It differs per community. Some of the more hype-y conferences I’ve submitted to require at least one co-author to review other papers as a condition to submission. I’ve not seen this at less hyped conferences or journals yet, though. But different communities tend to do things very differently, so many people will have different experiences.

I don’t think this is appeasing a bully, this is actually giving him very little. Appeasement would have involved actually giving him something. The increase to 3.5% is back to around cold war levels, which seems very appropriate for the current geopolitical situation. The final 1.5% is essentially an accounting trick to make whatever expenses you like count towards the 5%, like road maintenance or technological R&D, it would be hard not to reach this target. Plus this money can now be increasingly spent on Europe’s own companies instead of sending 1-2% of yearly GDP straight to the US economy, especially once economies of scale start picking up.

This is just what Europe was planning to do on its own, but framing it in a way that strokes Trump’s ego and lets him claim it as his victory. Especially after a few years this will not be a positive change for the US. I’ll happily sacrifice Rutte’s pride if it means Europe gets exactly what it wanted.

The central command is there, but it’s led by America. This means that, if we rely on NATO mechanisms, America effectively controls collective responses by Europe, which is undesirable now that they are not on Europe’s side in the conflict with Russia, and they state over and over again that they intend to annex Greenland.

A European central command and standardisation between countries makes a lot of sense to me. If member states don’t want to give up autonomy, maybe with some kind of opt-out clause. That way the countries that are willing won’t need to coordinate poorly through dozens of bilateral communication channels, but can jointly operate with a common strategy, and at worst, not all member states would contribute to every action. Plenty of possibilities for problems still, but a step up from the current situation.

I would personally still prefer to see a more integrated European military, though. While we will have a bunch of low-population countries all doing all possible tasks poorly, instead of having some specialise to specific strengths and sourcing collectively, the EU will always be weaker militarily than a comparable force that is not split in such a manner.

Ukraine has one of the strongest militaries in Europe. This whole “they couldn’t even beat puny Ukraine” line I keep seeing is entirely too haughty for my liking. Their gear is less state-of-the-art, sure, but many European countries lack vital components of a functional military altogether. Including logistics and coordination of joint efforts which the Americans have until recently been doing.

Sure, no need to panic yet, but certainly a need to get a move on and actually respond proactively to make up for gaps, and respond jointly, to ensure that it’s not going to be a matter of small countries getting steamrolled one by one.

While nice, this seems at odds with the budget cuts to science that are horribly undermining our existing, high-quality scientific institutions. It would be much nicer if luring these US-based scientists were an addition to a larger package to invest in, rather than cut and destroy, science in the country.

We could certainly use the help, so they’d be very welcome, but if we’re still getting rid of hundreds of fully set up scientists while gaining a few new ones from this, that’s still a net loss…

Plus, any US-based scientist who might consider doing this would surely look at these budget cuts, see how countries like France and Germany are actually investing in scientific infrastructure, and take this into account when selecting a destination. If you want to “lure” people over, you do need to have an actual high-quality and functional system to show off.