Seems to me that Starlink is de facto an organ of the US government at this point. Should just be nationalized so a demonstrably unstable foreigner doesn't control something of such vital importance.
The Starshield portion of Starlink is already controlled by the government. It was Starshield that restricted access to Ukraine, and the decision reportedly came from the White House.
OP's article of course is about spectrum allocation in the US and potential trade retaliation, which isn't all that related to Musk's control of Starlink.
Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea of slowing down Starshield.
And the situation here is that Musk's instability is causing Europe to want to not depend on Starlink, and by extension not depend on the US. So now we're using other organs of the state to essentially coerce them into using a system that is de facto controlled by an unstable foreigner, but is part of the US defense apparatus.
I think "slowed down" is a strange description of what happened, which is that it was cut off above a certain speed limit. As in a terminal physically traveling faster than (IIRC) 100 miles per hour would shut off.
Perhaps also worth noting that Starlink is used only for defensive purposes, specifically against "Shahed" drones, which have top speeds of 340 km/h (210 mph). Restricting the speed is effectively helping Putin/Russia murder civilians.
> Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea of slowing down Starshield.
More like - he wants no responsibility of Starlink and pushes White House to actually deliver/enable Starshield to Ukrainian forces (and THUS enable deep strike capability).
Sorry, but the notion that they are trying to damage Ukraine is just braindead.
What? I genuinely don't understand your theory. Can you re-state it?
It seems like you're saying the reporting "Elon Musk approaches White House with proposal to add travel speed limit to Starshield in Ukraine, which severely degrades Ukrainian defense" cannot possibly be because Musk and/or the White House want to damage Ukraine?
> He did stuff that continually surprised the public, and the world is generally better off for it. No comment on his politics.
How does the good things he may have done commercially weighed against his help and support to get Trump getting elected a second time? Is "the world generally better off" with Trump in Whitehouse now?
As I said, can't comment on his politics. And Trump would've been in regardless IMO. What I can say is I've been a very happy user of Starlink since I bought my kit a few years ago (other internet solutions in my area are crap in comparison), and Musk made it happen. And there's still nobody else close even today.
Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea. Of course in reality the White House holds all ultimate responsibility, but that doesn't mean Musk is without guilt (especially if he proposed the idea for... some reason...?)
The problem is, if you tell everyone that you are a superpower, but then go on to not only not achieve your strategic goals (during a conflict of your choosing), but get to an unconfortable stalemate (that you cannot forcibly break) where you get to the point that you have to throw allies under the bus (not just Ukraine).. that's losing.
I mean, they could break it, but the devastation would be immense and then everyone would hate us even more. Getting involved was always a losing strategy.
The war in Iran has meant that the military resources of many actors are getting used for that conflict and are no longer available. Think patriot missiles to protect against balistic missiles.
It also means that the eyes of the world are distracted.
Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration is now getting anxious about the economical damage that Iran is inflicting, and has been forced to cut a deal with Russia.
But as said, that is just Ukraine.
The US has also been forced to reposition assets in Asia, to make up for the ones lost or expended in the Iran theater. They have shown to their allies in the middle east that having a US base is not a protection, but rather an invitation to be attacked.
Despite extensive military investment, Iran's neighbours are now realizing that the US presence and weapons they bought don't work.
The fact that a "muslim NATO" was recently created is not a coincidence. The world has taken notice.
Iran have been utterly destroyed, but they can still hurt the US. When your're a superpower, not winning when fighting a regional power IS losing.
If America had launched nukes during the cold war, the USSR would retaliate. Maybe via submarine-launched ICBM, maybe using a dead man's switch; methodology is irrelevant, because the question is this: If both countries end up radioactive desert, which country would be declared the winner? Or is it possible for neither country to be the definitive winner of a war?
I was born in 1979. We have always been at odds with Iran and have had a few skirmishes, but this notion that we have been at war with them for 47 years only became a thing several months ago. There was never a time we were "at war" with them until Trump started one. You should stop consuming propaganda and learn more history.
And they weren't using it for deep strikes. They were using it to enable the anti-Shahed drones which need very fast updates because their targets moving at a clip that is just manageable. Any kind of delay and they'll miss and that means another one of these crap machines lands on a Ukrainian city.
Messing with that is roughly the same as enabling Germany to bomb London more effectively using V2s.
Awww... more threats from Usania. This will definitely help... the EU move to more independence. More and more governments are dropping US made stuff as much as possible and pushing for local alternatives... way to go!
If I understand this correctly the Europeans hope that by banning the spectrum where Starlink operates, they will spur the development of home grown operators that provide the same service ... is that realistic?
Even if we don't spur the development of home grown operators (and IMO launch on the scale of Starlink is somewhat unrealistic any time soon), it will at least prevent us getting get another incidental dependency on US systems which we can be threatened with loss of access to at any point.
The internal cost per tonne to low Earth orbit differs
vastly between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Ariane’s best offer:
Vehicle Cost / tonne
Falcon 9 (booster recovery) ~$2 million
Ariane 64 ~$5 million
Starship (projected) <$500,000
To meaningfully compete, European launch providers must try to match these costs, then spend a decade putting these vehicles into orbit. That’s no easy task.
Europe doesn't need the same service. A far higher percentage of homes in Europe have access true high speed internet over fiber or wires than the US does. Europe can get itself the same capability with far fewer satellites.
It is, there are lots of European launch companies that will have their first launches in 2027 and all target cheap launch services which is the key to Starlink. Isar Aerospace has already put a payload in orbit, but they are only one of many.
The baller move would be tariffing new sales of Tesla and Starlink unite (and a lower tariff on subscriptions paid by owners at the time the law id proposed) as long as Musk controls either and letting in a number of Chinese cars in exchange for China quitting it with helping Russia in Ukraine.
It's the same tech but after Musk took flack for making a decision on Ukraine's military use, they split off a portion for the US government to control.
Anonymous source can say anything and telegraph can fully make it up also. And it also doesn't matter if Musk suggested it.
The fact is Starshield is controlled by US Govt and they decide what happens with it. Not Musk.
Starlink is controlled by SpaceX, Musk decides what happens with it. It is not allowed to use Starlink for most military purposes. Nothing changed now.
Complaints about anonymous sources might be legitimate when there are legitimate protections for whistleblowers, but an autocratic regime like the US' current government does not deserve any benefit of the doubt - they literally keep openly threatening dissenters and whistleblowers!
Until the rule of law has been re-established and participants have been prosecuted, the standard you're holding sources to is unreasonable.
Before the execution livestream was called off, Trump said that people who leak to the press should be shot. It doesn't take a big leap to see where this is going and what the stakes are.
> Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”
And yet companies are wondering why the EU is moving to build their own tech sector, separate from the US. Another reason why.
And the big winner of this is China. I heard China is building its own starlink and I would not be surprised they will offer verifiable guarantees to the EU on "spying" should the EU want to use China's version.
China should be sending Trump all kinds of Thank You notes. Trump already gave China the lead in Medical Research, Trump is helping China to take over Chip Development and he just started handing China the lead in AI.
You get what you vote for. At least the US will be the leader in Bible Research.
> European companies face “devastating” retaliation from Washington if Brussels presses ahead with plans to restrict American rivals such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX from parts of the European market, the US ambassador to the EU has warned.
> Andrew Puzder’s warning comes after the European Commission this year proposed reserving part of its spectrum band that allows smartphones to connect directly to satellites for European players. That would limit the frequencies for Chinese and US companies such as SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite network.
> Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”, given the size of the American market.
Eh, this seems like a fairly even tit-for-tat, for once.
> Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”, given the size of the American market.
Would this even be "devastating"? Would any of them been able to sell in the US anyway, given the position Starlink is in? I see occasional headlines that Starlink is forcing out other US providers, from the US, but even without that kind of thing going on, this doesn't even feel like much of a threat.
This forum in particular, but also our society in general is tremendously influenced by Grace Hopper's "compiler" (we would not call the thing Grace came up with a "compiler" today but we'd recognise her ideas). Grace appears to be the first person who noticed that the machine could be told to do the boring part where you turn your program into machine code to run on that machine. Grace's idea is meta-applicable, it applies not only to many other things but also to itself, things get out of hand very fast and that's how less than a century later we're here.
Grace was in the US Navy in World War II. Even in our real history where Donald Trump was not President, Grace did not meet their strict requirements for women and so she was only able to get in via a special exemption. Can you imagine in the "Make sure our Warriors look good on TV" world of Pete Hegseth that they'd ever accept Grace? No, the Navy is for big strong men.
The USSR would have taken over all of Europe, not just Eastern. What would have happened to the former British and French empires? Presumably they'd have been turned communist, but would their struggles for independence have gone the same way?
The Manhattan project would have been announced before it went anywhere, undermined during development and produced no real result. Japan would not have been nuked, but also would not have been invaded and the Pacific theatre would have in general developed in a completely different way. Without the American nuclear arsenal, the world may have skipped the cold war and nukes, or perhaps other states would have made them and used them in a heavy mutual bombardment without restraint.
Eventually in Europe, glasnost and perestroika would still have happened, and the USSR would still have fallen; but the geopolitical and economic importance of the USA would be little different to that of Brazil.
Seems to me that Starlink is de facto an organ of the US government at this point. Should just be nationalized so a demonstrably unstable foreigner doesn't control something of such vital importance.
The Starshield portion of Starlink is already controlled by the government. It was Starshield that restricted access to Ukraine, and the decision reportedly came from the White House.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-...
OP's article of course is about spectrum allocation in the US and potential trade retaliation, which isn't all that related to Musk's control of Starlink.
Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea of slowing down Starshield.
And the situation here is that Musk's instability is causing Europe to want to not depend on Starlink, and by extension not depend on the US. So now we're using other organs of the state to essentially coerce them into using a system that is de facto controlled by an unstable foreigner, but is part of the US defense apparatus.
That is what sources told The Telegraph[0]
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/16/musk-appro...
It was cut off, not slowed. Maybe Musk tried to lessen the impact of raging Cheetos?
I think "slowed down" is a strange description of what happened, which is that it was cut off above a certain speed limit. As in a terminal physically traveling faster than (IIRC) 100 miles per hour would shut off.
Perhaps also worth noting that Starlink is used only for defensive purposes, specifically against "Shahed" drones, which have top speeds of 340 km/h (210 mph). Restricting the speed is effectively helping Putin/Russia murder civilians.
> Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea of slowing down Starshield.
More like - he wants no responsibility of Starlink and pushes White House to actually deliver/enable Starshield to Ukrainian forces (and THUS enable deep strike capability).
Sorry, but the notion that they are trying to damage Ukraine is just braindead.
What? I genuinely don't understand your theory. Can you re-state it?
It seems like you're saying the reporting "Elon Musk approaches White House with proposal to add travel speed limit to Starshield in Ukraine, which severely degrades Ukrainian defense" cannot possibly be because Musk and/or the White House want to damage Ukraine?
Are you taking the telegraph reporting seriously?
> The Starshield portion of Starlink is already controlled by the government.
How do you suggest this is implemented, in a way that Musk has no way to control it?
> and the decision reportedly came from the White House.
That looks like outdated information. The request to slow Starshield came directly from Musk.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/16/musk-appro...
Should just be nationalized so a demonstrably unstable foreigner doesn't control something of such vital importance.
Yes, clearly a demonstrably unstable chief executive is the right man for the job.
The idea of a drug addicted undocumented immigrant being in charge of our space program and sat comms does seem incredibly unwise.
Wait till you hear about Wernher von Braun
Oh god did he disrupt active US/allied military operations?
Dude, he was a literal German Nazi, the weapons he made were killing US and allied soldiers and civilians during the WWII
Wait you mean he was doing that while he was employed by or claimed loyalty to the US?
That’s crazy. We didn’t charge him with treason?
who stopped you from catching rockets and sending up thousands of sats? can only rage and take, never make. Typical.
[flagged]
TBF he didn't waste it. He did stuff that continually surprised the public, and the world is generally better off for it. No comment on his politics.
> He did stuff that continually surprised the public, and the world is generally better off for it. No comment on his politics.
How does the good things he may have done commercially weighed against his help and support to get Trump getting elected a second time? Is "the world generally better off" with Trump in Whitehouse now?
As I said, can't comment on his politics. And Trump would've been in regardless IMO. What I can say is I've been a very happy user of Starlink since I bought my kit a few years ago (other internet solutions in my area are crap in comparison), and Musk made it happen. And there's still nobody else close even today.
I never said he wasted it. The person I responded to said “why don’t you do what he did”.
[flagged]
Unfortunately Trump is worse than Musk. And it's Trump who's to blame for the Ukraine speed restrictions.
Current reporting is that Musk approached the White House with the idea. Of course in reality the White House holds all ultimate responsibility, but that doesn't mean Musk is without guilt (especially if he proposed the idea for... some reason...?)
You think Trump wouldn't immediately promote Musk to General?
I would be a bit surprised, actually, just because they did have a giant public spat around the end of Musk's weird temp job in DOGE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
I don't think either of them are that deep.
He would if he could. And let's not give him any ideas. Musk can do enough damage as it is.
Nobody is afraid of the US anymore. You lost a war with Iran and they did not even put forward a Navy or an Air Force...
That's brave, friend. I, living here, am annoyed of geriatrics in the wheelhouse.
That doesn't make their treatment of other countries go away.
[flagged]
> Inability to project power beyond a few random pot shots at neighbors that aren't even the US.
This is a very funny way of saying “has de facto control of one of the world’s most important shipping lanes”.
Nobody said Iran was winning.
The problem is, if you tell everyone that you are a superpower, but then go on to not only not achieve your strategic goals (during a conflict of your choosing), but get to an unconfortable stalemate (that you cannot forcibly break) where you get to the point that you have to throw allies under the bus (not just Ukraine).. that's losing.
I mean, they could break it, but the devastation would be immense and then everyone would hate us even more. Getting involved was always a losing strategy.
I don't think anyone in Ukraine is losing sleep over Iran getting bombed.
They are?
The war in Iran has meant that the military resources of many actors are getting used for that conflict and are no longer available. Think patriot missiles to protect against balistic missiles.
It also means that the eyes of the world are distracted.
Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration is now getting anxious about the economical damage that Iran is inflicting, and has been forced to cut a deal with Russia.
But as said, that is just Ukraine.
The US has also been forced to reposition assets in Asia, to make up for the ones lost or expended in the Iran theater. They have shown to their allies in the middle east that having a US base is not a protection, but rather an invitation to be attacked.
Despite extensive military investment, Iran's neighbours are now realizing that the US presence and weapons they bought don't work.
The fact that a "muslim NATO" was recently created is not a coincidence. The world has taken notice.
Iran have been utterly destroyed, but they can still hurt the US. When your're a superpower, not winning when fighting a regional power IS losing.
brent crude futures are trading above 109$/barrel right now. America didn't want that to happen, Iran did. They won that one.
Note that the comment you’re replying to does not claim Iran is winning.
> Note that the comment you’re replying to does not claim Iran is winning.
Well the comment literally says "you lost a war with Iran". If the US lost a war with Iran, the Iran won a war with the US.
But maybe that was an old war, from a few months ago, that Iran won. And now there's a new war and Iran ain't winning that one?
Right - the US didn't just win. They've achieved victory at least 20 times so far!
If America had launched nukes during the cold war, the USSR would retaliate. Maybe via submarine-launched ICBM, maybe using a dead man's switch; methodology is irrelevant, because the question is this: If both countries end up radioactive desert, which country would be declared the winner? Or is it possible for neither country to be the definitive winner of a war?
A pyrrhic victory and a loss are colloquially synonyms.
You're wrong about intervention in Iran, it started far earlier, with the coup to Mossadegh
That's actually a fair point.
I was born in 1979. We have always been at odds with Iran and have had a few skirmishes, but this notion that we have been at war with them for 47 years only became a thing several months ago. There was never a time we were "at war" with them until Trump started one. You should stop consuming propaganda and learn more history.
"We've always been at war with Eurasia." - Republicans
Not a Republican. They tend to pussy out instead of getting the job done. Not a fan.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1989/may/air-view...
I agree. History is important. What would you call this?
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
I thought it was Starshield that was restricted, not Starlink, which was already restricted like all civilian tech?
Europe is putting economic restrictions on Starlink; the technical restrictions the US placed on Starshield are unrelated.
And Rubio says Ukraine never had Starshield, which is interesting.
The video clip of Rubio saying this is on C-SPAN for those interested.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=T2ZEMRKjTz8
If you listen carefully - it sounds like they do have Starshield, but only for internal access (not enabled for deep strikes)?
And they weren't using it for deep strikes. They were using it to enable the anti-Shahed drones which need very fast updates because their targets moving at a clip that is just manageable. Any kind of delay and they'll miss and that means another one of these crap machines lands on a Ukrainian city.
Messing with that is roughly the same as enabling Germany to bomb London more effectively using V2s.
https://archive.is/9GrWd
Awww... more threats from Usania. This will definitely help... the EU move to more independence. More and more governments are dropping US made stuff as much as possible and pushing for local alternatives... way to go!
If I understand this correctly the Europeans hope that by banning the spectrum where Starlink operates, they will spur the development of home grown operators that provide the same service ... is that realistic?
The europeans reserve strategic resources so that they can manage supply chain risk, since they consider the US one.
The US (dependably) proves them right, by threatening their supply lines.
Even if we don't spur the development of home grown operators (and IMO launch on the scale of Starlink is somewhat unrealistic any time soon), it will at least prevent us getting get another incidental dependency on US systems which we can be threatened with loss of access to at any point.
> they will spur the development of home grown operators
It’s already funded and scheduled to start launching in 2029 [1]. (Bit nerfed given Europe hasn’t yet gotten serious about launch…)
[1] https://www.grosswald.org/european-commission-spacerise-iris...
Of course, why wouldn't it? There's nothing unique about SpaceX's sattelites, or about putting them in orbit.
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/these-are-the-six-european-altern...
The internal cost per tonne to low Earth orbit differs vastly between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Ariane’s best offer:
To meaningfully compete, European launch providers must try to match these costs, then spend a decade putting these vehicles into orbit. That’s no easy task.No better time to start than now, right?
nothing unique about it but they come in last and own the market from companies in this field for decades. EU rulz!!11
Europe doesn't need the same service. A far higher percentage of homes in Europe have access true high speed internet over fiber or wires than the US does. Europe can get itself the same capability with far fewer satellites.
We need equivalent service to guide our drones to Moscow when Putin comes to the rest of Europe
You don't need many satellites for that. Starlink is designed for millions of homes, not hundreds of drones.
You need a production pipeline to replace the ones that get shot down.
It is, there are lots of European launch companies that will have their first launches in 2027 and all target cheap launch services which is the key to Starlink. Isar Aerospace has already put a payload in orbit, but they are only one of many.
It is a pipe dream like Von der Layen's tweets https://x.com/vonderleyen
Ban Teslas in Europe then. Being selective works both ways.
Not a bad idea - could couple it with further reducing European tariffs on Chinese EVs, which already outsell Tesla there.
lmao
Yea pay for Putin's oil instead lol
The baller move would be tariffing new sales of Tesla and Starlink unite (and a lower tariff on subscriptions paid by owners at the time the law id proposed) as long as Musk controls either and letting in a number of Chinese cars in exchange for China quitting it with helping Russia in Ukraine.
Imagine being this naive. Reading this hurts me physically.
It is the same starlink that was disabled on request of either WH or Musk to bully Ukraine.
That's Starshield, which is not under Musk's control. Reportedly the WH did make the decision.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-...
It's the same tech but after Musk took flack for making a decision on Ukraine's military use, they split off a portion for the US government to control.
Again, as repeated elsewhere in the thread, Musk requested that Starshield be slowed.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/16/musk-appro...
Anonymous source can say anything and telegraph can fully make it up also. And it also doesn't matter if Musk suggested it.
The fact is Starshield is controlled by US Govt and they decide what happens with it. Not Musk.
Starlink is controlled by SpaceX, Musk decides what happens with it. It is not allowed to use Starlink for most military purposes. Nothing changed now.
Complaints about anonymous sources might be legitimate when there are legitimate protections for whistleblowers, but an autocratic regime like the US' current government does not deserve any benefit of the doubt - they literally keep openly threatening dissenters and whistleblowers!
Until the rule of law has been re-established and participants have been prosecuted, the standard you're holding sources to is unreasonable.
Before the execution livestream was called off, Trump said that people who leak to the press should be shot. It doesn't take a big leap to see where this is going and what the stakes are.
https://archive.is/9GrWd
> Ambassador Andrew Puzder warns about ‘devastating’ retaliation if Brussels goes ahead with plans to limit spectrum access for non-EU companies
Please do.
The more the US shows that it is an enemy to Europe the better.
I hope the leaders on this side of the pond grow cojones and start to treat the US and its companies as a threat to EU and the countries within.
> it’d be a lot easier if we were working with Europe instead of fighting Europe
Seriously? When will this shit show finally end?
> Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”
Devastated companies can’t buy US products.
So go on and hit your exports again
And yet companies are wondering why the EU is moving to build their own tech sector, separate from the US. Another reason why.
And the big winner of this is China. I heard China is building its own starlink and I would not be surprised they will offer verifiable guarantees to the EU on "spying" should the EU want to use China's version.
China should be sending Trump all kinds of Thank You notes. Trump already gave China the lead in Medical Research, Trump is helping China to take over Chip Development and he just started handing China the lead in AI.
You get what you vote for. At least the US will be the leader in Bible Research.
> European companies face “devastating” retaliation from Washington if Brussels presses ahead with plans to restrict American rivals such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX from parts of the European market, the US ambassador to the EU has warned.
> Andrew Puzder’s warning comes after the European Commission this year proposed reserving part of its spectrum band that allows smartphones to connect directly to satellites for European players. That would limit the frequencies for Chinese and US companies such as SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite network.
> Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”, given the size of the American market.
Eh, this seems like a fairly even tit-for-tat, for once.
> Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”, given the size of the American market.
Would this even be "devastating"? Would any of them been able to sell in the US anyway, given the position Starlink is in? I see occasional headlines that Starlink is forcing out other US providers, from the US, but even without that kind of thing going on, this doesn't even feel like much of a threat.
I wonder what history would be like if Trump had been president during WW2.
Mein Deutsch waere viel besser gewesen...
This forum in particular, but also our society in general is tremendously influenced by Grace Hopper's "compiler" (we would not call the thing Grace came up with a "compiler" today but we'd recognise her ideas). Grace appears to be the first person who noticed that the machine could be told to do the boring part where you turn your program into machine code to run on that machine. Grace's idea is meta-applicable, it applies not only to many other things but also to itself, things get out of hand very fast and that's how less than a century later we're here.
Grace was in the US Navy in World War II. Even in our real history where Donald Trump was not President, Grace did not meet their strict requirements for women and so she was only able to get in via a special exemption. Can you imagine in the "Make sure our Warriors look good on TV" world of Pete Hegseth that they'd ever accept Grace? No, the Navy is for big strong men.
The UK would most likely be speaking German now. Possibly even the US.
The USSR would have taken over all of Europe, not just Eastern. What would have happened to the former British and French empires? Presumably they'd have been turned communist, but would their struggles for independence have gone the same way?
The Manhattan project would have been announced before it went anywhere, undermined during development and produced no real result. Japan would not have been nuked, but also would not have been invaded and the Pacific theatre would have in general developed in a completely different way. Without the American nuclear arsenal, the world may have skipped the cold war and nukes, or perhaps other states would have made them and used them in a heavy mutual bombardment without restraint.
Eventually in Europe, glasnost and perestroika would still have happened, and the USSR would still have fallen; but the geopolitical and economic importance of the USA would be little different to that of Brazil.