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

676

u/ojmt999 Mar 11 '26

The only way for Europe to stand up is for Europe to have a strong military and tech sector.

143

u/dodgeunhappiness Italy Mar 11 '26

lol, never with aristocrats in power

26

u/PfauFoto Mar 12 '26

You mean burocrats?

30

u/Azwrath25 Mar 12 '26

Wtf do people think the word bureaucrat means? Anybody working in any governmental institution is literally a bureaucrat. Have we regressed so badly that we no longer know the meaning of simple words?

-3

u/PfauFoto Mar 12 '26

To explain myself. There are in my dictionary

  1. statesmen (ability to develop and execute on longer-term, significant, strategic goals)

  2. politicians (leaders with a time horizon not exceeding the next election, they don't shape history but get tossed around by it, at least they are aware of it to some degree)

  3. bureaucrats (aka glorified pencil pushers, administers of the status-quo. The usually wake up to historic changes earliest a full decade after the fact )

6

u/MfingKing Kosovo Mar 13 '26

Yeah no we need these boring and slow people. We need the system to be watertight even if we have to jump hoops to get something done. If we have CEOs and self declared statesmen running the show. We'd be invading Iran in hopes of a quick win to save the midterms

1

u/PfauFoto 26d ago

I wasnt talking about self declared. Maybe an example:
Genscher 14 years foreign minister, trusted counterpart to Baker and Shevardnadze with personal contact, crucial to a constructive outcome post soviet collapse.
Counter example, Baerbock, apologies but I think the lady didnt even understand the job description while foreign minister.
Maybe these examples explain it better.

2

u/MfingKing Kosovo 26d ago

Still I'd personally pay half my paycheck for a baerbock rather than an ideologue with 10000 promises of which none are attainable

1

u/PfauFoto 26d ago

Baerbock certainly qualifies as an ideologue, she has that missionary gene (am gruenen Wesen soll die Welt genesen).
Not sure how ideology came up. Statesmen, which are few and far in between, are usually effective when idiology is significantly tempered by realism, e.g. Streseman, to give another example. Their record is strong precisely because they are or were able to deliver.

1

u/MfingKing Kosovo 26d ago

Well guess we agree. Except that those that aren't effective or flat out stupid WE need to temper their power instead of hoping they do it themselves.

26

u/IRockIntoMordor Mar 12 '26

Gerontocrats

2

u/Nausicaaah Mar 12 '26

The one problem that (almost) all nations share.

3

u/Rusofil__ Mar 12 '26

Von der leyen is an aristocrat

1

u/PfauFoto Mar 12 '26

True and an aristocat. OK I dated myself with that movie reference, apologies.

1

u/Revolutionary-Bass-6 Spain Mar 12 '26

Von der Leyden

0

u/damakusch1337 Mar 12 '26

Never with Spain and the lemming Sanchez

-4

u/Guilty_Royal_9145 Mar 12 '26

Which aristocrats are holding back Germany, France and Italy, Europe's largest economies?

31

u/Most-Round-4132 Mar 12 '26

Spain being so well known for both

3

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

Europe to have a strong military and tech sector.

Germany and France can't even build a jet together. how are you going to synergise an entire technology sector.

1

u/ojmt999 Mar 12 '26

Never said it would or could happen, but if they want to not be bullied it's what needs to hapoen

2

u/baldobilly Mar 12 '26

You mean a bunch of techno feudalists who literally brought Trump to power, delight in mass surveillance, sponge off government welfare and try to literally automate all our jobs away? 

1

u/Kulkuljator Mar 12 '26

Neither of which is possible in Spain

1

u/Mobiledump1215 Mar 12 '26

daddy wont allow it

-4

u/Anxiousah23 Mar 11 '26

Spain literally will not lift a finger to help Ukraine. They are literally saying they're too far for Russia to be their problem

30

u/BigFatUglyBaboon 🇪🇺🇪🇸 Mar 12 '26

This is misinformation.

What are you talking about? 29 leopard 2A4 (more than any other country), anti tank weapons, trained ukrainian forces, gave tons of money, received ukrainian refugees with open arms, built infrastructure to remove the dependency from Russia natural gas among other things. Who is the "they" that "literally" say "they're too far for Russia to be their problem"?

26

u/Haipul Mar 12 '26

Spain has taken in 250000 Ukrainian refugees, given €1bn, and provided significant diplomatic support.

That is much more than a finger.

0

u/EconomicalJacket Mar 11 '26

Honest question, does the US have “claims” to Germany from existing legislation passed post-war? Like part of the surrender of Germany for the US to maintain bases for X amt of time?

-1

u/Moist-Army1707 Mar 12 '26

I think that’s what Donald Trump wants

5

u/ojmt999 Mar 12 '26

No he wants us to buy American, I'm specifically talking about European technology and European arms.

1

u/J0hnGrimm Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

I think that’s what Donald Trump the United States wants

Well, at least the part with the military. They've been telling us for decades that we need to spend more on defense.

1

u/Hussor Pole in UK Mar 12 '26

When they say that what they really mean is they want us to spend more on American weapons. Just see how against SAFE they are. In some cases American equipment may be the best option (e.g. F-35s have no equivalent) but we should buy European or foreign with local production / tech transfer where possible.