There are problems with Trump’s analysis. First, there is no membership rule regarding spending. The 2-per-cent target dates from 2006, when everyone was realizing the Afghanistan war was a huge suck on resources — as was George W. Bush’s side project, the Iraq war. At the NATO summit that year in Riga, Latvia, the 2-per-cent goal was mentioned for the first time, as an incentive to other members to shoulder more burden and give Bush’s overworked armies a break.
...
So the 2-per-cent goal is no formal rule. And it’s a shaky guide to any member state’s utility. Greece spends 2.38 per cent of GDP on its military — mostly to pay soldiers generous wages, prep for a war with Turkey that everyone hopes will never happen, and procure lots of German and French equipment in what amounts to an intra-European protection racket. Everyone likes Greece, but Europe will not be safer if everyone’s military becomes more like Greece’s.
Politico has a good op-ed today pointing out how "Trump Foreign Policy" is an oxymoron
In almost any other administration, much of the work of establishing basic foreign policy views would have been done already—not in the first month in office, but long before that, through working groups of policy experts convened by the campaign. The Trump campaign didn’t bother with that, either because they didn’t think it would help them win (which is probably true) or because they assumed that in the unlikely event of a victory they would quickly catch up (which was false). Career officials in the national security agencies might have been able to help fill the void left by an absence of policy leadership, and by the baffling failure of the White House to even nominate people for the vast majority of senior political appointments. But instead, experts with decades of experience have been ignored, vilified or pushed aside, to be replaced, at least in theory, by appointees who either have yet to materialize or have arrived at the agencies without being told what their jobs are supposed to be.
As a result, not only is there nothing even close to a Trump doctrine, which would be more than anyone should expect, but even saying what the administration’s policy is on any given major issue is virtually impossible. This is not just embarrassing, but dangerous. The world will not wait until we get our act together. Left to their own guesswork, adversaries and allies can easily miscalculate the strength of our support or opposition. And other nations—friends like Germany, but also competitors like China—will move to fill any vacuum left by the confusion over America’s basic approach. All this suggests that the handwringing during the campaign about the potential for Trump to squander America’s global position by deliberately shifting the country toward a posture of isolation was misplaced. What is emerging is something else entirely; an abdication of our leadership by default.
This isn't some new world order or Trump unveiling his secret plans. This is just pure incompetence.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
The White House abruptly dismissed a senior National Security Council aide on Friday after receiving reports that he had publicly laced into the president and his senior aides, including son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump at an event hosted by a Washington think tank.
The aide, Craig Deare, was serving as the NSC's senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Earlier in the week, at a private, off-the-record roundtable hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center for a group of about two dozen scholars, Deare harshly criticized the president and his chief strategist Steve Bannon and railed against the dysfunction paralyzing the Trump White House, according to a source familiar with the situation.
He complained in particular that senior national security aides do not have access to the president -- and gave a detailed and embarrassing readout of Trump's call with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto.
[...]
At least there is more confirmation that Trump's call with the Mexican president was a trainwreck.
There's another politico article that says Rex Tillerson only found out that Trump was throwing doubt on the 2-state solution as US policy because he was watching the press conference, he was never consulted or warned.
Which I mean, we probably could've guessed on our own.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Some really interesting interviews about recent foreign policy shit and how the process works and what the various Obama admin goals were and also a lot about the things that Trump could really fuck up and what future events may be waiting in the wings for him.
This conversation made me think of this because of how Trump's complete dysfunction is a big deal. In how it basically leaves the US with no direction and way less pull internationally at what seems like a fairly critical time.
And also how his empty talk and his views on how "deals" should work are incredibly harmful to any effort to, like, do stuff on the international level. Some examples the show was talking about so far were things like the Cuban situation or any sort of dealings with any country that has large muslim populations as Trump has effectively made the US very obviously the "bad guy", hampering the US's ability to work with these people or to achieve US goals.
The mentions of the Cuban situation are actually kinda interesting on this front as it's less obvious then the Muslim Ban but just as bad for US goals. One of the goals of Obama's friendlier relations with Cuba was to essentially work to deprive the Castros of a scapegoat for their internal issues. Something that applies alot of places around the world and is a narrative that Trump is going to play right in to. The opposite of this is a big reason Obama winning in 2008 was a big deal internationally and was in part responsible for his whole Nobel Peace Prize thing.
Scarier perhaps though are the challenges they may get to bungle in the future. One really worrying one mentioned was in Venezuela. Because Venezuela helps prop up other countries in the region with subsidised oil. And a collapse in Venezuela (which isn't looking out of the question these days) could trigger major issues in the Caribbean and a potential refugee crisis in the US as people flee on boats. And how the Trump admin will react to that is absolutely terrifying.
The White House abruptly dismissed a senior National Security Council aide on Friday after receiving reports that he had publicly laced into the president and his senior aides, including son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump at an event hosted by a Washington think tank.
The aide, Craig Deare, was serving as the NSC's senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Earlier in the week, at a private, off-the-record roundtable hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center for a group of about two dozen scholars, Deare harshly criticized the president and his chief strategist Steve Bannon and railed against the dysfunction paralyzing the Trump White House, according to a source familiar with the situation.
He complained in particular that senior national security aides do not have access to the president -- and gave a detailed and embarrassing readout of Trump's call with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto.
[...]
At least there is more confirmation that Trump's call with the Mexican president was a trainwreck.
Sounds a lot like how the Bush administration supposedly - in post-hoc analyses anyways - either fired or pushed aside any intelligence officers who were opposed to or provided intelligence that contradicted the motivations to invade Iraq, so that the White House only ended up getting intelligence that supported preconceptions about Iraq. Except, you know... worse.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
I think what Trump is showing is that the swings between Presidents will likely just keep getting wider, so you can only rely on things within a particular President's run and the second it looks like there's going to be a different one be prepared to drop everything and start again.
I think what Trump is showing is that the swings between Presidents will likely just keep getting wider, so you can only rely on things within a particular President's run and the second it looks like there's going to be a different one be prepared to drop everything and start again.
So basically the US is now the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.
"CHANGE PLACES!"
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
Not only did electing barrack not end it, it somehow made it worse.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
Not only did electing barrack not end it, it somehow made it worse.
It didn't help that it made the rest of us complacent.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
Additionally, unlike Trump, Republicans before have not demonstrated such a willful desire to alter the world order with regards to foreign relations. The world is completely willing to let us fuck ourselves domestically as long as we don't dick with the world order. But by willfully messing up ambassadorial placements, souring relations with one (two?) third(s) of North America's nations, forgetting Cold War lessons, and disparaging NATO as well as the UN, it is very clear to many powers that the newest version of the US is not committed to the current definition of "The West," of which they are members.
These are things conservatives have not done before. As distasteful as the Iraq engagements were, they didn't threaten the success of the West. This shit that is happening today is.
Edits: Engrish.
Priest on
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
Not only did electing barrack not end it, it somehow made it worse.
And the thing is (which I'm sure a lot of countries recognize now, as they are monitoring and watching this very closely) is that even if Trump does get voted out or impeached or whatever, his base will still be crazy, they are not calming down but getting even more riled up, so the next demagogue they elect will be even worse unless or until that base is somehow neutralized. Even if we elect a sane government, America is still filled with crazies who could take over again; we cannot be trusted, not for a long time.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
I can only speak for myself, but when Obama got in I did indeed go "Thank goodness", but I certainly never thought of the US the same way as I had before Bush. There was just a lingering unease - I never really regained the optimism I'd had when Clinton was in and things really seemed poised for a century of development and peace. Remember "the end of history"? Man that seems a long time ago.
And even if a Dem gets in 4 years from now, everyone has seen the US deliberately go full retard twice now. We're always going to be thinking, "when is the next one?".
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
Not only did electing barrack not end it, it somehow made it worse.
And the thing is (which I'm sure a lot of countries recognize now, as they are monitoring and watching this very closely) is that even if Trump does get voted out or impeached or whatever, his base will still be crazy, they are not calming down but getting even more riled up, so the next demagogue they elect will be even worse unless or until that base is somehow neutralized. Even if we elect a sane government, America is still filled with crazies who could take over again; we cannot be trusted, not for a long time.
Pretty much never again because unlike y'all like to think it isn't just the aged and dying that fall into this group.
I know many of my peers that are irrevocably within their ranks.
Plenty of 80's millennials are within this psychotic base, and trying to convince them to be anything else is less fruitful than bashing your head into a brick wall for an hour.
They are the most likely to sit there, have no idea what the fuck they are taking about, and retreat to, "fuck libtards", as to why we should or shouldn't do something.
Even worse they are the most likely to be breeding.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
I disagree. W. did incredible damage to the US's reputation and alienated allies left and right, the Iraq war being the epicenter for the frayed alliances. The reason it wasn't permanently crippling is that once he left Obama literally spent years and political capital over the world repairing the damage. The W. administration was not as reliable as Obama's was on the national stage, they're only reliable in comparison to Trump. IIRC they pissed off NK so they started testing nukes again via the Axis of Evil bullshit.
edit: But yeah, which ever Dem picks up after Trump is going to face a greater challenge on this front.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
Not only did electing barrack not end it, it somehow made it worse.
That's not unusual. IIRC during MLK's era the white supremacists got super charged.
As I've said on other threads, it's been a tremendously frustrating and dysfunctional pattern during my lifetime that as soon as a Democratic admin finally, finally gets (mostly) done unfucking the country after the state the last Republican admin left it in, guess who gets voted back in?
W was decently reliable, i'd say. The perception of American arrogance was greater than the political reality of it at the time. The only alliance strain was really NATO's unwillingness to fully sign on with the Second Gulf War, but he recommitted to the two-state solution and was the proponent of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and continued building our ties in the Western Hemisphere on top of NAFTA. The antagonistic posture of the GOP at the time belied their traditional policy predilections, but the antagonism was a leading indicator of where the policy would go.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
I disagree. W. did incredible damage to the US's reputation and alienated allies left and right, the Iraq war being the epicenter for the frayed alliances. The reason it wasn't permanently crippling is that once he left Obama literally spent years and political capital over the world repairing the damage. The W. administration was not as reliable as Obama's was on the national stage, they're only reliable in comparison to Trump. IIRC they pissed off NK so they started testing nukes again via the Axis of Evil bullshit.
edit: But yeah, which ever Dem picks up after Trump is going to face a greater challenge on this front.
That was not remotely the same thing. First off, the GWB never openly derided America's alliances or suggest abandoning them. The US was going on another boneheaded Middle East adventure, but that was their prerogative and there was never a suggestion that anybody not joining them on it would be cut off in any way.
Secondly, by the time the US had invaded Iraq, GWB had been in power for two years already, establishing a relatively standard foreign policy, at least with respect to America's allies. There were markedly increased tensions in some areas of the world, such as due to the US withdrawing from the ABM treaty, but generally America under GWB treated its allies in fairly standard way.
Third of all, the Americans went through NATO and the UN - or tried to at least - before invading Iraq, as opposed to idly musing about sinking a Russian intelligence boat parked in international waters.
Fourth of all, Americans were still in Afghanistan alongside NATO nations, the US being the only country to ever invoke Article 5 of NATO. Five NATO nations subsequently joined the American "coalition of the willing" anyways!
GWB never alienated allies. He made American allies think that America was stupid and boneheaded, he put off American allies, made us worry whether the US was actually competent enough to lead the international order, but there was never alienation. For example, we Canadians never had to worry about a possible future without US economic protection and military support, which is something that we actually kinda do now. (To a lesser extent than other US allies, mind you.) Trump's global disapproval ratings are already higher now than GWB's have ever been.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
The Iraq War was never sold as having to do with 9/11, at least not internationally. The presented arguments were that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to Middle East peace.
And for the record, Poland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain sent troops in addition to the UK as NATO nations. Australia also contributed. A wide range of other countries provided troops in the occupation afterwards.
Again, there are different sorts of reputation. A compulsive liar has a different reputation than a violent serial killer, and people will respond to different reputations differently (obv). There was sure as hell never, at least on my part, concern that GWB might start a war with China. They were just going to go roll another Middle Eastern country, as Americans are somewhat prone to doing regardless of who's President. It certainly wasn't a GWB-only thing; it was remarked more than once that someone was really following in his father's footsteps.
I don't think anyone outside the US bought the WMD "evidence", everyone knew it was bogus. Some countries went along with it because they wanted to stay in with the US and get the benefits that came with it. I know here in OZ our participation in Iraq was very divisive. And Iraq was a quantum leap from anything that had happened before, this was the US just going and invading a country because they could, not because there was an international consensus or because their vital interests were threatened. It was frightening. The only thing that stopped even more opposition world wide imho was that Saddam was a bad guy, and people were hopeful that it would all work out as advertised. And then of course it turned to custard, the civilian death toll went off the charts and the Bush business associates looted the place.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
The Iraq War was never sold as having to do with 9/11, at least not internationally. The presented arguments were that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to Middle East peace.
And for the record, Poland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain sent troops in addition to the UK as NATO nations. Australia also contributed. A wide range of other countries provided troops in the occupation afterwards.
Again, there are different sorts of reputation. A compulsive liar has a different reputation than a violent serial killer, and people will respond to different reputations differently (obv). There was sure as hell never, at least on my part, concern that GWB might start a war with China. They were just going to go roll another Middle Eastern country, as Americans are somewhat prone to doing regardless of who's President. It certainly wasn't a GWB-only thing; it was remarked more than once that someone was really following in his father's footsteps.
And that reputation will not outlive Trump's Presidency, the same as it didn't GWB's.
A lot of nations signed on for various reasons but there has never seemed much indication to me that most nations bought the US's bullshit.
Also, you said "Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything." so, like, that's what I'm talking about. You said they sold his foreign relations, which would be Iraq War more then anything, on 9/11. And yeah, they kinda did. It was just transparently bullshit.
GWB was a moron and a bullshiter and did a lot of harm. But once he was gone, no one thought "Man, the US is a crazy person who can never be trusted again." Nations get shifts in government. Certainly at the actually-running-the-place level.
If nothing else, the GWB worldview was still one based on facts. The argument that we should invade Iraq because letting Saddam - who both proclaimed that he had WMDs and had a record of sponsoring terrorism - keep his WMDs is one with flaws, and keeping the peace afterwards was not done well, but it is still a strategy based on a coherent world view, one that can be openly debated based on the merits of their argument. In hindsight, the interpretation that state-sponsored terrorism was still the biggest priority looks foolish, but they could still make a reasonable case for their interpretation.
Having a president who turned out to have made a lot of mistakes is a LOT different than having a president who insists that he decides what reality is, and attacks any experts who disagrees with him. GWB may not have known much about policy, but he made a conscious effort throughout his presidency to learn. Trump insists that he knows more than anyone. Then he and his sock puppets go out and attack alliances that are fundamental to the US's place in the world.
It's one thing when your friend crashes his car. It's something entirely different when he crashes his car on purpose because the voices told him to do it, and then insists that his car is still running great.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
If nothing else, the GWB worldview was still one based on facts.
Bullshit. They're on record mocking the concept of objective reality and that as the imperial power we created our own reality. The last four (and five of six) Republican Presidents have been inveterate liars who made unreality the basis of their White Houses.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
If nothing else, the GWB worldview was still one based on facts.
Bullshit. They're on record mocking the concept of objective reality and that as the imperial power we created our own reality. The last four (and five of six) Republican Presidents have been inveterate liars who made unreality the basis of their White Houses.
Seriously I think some of y'all are forgetting how bad GWB was. This is Mr Appoint-John-Bolton. The Republican party has been the party of fucking insane foreign policy based on chest beating and fantasy since at least Reagan.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
The Iraq War was never sold as having to do with 9/11, at least not internationally. The presented arguments were that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to Middle East peace.
And for the record, Poland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain sent troops in addition to the UK as NATO nations. Australia also contributed. A wide range of other countries provided troops in the occupation afterwards.
Again, there are different sorts of reputation. A compulsive liar has a different reputation than a violent serial killer, and people will respond to different reputations differently (obv). There was sure as hell never, at least on my part, concern that GWB might start a war with China. They were just going to go roll another Middle Eastern country, as Americans are somewhat prone to doing regardless of who's President. It certainly wasn't a GWB-only thing; it was remarked more than once that someone was really following in his father's footsteps.
And that reputation will not outlive Trump's Presidency, the same as it didn't GWB's.
A lot of nations signed on for various reasons but there has never seemed much indication to me that most nations bought the US's bullshit.
Also, you said "Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything." so, like, that's what I'm talking about. You said they sold his foreign relations, which would be Iraq War more then anything, on 9/11. And yeah, they kinda did. It was just transparently bullshit.
GWB was a moron and a bullshiter and did a lot of harm. But once he was gone, no one thought "Man, the US is a crazy person who can never be trusted again." Nations get shifts in government. Certainly at the actually-running-the-place level.
And again, you are ignoring the fact that these were happening in different areas of foreign policy. In fact, completely fucking toss out the notion of "foreign policy". There is no generic "foreign policy" score that Presidents are graded on. They're graded on individual issues and on what people think they'll do w.r.t. any particular issue w.r.t. any particular foreign actor.
Bush is going to attack some foreign nation based on some bullshit, but what do we care, NATO's still intact and the US isn't coming to invade us vs Trump is threatening the documents and principles that underpin NATO, period. That's a qualitative difference that is meaningful for NATO nations. It doesn't matter how much of an asshat Bush was, as long as he was an asshat within certain boundaries, so listing all his terrible crimes is beside the point.
I.e. I don't mind a friend who gets into arguments with his mom; I do mind a friend who gets into arguments with bouncers and security guards.
I.e. a Republican voter might not mind a President who sticks it to Democrats, but they will mind a President who sticks it to Republicans.
I.e. Germany might not mind if the US decides to fuck around and destabilize the Middle East, but they will mind if they fuck around and destabilize Eastern Europe.
Not all harm is equivalent. If Trump dissolves NATO, or withdraws the US from NATO, or qualitatively makes NATO nations believe that the US might not intervene to defend them, there is not necessarily a "reset" for that. Once the four years are done, things on the ground may have changed in substantially, irreversible ways.
To wit: I don't understand this vague, "BUT BUSH WAS REALLY BAD TOO," argument. It's downright incoherent to me and does not, to me, reflect in any way how sensible foreign leaders viewed the Bush presidency. Foreign policy isn't established based on binary scale judgements of foreign leaders.
Not to mention, the US hasn't really recovered its reputation from the Bush presidency. Obama spent 8 years trying to restore it, but there's no erasing history. You think Pakistan or Iran or North Korea look at the US the same now as they did ... well, actually, they probably never looked at the US differently, since, like I said, the US tends to just roll up a small nation every once in a while anyways. Bush wasn't really an outlier in this regard. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada If you're a serious foreign policy wonk in a US ally nation, you're just used to this shit by now. Regime change was not a new US foreign policy idea invented by the Bush II administration.
"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
At the time I thought that it sounded pretty stupid. And, well, we saw how well it worked out.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
The Iraq War was never sold as having to do with 9/11, at least not internationally. The presented arguments were that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to Middle East peace.
And for the record, Poland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain sent troops in addition to the UK as NATO nations. Australia also contributed. A wide range of other countries provided troops in the occupation afterwards.
Again, there are different sorts of reputation. A compulsive liar has a different reputation than a violent serial killer, and people will respond to different reputations differently (obv). There was sure as hell never, at least on my part, concern that GWB might start a war with China. They were just going to go roll another Middle Eastern country, as Americans are somewhat prone to doing regardless of who's President. It certainly wasn't a GWB-only thing; it was remarked more than once that someone was really following in his father's footsteps.
And that reputation will not outlive Trump's Presidency, the same as it didn't GWB's.
A lot of nations signed on for various reasons but there has never seemed much indication to me that most nations bought the US's bullshit.
Also, you said "Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything." so, like, that's what I'm talking about. You said they sold his foreign relations, which would be Iraq War more then anything, on 9/11. And yeah, they kinda did. It was just transparently bullshit.
GWB was a moron and a bullshiter and did a lot of harm. But once he was gone, no one thought "Man, the US is a crazy person who can never be trusted again." Nations get shifts in government. Certainly at the actually-running-the-place level.
And again, you are ignoring the fact that these were happening in different areas of foreign policy. In fact, completely fucking toss out the notion of "foreign policy". There is no generic "foreign policy" score that Presidents are graded on. They're graded on individual issues and on what people think they'll do w.r.t. any particular issue w.r.t. any particular foreign actor.
Bush is going to attack some foreign nation based on some bullshit, but what do we care, NATO's still intact and the US isn't coming to invade us vs Trump is threatening the documents and principles that underpin NATO, period. That's a qualitative difference that is meaningful for NATO nations. It doesn't matter how much of an asshat Bush was, as long as he was an asshat within certain boundaries, so listing all his terrible crimes is beside the point.
I.e. I don't mind a friend who gets into arguments with his mom; I do mind a friend who gets into arguments with bouncers and security guards.
I.e. a Republican voter might not mind a President who sticks it to Democrats, but they will mind a President who sticks it to Republicans.
I.e. Germany might not mind if the US decides to fuck around and destabilize the Middle East, but they will mind if they fuck around and destabilize Eastern Europe.
Not all harm is equivalent. If Trump dissolves NATO, or withdraws the US from NATO, or qualitatively makes NATO nations believe that the US might not intervene to defend them, there is not necessarily a "reset" for that. Once the four years are done, things on the ground may have changed in substantially, irreversible ways.
To wit: I don't understand this vague, "BUT BUSH WAS REALLY BAD TOO," argument. It's downright incoherent to me and does not, to me, reflect in any way how sensible foreign leaders viewed the Bush presidency. Foreign policy isn't established based on binary scale judgements of foreign leaders.
Not to mention, the US hasn't really recovered its reputation from the Bush presidency. Obama spent 8 years trying to restore it, but there's no erasing history. You think Pakistan or Iran or North Korea look at the US the same now as they did ... well, actually, they probably never looked at the US differently, since, like I said, the US tends to just roll up a small nation every once in a while anyways. Bush wasn't really an outlier in this regard. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada If you're a serious foreign policy wonk in a US ally nation, you're just used to this shit by now.
Is your argument that Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people? Because that's how it sounds.
Is your argument that Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people? Because that's how it sounds.
No, but if you want to be glib about it, you could phrase it as, "white people think Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people." It's misleading, since the race part of it isn't actually the salient distinction and many US ally nations are multiracial, but it does happen to work out that way.
Foreign policy is about self-interest. Ain't no Canadians threatening to withdraw from NAFTA out of solidarity with Mexico, and, in fact, Canadians are relieved when the Trump administration says that their beef is with Mexico and not Canada. That is to say, as long as Trump is an asshat within particular boundaries - don't rip up NAFTA, build a wall on the Mexican border and not the Canadian border, target Mexico with protectionist trade policies and not Canada - ... well, we're willing to be chums, or at least pretend to be.
Is your argument that Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people? Because that's how it sounds.
No, but if you want to be glib about it, you could phrase it as, "white people think Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people." It's misleading, since the race part of it isn't actually the salient distinction and many US ally nations are multiracial, but it does happen to work out that way.
Foreign policy is about self-interest. Ain't no Canadians threatening to withdraw from NAFTA out of solidarity with Mexico, and, in fact, Canadians are relieved when the Trump administration says that their beef is with Mexico and not Canada. That is to say, as long as Trump is an asshat within particular boundaries - don't rip up NAFTA, build a wall on the Mexican border and not the Canadian border, target Mexico with protectionist trade policies and not Canada - ... well, we're willing to be chums, or at least pretend to be.
While W.'s administration was evil, it's self interest made some sort of sense - Iraq aside (they couldn't decide whether it was for revenge on Saddam for the first Gulf war or stealing their oil + grifting via contractors). Trump's "self interest" is his own, and can be unreliable and unpredictable short and long term - which makes his foreign policy a nightmare for his allies and enemies to picture, as well as being pretty easy to manipulate by these same people like China has shown the last few weeks.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
The Iraq War was never sold as having to do with 9/11, at least not internationally. The presented arguments were that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to Middle East peace.
And for the record, Poland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain sent troops in addition to the UK as NATO nations. Australia also contributed. A wide range of other countries provided troops in the occupation afterwards.
Again, there are different sorts of reputation. A compulsive liar has a different reputation than a violent serial killer, and people will respond to different reputations differently (obv). There was sure as hell never, at least on my part, concern that GWB might start a war with China. They were just going to go roll another Middle Eastern country, as Americans are somewhat prone to doing regardless of who's President. It certainly wasn't a GWB-only thing; it was remarked more than once that someone was really following in his father's footsteps.
And that reputation will not outlive Trump's Presidency, the same as it didn't GWB's.
A lot of nations signed on for various reasons but there has never seemed much indication to me that most nations bought the US's bullshit.
Also, you said "Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything." so, like, that's what I'm talking about. You said they sold his foreign relations, which would be Iraq War more then anything, on 9/11. And yeah, they kinda did. It was just transparently bullshit.
GWB was a moron and a bullshiter and did a lot of harm. But once he was gone, no one thought "Man, the US is a crazy person who can never be trusted again." Nations get shifts in government. Certainly at the actually-running-the-place level.
And again, you are ignoring the fact that these were happening in different areas of foreign policy. In fact, completely fucking toss out the notion of "foreign policy". There is no generic "foreign policy" score that Presidents are graded on. They're graded on individual issues and on what people think they'll do w.r.t. any particular issue w.r.t. any particular foreign actor.
Bush is going to attack some foreign nation based on some bullshit, but what do we care, NATO's still intact and the US isn't coming to invade us vs Trump is threatening the documents and principles that underpin NATO, period. That's a qualitative difference that is meaningful for NATO nations. It doesn't matter how much of an asshat Bush was, as long as he was an asshat within certain boundaries, so listing all his terrible crimes is beside the point.
I.e. I don't mind a friend who gets into arguments with his mom; I do mind a friend who gets into arguments with bouncers and security guards.
I.e. a Republican voter might not mind a President who sticks it to Democrats, but they will mind a President who sticks it to Republicans.
I.e. Germany might not mind if the US decides to fuck around and destabilize the Middle East, but they will mind if they fuck around and destabilize Eastern Europe.
Not all harm is equivalent. If Trump dissolves NATO, or withdraws the US from NATO, or qualitatively makes NATO nations believe that the US might not intervene to defend them, there is not necessarily a "reset" for that. Once the four years are done, things on the ground may have changed in substantially, irreversible ways.
To wit: I don't understand this vague, "BUT BUSH WAS REALLY BAD TOO," argument. It's downright incoherent to me and does not, to me, reflect in any way how sensible foreign leaders viewed the Bush presidency. Foreign policy isn't established based on binary scale judgements of foreign leaders.
Not to mention, the US hasn't really recovered its reputation from the Bush presidency. Obama spent 8 years trying to restore it, but there's no erasing history. You think Pakistan or Iran or North Korea look at the US the same now as they did ... well, actually, they probably never looked at the US differently, since, like I said, the US tends to just roll up a small nation every once in a while anyways. Bush wasn't really an outlier in this regard. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada If you're a serious foreign policy wonk in a US ally nation, you're just used to this shit by now. Regime change was not a new US foreign policy idea invented by the Bush II administration.
You don't understand the argument because, well, I don't know. But you are still not seeming to understand the argument and are arguing against some other one I didn't make.
Trump can fuck things up real bad. But the point is that if he doesn't, the US will not be irreparably damaged as some people have been saying. Like, if Trump doesn't destroy NATO, NATO will get along fine once he's gone. "Phew, that crazy fucker is gone, we can get back to business as usual" is not foreign to foreign policy. It's happened before.
Again, if we make it out of these 4 years without Trump imploding the global economic or political order, the fact that the US elected a madman for 4 years is not gonna be a huge drag on future Presidents and their agendas beyond the fallout of whatever he got up to.
On a similar subject though I think talk of Trump doing permanent damage to the US's reputation is vastly overblown. The US's reputation survived GWB just fine. The minute Obama was in everyone breathed a sigh of relief and business continued as usual.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
The Iraq War was never sold as having to do with 9/11, at least not internationally. The presented arguments were that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to Middle East peace.
And for the record, Poland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain sent troops in addition to the UK as NATO nations. Australia also contributed. A wide range of other countries provided troops in the occupation afterwards.
Again, there are different sorts of reputation. A compulsive liar has a different reputation than a violent serial killer, and people will respond to different reputations differently (obv). There was sure as hell never, at least on my part, concern that GWB might start a war with China. They were just going to go roll another Middle Eastern country, as Americans are somewhat prone to doing regardless of who's President. It certainly wasn't a GWB-only thing; it was remarked more than once that someone was really following in his father's footsteps.
And that reputation will not outlive Trump's Presidency, the same as it didn't GWB's.
A lot of nations signed on for various reasons but there has never seemed much indication to me that most nations bought the US's bullshit.
Also, you said "Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything." so, like, that's what I'm talking about. You said they sold his foreign relations, which would be Iraq War more then anything, on 9/11. And yeah, they kinda did. It was just transparently bullshit.
GWB was a moron and a bullshiter and did a lot of harm. But once he was gone, no one thought "Man, the US is a crazy person who can never be trusted again." Nations get shifts in government. Certainly at the actually-running-the-place level.
And again, you are ignoring the fact that these were happening in different areas of foreign policy. In fact, completely fucking toss out the notion of "foreign policy". There is no generic "foreign policy" score that Presidents are graded on. They're graded on individual issues and on what people think they'll do w.r.t. any particular issue w.r.t. any particular foreign actor.
Bush is going to attack some foreign nation based on some bullshit, but what do we care, NATO's still intact and the US isn't coming to invade us vs Trump is threatening the documents and principles that underpin NATO, period. That's a qualitative difference that is meaningful for NATO nations. It doesn't matter how much of an asshat Bush was, as long as he was an asshat within certain boundaries, so listing all his terrible crimes is beside the point.
I.e. I don't mind a friend who gets into arguments with his mom; I do mind a friend who gets into arguments with bouncers and security guards.
I.e. a Republican voter might not mind a President who sticks it to Democrats, but they will mind a President who sticks it to Republicans.
I.e. Germany might not mind if the US decides to fuck around and destabilize the Middle East, but they will mind if they fuck around and destabilize Eastern Europe.
Not all harm is equivalent. If Trump dissolves NATO, or withdraws the US from NATO, or qualitatively makes NATO nations believe that the US might not intervene to defend them, there is not necessarily a "reset" for that. Once the four years are done, things on the ground may have changed in substantially, irreversible ways.
To wit: I don't understand this vague, "BUT BUSH WAS REALLY BAD TOO," argument. It's downright incoherent to me and does not, to me, reflect in any way how sensible foreign leaders viewed the Bush presidency. Foreign policy isn't established based on binary scale judgements of foreign leaders.
Not to mention, the US hasn't really recovered its reputation from the Bush presidency. Obama spent 8 years trying to restore it, but there's no erasing history. You think Pakistan or Iran or North Korea look at the US the same now as they did ... well, actually, they probably never looked at the US differently, since, like I said, the US tends to just roll up a small nation every once in a while anyways. Bush wasn't really an outlier in this regard. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada If you're a serious foreign policy wonk in a US ally nation, you're just used to this shit by now.
Is your argument that Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people? Because that's how it sounds.
More like "Bush was OK because he was not threatening to undermine the entire structure by which the relative world stability is enforced, and was not willing to cede aspects of that hegemony from the relatively benign United States to the openly hostile Russia. He did some stupid things, but the wars he threatened were regional and not global. Nor did they involve major trading partners nor strategic positions. Nor did they upset longstanding alliances and their potential blowback would not threaten those we might consider members of the international community in good standing."
Bush went and shoved around the kid no one really liked anyway, and sure it was dumb and petty; but the price was largly borne by the US.
Trump... Goddamn trump wants to push around everyone. He wants to push around his allies in favor of those who had been his adversaries. He wants to push around other big kids who might be able to fight back. He is making all the other kids who depended on him for protection and so deferred their self interest in favor of the US's start to consider maybe bucking that trend.
None of that the shit that Bush did is even close to the level that Trump has done in one goddamn month!
Posts
This isn't some new world order or Trump unveiling his secret plans. This is just pure incompetence.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/white-house-nsc-aide-craig-deare-dismissed-235175 At least there is more confirmation that Trump's call with the Mexican president was a trainwreck.
Which I mean, we probably could've guessed on our own.
If only this wasn't horribly visible to anyone with two neurons to rub together forever in advance
and if it didn't have potentially disastrous consequences for thousands/millions/billions of people.
It might save us from them, but it'll kill us when something abroad happens.
https://getcrookedmedia.com/pod-save-the-world-7cc67d64dd56#.3b5mpcm0e
Some really interesting interviews about recent foreign policy shit and how the process works and what the various Obama admin goals were and also a lot about the things that Trump could really fuck up and what future events may be waiting in the wings for him.
This conversation made me think of this because of how Trump's complete dysfunction is a big deal. In how it basically leaves the US with no direction and way less pull internationally at what seems like a fairly critical time.
And also how his empty talk and his views on how "deals" should work are incredibly harmful to any effort to, like, do stuff on the international level. Some examples the show was talking about so far were things like the Cuban situation or any sort of dealings with any country that has large muslim populations as Trump has effectively made the US very obviously the "bad guy", hampering the US's ability to work with these people or to achieve US goals.
The mentions of the Cuban situation are actually kinda interesting on this front as it's less obvious then the Muslim Ban but just as bad for US goals. One of the goals of Obama's friendlier relations with Cuba was to essentially work to deprive the Castros of a scapegoat for their internal issues. Something that applies alot of places around the world and is a narrative that Trump is going to play right in to. The opposite of this is a big reason Obama winning in 2008 was a big deal internationally and was in part responsible for his whole Nobel Peace Prize thing.
Scarier perhaps though are the challenges they may get to bungle in the future. One really worrying one mentioned was in Venezuela. Because Venezuela helps prop up other countries in the region with subsidised oil. And a collapse in Venezuela (which isn't looking out of the question these days) could trigger major issues in the Caribbean and a potential refugee crisis in the US as people flee on boats. And how the Trump admin will react to that is absolutely terrifying.
Sounds a lot like how the Bush administration supposedly - in post-hoc analyses anyways - either fired or pushed aside any intelligence officers who were opposed to or provided intelligence that contradicted the motivations to invade Iraq, so that the White House only ended up getting intelligence that supported preconceptions about Iraq. Except, you know... worse.
Edit: Hm. I have no idea what this is about, but interesting timing (published Feb 15, 7:36 PM ?!): Craig Deare’s ‘ethical and moral flaws’ make him unfit for NSC job. He should follow Flynn out the door.
The problem for Trump is what damage he can do in the next 4 years that will need to be dealt with and cleaned up and the massive opportunities lost in those wasted years. But if we can all ride it out somehow and Trump doesn't manage to collapse the global economic or political system, the US should be able to recover if we have a decent Democrat following him.
There are different aspects to reputation. IIRC, GWB never did much damage to the US's credibility (at least to friendly-ish regimes) and reliability, which are two areas to which Trump is taking a jackhammer. Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything. If Trump chooses a random Asian nation to invade, it's not going to be viewed the same way as the invasion of Afghanistan, or even Iraq.
So basically the US is now the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.
"CHANGE PLACES!"
The Republican party has been getting steadily worse since 9/11. I think when we elected Obama the world went, "Oh, thank God, that's over." But half our voting population is demonstrably psychotic and that's clearly not going away. Even if we kick Trump out in 2020 the world is going to view this as an ongoing problem, where before you could have called it an aberration that got corrected in 2008.
Not only did electing barrack not end it, it somehow made it worse.
It didn't help that it made the rest of us complacent.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Additionally, unlike Trump, Republicans before have not demonstrated such a willful desire to alter the world order with regards to foreign relations. The world is completely willing to let us fuck ourselves domestically as long as we don't dick with the world order. But by willfully messing up ambassadorial placements, souring relations with one (two?) third(s) of North America's nations, forgetting Cold War lessons, and disparaging NATO as well as the UN, it is very clear to many powers that the newest version of the US is not committed to the current definition of "The West," of which they are members.
These are things conservatives have not done before. As distasteful as the Iraq engagements were, they didn't threaten the success of the West. This shit that is happening today is.
Edits: Engrish.
And the thing is (which I'm sure a lot of countries recognize now, as they are monitoring and watching this very closely) is that even if Trump does get voted out or impeached or whatever, his base will still be crazy, they are not calming down but getting even more riled up, so the next demagogue they elect will be even worse unless or until that base is somehow neutralized. Even if we elect a sane government, America is still filled with crazies who could take over again; we cannot be trusted, not for a long time.
I can only speak for myself, but when Obama got in I did indeed go "Thank goodness", but I certainly never thought of the US the same way as I had before Bush. There was just a lingering unease - I never really regained the optimism I'd had when Clinton was in and things really seemed poised for a century of development and peace. Remember "the end of history"? Man that seems a long time ago.
And even if a Dem gets in 4 years from now, everyone has seen the US deliberately go full retard twice now. We're always going to be thinking, "when is the next one?".
Pretty much never again because unlike y'all like to think it isn't just the aged and dying that fall into this group.
I know many of my peers that are irrevocably within their ranks.
Plenty of 80's millennials are within this psychotic base, and trying to convince them to be anything else is less fruitful than bashing your head into a brick wall for an hour.
They are the most likely to sit there, have no idea what the fuck they are taking about, and retreat to, "fuck libtards", as to why we should or shouldn't do something.
Even worse they are the most likely to be breeding.
I disagree. W. did incredible damage to the US's reputation and alienated allies left and right, the Iraq war being the epicenter for the frayed alliances. The reason it wasn't permanently crippling is that once he left Obama literally spent years and political capital over the world repairing the damage. The W. administration was not as reliable as Obama's was on the national stage, they're only reliable in comparison to Trump. IIRC they pissed off NK so they started testing nukes again via the Axis of Evil bullshit.
edit: But yeah, which ever Dem picks up after Trump is going to face a greater challenge on this front.
That's not unusual. IIRC during MLK's era the white supremacists got super charged.
That was not remotely the same thing. First off, the GWB never openly derided America's alliances or suggest abandoning them. The US was going on another boneheaded Middle East adventure, but that was their prerogative and there was never a suggestion that anybody not joining them on it would be cut off in any way.
Secondly, by the time the US had invaded Iraq, GWB had been in power for two years already, establishing a relatively standard foreign policy, at least with respect to America's allies. There were markedly increased tensions in some areas of the world, such as due to the US withdrawing from the ABM treaty, but generally America under GWB treated its allies in fairly standard way.
Third of all, the Americans went through NATO and the UN - or tried to at least - before invading Iraq, as opposed to idly musing about sinking a Russian intelligence boat parked in international waters.
Fourth of all, Americans were still in Afghanistan alongside NATO nations, the US being the only country to ever invoke Article 5 of NATO. Five NATO nations subsequently joined the American "coalition of the willing" anyways!
GWB never alienated allies. He made American allies think that America was stupid and boneheaded, he put off American allies, made us worry whether the US was actually competent enough to lead the international order, but there was never alienation. For example, we Canadians never had to worry about a possible future without US economic protection and military support, which is something that we actually kinda do now. (To a lesser extent than other US allies, mind you.) Trump's global disapproval ratings are already higher now than GWB's have ever been.
No one outside the US and I guess the UK bought the Iraq War as having anything to do with 9/11.
GWB did a lot of damage too. It didn't matter once Obama came along. GWB alienated allies and fucked us in enumerable unfixable ways. The international community understood that the US was still the US.
The danger of Trump is not another stupid war (unless it's with China) or being an idiot. The US can and has recovered from stupid foreign policy. The danger is Trump starting a bunch of trade wars or starting a war with China and fucking the global economic system. Or dismantling NATO. Shit that goes wrong right now not damaged reputation issues decades down the line.
But if he is contained, the US will be ok enough coming out the other end. Just like with GWB.
The Iraq War was never sold as having to do with 9/11, at least not internationally. The presented arguments were that Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to Middle East peace.
And for the record, Poland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain sent troops in addition to the UK as NATO nations. Australia also contributed. A wide range of other countries provided troops in the occupation afterwards.
Again, there are different sorts of reputation. A compulsive liar has a different reputation than a violent serial killer, and people will respond to different reputations differently (obv). There was sure as hell never, at least on my part, concern that GWB might start a war with China. They were just going to go roll another Middle Eastern country, as Americans are somewhat prone to doing regardless of who's President. It certainly wasn't a GWB-only thing; it was remarked more than once that someone was really following in his father's footsteps.
And that reputation will not outlive Trump's Presidency, the same as it didn't GWB's.
A lot of nations signed on for various reasons but there has never seemed much indication to me that most nations bought the US's bullshit.
Also, you said "Furthermore, GWB had 9/11 as a backup justification for pretty much anything." so, like, that's what I'm talking about. You said they sold his foreign relations, which would be Iraq War more then anything, on 9/11. And yeah, they kinda did. It was just transparently bullshit.
GWB was a moron and a bullshiter and did a lot of harm. But once he was gone, no one thought "Man, the US is a crazy person who can never be trusted again." Nations get shifts in government. Certainly at the actually-running-the-place level.
Having a president who turned out to have made a lot of mistakes is a LOT different than having a president who insists that he decides what reality is, and attacks any experts who disagrees with him. GWB may not have known much about policy, but he made a conscious effort throughout his presidency to learn. Trump insists that he knows more than anyone. Then he and his sock puppets go out and attack alliances that are fundamental to the US's place in the world.
It's one thing when your friend crashes his car. It's something entirely different when he crashes his car on purpose because the voices told him to do it, and then insists that his car is still running great.
Bullshit. They're on record mocking the concept of objective reality and that as the imperial power we created our own reality. The last four (and five of six) Republican Presidents have been inveterate liars who made unreality the basis of their White Houses.
Seriously I think some of y'all are forgetting how bad GWB was. This is Mr Appoint-John-Bolton. The Republican party has been the party of fucking insane foreign policy based on chest beating and fantasy since at least Reagan.
And again, you are ignoring the fact that these were happening in different areas of foreign policy. In fact, completely fucking toss out the notion of "foreign policy". There is no generic "foreign policy" score that Presidents are graded on. They're graded on individual issues and on what people think they'll do w.r.t. any particular issue w.r.t. any particular foreign actor.
Bush is going to attack some foreign nation based on some bullshit, but what do we care, NATO's still intact and the US isn't coming to invade us vs Trump is threatening the documents and principles that underpin NATO, period. That's a qualitative difference that is meaningful for NATO nations. It doesn't matter how much of an asshat Bush was, as long as he was an asshat within certain boundaries, so listing all his terrible crimes is beside the point.
I.e. I don't mind a friend who gets into arguments with his mom; I do mind a friend who gets into arguments with bouncers and security guards.
I.e. a Republican voter might not mind a President who sticks it to Democrats, but they will mind a President who sticks it to Republicans.
I.e. Germany might not mind if the US decides to fuck around and destabilize the Middle East, but they will mind if they fuck around and destabilize Eastern Europe.
Not all harm is equivalent. If Trump dissolves NATO, or withdraws the US from NATO, or qualitatively makes NATO nations believe that the US might not intervene to defend them, there is not necessarily a "reset" for that. Once the four years are done, things on the ground may have changed in substantially, irreversible ways.
To wit: I don't understand this vague, "BUT BUSH WAS REALLY BAD TOO," argument. It's downright incoherent to me and does not, to me, reflect in any way how sensible foreign leaders viewed the Bush presidency. Foreign policy isn't established based on binary scale judgements of foreign leaders.
Not to mention, the US hasn't really recovered its reputation from the Bush presidency. Obama spent 8 years trying to restore it, but there's no erasing history. You think Pakistan or Iran or North Korea look at the US the same now as they did ... well, actually, they probably never looked at the US differently, since, like I said, the US tends to just roll up a small nation every once in a while anyways. Bush wasn't really an outlier in this regard. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada If you're a serious foreign policy wonk in a US ally nation, you're just used to this shit by now. Regime change was not a new US foreign policy idea invented by the Bush II administration.
"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
At the time I thought that it sounded pretty stupid. And, well, we saw how well it worked out.
Is your argument that Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people? Because that's how it sounds.
No, but if you want to be glib about it, you could phrase it as, "white people think Bush was OK but Trump isn't because Trump is threatening to cause harm to white people." It's misleading, since the race part of it isn't actually the salient distinction and many US ally nations are multiracial, but it does happen to work out that way.
Foreign policy is about self-interest. Ain't no Canadians threatening to withdraw from NAFTA out of solidarity with Mexico, and, in fact, Canadians are relieved when the Trump administration says that their beef is with Mexico and not Canada. That is to say, as long as Trump is an asshat within particular boundaries - don't rip up NAFTA, build a wall on the Mexican border and not the Canadian border, target Mexico with protectionist trade policies and not Canada - ... well, we're willing to be chums, or at least pretend to be.
While W.'s administration was evil, it's self interest made some sort of sense - Iraq aside (they couldn't decide whether it was for revenge on Saddam for the first Gulf war or stealing their oil + grifting via contractors). Trump's "self interest" is his own, and can be unreliable and unpredictable short and long term - which makes his foreign policy a nightmare for his allies and enemies to picture, as well as being pretty easy to manipulate by these same people like China has shown the last few weeks.
You don't understand the argument because, well, I don't know. But you are still not seeming to understand the argument and are arguing against some other one I didn't make.
Trump can fuck things up real bad. But the point is that if he doesn't, the US will not be irreparably damaged as some people have been saying. Like, if Trump doesn't destroy NATO, NATO will get along fine once he's gone. "Phew, that crazy fucker is gone, we can get back to business as usual" is not foreign to foreign policy. It's happened before.
Again, if we make it out of these 4 years without Trump imploding the global economic or political order, the fact that the US elected a madman for 4 years is not gonna be a huge drag on future Presidents and their agendas beyond the fallout of whatever he got up to.
More like "Bush was OK because he was not threatening to undermine the entire structure by which the relative world stability is enforced, and was not willing to cede aspects of that hegemony from the relatively benign United States to the openly hostile Russia. He did some stupid things, but the wars he threatened were regional and not global. Nor did they involve major trading partners nor strategic positions. Nor did they upset longstanding alliances and their potential blowback would not threaten those we might consider members of the international community in good standing."
Bush went and shoved around the kid no one really liked anyway, and sure it was dumb and petty; but the price was largly borne by the US.
Trump... Goddamn trump wants to push around everyone. He wants to push around his allies in favor of those who had been his adversaries. He wants to push around other big kids who might be able to fight back. He is making all the other kids who depended on him for protection and so deferred their self interest in favor of the US's start to consider maybe bucking that trend.
None of that the shit that Bush did is even close to the level that Trump has done in one goddamn month!