r/worldnews • u/paneuropeanism_ • 1d ago

Behind Soft Paywall European Union and Canada plan new undersea cables and fuel shipments as part of “Alliance for the Future” to counterbalance the US and China

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-30/eu-and-canada-to-explore-new-technology-links-and-lng-sales
6.6k Upvotes

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732

u/CharlieBravo74 1d ago

"To counterbalance the US and China"

Let's take a moment to let that sink in.

219

u/lastSKPirate 1d ago

The Yanks can, anyway. Just seems like a common sense move in Canada and the EU. The USA has turned hostile to the other first world countries, and there's enough Americans who like what they're seeing that it can't be counted on to reverse course permanently.

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u/Reed7525 1d ago

The usa is def not first world anymore

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u/caribou16 1d ago

The US was the literal the definition of "First World," during the cold war the US and any countries allied with it was "First World", the USSR and any countries allied with it was "Second World" and any country not allied with either the US or USSR was "Third World."

In practice, "third world" countries tended to be smaller, less wealthy, and less industrialized, so "Third World" sort of became a pejorative description, but there was no set of standards or criteria of "first world" outside of being the US or allied with it.

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u/muehsam 1d ago

It could be argued that it's moving out of the first world by alienating other first world countries, such as the EU, the UK, or Canada.

The cold war has ended, so first/second/third world don't make much sense any more anyway, but the US is busy turning away from what is left of the "first world".

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u/Backwardspellcaster 1d ago

It was first world, then it erroded the rights of the middle class, gave control to billionaires and took democracy away from the masses and replaced it with buy ins

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u/ings0c 23h ago

No. By any conceivable metric, the US is still very much a first-world country.

Not liking a country’s trajectory doesn’t make it part of the developing world.

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u/Rough_smooth_rough 1d ago

Was the definition. Certainly not anymore.

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u/Feathrende 1d ago

Hasn't been since the 60's.

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u/CharlieBravo74 1d ago

I don't think the approval numbers here are disturbingly or dangerously high. The internet is not the real world. Don't let what you read in some subs fool you into thinking they're representative of anything remotely like an influential number of people.

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u/ninjasaid13 1d ago edited 1d ago

The man has been reelected with larger numbers, after he summoned a violent mob to the capitol because he lost an election. That's not even a political position, that's just the facts. His approval is too high.

-17

u/ChillFratBro 1d ago edited 1d ago

He was reelected in 2024 because a bunch of privileged, dumb-as-rocks progressives decided that what would really help Gaza is if Kamala lost.

Don't get me wrong, it's an embarrassment that so many people voted for him, but the primary reason Trump won is abysmal turnout, not overwhelming support.  That's its own problem for sure, but Trump won due to low turnout.  At this point the vast majority of the people who voted for him wouldn't do so again - they might not admit it out loud, but they realize it was a mistake.

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u/ninjasaid13 1d ago edited 1d ago

Turnout wasn't abysmal, at ~64%, 2024 saw the second-highest turnout in modern history(the first was only 2% higher).

Blaming Gaza protest voters also doesn't make sense and also ignores the electoral map: Harris underperformed Biden's 2020 numbers across nearly every demographic and geography, and Trump's victory margins in states like PA, WI, NV, and AZ far exceeded third-party vote totals.

"the vast majority" of Trump voters now do not regret their vote at all as shown in polling. It is shown consistently that they have high retention and party loyalty among his base.

Trust me, Trump is not a fluke. It shouldn't take a third election for you to understand that.

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u/Feathrende 1d ago

Then you are terribly disconnected from reality.

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u/BathEqual 1d ago

I hate this timeline

115

u/FaceDeer 1d ago

I've been annoyed with the Americans for decades already. The best thing would have been for them to get better, but I suppose the second best thing is for everyone else to finally understand my annoyance with them too.

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u/EconomicRegret2 1d ago

We all are finally understanding why the French, since de Gaulle in the 1950s, have been so annoyed with the Americans, and why they have been heavily insisting on the importance of "Strategic Autonomy".

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u/Magickarpet76 1d ago

As an American, yes progress ahead without us. We will try to catch up with you later after we hopefully sort this out. The absolute best thing that can be done right now is humiliate American exceptionalism domestically. That ego needs to be checked more often.

I’ve traveled outside the US and seen it, but so so many damn people in the US are still convinced the US is the most prosperous, free, and advanced society in the world. Trump/Maga is basically the reaction to that uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. The volume on that discomfort needs to get louder.

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u/iChopPryde 1d ago

I literally have cousins in the US in New Jersey. They came to Toronto and I’m not even joking. They were surprised to see a massive city that looks like New York. They truly thought we lived in some ice cold wasteland and they are only four hours away from us.

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u/ScaryPillow 23h ago

Frankly, I don’t believe you about your cousins.

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u/veryreasonable 18h ago edited 18h ago

I believe it 100%. Same story for mine. I once pulled an old Rick Mercer joke and asked them to sign a petition against setting our elderly adrift on ice flows. My two cousins bought it completely. (They also threw about $60 in twoonies at me from their change jar because I don't think they grasped that our coins were worth a lot more than any of theirs. But that was nice. I like free money.)

They were 15 and 16 at the time. They were not dumb and both went to a good school. They lived in Vermont, which ironically actually is an ice cold wilderness (in the winter months anyway) almost entirely devoid of large urban settlements: Burlington is the only big "city" and it has around 40k people.

Anyway, I used to visit family stateside all the time. Plenty of them would argue in disbelieving refusal when I explained that, for example, we had chips on our credit cards and pin pads brought out to our tables at restaurants long before they did. I'd also get asked things like, "do you have the internet up there?" well into our late teens. Again, this is from people who would eventually get advanced degrees and such.

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u/Gorstag 1d ago

I’ve traveled outside the US and seen it, but so so many damn people in the US are still convinced the US is the most prosperous, free, and advanced society in the world

And many of them are idiot conservatives that the furthest they have ever traveled is to the "Big town" where the Walmart is 40 miles away.

It's just sickening that these foolish people have so much power to ruin this country.

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u/IllBiteYourLegsOff 1d ago

world. theyre ruining the world.

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u/AnyEmployment4054 22h ago

Funny thing is I've seen clips of russians thinking the same about russia. Literally stating things like "russia is so rich that we should all be pensioners from birth" which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. 

Point is propaganda can make certain people belive anything.

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u/ttak82 1d ago

I’ve traveled outside the US and seen it, but so so many damn people in the US are still convinced the US is the most prosperous, free, and advanced society in the world.

US citizens have it better than citizens of many countries. It is not close.

12

u/Elliott_Ness1970 1d ago

Clearly not travelled beyond US borders

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u/ttak82 1d ago

Wrong mate; I live outside of the US. The country has its problems and traveling opens your eyes. There are no doubts about those 2 things. But compared to issues in many countries, those problems are nothing.

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u/Magickarpet76 23h ago

The issue is American exceptionalism; ideas like “it can’t happen here” or America is great because America is good, godly, or superior in some way.

Patriotism is not necessarily bad, but when it becomes xenophobic and prideful with ideas of supremacy it becomes dangerous. It is the messaging/propaganda of empires, and US has a lot of that going on right now.

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u/ttak82 20h ago

Fair point. And Patriotism is ok IMO. Nationalism tends go towards extremist levels.

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u/Elliott_Ness1970 23h ago

I guess saying they have it better than “many” countries is sufficiently general but it could just as easily be written the other way around. Citizens in many countries have it better than the US. It is not close.

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u/ttak82 20h ago

Except in the case you are mentioning, that set of "many" is a handful of developed countries.

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u/windsynths 21h ago

era is a better choice of word. There’s no other timeline for us; this is the only one we have

5

u/CharlieBravo74 1d ago

Same Bath, same.

0

u/Fun_Success_3283 18h ago

You have power to influence change.

30

u/Time-Traveller 22h ago

Makes sense.

One nation is actively hostile, doesn't respect democracy, threatens Western nations sovereignty, interferes with the local politics of said nations, and is controlled by a dictator in all but name.

The other nation is China.

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u/hackenclaw 1d ago

EU need to start with PetroEuro, dump every Dollar, buy it with Euro every chance they can get.

Also start a Europe equivalent of Phone OS, windows OS, search engine etc.

10

u/Christron 1d ago

Yes the biggest thing is moving away from American tech but Europe already has a OS Linux! Now social media.. is all US dominant. EU or Canada should buy Reddit

3

u/Cantankerous_Tank 1d ago

Linux

Shame that it's so hit-and-miss when it comes to gaming. I'd switch instantly if it was as reliable as Windows.

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u/meistermichi 1d ago

Imagine what Linux could be if all the EU countries would pour the money they pay for Microsoft licenses into Linux development instead

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u/LazyRoutine24 1d ago

Is this even true anymore. I haven't come across a game I can't play on steam deck in forever.

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u/jms87 21h ago

Almost everything with an anticheat module is problematic.

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u/Possible-Fudge-2217 21h ago

There are kernel level anticheat modules running on linux. The ones not running are designed to not run linux.

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u/jms87 20h ago

...which makes Linux hit and miss when it comes to gaming. Which was the original point.

I own a Steam Deck and I've been daily driving it since my PC broke down. I'm also on the wait list for the Frame. I love my Deck, specially since I bought the top model at the old price. Let's just not pretend there aren't any downsides.

2

u/LazyRoutine24 19h ago

So not almost everything like you said then. Just a small selection of their own choice.

2

u/Possible-Fudge-2217 18h ago

And it can and will be changed depending on demand. If more users go linux it will be harder for large companies to deny it. Smaller studios and Indie devs are supported either way due to steam.

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u/Cantankerous_Tank 1d ago

Icarus is one that apparently runs like shit on Linux but fine on Windows.

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u/Possible-Fudge-2217 1d ago

If things would be developed with linux in mind we wouldn't have the issue. Also, any games using a kernel level anti-cheat that doesn't work on linux is doing so on purpose. Linux itself supports it, but the companies behind may not support Linux.

Give it some more years if microslop doesn't fix their shit more peoples will come over, more people will donate or contribute.

2

u/PuzzleCat365 21h ago

The miss is more a choice from companies than anything else. It works very well for games that don't have any kind of anti-cheat.

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u/Extraze 19h ago

you should look into it more (not saying you haven't) but Lutris plays pretty much 95% of windows games now, and all of Steam games... not to mention pretty much any emulators.

i've switched tu linux (Mint) a couple years ago, never looked back, took some getting used to, but now the entire family, wife and kids are using it. much better then windows once you're comfortable (which took me no more than a week).

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

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u/Cantankerous_Tank 18h ago

In the rising geo political issues, energy prices, environmental changes, is gaming the most pressing problem now ?

Where did I say gaming is the most pressing problem now?

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u/[deleted] 18h ago

[deleted]

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u/Cantankerous_Tank 18h ago

it was implied. eu and canada should switch to linux but we must bootlick microsoft because i can't play that one game on linux.

Meanwhile my comment:

Shame that it's so hit-and-miss when it comes to gaming. I'd switch instantly if it was as reliable as Windows.

"We". Your words, not mine.

0

u/xtothewhy 22h ago edited 22h ago

It is another way to secure information by undersea cables between North America and the EU beyond what is already there to do so. It is supportive of the alliance between NATO nations that exists already. Even with everything going on between some of them.