NIB

Partially but the big advantage of being in a big alliance, it sharing stuff. That is the most effective way of progressing.

Take microchips for example. Taiwan is making them, with european machines and the european machines use american technology. Taiwan is able to create cutting edge microchips because they are allied and dependent on their allies. Similarly, a lot of russian technology has its roots in the soviet era, when russians had access to scientists/technology from all over eastern Europe.

Apes together strong. Thats the strength of alliances. But if you have a bad faith ape, that ape can destroy the effort of all other apes. Thats the weakness of alliances. For strategically important things(jet planes), you might be willing to take an efficiency hit, by creating things independently for security reasons. Which is why the french have rafale.

But keep making cutting edge things in order to maintain and improve your defence industry capabilities is very expensive. Thats why Canada doesnt have a jet plane industry, even though they used to have a very capable fighter jet industry. Or you could be like Russia, where you can design new planes but dont have the money to produce them, so you are basically spending a lot of money, creating one off planes.

This meme is from a different game but similar

Because none of them have the capabilities of the F-35. And they are even more expensive than the F-35.

Do you think european nations dont have any tanks?

Close enough. Especially if you add Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

Population means very little when we have to fight tanks, boats, planes and missiles.

Those things cant automatically teleport to european soil. Aircraft carriers can only do so much and they also cant teleport. Numbers are still relevant, especially when backed by existing european military. Morale is also relevant.

Europe is a giant place, with shitload of people, that have a strong desire to defend against invaders. Look what happened to Vietnam or Ukraine. As long as you have a large enough group of people, with decent equipment and morale, you can do great things.

The EU has 500+ million population. Do you you think that the few thousands of american troops in Europe can fight against that? Even if the EU had no military, it would be an impossible fight. And the EU has a lot of military, vastly outnumbering american military stationed in Europe.

Ukraine can survive without american support. Russia has the GDP of Spain. The EU has the resources to help Ukraine, we just need

1. Political will
2. Ability to produce(or procure) stuff for Ukraine

For the last 100 years, everyone was dependent on each other, since we were all allied, it made less sense for every country to reinvent the wheel. Now the EU will need to create new production capabilities and that takes time and money. This will have a noticeable negative effect to the quality of life of europeans so the europeans will need to be willing to deal with that.

South Korea has a strong defence industry that can help cover the gap, especially if things are chill in SouthEast Asia.

If the EU can guarantee the safety of Greece(maybe with the creation of an EU army or through stronger defence treaties), Greece has a lot of military equipment that could potentially be sent to Ukraine, especially if Turkey is cool. Greece for example has more Leopard 2 tanks than any other country(including Germany).

I think if the EU sends troops to Ukraine, the EU will need to completely commit to that. The war in Ukraine is rough and very different than any other war, especially the wars western forces have fought in the last 50 years. So you cant half ass it and send a couple thousand soldiers to die there, you need to commit with proper air support, etc. This escalation needs to be managed carefully.

The EU needs to start pumping nukes and developing its missile program. Without the american nuclear shield, the EU needs its own. There is a reason that China is pumping nukes like crazy, because they are way behind the americans and russians. MAD is the only way to de-escalate and prevent a nuclear war.

Most of the aforementioned cost is these nukes/missile and building capabilities(stealth planes) programs. Helping Ukraine is cheap.

It is hard to find a date where nothing bad has ever happened. Most devs just write a random date, because who cares.

Cyrillic was literally byzantine propaganda, an effort by the Eastern Roman Empire(aka Byzantine Empire) to culturally assimilate/approach the slavs, in hopes for them to be friendlier to the Empire. Language and religion were the thing back then(and even today), having a similar language and religion made everyone friendlier.

Diplomacy, espionage, bribery, trading and huge ass walls were the strength of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Yeah, the emperor part is the best part of the series and has nothing to do with the Foundation books. It is obvious that they wanted to make a series about that story, which is why it is the best part of the series.

The books are basically a collection of stories that take place over centuries/thousands of years. But in the series, you want familiar characters since you cant change characters every couple episodes, they did some insanely convoluted, inane things just so they can "connect" everything. It is like bad fanfiction.