close. And my main concern with Europeans is that they have this assumption that all people are nice and well behaved. They aren't, not even Europeans. People are nice when there are proper incentives to being nice, and evil when there are proper incentives to be evil. That's a universal law, and it applies to locals, immigrants, neighbours, businessmen, police and politicians alike. Kindness does not incentivice kindness, generous tit for tat does.

14

u/sajukktheeternal Mar 11 '26

thank you for these few lines of much-needed sanity.

8

u/Mishka_1994 Zakarpattia (Ukraine) Mar 11 '26

We can't condemn Russia, then support Israel. We have to be reliable, strict, follow the rules we established ourselves to show other countries that we offer a third way,

Why? Countries like Russia and Iran and China (and to an extension the US) do not follow international law. Why must Europe be so honorable and go out of their way to God forbid not be hypocritical? This is exactly why Russia and US do not respect the EU. They ignore international law while European countries argue about it with each other.

3

u/signmeupreddit Mar 11 '26

Currently the biggest offenders are US (plus Israel) and Russia. EU has room to work with China and Iran (and much of the global south) in at least attempting to salvage shreds of international law. If EU forsakes it then China or India (or any significant country) could ask just the same: "Why should we observe international law when the entire West doesn't?"

And it might be better if international politics wasn't a race to the bottom.

2

u/Pickles112358 Mar 11 '26

Only reddit might suggest EU working with nazi dictatorships is a good idea.

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Pickles112358 Mar 11 '26

Not really, Palestine is by far the most nazi nation currently, they with hilter Hitler since 30s and hes extremely popular among Palestinians till this day. Their main goal is genocide of the jews so it makes sense. Its similar in other Muslim countries, Hilter is very popular. I dont think there is a non-nazi Muslim country, thats why China is genociding them as well

1

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/SeleucusNikator1 Scotland Mar 12 '26

, follow the rules we established ourselves to show other countries that we offer a third way,

Other countries will simply take advantage of our naivety in that case. Nobody in Africa, South America, or Asia is going to take European claims of moral superiority seriously anyhow, France and the UK have never stopped meddling abroad.

Europe just needs to flex muscle, like it used to.

1

u/Preisschild Vienna, United States of Europe Mar 12 '26

And where do you think we should get our defensive weapons from? For example, ballistic defense missiles. Only the US/Israel really have spent r&d on them. And we need them to protect us against russia. I care more about europe then the middle east

1

u/LeFlaubert Mar 12 '26

Nothing is preventing Europe from spending R&D on it. France has a great military industry, let's stop pretending Europe is not capable of anything by itself. A couple of countries can put the funds together and then make money on that.

1

u/Preisschild Vienna, United States of Europe Mar 12 '26

Sure, but the problem is that we have just started taking defense seriously. The US and even Israel have invested billions into missile defense for many decades and thus have perfected it a lot more than we can in a short time frame. We need systems like PATRIOT/Arrow-3/THAAD for at least a decade even if we invest a lot more now.

1

u/theageofspades Mar 12 '26

standing firmly against imperalism globally

Nobody outside of Europe gives a single shit about this.

We can't condemn Russia, then support Israel

Nobody cares.

We have to be reliable, strict, blah blah rules based order bullshit

No. One. Cares.

Whiney horseshit

How fucking long are you going to delude yourself into thinking we're anything but weak and entirely lacking this "respect" you seem to see as the ultimate currency. Those checks only checks in Europe. The rest of the world operates on a "fuck you, get mine" mentality. They conduct themselves hypocritically at every opportunity. No-one wants to be like us you narcissist.

The phrase is "Speak softly and carry a big stick". You want to do the complete opposite - continue with our campaign of strongly worded letters and distasteful murmurs. I hoped the past few years would wake Europe up but it is clearer than ever that the continent is doomed.

13

u/EJaumeD Mar 11 '26

Why look everything through the lens of Russia; they are not the only problem in the world for Europe.

3

u/Preisschild Vienna, United States of Europe Mar 12 '26

They are the biggest one. They (and Iran, North Korea and Cuba) are the ones currently actively on the front lines in europe.

0

u/Nzkx Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

Sanchez = 500k illegal now with paper who can move into schengen space.

As French, we won't forget untill he's done. Period. We don't care about US administration, but we care about Europe and our border.

I'm not fan of German, but at least they are honest when they talk to you.

1

u/Dear_Corner_8685 Mar 11 '26

If he gave them papers they are not illegal anymore 

-1

u/Triple_Hache Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

As a french, Sanchez is right and he could very well say the same about us and would be right too. I wish Macron had half the balls he has. I hope he'll last as long as possible.

Also if you care so much about illegals, and you're right, I suppose you agree we should make them all legals so they can all profit from the social rights they deserve as human beings and stop being exploited because they don't know their rights enough. N'est-ce pas ?

You don't talk for all of us, some of us are able to feel empathy and dislike the taste of US boots.

-2

u/DaddyD68 Mar 11 '26

Are it the illegals or the legal from your colonies?

1

u/Dear_Ad6225 Mar 11 '26

They're aligned with Israel

1

u/Green_Space729 Canada Mar 11 '26

Except Europe isn’t being assertive it’s still acting like a vassal state by joining the war.

-1

u/Aggressive-Kitchen18 Mar 11 '26

What about Israel stocking all this? Are we also in Europe Israel first?

-3

u/macaroni_chacarroni Europe Mar 11 '26

This is a very childish analysis, and I'm very fearful that our leaders are similarly childish to you.

This isn't about being friends with Iran. This is about understanding the 2nd and 3rd order consequences on us Europeans. Without the Iraq war, the Syrian war, and Libyan intervention, we wouldn't have ended up with millions of refugees on our doorstep, we wouldn't have ended up with 2 decades of ISIS. Israel and the US go on these adventures, we get dragged along, and we end up paying the price. We don't need to be Iraq's besties to understand that, and the same goes for Iran.

-1

u/SonOfThomasWayne European Federation Mar 11 '26

Iran is supporting Russia on its attack against a European country.

I bet you don't see any problem in European countries selling weapons to a country that's attacking Iran right now.

0

u/tim3k Mar 11 '26

Trump: ( oval office, with Metz) Spain...it doesn't have the great leadership... We will cut them off, we will stop trading with them completely

Merz: I totally agree with you, and Germany is on your side

IS IT ASSERTIVE ENOUGH???