They never had an absolute monarchy again.
The bourbon dynasty was a constitutional monarchy.
Napoleon III is an interesting case. He was emperor but he never wielded a fraction of the power his uncle had.
Isn’t there some value in maintaining a US presence closer to potential adversaries like Russia, etc.? Don’t necessarily look at it as defending Europe, but playing nice so they let us keep our bases close to where potential action could be in the future. Force projection.
The event honor both wars, across Europe, there is no WWII remembrance day.
Enhhh…that was sort of not what he really said. That was actually referring to defense against hacking, not militarily. It sort of got changed as the story was retold.
My statement pertains only to NATO. Nearly 3/4 of NATO’s budget is provided by the US.
Even if that was so, it doesn’t make it any less of an insult.
100% of NATO budget is administration cost none of it is military.
Napoleon was lucky, they put his English counterpart head on a spike for like 60 years.
It is long past time that they were responsible for their own defense.
Bring the boys back home.
I’ve never seen a monkey eat cheese… army of monkeys? is Caesar around?
If you are speaking of the direct budget of NATO, then that figure is about 20% provided by the US.
My wife is from Ivano-Frankivsk, I travel there quiet often and have a pretty good grasp of the region as well as can speak both Ukrainian and Russian.
I stand completely by what I said that once you leave Kiev and travel south east along the Dneiper river you will run into a lot of people and towns which are pro Russian.
The first thing my wife is asked when we teavel and meet a Russian is “What part of Ukraine are you from?”
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Of course.
Again stereotypes, the rural Frenchmen might still be giving folks the world over a good thumping it it weren’t for the cheese eating surrender monkey elites … but of course the latter have had control of education and much of the public discourse in France for generations now so in the end as the consistency of the mixing pool becomes ever more adulterated under the influence of proverbial cheese eating surrender monkeys old strengths wither away and what floats at the top is NOT cream.
We’ve seen our own version of that as PC has festered and pustulated through our education system.
I think the First World War ultimately destroyed any chance of France achieving what it had attained up to that point.
It’s still a great power. But not to the extent it was at the turn of the 20th century.
It really did break that country’s back. It was that bad. I firmly believe what happened to France during the Second World War was caused entirely by what they went through in the first.
They were basically forced to send an entire generation to the slaughter house in defense of the Republic. Not many countries are the same after an experience like the Western Front in World War I. Especially when 90% of it was fought on your soil and the scars can still be seen today. Every year hundreds of tons of unexplored ordinance is dug up in France. Ordinance that is literally a 100+ years old.
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France isn’t even a real country anymore. They’re more like a subject of the United States.
I thought the entire country was a no go zone.
Life is a no go zone.
That depends entirely on the accounting. The fact of the matter is, most of the European countries (and Canada) are not fulfilling their financial obligation to NATO thus the US is picking up the lion’s share to keep the organization functional. How you can sit here and pretend that that is not the case is astounding.
They are not fulfilling their obligation to their own militarizes, NATO is a organization system America isn’t picking up the slack for Canada because America doesn’t fund the Canadian military, we are failing ourselves.
NATO is is a command structure which can be activated within 24 hour in which 20 + national armies will be organized into a single fighting force.
To be fair Canada’s military is basically designed for two things.
A. Tie up the invading enemy force for as long as possible, using their excellent defensive terrain to their advantage, until allies arrive.
B. To integrate seemlessly into a combined force with the US military. Canadian Army units, naval forces, and air forces are trained to operate alongside US forces and like most NATO countries use the same communication standards. In other words a US Army General can command a Canadian unit without difficulty and the same goes for Canadian Generals in the opposite situation.
Should they spend more? Yes. But considering their strategic situation it’s not entirely necessary.
