Incoming officials have asked the US Trade Representative’s office to draft a list of the legal mechanisms that Washington could use to level trade sanctions unilaterally against China and other countries.
Their goal, people briefed on the request told the Financial Times, is to find ways that the new administration could circumvent the WTO’s dispute system.
Since being established in 1995 the WTO has become the pre-eminent venue for resolving trade fights between member countries, which its proponents say has helped prevent destructive trade wars.
While the US would remain a WTO member under the Trump administration’s plans, the officials’ move reflects the sceptical view many of them have of an institution they see as a plodding internationalist bureaucracy biased against US interests.
ie - Trump and Co are fucking morons out to destroy our way of life and US global hegemony
Christ....
I... don't see that policy working out for Trump. The more the US steers clear of the WTO the more everyone else will cling to it, since the alternative will be relying on the word of a man who never pays his contractors. I can't even see the Brexit-weakened UK going for that one.
Yeah, the way to understand the Republican obsession with military spending is to understand that the GOP and their voters as essentially represented perfectly by Trump view america as weak and pathetic because of liberals and namby-pamby not-committing-of-crimes-against-humanity.
So we have to make America strong which means more money for the military.
And that's as far as it goes.
It's just a bunch of money thrown into a firepit to satisfy a delusion of inadequacy.
Thinking back to the previously mentioned "Obama got shit for not raising the military's budget as much as it had previously gone up" discussion, this seems like one of those things that could be an ongoing problem.
So he bumps it 9% this year, does he bump it 10% the next? 11%? 12%?
Say (purely as a hypothetical) he gets voted out, new president comes in, and the team reigns that back down to 8%, and suddenly it's "omg _______ hates the military, doesn't respect our soldiers" despite a several year massive compound increase over the course of his term.
Not only do they get the giant piles of money they want, they get a convenient cudgel for the next person who looks at a 45%+ (or whatever the math works out to) increase in 4 years and tries to reign that shit in.
To be clear, I'm not proposing this as some kind of long term plan of theirs, just a happy (for them) side effect that their base eats up.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Okay so it's a domestic policy thing rather than a foreign policy thing. Well that's good. It's not good good but it's infinately better than it being a foreign policy thing.
When he starts massing troops somewhere or just not backing down when he otherwise would, that's when it be comes a foreign policy worry.
I believe him so far as 'America First' is concerned. Absent of any historical reference. By recreating Morning In America, he think he and the rest of those who deserve it will get rich(er). Why fuck with other countries when you don't have to. There is a nearly compliant underclass here at home willing to so anything for mom, country, apple pie, and the American Nightmare.
Incoming officials have asked the US Trade Representative’s office to draft a list of the legal mechanisms that Washington could use to level trade sanctions unilaterally against China and other countries.
Their goal, people briefed on the request told the Financial Times, is to find ways that the new administration could circumvent the WTO’s dispute system.
Since being established in 1995 the WTO has become the pre-eminent venue for resolving trade fights between member countries, which its proponents say has helped prevent destructive trade wars.
While the US would remain a WTO member under the Trump administration’s plans, the officials’ move reflects the sceptical view many of them have of an institution they see as a plodding internationalist bureaucracy biased against US interests.
ie - Trump and Co are fucking morons out to destroy our way of life and US global hegemony
Christ....
And that's after he passed on the opportunity to completely screw over China's trade without needing any sanctions.
Yeah, the way to understand the Republican obsession with military spending is to understand that the GOP and their voters as essentially represented perfectly by Trump view america as weak and pathetic because of liberals and namby-pamby not-committing-of-crimes-against-humanity.
So we have to make America strong which means more money for the military.
And that's as far as it goes.
It's just a bunch of money thrown into a firepit to satisfy a delusion of inadequacy.
Mid-Empire life crisis.
Though, I do wonder how they'll manage to get some of these things through on Reconciliation since that requires a baseline budget neutrality at the least.
I don't think the President has the authority to tell Treasury to just stop paying, unless he gets Congress to not raise the debt ceiling or something like that.
It means he's a Republican. The Pentagon already takes up ~half of discretionary spending so all this means is yet more money for them, less for domestic spending, and an even higher deficit after the tax cuts.
So...Republican administration policy.
Not to mention he wants to gut the State Dept too!
It means he's a Republican. The Pentagon already takes up ~half of discretionary spending so all this means is yet more money for them, less for domestic spending, and an even higher deficit after the tax cuts.
So...Republican administration policy.
Not to mention he wants to gut the State Dept too!
Well yeah. Gotta cut diplomacy to make room for more war.
It means he's a Republican. The Pentagon already takes up ~half of discretionary spending so all this means is yet more money for them, less for domestic spending, and an even higher deficit after the tax cuts.
So...Republican administration policy.
Not to mention he wants to gut the State Dept too!
Well yeah. Gotta cut diplomacy to make room for more war.
Okay so it's a domestic policy thing rather than a foreign policy thing. Well that's good. It's not good good but it's infinately better than it being a foreign policy thing.
When he starts massing troops somewhere or just not backing down when he otherwise would, that's when it be comes a foreign policy worry.
Which is to say April.
Dude is not an isolationist, he wants to be a damned colonial emperor.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
So! Today Trump announced that he wants to increase military spending by 9% Thoughts on what that means in terms of American foreign policy and foreign relations? Because I can't think it will go down terribly well and I don't think it indicates anything good in the pipeline, but I can't think of anything concrete it may indicate other than Trump's mad scheme to "head to Iraq and take all the oil" which I'm hoping was I'm-so-tough-you-guys boasting rather than something he'd actually go to the effort of trying.
Incoming officials have asked the US Trade Representative’s office to draft a list of the legal mechanisms that Washington could use to level trade sanctions unilaterally against China and other countries.
Their goal, people briefed on the request told the Financial Times, is to find ways that the new administration could circumvent the WTO’s dispute system.
Since being established in 1995 the WTO has become the pre-eminent venue for resolving trade fights between member countries, which its proponents say has helped prevent destructive trade wars.
While the US would remain a WTO member under the Trump administration’s plans, the officials’ move reflects the sceptical view many of them have of an institution they see as a plodding internationalist bureaucracy biased against US interests.
ie - Trump and Co are fucking morons out to destroy our way of life and US global hegemony
Christ....
So, I will start with the caveat that this may be completely unplanned and uncoordinated and that nobody has actually thought any of this out (not even at typically poor Trump administration levels), so this is rather speculative.
But... BUT... if you take these two moves together, combine them with the bickering with NATO and the thawing with Russia and the cancellation of TPP, then, at least superficially, put together, this all points to preparation for a future war with China. By all appearances, the US is cleaning house on its lower-level priorities, engaging in "enemy of my enemy" diplomacy, and trying to project strength. That Bannon is on the record as convinced of/eager for a war in China and has been elevated to the National Security Council is perhaps a key signifier/cause as well.
Increasing the military budget by such a large amount definitely speaks to A) everything he does is in the service of throwing red meat to his base, which means he's only really interested in his popularity and nothing else, and that he intends on wielding the military in foreign policy matters like he wields his lawyers in business matters, ie: "You'll stand down or we'll both hurt, but you'll hurt more"
So! Today Trump announced that he wants to increase military spending by 9% Thoughts on what that means in terms of American foreign policy and foreign relations? Because I can't think it will go down terribly well and I don't think it indicates anything good in the pipeline, but I can't think of anything concrete it may indicate other than Trump's mad scheme to "head to Iraq and take all the oil" which I'm hoping was I'm-so-tough-you-guys boasting rather than something he'd actually go to the effort of trying.
Incoming officials have asked the US Trade Representative’s office to draft a list of the legal mechanisms that Washington could use to level trade sanctions unilaterally against China and other countries.
Their goal, people briefed on the request told the Financial Times, is to find ways that the new administration could circumvent the WTO’s dispute system.
Since being established in 1995 the WTO has become the pre-eminent venue for resolving trade fights between member countries, which its proponents say has helped prevent destructive trade wars.
While the US would remain a WTO member under the Trump administration’s plans, the officials’ move reflects the sceptical view many of them have of an institution they see as a plodding internationalist bureaucracy biased against US interests.
ie - Trump and Co are fucking morons out to destroy our way of life and US global hegemony
Christ....
So, I will start with the caveat that this may be completely unplanned and uncoordinated and that nobody has actually thought any of this out (not even at typically poor Trump administration levels), so this is rather speculative.
But... BUT... if you take these two moves together, combine them with the bickering with NATO and the thawing with Russia and the cancellation of TPP, then, at least superficially, put together, this all points to preparation for a future war with China. By all appearances, the US is cleaning house on its lower-level priorities, engaging in "enemy of my enemy" diplomacy, and trying to project strength. That Bannon is on the record as convinced of/eager for a war in China and has been elevated to the National Security Council is perhaps a key signifier/cause as well.
We're not going to have a war with China outside of any other context than an actual honest world war.
For all their bluster and idiocy, Trump/Bannon can't make the US an aggressor in a war. At least not against a vital economic ally. Sure, Iran or Syria on the flimsiest of justifications, particularly given how many Republicans are also chomping at the bit to invade; but China isn't going to instigate a war with the US, and land grabs and island building in the South China Sea isn't going to warrant military action by the US or its allies. Taiwan being a trigger is a possibility, but China, at least through their actions on production and international trade, for the past few decades, seem to know exactly where they stand, their power, and its limits. I'm not saying that to handwave how many shitty things they do, but they are self-aware enough to know that a major military conflict between them and the US will do absolutely nothing to help them with their asian expansionism or other global trade and economic power. In fact, it would in all likelihood destroy it, and thus destroy their means to fund such a conflict long term.
If the US and China come to blows, it'll be on sides of a conflict that involves everyone; and it is increasingly looking like that would be everyone against us, and you bet your ass Russia would sit it out as much as possible and use their relative stability to happily grab up a continent or three afterward including China.
Beyond that, there is no way that the joint chiefs, Mattis, even McMaster, let such a thing fly. They would be fully aware of how utterly infeasible a war with China, given our lack of presence in that region (compared to our hemisphere and Europe), and our lack of strong allies that could provide us any more than airstrips. No southeast asian nation would assist us knowing the result if we pulled out/lost, because they've experienced it already, and they are not going to give China a blank check to just gobble them up afterward. India sure as hell wouldn't participate or let us use them as a launching pad. Russia, again, no, and even if they would god that would be james bond villain levels of obvious traps.
Granted, I'm saying this assuming a world where reason and logic matter; when it clearly doesn't in the White House right now. Fortunately, though, Trump or Bannon cannot instigate all out war against another country without at least some level of support from commanders and maybe to a lesser degree congress. We will go to war in Iran long before China, and if we are stupid enough to go into Iran, we will be there longer than Trump could possibly be president with term limits, and our generals would absolutely give them the finger if they tried to begin another war, with the (probably) second most powerful military in the world, while fighting in another region.
Define "war". Trump is totally kickstarting a trade war with China, since that was always his plan. His plan seems to have a bunch of military and peel off countries around China so when the tariffs come the US can force the issue without losing influence. And about "China has no reason to become the aggressor", given how economics are a leading cause of wars in history, wouldn't be too sure about it.
I was rewatching a recent episode of Qi last night, and they did a bit on Sweden I'd completely forgotten about. To celebrate 250 years of free speech in Sweden, their tourism board set up an international number that allows anyone in the world to talk to a random Swede.
Swedish citizens sign up to take part, and when someone outside Sweden calls the number, it puts them through to one of the people on the list. Here's Qi's clip, in which they actually dial the number to chat to a random Swede.
The Right Wing in the US is trying to pass Sweden off as a crime ridden hellhole when their tourism board set up a number that lets people all over the world call a random Swede to ask what Sweden is like so they could celebrate free speech.
We dialled that number at work when it was live
Dude picked up and said "Yes, this is Sweden"
It was the greatest day of my life
I imagine that's just their standard phone greeting and I can't stop giggling.
“He (Trump) offers his hand first, pulls his counterpart to his side, and taps the recipient’s hand. These are signs to say the recipients are ‘good little boys’, they are amateur and the real person in charge is Trump himself,” said Dr Leow Chee Seng, a professor of non-verbal communication and human behaviour at the IIC University of Technology in Cambodia.
I might have a solution for this.
1. As you walk forward to accept his baby hand into your own, do not stop moving once they meet.
2. As you continue moving towards Donny, hands clasped, you prevent his childish pull back.
3. With your free hand, touch the back of his shaking hand's elbow which reflexively would lessen tension in his big boy arm.
4. Begin rotating to the left while simultaneously moving your free hand to his broad shoulderpad and turn to face the cameras with him.
5. You have now successfully created the look of a gameshow host begrudgingly shaking the hand of a losing contestant. Mumble "tell him what he's won." under your breath.
“He (Trump) offers his hand first, pulls his counterpart to his side, and taps the recipient’s hand. These are signs to say the recipients are ‘good little boys’, they are amateur and the real person in charge is Trump himself,” said Dr Leow Chee Seng, a professor of non-verbal communication and human behaviour at the IIC University of Technology in Cambodia.
I might have a solution for this.
1. As you walk forward to accept his baby hand into your own, do not stop moving once they meet.
2. As you continue moving towards Donny, hands clasped, you prevent his childish pull back.
3. With your free hand, touch the back of his shaking hand's elbow which reflexively would lessen tension in his big boy arm.
4. Begin rotating to the left while simultaneously moving your free hand to his broad shoulderpad and turn to face the cameras with him.
5. You have now successfully created the look of a gameshow host begrudgingly shaking the hand of a losing contestant. Mumble "tell him what he's won." under your breath.
...if someone behaves like a child, you simply don't shake their hand.
1. As you walk forward to accept his baby hand into your own, do not stop moving once they meet.
2. As you continue moving towards Donny, hands clasped, you prevent his childish pull back.
3. With your free hand, touch the back of his shaking hand's elbow which reflexively would lessen tension in his big boy arm.
4. Begin rotating to the left while simultaneously moving your free hand to his broad shoulderpad and turn to face the cameras with him.
5. You have now successfully created the look of a gameshow host begrudgingly shaking the hand of a losing contestant. Mumble "tell him what he's won." under your breath.
Personally, I'd love it if China selected this man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7InRmTGU0Hg
As their chairman specifically for all "diplomatic" engagements with Donald Trump. :P
So! Today Trump announced that he wants to increase military spending by 9% Thoughts on what that means in terms of American foreign policy and foreign relations? Because I can't think it will go down terribly well and I don't think it indicates anything good in the pipeline, but I can't think of anything concrete it may indicate other than Trump's mad scheme to "head to Iraq and take all the oil" which I'm hoping was I'm-so-tough-you-guys boasting rather than something he'd actually go to the effort of trying.
Incoming officials have asked the US Trade Representative’s office to draft a list of the legal mechanisms that Washington could use to level trade sanctions unilaterally against China and other countries.
Their goal, people briefed on the request told the Financial Times, is to find ways that the new administration could circumvent the WTO’s dispute system.
Since being established in 1995 the WTO has become the pre-eminent venue for resolving trade fights between member countries, which its proponents say has helped prevent destructive trade wars.
While the US would remain a WTO member under the Trump administration’s plans, the officials’ move reflects the sceptical view many of them have of an institution they see as a plodding internationalist bureaucracy biased against US interests.
ie - Trump and Co are fucking morons out to destroy our way of life and US global hegemony
Christ....
So, I will start with the caveat that this may be completely unplanned and uncoordinated and that nobody has actually thought any of this out (not even at typically poor Trump administration levels), so this is rather speculative.
But... BUT... if you take these two moves together, combine them with the bickering with NATO and the thawing with Russia and the cancellation of TPP, then, at least superficially, put together, this all points to preparation for a future war with China. By all appearances, the US is cleaning house on its lower-level priorities, engaging in "enemy of my enemy" diplomacy, and trying to project strength. That Bannon is on the record as convinced of/eager for a war in China and has been elevated to the National Security Council is perhaps a key signifier/cause as well.
We're not going to have a war with China outside of any other context than an actual honest world war.
For all their bluster and idiocy, Trump/Bannon can't make the US an aggressor in a war. At least not against a vital economic ally. Sure, Iran or Syria on the flimsiest of justifications, particularly given how many Republicans are also chomping at the bit to invade; but China isn't going to instigate a war with the US, and land grabs and island building in the South China Sea isn't going to warrant military action by the US or its allies. Taiwan being a trigger is a possibility, but China, at least through their actions on production and international trade, for the past few decades, seem to know exactly where they stand, their power, and its limits. I'm not saying that to handwave how many shitty things they do, but they are self-aware enough to know that a major military conflict between them and the US will do absolutely nothing to help them with their asian expansionism or other global trade and economic power. In fact, it would in all likelihood destroy it, and thus destroy their means to fund such a conflict long term.
If the US and China come to blows, it'll be on sides of a conflict that involves everyone; and it is increasingly looking like that would be everyone against us, and you bet your ass Russia would sit it out as much as possible and use their relative stability to happily grab up a continent or three afterward including China.
Beyond that, there is no way that the joint chiefs, Mattis, even McMaster, let such a thing fly. They would be fully aware of how utterly infeasible a war with China, given our lack of presence in that region (compared to our hemisphere and Europe), and our lack of strong allies that could provide us any more than airstrips. No southeast asian nation would assist us knowing the result if we pulled out/lost, because they've experienced it already, and they are not going to give China a blank check to just gobble them up afterward. India sure as hell wouldn't participate or let us use them as a launching pad. Russia, again, no, and even if they would god that would be james bond villain levels of obvious traps.
Granted, I'm saying this assuming a world where reason and logic matter; when it clearly doesn't in the White House right now. Fortunately, though, Trump or Bannon cannot instigate all out war against another country without at least some level of support from commanders and maybe to a lesser degree congress. We will go to war in Iran long before China, and if we are stupid enough to go into Iran, we will be there longer than Trump could possibly be president with term limits, and our generals would absolutely give them the finger if they tried to begin another war, with the (probably) second most powerful military in the world, while fighting in another region.
You're forgetting that they're both not nearly as smart as they think.
Okay so it's a domestic policy thing rather than a foreign policy thing. Well that's good. It's not good good but it's infinately better than it being a foreign policy thing.
When he starts massing troops somewhere or just not backing down when he otherwise would, that's when it be comes a foreign policy worry.
I believe him so far as 'America First' is concerned. Absent of any historical reference. By recreating Morning In America, he think he and the rest of those who deserve it will get rich(er). Why fuck with other countries when you don't have to. There is a nearly compliant underclass here at home willing to so anything for mom, country, apple pie, and the American Nightmare.
1. Greed (oil, grifting via MIC etc)
2. Ego (a country pushes him too far and he can't let it go)
3. He feels weak at home so he'll show the peasants at home what he can do with another target that he actually can engage military force with
4. He's Trump, fucking with people when he doesn't have to is not how he works. He'll do it for lolz.
Define "war". Trump is totally kickstarting a trade war with China, since that was always his plan. His plan seems to have a bunch of military and peel off countries around China so when the tariffs come the US can force the issue without losing influence. And about "China has no reason to become the aggressor", given how economics are a leading cause of wars in history, wouldn't be too sure about it.
China's been smart by playing him like a fiddle and with soft power, but don't rule out actual war yet. This is Trump we're talking about, not George W. Bush. All that's required for war with Trump is for things to get too heated on twitter, and escalating incidents between hostile powers that usually gets waved off as dick waving to please the base at home.
Trump badmouths immigrants in Sweden, sets off an incident?
Much as I'd like to place the blame at his feet, Donald unfortunately hasn't shit to do with that. Cars burning and attacks on emergency response units are more or less everyday things here. The current event somewhat more noticeable in that police felt the need to open fire upon attackers (major no-no, otherwise).
...why are attacks on emergency response units an everyday thing?
This is old and the user is not here any more but I saw this and felt I have to point out that he was greatly exaggerating.
This is one out of many instances where he posted rhetoric and arguments that are 100% informed by what the Sweden Democrats claim as truth - the right wing populists in Sweden. I'd take everything in his post history with a very big grain of salt.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is blasting President Trump’s proposed defense budget for fiscal 2018, saying that a “world on fire” requires a bigger increase in spending.
“With a world on fire, America cannot secure peace through strength with just 3 percent more than President Obama’s budget,” McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Monday. “We can and must do better.”
....
The fuck is wrong with you man? The US already spends more in defense than all 8 next other countries combined. And that's not enough because.....?
Between that and a lot of people forgetting that a big reason that the press doesn't have the moral authority to oppose Trump is that they sold neocon wars, this entire "neocons as allies against Trump" line is just stupid.
If it wasn't because they do hate Trump that much and they are that incompetent, I would say that the neocons are trying to be the fake opposition to Trump in order to discredit real opposition to him.
“This is probably what it felt like to be a British foreign service officer after World War II, when you realize, no, the sun actually does set on your empire,” said the mid-level officer. “America is over. And being part of that, when it’s happening for no reason, is traumatic.”
Every day in this administration terrifies me more and more, and the thought of what we are going to do when something bad inevitably happens in the world makes me sick to my stomach.
I feel like you're not focusing on the real issue here, which is the prioritising of blame on various minorities.
Also no, that guy's wrong. It's nothing like how it felt to be a British foreign service officer, because there was an incredibly good reason for basically disbanding the British empire (in addition to the moral ones ofc), and a large majority of even moderately educated people - ie: everyone in the British foreign service - understood that perfectly well. But what's happening in the US is as if after the Mhadi was killed in Sudan, Gladstone had decided to alienate the white colonies, condemn the USA and disband the Colonial system of trade tariffs. And call the editor of the Times an enemy of the people.
And hacksaw his own bollocks off or something, I don't even know. Trump's foreign policy is so incomprehensiby stupid that any attempt to draw some kind of hypothetical historical parallel just sounds like some drunken, weed-soaked sophomore bullshit. I don't know, maybe there's something from the bible that works?
The idea that a handful of people (trump, Bannon, miller, kushner) can replace the work work of thousands of people just by, like, deciding hard or something is patently absurd. Even if they were actually the supergeniuses they thought they were and not the clown car of chuckle fucks they really are, there simply doesn't exist enough time in the world for such a small group of people to gather and process the amount of information required to even know what decisions need to be made, let alone make them.
They're currently coasting on institutional inertia. And since they're stated goal is to dismantle those institutions we're gonna find out really soon how much we actually needed a full and functioning federal government, the hard way.
“This is probably what it felt like to be a British foreign service officer after World War II, when you realize, no, the sun actually does set on your empire,” said the mid-level officer. “America is over. And being part of that, when it’s happening for no reason, is traumatic.”
Every day in this administration terrifies me more and more, and the thought of what we are going to do when something bad inevitably happens in the world makes me sick to my stomach.
Yup. The white supremacists, via their president Trump, are throwing a tantrum and gonna destroy the US hegemony unless they are stopped. And amazingly for no goddamn reason other then them not understanding what it even is and cause they hate having anything to do with foreigners and non-whites.
Honestly, it has always been kind of amazing how the US state has been such a huge force in foreign affairs given it's populace is largely ignorant of foreign affairs and has huge portions who actively don't want to be involved based on stupidity, ignorance and pure white supremacy.
US hegemony has in some sense always been unstable since it's been almost entirely an affair and an interest of the elite.
I think this is the real money quote from that article though:
When Rex Tillerson finally arrived in the building, members of the department I spoke to had very high hopes for him. People wanted to like him. But his remarks to the staff left many cold, and confused. “He only spoke of reform and accountability,” said the State Department staffer. “He offered no vision of America and its place in the world.” He also spoke of protecting missions abroad, which some read as a gratuitous reference to Benghazi. “It landed like a thud,” said the staffer. “There are all these people whose sole focus is protecting missions abroad. What do you think we’ve been doing for all these years?”
They literally don't understand what the State Department does. Or what foreign policy is. They only view the government as an inefficient bureaucracy and not as an entity that actually, like, accomplishes shit. So their own view on it is "make it more efficient!" but no thinking about what it is supposed to be efficient at.
Honestly, it has always been kind of amazing how the US state has been such a huge force in foreign affairs given it's populace is largely ignorant of foreign affairs and has huge portions who actively don't want to be involved based on stupidity, ignorance and pure white supremacy.
It's not amazing, it's the military industrial complex. A sane country would have ended its war footing (and yes, US hegemony) at the close of the Cold War. Instead we invaded a bunch of countries and bombed several more because that's where the money is.
edit: Not to mention being a top global arms dealer over the same period.
Honestly, it has always been kind of amazing how the US state has been such a huge force in foreign affairs given it's populace is largely ignorant of foreign affairs and has huge portions who actively don't want to be involved based on stupidity, ignorance and pure white supremacy.
It's not amazing, it's the military industrial complex. A sane country would have ended its war footing (and yes, US hegemony) at the close of the Cold War. Instead we invaded a bunch of countries and bombed several more because that's where the money is.
edit: Not to mention being a top global arms dealer over the same period.
US hegemony extends well beyond the military industrial complex and military force isn't even the main way the US projects force. Trump thinks that and it's why he doesn't know shit. US economic and cultural power is enormous just as the obvious examples.
US hegemony extends well beyond the military industrial complex and military force isn't even the main way the US projects force. Trump thinks that and it's why he doesn't know shit. US economic and cultural power is enormous just as the obvious examples.
That may be, but the isolationism you attribute to stupidity and racism comes more from recoil at our experience at foreign entanglements like Iraq than exporting manufactured goods or hollywood movies.
Posts
I... don't see that policy working out for Trump. The more the US steers clear of the WTO the more everyone else will cling to it, since the alternative will be relying on the word of a man who never pays his contractors. I can't even see the Brexit-weakened UK going for that one.
So we have to make America strong which means more money for the military.
And that's as far as it goes.
It's just a bunch of money thrown into a firepit to satisfy a delusion of inadequacy.
So he bumps it 9% this year, does he bump it 10% the next? 11%? 12%?
Say (purely as a hypothetical) he gets voted out, new president comes in, and the team reigns that back down to 8%, and suddenly it's "omg _______ hates the military, doesn't respect our soldiers" despite a several year massive compound increase over the course of his term.
Not only do they get the giant piles of money they want, they get a convenient cudgel for the next person who looks at a 45%+ (or whatever the math works out to) increase in 4 years and tries to reign that shit in.
To be clear, I'm not proposing this as some kind of long term plan of theirs, just a happy (for them) side effect that their base eats up.
When he starts massing troops somewhere or just not backing down when he otherwise would, that's when it be comes a foreign policy worry.
I believe him so far as 'America First' is concerned. Absent of any historical reference. By recreating Morning In America, he think he and the rest of those who deserve it will get rich(er). Why fuck with other countries when you don't have to. There is a nearly compliant underclass here at home willing to so anything for mom, country, apple pie, and the American Nightmare.
And that's after he passed on the opportunity to completely screw over China's trade without needing any sanctions.
Mid-Empire life crisis.
Though, I do wonder how they'll manage to get some of these things through on Reconciliation since that requires a baseline budget neutrality at the least.
Why hasn't our credit been downgraded yet?
They almost did it after our government shutdown, why aren't they doing it for our government implosion?
No?
I would have thought his brilliant idea of purposely not paying it back in order to renegotiate the amounts would have immediately downgraded us.
He's attempted most every other insane idea he campaigned on. I'd have immediately dropped us if I was in charge.
I just figured since he seems to be governing by EO, that would be coming down the line
Not to mention he wants to gut the State Dept too!
Well yeah. Gotta cut diplomacy to make room for more war.
He doesn't need the State Dept. He's got Twitter.
Until Trump / Congress actually act on anything, the credit rating will remain the same. Hot air wont move the credit rating the way it moves the DOW.
MWO: Adamski
Which is to say April.
Dude is not an isolationist, he wants to be a damned colonial emperor.
So, I will start with the caveat that this may be completely unplanned and uncoordinated and that nobody has actually thought any of this out (not even at typically poor Trump administration levels), so this is rather speculative.
But... BUT... if you take these two moves together, combine them with the bickering with NATO and the thawing with Russia and the cancellation of TPP, then, at least superficially, put together, this all points to preparation for a future war with China. By all appearances, the US is cleaning house on its lower-level priorities, engaging in "enemy of my enemy" diplomacy, and trying to project strength. That Bannon is on the record as convinced of/eager for a war in China and has been elevated to the National Security Council is perhaps a key signifier/cause as well.
We're not going to have a war with China outside of any other context than an actual honest world war.
For all their bluster and idiocy, Trump/Bannon can't make the US an aggressor in a war. At least not against a vital economic ally. Sure, Iran or Syria on the flimsiest of justifications, particularly given how many Republicans are also chomping at the bit to invade; but China isn't going to instigate a war with the US, and land grabs and island building in the South China Sea isn't going to warrant military action by the US or its allies. Taiwan being a trigger is a possibility, but China, at least through their actions on production and international trade, for the past few decades, seem to know exactly where they stand, their power, and its limits. I'm not saying that to handwave how many shitty things they do, but they are self-aware enough to know that a major military conflict between them and the US will do absolutely nothing to help them with their asian expansionism or other global trade and economic power. In fact, it would in all likelihood destroy it, and thus destroy their means to fund such a conflict long term.
If the US and China come to blows, it'll be on sides of a conflict that involves everyone; and it is increasingly looking like that would be everyone against us, and you bet your ass Russia would sit it out as much as possible and use their relative stability to happily grab up a continent or three afterward including China.
Beyond that, there is no way that the joint chiefs, Mattis, even McMaster, let such a thing fly. They would be fully aware of how utterly infeasible a war with China, given our lack of presence in that region (compared to our hemisphere and Europe), and our lack of strong allies that could provide us any more than airstrips. No southeast asian nation would assist us knowing the result if we pulled out/lost, because they've experienced it already, and they are not going to give China a blank check to just gobble them up afterward. India sure as hell wouldn't participate or let us use them as a launching pad. Russia, again, no, and even if they would god that would be james bond villain levels of obvious traps.
Granted, I'm saying this assuming a world where reason and logic matter; when it clearly doesn't in the White House right now. Fortunately, though, Trump or Bannon cannot instigate all out war against another country without at least some level of support from commanders and maybe to a lesser degree congress. We will go to war in Iran long before China, and if we are stupid enough to go into Iran, we will be there longer than Trump could possibly be president with term limits, and our generals would absolutely give them the finger if they tried to begin another war, with the (probably) second most powerful military in the world, while fighting in another region.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
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I imagine that's just their standard phone greeting and I can't stop giggling.
I might have a solution for this.
1. As you walk forward to accept his baby hand into your own, do not stop moving once they meet.
2. As you continue moving towards Donny, hands clasped, you prevent his childish pull back.
3. With your free hand, touch the back of his shaking hand's elbow which reflexively would lessen tension in his big boy arm.
4. Begin rotating to the left while simultaneously moving your free hand to his broad shoulderpad and turn to face the cameras with him.
5. You have now successfully created the look of a gameshow host begrudgingly shaking the hand of a losing contestant. Mumble "tell him what he's won." under your breath.
...if someone behaves like a child, you simply don't shake their hand.
Personally, I'd love it if China selected this man
As their chairman specifically for all "diplomatic" engagements with Donald Trump. :P
You're forgetting that they're both not nearly as smart as they think.
1. Greed (oil, grifting via MIC etc)
2. Ego (a country pushes him too far and he can't let it go)
3. He feels weak at home so he'll show the peasants at home what he can do with another target that he actually can engage military force with
4. He's Trump, fucking with people when he doesn't have to is not how he works. He'll do it for lolz.
China's been smart by playing him like a fiddle and with soft power, but don't rule out actual war yet. This is Trump we're talking about, not George W. Bush. All that's required for war with Trump is for things to get too heated on twitter, and escalating incidents between hostile powers that usually gets waved off as dick waving to please the base at home.
Ah, the "Keep Sweden Swedish" ironpipe-lads.
Maybe that's who will be allies to the U.S.
....
The fuck is wrong with you man? The US already spends more in defense than all 8 next other countries combined. And that's not enough because.....?
Between that and a lot of people forgetting that a big reason that the press doesn't have the moral authority to oppose Trump is that they sold neocon wars, this entire "neocons as allies against Trump" line is just stupid.
If it wasn't because they do hate Trump that much and they are that incompetent, I would say that the neocons are trying to be the fake opposition to Trump in order to discredit real opposition to him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/state-department-trump/517965/
A fun quote
Every day in this administration terrifies me more and more, and the thought of what we are going to do when something bad inevitably happens in the world makes me sick to my stomach.
Also no, that guy's wrong. It's nothing like how it felt to be a British foreign service officer, because there was an incredibly good reason for basically disbanding the British empire (in addition to the moral ones ofc), and a large majority of even moderately educated people - ie: everyone in the British foreign service - understood that perfectly well. But what's happening in the US is as if after the Mhadi was killed in Sudan, Gladstone had decided to alienate the white colonies, condemn the USA and disband the Colonial system of trade tariffs. And call the editor of the Times an enemy of the people.
And hacksaw his own bollocks off or something, I don't even know. Trump's foreign policy is so incomprehensiby stupid that any attempt to draw some kind of hypothetical historical parallel just sounds like some drunken, weed-soaked sophomore bullshit. I don't know, maybe there's something from the bible that works?
They're currently coasting on institutional inertia. And since they're stated goal is to dismantle those institutions we're gonna find out really soon how much we actually needed a full and functioning federal government, the hard way.
Yup. The white supremacists, via their president Trump, are throwing a tantrum and gonna destroy the US hegemony unless they are stopped. And amazingly for no goddamn reason other then them not understanding what it even is and cause they hate having anything to do with foreigners and non-whites.
Honestly, it has always been kind of amazing how the US state has been such a huge force in foreign affairs given it's populace is largely ignorant of foreign affairs and has huge portions who actively don't want to be involved based on stupidity, ignorance and pure white supremacy.
US hegemony has in some sense always been unstable since it's been almost entirely an affair and an interest of the elite.
They literally don't understand what the State Department does. Or what foreign policy is. They only view the government as an inefficient bureaucracy and not as an entity that actually, like, accomplishes shit. So their own view on it is "make it more efficient!" but no thinking about what it is supposed to be efficient at.
It's not amazing, it's the military industrial complex. A sane country would have ended its war footing (and yes, US hegemony) at the close of the Cold War. Instead we invaded a bunch of countries and bombed several more because that's where the money is.
edit: Not to mention being a top global arms dealer over the same period.
US hegemony extends well beyond the military industrial complex and military force isn't even the main way the US projects force. Trump thinks that and it's why he doesn't know shit. US economic and cultural power is enormous just as the obvious examples.
That may be, but the isolationism you attribute to stupidity and racism comes more from recoil at our experience at foreign entanglements like Iraq than exporting manufactured goods or hollywood movies.