Also you cannot just leave NATO. Leaving the EU is hard, but at least still possible. For explanation please look at the elections results of the past decades of any western country.You’d get a whopping 80-95% across the board for pro-NATO parties.

“You CANNOT just leave NATO ! Because you do not WANT to leave NATO !” is … quite a galaxy-brain take.

Yes, manufactured consent is unfortunately rather indistinguishable from people having their own opinions, and if any opinion can be “manufactured”, you get to circular reasoning like “your not leaving NATO proves that you are actually forbidden from leaving”.

Of course, European states were not neutral during the Cold War. For some weird reason they wanted not to become Russian vassals (and Eastern European countries followed suit as soon as they could).

But: being aligned with the US does not mean you have to be subservient or bound in any way. As you mentioned, France even left NATO for a time. Vassal states usually cannot do that (see again the Cold War for examples: Poles, Czech and Hungarians were very much not allowed to break free from Moscow).

We may be fighting over semantics here, but I think this is important. Are you member of a club you can leave anytime? NATO and EU are such clubs. Or are you bound to a pact where you get violently suppressed the moment you want to quit? Warsaw Pact was such a thing.

moving your goalposts? “puppet” implies remote control and a lack of agency. a lapdog however has agency.

anywho. European countries have repeatedly done things that went against US interests. Heck, France even left NATO for a time.

This is not an explanation, it’s a (faulty) observation at best.

turns out the kind of people who want asshole policies are themselves… well… not burdened by conscience

Mandatory Palestine

the UK is against backing “Palestine Action” which is a group that has sabotaged British military equipment. Surprisingly, the British government doesn’t take kindly to that sort of thing.