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Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump
enlightenedbum
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Registered User regular
This is one we don't have yet, I don't think.
Notable features so far:
Threatening/Promising War with Iran
The Muslim Ban (discussion of this should go in its existing thread, obviously)
Pissing off Australia
Withdrawing from the TPP, Pushing Japan Towards China's Trade Framework
And today moving back on the "One China" policy. China shoved his weak ass around. Sad!
Notable features so far:
Threatening/Promising War with Iran
The Muslim Ban (discussion of this should go in its existing thread, obviously)
Pissing off Australia
Withdrawing from the TPP, Pushing Japan Towards China's Trade Framework
And today moving back on the "One China" policy. China shoved his weak ass around. Sad!
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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The TPP stuff makes me sigh sadly every single time I remember it as well. That turn from the GOP has really bummed me out, I always expected the corporatist cold warriors to at least know the score on Russia and China, and even that is out the window.
Not....well received positions.
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In the Russia thread.
These are, hopefully, people who know how to choose their words carefully.
So sure, maybe the US will be looted over the next four years, but I take a weird comfort in knowing it will likely be by our allies and not our enemies or our own government.
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Iran should be green and purple.
Man, the US is going to fucking war with Iran. Every time you see Flynn you can see the glorious fantasy playing out beneath his eyes. And Iran being Iran (we are impish, irritating bastards, it's true), they will happily needle and poke and prod the US into making the first move.
NNID: Hakkekage
Iran could start referring to itself as Persia and I bet Trump would immediately respect them for their leadership and empire of wealth. I'd wager it would take at least a month for him to figure it out if no one told him.
War with Iran is what truly terrifies me about this administration both because it is something that they would absolutely stupidly do, but also because it's probably the precursor to a larger scale global proxy war. Which is what Bannon wants.
Thousands from our generation will die for absolutely nothing, the middle east will destabilize even further, and enmity between both sides will last for generations.
It will be the most pointless of tragedies.
I doubt the US will go to war with Iran.
Its to much like America, in many ways. Varied, vibrant, trying to liberalize..and strong. We cant handle terrorists that live in the mountains, theres no way we'd be able to fight Iran..not without going full scorched earth WW2 mass city firebombing shit.
Also theres no way in hell our allies would have our back in an aggressive war against Iran, and with it being a war of aggression, they wont be forced to tag along via NATO.
Basically, theres no valid reason to go to war with Iran, and literally every reason not to. I refuse to believe our government, even under Trump, is so broken as to allow that to happen.
Have you listened to anything a Republican has ever said about Iran?
Yeah, Buttcleft (lol ur username is really undermining the seriousness of this statement).
For real and for true I would have argued your exact same points a few months ago, when we didn't elect a dangerous lunatic and his posse of irrational Iran-hating goons. Even the one guy who is considered somewhat of an even keel (Mattis) is irrationally enraged by Iran.
NNID: Hakkekage
Yes, they are idiots and its baseless saber rattling.
I refuse to believe our government is so broken and so ignorant as to think pursuing a aggressive war against Iran is a viable option. If not for the cost of the war itself in lives, money and material, then for the fact it will alienate even our allies against us, Allies who are still sore after being drug into Iraq on false pretenses.
There wasn't really a valid reason to go to war with Iraq, either. Iraqi WMD allegations? Well, Iran has a nuclear program. Doesn't matter that it's a peaceful program and the international community has taken steps to ensure as much, the GOP has been pumping up the idea that they're going to get the bomb any day now. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant? Well, Iran is led by an Ayatollah. Doesn't matter that they've been making steady progress towards democracy and liberalization, Muslims are different and scary and we all know that of course most Muslims are evil terrorists who hate America and plus one time that one guy with a funny name said he would wipe Israel off the map...
The right and even a non-negligible chunk of the left has been itching for this fight for a long while and a lot of people are primed for it. Right now I think there'd be too much opposition to go to war, but throw in four years of Republicans moving us in that direction? Throw in propaganda, maybe bullshit claims of nuclear weaponization? Things change.
Your argument amounts to the fact that would be a tragedy if we went to war with Iran. And that's absolutely right, it would be totally senseless violence, lead to many useless deaths, and deal a grave blow to the Middle Eastern stabilization process. But it's a tragedy that can, unfortunately, happen.
Buttcleft (hehehehehe) I'm sorry to undermine your hopeful argument here but the US is planning to build a boondoggle of a border wall (and it's going to be so cheap!) and has already begun to needlessly alienate our closest allies (take your refugees and stuff em in a kangaroo's arse prime minister!!)
This is the moment where my own casual dismissal of routine baseless saber rattling that the US and Iran has liked to engage in to play well at home has to give way to the very real dread that this isn't just a funny game anymore
NNID: Hakkekage
The only thing could potentially save us would be a unified democratic party in opposition to a war effort. But that would crumble the moment there was a large scale terrorist attack of some kind. And this admin is going to do their damnedest to connect the dots to Iran whether they exist or not.
It is very easy to fight. Not embarrassing yourself in the process is the hard part.
Trudeau meets with Trump on Monday.
As the National Post puts it: In my opinion, Trudeau is successfully walking a very fine line. He's demonstrating Canadian principles via his actions, while refraining from saying anything that could cripple the Canadian economy (and the American one, for that matter). For his part, Trump needs a foreign policy win, and being able to show he can play nice with Canada would qualify. On the other hand, he might consider slapping an important tax on Canadian goods a win, so who knows.
I think that there's a decent chance that we might see Trudeau announce that our military will expand. That isn't exactly ideal, but I'd rather Trump says that he forced us to meet our NATO funding commitments than to see him building a northern wall. A growing military also serves to some extent as a stimulus, so it's not completely terrible.
Trudeau's probably the current world leader best equipped to deal with Trump. While he was mocked for it during our election, the fact that he has actual experience as a classroom teacher means he has at least some skills at dealing with children.
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Foreign policy is rarely about how a given leader behaves when it is sunny outside; it's more about how they respond when they hear the rolling of thunder.
Tomorrow being like any other day, you're probably right - Trump & the GOP will grumble and tweet and otherwise be happy to just eat their Honey Nut Cheerios while watching Morning Joe and writing bad legislation.
Tomorrow being blindsided by crisis... they literally won't be able to just sit there grumbling and having breakfast. They'll be forced to act. What does Trump do when he is taken completely out of his comfort zone and cannot simply choose to eat dinner and let a blood & guts cold warrior make a crucial decision for him? If the DoD decides after a future crisis that Iran needs to be targeted because, well, just because... do they even need to present much of a case to the executive? I'm not eager to find out.
Zero chance a northern wall is built, even though it would be just as symbolic (and just as useless) as the Mexican wall. The Mexican wall gets its support because of perceptions of the Mexican people. "Mexicans are poor brown people who don't speak English blah blah blah, so let's keep them out." Canada isn't perceived the same way, it's too rich and white, so a border wall would be impossible to sell. People would voice their support, but they wouldn't be as eager to fork over a few billion the way they would to "keep out" Mexicans.
I bet you could make a convincing argument for walling off Quebec.
I've said in the Canada thread that I agree with this, and having mulled it over for a while I still mostly do (because I feel it is important right now that we have world leaders who can act like they are actually fucking adults where it counts)... but I have also asked myself this question, and I don't think I have a satisfactory answer:
Is this not more or less the same as Chamberlain's policy of German appeasement? Act polite, bend with the wind, hope that somehow the beast's appetite is satiated at some point?
If it isn't the same... why isn't it? (Note that I don't mean the surrounding conditions, which are obviously much different, but the policy itself to me plainly appears to be aimed at appeasing a man who has shown no indication he can actually be appeased).
Though, both highschoolers and Trump seem to be fixated on their phones, and watch a crapload of television.
Chamberlain could have stopped Hitler. Canada has as much chance of stopping Trump as Denmark or Switzerland did of stopping Hitler.
The part of this that makes it especially tragiweird is that our interests would probably be served better by Iran successfully resisting an invasion by us than by them losing to us.
I don't think The Ender is talking about actual military action or anything. He knows Canada isn't going to enact regime change in the US or anything. He's talking about whether Canada should continue its present course of kind of passive-aggressive friendliness or whether it should tell Trump to fuck off.
Significant for who? Americans? Yeah right.
Thus, "we're totally going to war with Iran" or even "I hope we don't go to war with Iran" are insufficient responses to such a possibility, in my opinion. "We must do everything in our power to prevent that outcome" is better. Like general strikes, blocking the roads of cities, etc. Yes we all need our jobs but not as much as we need the Strait of Hormuz to be open and the Iranians to not level GUAR's oil installations with ballistic missiles or something. At this point I see preventing such a war as more of a matter of survival than of morality.
My fear is that, due to the gradual degradation of the "Congress has the power to declare war" concept, we would not get the same sort of public debate and forewarning that we did before Iraq in 2003.
My hope is that the massive consequences of such a war will persuade enough of our government that it isn't worth it. I mean it's not like the current wars aren't already feeding endless blood and money into our gluttonous war machine; you'd think the hawks would be content with the Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/Yemen/Libya/Somalia Wars.
This is also kind of a major test, in my eyes. Canada is probably the easiest of easy mode diplomacy, by far. I mean, he's already pissed off Australia and Mexico, and Canada's probably the only one that's gonna be easier than those.
So if Trump manages to piss off Canada, we're basically going to be flying completely solo for the next four years.
Trump might remember that Canada is part of NAFTA and start spewing shit over that.
Considering there are only 3 countries in NAFTA and he now runs one of them I would hope he knows that
I think any war would result in massive protest and civil unrest. Look at what happened with Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans are much more gun-shy now when it comes to war than before.
But maybe that's optimism.
You'd also think that the war hawk groups would have realized by now that Iran isn't like the rest of the countries listed: it actually has a functioning military and economy. Sure, Iraq had the 4th largest military prior to the 2003 invasion, but Iran has a bigger population and economy than Iraq did.
It also ignores the fact that Russia and Iran are close allies. Don't know if Putin would be willing to give up that ally for some kind of bargaining chip with the new administration.
You overestimate him.
Hell, he might not even realize that he's going to Ottawa and tell them to fly to the wrong city.