Related:<p><a href="http://reuters.com/world/us-officials-object-european-push-buy-weapons-locally-2025-04-02/" rel="nofollow">http://reuters.com/world/us-officials-object-european-push-b...</a> (<a href="https://archive.is/BTRUS" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/BTRUS</a>)<p>> U.S. officials have told European allies they want them to keep buying American-made arms, amid recent moves by the European Union to limit U.S. manufacturers' participation in weapons tenders, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.<p>..<p>> According to two of the sources, Rubio said any exclusion of U.S. companies from European tenders would be seen negatively by Washington, which those two sources interpreted as a reference to the proposed EU rules.<p>I suppose it will be done as always: allow tenders from EU/US/etc. This time though, instead of always buying at least a certain amount from the US regardless of merit and cost (because what you were really buying was <i>US protection</i>), <i>actually</i> buy on merit and cost. The <i>protection</i> was a scam.
Something I often think that politically naive people over-index on is the ability to bully people when you have no leverage. I see comments on the left all the time about this “why doesn’t Biden just pull Joe Manchin into his office and threaten him! Because Joe Manchin would come out of the office, tell his voters Joe Biden threatened him and he told him to f* off, and gain like 100k new voters!<p>It’s wild to maybe watch our president make the same mistake. This conservative attitude of throwing bout weight around in the world, leading through strength, not realizing everyone has other options.<p>In a weird way, I think some of this might be healthy for the world? To create a more anti fragile world order? But it’s not great for us.