Agreed, the moment we allowed MBDA to put some american component in our (French) missiles made with european allies (Scalp, Meteor), the US blocked our sales to Egypt because they wanted to sell their own instead, using ITAR, forcing us to fix it for the french version.

The US has repeatedly proven that ITAR is for them as much of a military thing as it is an economic one, and that they're willing to use it against allies. If we refuse to learn that lesson, it's on us not them.

US military products are also full of European parts.

ITAR and EAR were built to keep U.S. military and dual-use technology from strengthening countries that could use it against the United States or its allies, like Europe

Indeed. The interpretation that served as a justification for US interventionism came almost a century later (the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904).

In its original form, the Monroe doctrine declared attempts by European monarchies to reconquer the newly independent Spanish states to be an unfriendly act toward the US. It did not declare US domination over them, as it's commonly misunderstood nowadays.

> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start (see also: Denmark leak about how France was essentially willing to provide whatever to help defend Greenland).

And the rest of Europe loves you for that! But we're also very worried if that'll all remain so if Le Pen or Mélenchon win next year.

> salivating at the thought to prove to our EU neighbors how strong we meant it when we said we would accept to oppose the US in case of military attack and I think they knew we may actually mean it and not back down when it start

No offense to France, I don't really care one way or another, but didn't Macron also say he would deploy French troops in Ukraine? Where are those troops? Surely Ukraine is an "EU neighbor". They're currently suffering from an actual aggressor (Putin), not merely theoretical (Trump).

France says a lot of things.

> Deep down, we're an annoyingly arrogant little country with delusions of grandeur ...

The problem is France used to be the world's superpower, with an economy bigger than the one of the UK. Literally number one.

Then the monarchy fell and all it took was a mere 15 years for that little arrogant man that Napoleon was to get its arse (and France's arse) handed to him in Waterloo in 1815.

15 years to throw away centuries of greatness: what an amazing success the revolutionaries managed to pull. They fucked up so bad they realized it and tried to, peacefully, re-instate monarchy, but it was too late. Charles X was king of France after the Waterloo SNAFU (1824 to 1830) but it was too late to fix things.

It's nice and all, on paper, to want no king. But France is considered to have lost, forever, its place as the world's n 1 superpower when Napoleon lost in Waterloo.

I'm not saying monarchy is better: what I'm saying is that the french revolution coincides with France losing its status as the world's 1st super power.

And France has been arrogant ever since but it went from 2nd to 3rd to 4th to 5th to 6th to now 7th place.

It's a never ending fall.

With the biggest public deficit and the biggest public debt in the entire EU, and the level of primary education going down the drain (university is still doing OK), I fear it's only ever more pain ahead for France.

The country is literally crumbling left and right and communists, siding with islamists (the party of Melenchon are downright commies, who understood that if they were cozy with islamists, they'd get a chance a winning the elections), are planning to destroy the little that's left of France's past grandeur.

If you think those in charge now are negative towards their own country, you haven't seen anything should either the communists (Melenchon) or the national-socialists (Le Pen / Bardella: which are for a national preference with a deeply socialist program) win the next elections.

Besides an aching aircraft carrier France still has the atom bomb and that's it.

No more money. No more education.

France is toast.

P.S: the biggest success, from their leftist point of view, of french intellectuals is managing to present national-socialists as "far right" (as if they were fascists)

Who is "(Frace)" and what are you talking about?

You all need to watch actions more than what people say.

It's not France. The locals like that France gives them goodies so they vote for more goodies and France gives more goodies so they vote accordingly.

French people should be occupied by Guyanans who have no historic connection to France. Apparently that makes sense to some people when it's the other way around.

(As a Bavarian,) I’m acutely aware of the state’s economy – but my point is that SpaceX has an even bigger economy behind it, if the two were to actually be compared or compete.

Good point re/ depending on auto makers, though. That also applies to all of Germany…

Well, Musk will not be belling any cat, he hasn't even been to space himself. This makes me think he's really just performing an act for investors.

We still have a good few thousand years until we make the Earth anywhere close to as inhospitable as the second best planet in the Solar System - and probably much more than that before we run out of space on Earth.

It makes far more sense to colonize the Arctic, the Gobi desert, the peaks of the tallest mountains, and similar places here on Earth before even contemplating the colonization of Mars. Let's first have a 10M-strong self-sustaining megacity at the South Pole before contemplating absurd projects like a Mars colony.

I would say they never got the stability to build a strong economic foundation. During Prussian times the port cities like Danzig and Köngisberg flourished and attracted the capital of eastern Prussia and after the WWII, they had to deal with the oppression from the soviets. The Soviets took whatever they can from the Eastern Germany and they just had to build everything from the scratch, unlike the west that got help from the other western countries like US/Marshal plan. Also when the Germany was partitioned whatever industrial base remained in the east moved to west or southern Germany because they didn’t wanted to be under socialism.

Even to this day the western German, especially the older ones considers the Eastern Germans as a second class citizens and there hasn’t been any significant investment in Eastern part to build an industrial base (except for in Berlin and its suburbs) by any government even though the west payed a tax (solidarity) especially for that.

But the impact of an AFD win in that Bundesland would be terrible for the whole country. A bit long (45min) but this video from Simplicissimus goes into it in details: https://youtu.be/N2b1y9GAF48?si=1_L80z1PTXENkXy2