European or Global Crisis?
Usually, I steer clear of the long 'political threads'.
This one is clearly related to both the 'Trump' and 'Ukraine Crisis' discussions but they are too lengthy at 782pp and 585pp, respectively.
It is important to start a new discussion. Perhaps to describe, clarify or analyse what is going on.
In Europe. Whatever that means. I don't know. I have kept away from politics since the USA Election.
For the sake of my wellbeing. I can't bear to see or listen to the News. The faces and voices of hatred and division. But I need to know more...others need to know more...
I don't know that I can contribute anything of value.
I hope others can focus on the issues and enlighten.
This primarily is about the European, if not world-wide crisis, brought about by USA politics.
Trump, Vance and Musk - for starters. From Isolationism to Expansionism.
The wish to cement American interests at the direct cost of crushing others.
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/01/09/trump-greenland-canada/
***
I thought this Guardian article worth sharing:
Quoting The Guardian
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From the BTL comments:
From MAGA to MEGA. What next, MUGA? Make the Universe Great Again?
Further thoughts welcome.
This one is clearly related to both the 'Trump' and 'Ukraine Crisis' discussions but they are too lengthy at 782pp and 585pp, respectively.
It is important to start a new discussion. Perhaps to describe, clarify or analyse what is going on.
In Europe. Whatever that means. I don't know. I have kept away from politics since the USA Election.
For the sake of my wellbeing. I can't bear to see or listen to the News. The faces and voices of hatred and division. But I need to know more...others need to know more...
I don't know that I can contribute anything of value.
I hope others can focus on the issues and enlighten.
This primarily is about the European, if not world-wide crisis, brought about by USA politics.
Trump, Vance and Musk - for starters. From Isolationism to Expansionism.
The wish to cement American interests at the direct cost of crushing others.
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/01/09/trump-greenland-canada/
***
I thought this Guardian article worth sharing:
Quoting The Guardian
[b]Europe's turning point US foreign policy.
Trump and Vance have smashed the old order how should Europe respond?[/b]
The vice-presidents attack on European values signalled a historic realignment. Should the continent seek rapprochement or go its own way?
This assault on democracy has left Europe reeling and alone
Nathalie Tocci
At the Munich security conference, the US vice-president, JD Vance, accused Europe of abandoning the values of democracy by erecting firewalls to exclude the far right from government; of fearing its peoples, and of restricting free speech. This was to a mainly European audience eagerly expecting Vance to address the big security questions of our time, from Ukraine and Russia to China and the Middle East. His assault on European democracy left the room dumbfounded and seething. His chilling suggestion that the waging war against disinformation amounts to war on democracy felt like a genuinely shocking moment.
Vances extraordinary assault, and his electoral interference on behalf of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in Germany just days out from a general election (he had earlier met the AfDs co-leader Alice Weidel) have little to do with democracy. Rather he was outlining the Mega (Make Europe Great Again) project in support of the far right across Europe.
The strategic goal is clear: a Europe in which the nationalist far right is empowered is a divided Europe, far easier to subjugate by imperial powers, be that the US, Russia or China.
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Are our leaders brave enough to out-Trump Trump?
Yanis42
JD Vance, the US vice-president, has told Europeans that their values are no longer Americas values. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, added that Europeans cant make an assumption that Americas presence will last for ever. Keith Kellogg, Trumps special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has confirmed that Europe will not have a seat at the table when the end of the Ukraine war is negotiated.
[...]
A second option is to out-Trump Trump: to undermine Washington by rejecting any deal that gifts Ukraines resources to the US, meanwhile signalling to Moscow Europes openness to a new security architecture that involves a sovereign Ukraine in a role similar to Austrias during the cold war. That would be tantamount to turning a dismal crisis into an opportunity for Europe to liberate and to re-energise itself. Alas, I cannot see our present crop of leaders seizing it.
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This was a declaration of alliance with the European far right
Rakhiya Diallo
JD Vances speech in Munich took Europe by surprise, but nothing in its content is new. His words were loaded with references that resonate with rightwing populist movements across Europe.
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The peril Germany is facing may concentrate minds
John Kampfner
Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the first shock to the system. The Munich security conference of this past weekend will go down as an even bigger moment. Germans are now forced to realise that the US will no longer defend it; some are beginning to wonder whether the superpower on which they relied might even have become an adversary.
The elections next Sunday will go a long way to determining whether Germans have woken up. Will they finally appreciate the need to use hard power to defend the post-1945 settlement that gave their country a moral purpose? [...]
The peril Germany is facing with Trump on one side, Putin on the other may concentrate minds. Merzs new government will have three competing priorities: to bring order to the asylum system, radically modernise the economy and beef up defence spending. The scale of these challenges may strengthen his hand in negotiations to form a new coalition with either the Social Democrats or the Greens, or possibly both. All the parties will have to show a new resolve and sense of common leadership, characteristics that were sorely lacking in the outgoing government.
They know that now they have nowhere to hide. If they fail to make progress over the next four or five years, the AfD, aided and abetted by Trump and Elon Musk, will be in pole position for the next elections.
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The continent is torn between denial and hysterical overreaction
Lorenzo Marsili
Europes longer-term interest is to avoid having to scramble for an ad hoc and embarrassingly insufficient response each time a security crisis breaks out whether this is about meddling, piracy, cyber-attacks or aggression against it, or about supporting the UN in peacekeeping missions internationally.
It becomes clearer every day that if peace is to emerge in Ukraine then European troops will need to be part of the solution. They should not be deployed merely to guarantee European states a minor seat at the table of the negotiations or because Trump and Vance order so. They should be deployed to form the basis of a common, effective, but limited European army that is fit for objectives and for the future.
Ultimately, this is not merely about establishing a European military force, but establishing a European security regime crafted and owned by Europeans, less vulnerable to the whims and tides of US policy.
From the BTL comments:
The vice-president of a nation engaged in tearing down its own institutions goes to Munich and lectures the whole of Europe on its project to destroy democracy. Does he hold a meeting with the democratically elected government of Germany? Of course not, he seeks out the leader of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far right neo Nazi group dedicated to the overthrow of European democracy.
These people are fascists, the sooner this sinks in the better.
Some good points made by the contributors. But I think the most salient thing to understand is that the Trump administration wants to weaken and if possible break up the EU. It's an economic competitor that can credibly hold its own in trade talks and on tariffs.
Where once it was a partner to the US, in the MAGA mindset it is an enemy. Once you understand that, the comments of Hegseth and Vance are very transparent. Trump and Putin share the same goal on this.
The arrogance and hypocrisy of MAGA is extraordinary. European governments (including the UK) should work on behalf of their people first, and not be tempted to lurch to either the corporate right or the fascist right. The threat from both Russia and America is very real, but the threat of climate change and ecological collapse is the worst of all. Europe must not waver on this.
From MAGA to MEGA. What next, MUGA? Make the Universe Great Again?
Further thoughts welcome.
Comments (328)
Unfortunately, foreigners openly rooting for one political party may backfire quite much. Just as it would backfire if Europeans would be openly rooting for Democrats and accuse just like Vance of everything that Trump is doing. The simple fact is that many democrats wouldn't like it.
Yes. But it has been happening for years. A slow boil. Here, in the UK, we have Nigel Farage and the party he founded or purchased - 'Reform UK'. Leading to Brexit. It is gaining in strength. Full of populist rhetoric, it appeals to the young and disillusioned. Alienation including misogyny and hate. But we need to look further into the inequalities - house prices, job security.
The issues of insecurity are driving some from democracy to the 'certainties' of strong-man dictatorship.
Extreme parties are gathering force. Can we re-engage by tackling issues at the root?
For parties to listen to and tackle serious problems at the level of the citizen.
They all claim to be the voice of the people. What people?
Do we need this crisis to get real? Or is it now about going to war?
How civilised are we? Will the people even have a say in the matter?
Exactly. And it was all part of a well-laid plan.
Quoting javi2541997
I think that is easier said than done. There will always be differences. If it hasn't worked in the EU, then where and how would it work?
It is not so much about 'European values' - whatever they might be. But human values.
But that is not going to happen anytime soon.
It takes education and yeah, look who is in charge of that...
A citizens' movement not political but philosophical? Hah.
Not a chance in hell. One man's freedom an' all that.
The crisis is real and global. A number of factors account for the change in people's attitudes; but the salient point is that when they feel confident and optimistic, populations lean leftward; when they feel insecure and anxious, they lean right. Of course the self-declared strong father-figure doesn't protect them; he invariably makes their life harder and more perilous - but they somehow never twig to the pattern.
Under perceived threats from migrants, economic recessions, pandemic measures, loss of religious privilege, automation and international terrorism, people are open to offers of simple solutions. The far right always has simple solutions: blame a powerless minority and punish it. The left always has a more complicated plan it can't explain in terms that fit on a tractor-hat. More importantly, the left never promises its supporters special privileges.
The shift has already taken place, whatever the next election in Germany, Sweden or Canada throws up on top. Liberal parties have been pulled farther and farther rightward, leaving labour either out of touch or taking up what used to the center. The only thing that will reverse this trend is a wide enough popular dissatisfaction.
There is hope in that. The Trump regime is so drastic and crude in its actions, protests have already begun. People are finally noticing that he and his gang mean to carry out all the threats they made over the last several years. This extreme example might - just barely might - wake up other nations to the peril they're courting. His childishly spiteful trade and defence policies might - just possibly - spur greater co-operation among the countries where democracy is still alive. The extreme insanity of Trumpism just maybe possibly might perhaps trigger a global reaction against all similar agendas before it's too late.
As to Putin, nothing can be done about him short of assassination, and that will have to come from inside his government.
There is no crisis.
There is a crisis, as described in the OP.
Your view that the European/Global crisis is a 'good thing' is noted.
The question I asked was 'real', about the future and pragmatic hopes. Not based on wishful fantasy.
Identifying real solutions to real problems. Not just for electioneering purposes but for long-term.
Quoting javi2541997
Human values have been framed in many nations.
Liberty, Equality and Freedom - in the American Constitution.
It is in the regulation of these values, that we find tension and conflict.
Quoting Democratic Values and the American Constitution Society
Quoting javi2541997
What is a 'normal citizens' movement'?
How can a whole continent be 'taken care of' ?
What does that even mean?
Europe is diverse. Multiple viewpoints. That is its strength and also its weakness.
Quoting Christoffer
Like a defense alliance of democracies or something? Hey, I'm warming to the idea.
In terms of defense, it could be modeled somewhat after NATO, and otherwise maybe somewhat after the EU (also 1789, 1948). Ehh or whatever.
From a military-strategic perspective, it's harder to secure scattered regions, though reconnaissance/observation would be good, yet, surely the values are worth standing up for, human rights, civil liberties, various freedoms and protections, so this stuff would be prerequisites. Things like (nuclear) deterrence would be needed.
Some candidates alphabetically: maybe Argentina, Australia, maybe Botswana, Canada, maybe Chile, maybe Costa Rica, some European countries, Iceland, maybe India, Japan, New Zealand, maybe Singapore, maybe South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, maybe Ukraine after some further reforms, Uruguay, some US states, some ocean countries, ... (wicked cooperative)
In absence of "an outside threat", it's going to be difficult to get those together. What about mutual economic support, close to free trade, close to free migration (or visas), ...?
Yes. Too much to deal with?
Quoting Vera Mont
I bolded the list of 'perceived threats'. We could address them one by one. And see where it takes us. Migrants:
'Get Brexit Done' - the simple electioneering slogan > overwhelming majority for Johnson's Tory party.
'Reform UK' - the name of Farage's party/company sounds like a positive change.
The issue of immigrants. People ignorant of their value e.g. in the NHS, tourism, agriculture, etc..
Not to mention they fill the gap in decreasing populations in different European countries.
Quoting EIIR - The Importance of Immigrants in Boosting European Community
But it seems like another option is preferred. We must have more babies!
Farage has it sorted. Have you ever heard such nonsense?
Quoting Financial Times - Farage calls for more UK births
Oh yes, and their solution is to 'own' women and take away their rights. Make babies. Now!
Quoting The Independent
To return to shared values...
There are still European countries who retain a misogynistic attitude. A lot of homicide is femicide.
So, there is no such thing as a common value system. Just as you can't generalise about American values.
Progress made in all spheres to right wrongs, to value human rights...well, that is being systematically destroyed. If that's not a crisis, I don't know what is.
Yes, here's my entire post on that for reference.
Quoting Christoffer
Interesting enough, it seems Canada is warming up to the idea of approaching EU for further collaboration. Just imagine if mineral and material trade was to become free between the two, how business would flourish on both sides leaving the US out.
Because in my concept of an alliance based on national human rights and democratic ideals, the current US under Trump/Musk would not make the cut.
I asked GPT-o3 to make a fusion list that looks at democracy and corruption, since these are two lists. It took it longer than I've ever seen GPT to do this (3 min), which speaks of how complex it is to evaluate all of this, but here's the top 100 nations out of this calculation.
Look at how many top nations are already members of the EU or in Europe. But there are really powerful nations at the top which could easily be part of a new powerful alliance.
Reform the EU into this and it would be a much more stable union for trade and military defense. It would also gain a larger geographical cover of resources. It would also need to have a clause that stipulates that any nation which falls back into corruption or risking its democracy will be excluded fromt he alliance. You can only, within these nations, vote to be part of the alliance, but the perpetual membership is based on how well human rights and democratic values are held up, including how free the nation is in speech and overall rights.
This would incentivize nations close to ridding themselves of corruption and becoming a proper democracy to opt into that work harder, effectively a big carrot to push unstable nations into stability. As well as a deterrence to uphold democratic values and civil/human rights.
If anything, it would work much better at the job the UN is supposed to do.
Call it "The Human Rights Alliance Act" or something and get a nice peaceful flag for it representing the betterment of humanity over tyranny and we can finally divide up the world into some resemblance of good and bad, with a clear goal for how to make society better.
Yes but now the slow boiled frog is damned near cooked. The trend is war and defence.
Already, big smiles and profits for defence companies and the arm manufacturing industry.
Popular dissatisfaction be damned.
Quoting Vera Mont
There is always hope. On both sides of the equation. Some call it prayer. In God We Trust.
There are always possibilities, until the clamp down of prison, torture and death for those who protest.
Being criminalised for protest happens even in a so-called democracy like the UK.
What is happening is the fight for resources. Trump is bargaining for such in his Peace Deal with Russia. Ukraine side-lined. Trump longs not for Peace but for the Nobel Prize. Him and his pal, Musk.
They are bully boys extracting payment from their victims. With a bit of world domination on the side. Unfortunately, I doubt there will be a happy ending.
It should never have got this far. Hate-filled criminals charging about the world.
As if it were a game. The winners take it all...
There is already a global reaction - but how effective is it? There is nobody in charge...
[sup] Raf Casert, Sylvie Corbet, Dusan Stojanovic, Vanessa Gera, Justin Spike · AP via Defense News · Feb 17, 2025[/sup]
Looks like what they don't say out loud (and shouldn't), is that P01135809 + team first alienated friends and allies, then virtually stabbed them in the back, befriended authoritarians that P01135809 can't handle anyway (Putin is smarter, unfortunately). I'm sure P01135809 and Musk (rich folks) will be fine, whereas other Americans might find eggs pricey, while rambling on about "wokeness" or whatever cultural trend they dislike.
I'd suggest Canada, and maybe others, also are invited to a subsequent meeting (following the above I mean). But don't wait too long. P01135809 (and Putin) apparently ain't.
, can GPT combine more factors? In a way that's meaningful?
It should be able to, especially the high end models. It all depends a bit on how the prompt and conversation with it is. Best is to feed it actual PDF reports, documents and research papers as it's then drawing from specific data. Going by its reasoning pattern it spent most of the time asking itself to be careful about the nuances between what constitutes a democracy and corruption, and how to form a value system to rank nations so that it incorporated the fact that some nations have a rigorous democracy, even though they also have high corruption...
Funny thing, it specifically mentioned the US when reasoning, as a state which was hard to pinpoint due to its high corruption. As a soulless system drawing on data, that kinda settles any debate on whether or not the US is heavily corrupt, seen as fleshy humans seem unable to debate such things past their biases.
All those benefits are beside the point. European countries have a long tradition of national identity, national pride, patriotism; long histories of war for domination of other nations or liberation from other nations. Two thousand years of patriotic fervour, stoked by every monarch, prelate and premier who needed to raise and army doesn't go very far underground in one or two generations: the liberal veneer of prosperous times shatters at the first rousing "make us great again" speech in anxious times.
A scattering of immigrants who look, speak, cook, worship and dress differently is seen as a colourful and interesting novelty. Such immigrants assimilate quickly - certainly by the second generation - because, what choice do they have? A large influx of any one group of strangers can form its own distinct community, build churches, schools, cultural centers. It can elect representatives who become instruments of change in the government. That is a threat to the national identity in general and the individual native's self-image in particular. If those strangers are a different race and reproduce more than the average native (in the first couple of generations; once they're achieved economic parity, their family profile conforms to the norm.) and couple across racial divides (as young people will!) they're seen as a threat to the very ethnicity of the native population. Nationalists fear that their own descendants will bear no resemblance to themselves. These are compelling fears!
Protests in the US can grow quite heated and Americans, unlike most civilian populations, are heavily armed. Violent clashes are inevitable; the regime has not yet had time (if they're even competent to do it) to organize an effective enforcement agency. Civil war may yet be averted, but if they get frightened enough, the Trumpites will surely call for martial law. Then it will depend on which side the federal, state and municipal armed forces take. (My guess is, half and half, which ensures a long and costly civil war, like the last one.)
Will that be enough to galvanize the still-sensible nations? I hope so.... I'm still feeding all those things with feathers outside my window.
Trump Says Hes Serious About Wanting Canada to Become 51st U.S. State
[sup] Jill Colvin, Darlene Superville · TIME, AP · Feb 9, 2025[/sup]
How true is that? Who said it? Is it just a good soundbite used by Bush/Obama?
It begs a few questions: Who is 'We', who are the 'terrorists', what does it mean to 'negotiate'. And what are the alternatives?
It's a stated policy by most Western governments, related to hostage situations. This doesn't mean that negotiations with hostile countries should not take place.
Is this the same as the deal-making, transactional approach so beloved by the US President?
The criminal and outlaw who is destroying human rights and laws to be the dictator or King?
Who pardoned the domestic terrorists jailed for following his cause, his hatred for anyone who opposes him. Those who tried and failed to put him down. Now taking spiteful revenge. Look out!
He, who is now making his own laws to benefit self. Who is making deals with fellow terrorists and war criminals. Who is now blaming the victims of terrorism, war perpetrated by Putin for not making a deal? It's all their fault. Really?
Quoting The Guardian
The criminal is not satisfied with creating chaos and fear in his own land, he is spreading his 'peace' all over the world.
'We do not negotiate with terrorists'. Oh, yes, we do. It seems we must. In an attempt to prevent more war. War that suits and benefits the arms industry and more. Money directed to war or defence that could be better spent elsewhere.
For the enrichment of citizens. To improve lives. From poverty to the basics. Shelter and food.
Not even close to the honeyed golden showers of riches poured from one MAGA trillionaire to other terrorist billionaires.
The world and its resources will pay the price. For criminals and their greed.
Countries or their leaders will be bought. Is there a law against that?
What good is talk and protest? Delusional madmen do not listen. They live to create fear and terrorise, to gain even more wealth and power.
It was ever thus. Humans never seem to learn until it is too late...
I had to check out what you meant by PO1135809.
I know that the US President is a criminal, but didn't realise that he was given an inmate number.
Unfortunately, this and his mugshot are seen as a badge of honour. And money-making.
For now, I just refer to him as 'criminal'. It's simpler. The power he now has to disrupt the whole world is beyond belief. He is a domestic and global terrorist of the first order. And should be treated as such.
There is a European and Global Crisis. We know where and how the 'Ukraine Crisis' started and where it led. Are we to wait until there is conflagration and the most hellish of wars?
Where the cowardly perpetrators stand back and watch people and their worlds being destroyed...
Yes. Past, persistent protests changed the status quo. At a hefty price. And all of these gains are being destroyed with a wholesale ripping up of rights. At the stroke of a criminal's pen. How he gloats.
The criminal can do what he likes. The potential for violence and war is real. He is a terrorist.
Other nations know this. Some are with him, some against and others still willing to negotiate.
In the UK, we have Starmer who seems to be an 'appeaser', who seems to relish the role of middle-man between Europe and America. And other leaders still want, or need, to keep America on board.
The criminal seeks to have the glory and public demonstration of approval by King Charles III.
Ah well...there ya go...
Is there a deal to be made?
Do you think that will be the end of it?
Appeasing Putin is not the end of it. Not by a long chalk.
What proof do you have of that?
History of appeasement. Psychology.
Dictators are never satisfied with concessions or deals. They want more. European and Global expansion is in their sights. It's a double act.
Empires of ego.
Russia is already collapsing - needing the support of N Korea even to give a semblance of continuing the war. China now owns the world, though it too has economic troubles.
The place to look is at the collapse of the Roman Empire into corruption, and possibly Europe has enough of a cultural memory not to succumb yet again.
But everything depends on the economy. Economic decline is always blamed on the government (in the UK's case it was the EU 'government'), until the fascists are the government, and thereafter on foreigners. Thus economic decline leads inexorably towards fascism. The only hope is to identify the real cause of decline - the climate. Our accumulated labour of buildings and infrastructure and cultivation, aka the manmade environment is being burned, drowned, or blown away, and we are poorer.
Unfortunately this coincides with the left in a major transition from being the party of labour to being the party of the disenfranchised. Labour as such, trade unions, have lost their economic power due to automation, leaving the left scrambling for the same tawdry populist garb as the right. Thus in the UK, labour are in power, but their policies are indistinguishable from rightwing policies.
Humans are even losing their importance in the conduct of war, which Ukraine is showing can be largely better carried out by robotic machines guided by AI. Now if humans en mass no longer have economic or strategic value, can their moral worth sustain them in a godless world, that has reduced morality to sentiment and mere whim? We are all foreigners now.
Don't be ridiculous, the proof or disproof of any prediction whatsoever has to await the event or non-event.
Proof of future events is not possible. You are not being reasonable.
It's obviously you who is not being reasonable if you expect me to be satisfied with what little you have produced thus far.
Produce something better, or you may as well admit you've got nothing.
Thanks for providing a well-considered and informed analysis. A post of substance. Including UK politics and economic issues of decline and where that leads.
I think that the US is already being considered fascist and a rogue state by some.
Civil war is at the extreme end of the spectrum.
I don't think that is a choice, as such, it will be a case of escalation. Or the domino effect.
Nobody knows and that is what is scary.
It depends on the criminal...what actions he takes against the citizens who oppose his rule.
Who he will call traitors...
It is unreasonable to expect proof of future events. As in another reply to you:
Quoting unenlightened
Carry on.
You need to stop right there. This is not the issue of the OP. Nobody is arguing that peace is unacceptable. You are trolling and this is unacceptable.
I get that you're being painfully confronted with the shallowness of that view or what little evidence there exists to support it, but no need to pin the blame on me.
But one might argue that when the robbers and rapists are in your house, then peace is indeed unacceptable. I remember a peace-loving reverend was placed in this exact position, and decided that peace was the best option on the basis that his daughter being raped was a recoverable assault. He came to bitterly regret that choice in the aftermath. And what is true of one's home can apply also to one's neighbours and thus to one's country. Quoting Tzeentch
No. Putin, Trump, and Hitler are fascist dictators. The evidence that their words are not to be trusted is overwhelming, and therefore a peace without security guarantees from other parties whose word is a little more trustworthy is merely a pause in the aggression while sanctions are lifted and the aggressor consolidates their illegal gains and prepares for round 2. No, round 3 it would be.
I said it on behalf of my country, to Trump. In semi-jocular response to jorndoe's suggestion that we vote in their elections. Which, as a single state, would only give us 50 seats in Congress - 20-30 of them likely conservative - and two in the Senate. Not much of a bargain in return for our human rights, legal system, foreign policy, health care, oil, bauxite, water and lumber.
Quoting Tzeentch
Historical precedent is fairly persuasive. Not just Hitler: Alexander, Napoleon, Trajan, Victoria, Stalin, etc. Now Putin, spending his nation's resources and people to secure an insane legacy. Imperialists don't stop wanting more. For that matter, do you have any reason to think that Trump, who wanted Greenland, and now also wants Canada and Palestine, will stop if everybody gives in to him?
Quoting Truth Matters · Feb 14, 2025 · 3m:39s
Orlins is worried:
Quoting Eliza Orlins · Feb 16, 2025 · 1m:10s
Sorry, I just meant in that one election, and, given the campaign trails, and evidence that has since come about, I'd expect most Canucks (by far) to not vote P01135809. I was sort of joking, too. (Each province might be represented as a state?)
So you're against peace.
After all, peace is appeasement, and Putin is Hitler.
What do you suggest? Letting the Ukrainians fight and die until they are defeated totally? Starting World War 3? I presume you are volunteering to be the first to enter the trenches?
No one has said either of those things except you. Obviously, (except to you apparently), appeasement is not peace, but surrender. And equally obviously surrender is not a particularly good or necessarily peaceful outcome for those that do it.
And Putin is like Hitler in that he is an absolute and ruthless dictator with no respect for human life and huge territorial ambitions. And Trump is a wannabe.
Quoting Tzeentch
If Putin has designs on all of Europe, but after a 5th of Ukraine Russia is already on its last legs, then what are we worried about? At this rate it'll take several decades to even get through Ukraine.
But the Ukrainians are evidently fine on their own. Russia is on the verge of collapse and basically sending 80 year olds to the frontline - presumably without rifles and ammunition.
Etc. etc.
(Needless to say, I think this is a completely wrong view of what the battlefield currently looks like, but I doubt anything I say will get through to you.)
Also, the lack of enthousiasm to join the war is duly noted. But of course it's no problem if the Ukrainians keep fighting and having their sons sent back to them in bits and pieces. Somehow I predict you would be a lot less eager to prolong this war if you had to make similar sacrifices.
The armchair calls the sofa comfy.
Where's your proof? :rofl: You know that's not even an argument don't you. But you repeat it as if it is a strong point. Even if you were right and I am a hypocrite, that does exactly nothing to show that I am wrong. It's a feeble ad hominem for which you have no evidence whatsoever, and just shows how weak your case is.
I don't want to prolong the war for a single minute you idiot. But allowing Putin to dictate terms for a ceasefire would guarantee that the war will be resumed at his convenience. and the evidence for this is that it already happened like this; he took Crimea, restocked, and attacked again. There is no peace available without security guarantees, or absolute defeat for one side or the other.
Along similar lines, from Bernie Sanders:
Quoting The Guardian - Bernie Sanders
Where are all the voices of the opposition? Does America not have other strong Democrat leaders? Do they only come out at Election time? I'm sure that there those who are fighting for human rights but they need to be more obvious and in our faces to counteract the ugliness and false information of the criminal and his team. They are all over the joint with their loud, brash, aggressive actions and lying words. Words that stick in people's minds, even when/if they are shown to be false.
Find the right words and spell it out so that people can't say they didn't know.
I'm not the one suggesting we stop the peace talks because 'Putin is like Hitler, and peace is appeasement'.
Pointing out your hypocrisy isn't an ad hominem. It shows how shallow your position, and that of others, actually is.
You're whinging about Trump cutting a deal, not realizing that a peace agreement would spare the lives of thousands - a sacrifice you yourself are apparently not prepared to make.
This kind of thing has been happening throughout all the other threads related to Trump and Ukraine.
I think it best not to encourage this troll.
Thus you have been harping.
Death is peaceful.
Quoting Tzeentch
Are you sure those are the only options? Where is your proof?
Maybe you should all band together and try to produce something resembling an argument. :rofl:
Peace at the price of sacrificing a Ukraine. Sure: he won't miss Ukrainian independence. Then Poland? Sure, why not? Romania? Slovakia? Who needs them anyway? Hungary might be spared, so long as its government capitulates absolutely, rather than just the present lip-service. By then, Putin may be dead, but who knows what the next emperor has his eye on?
Fair enough. All of these conditions concerning the conflict have been discussed in the 17,500 comments resting comfortably in the Ukraine Thread. The only difference now is that Tzeentch has a champion in the field.
Europe gave 50% of military aid to Ukraine and actually more than the US when all aid is considered.
It's the time of our awakening: do we continue supporting Ukraine when raging Trump stops all aid to Ukraine? Do we let Ukraine fall?
I genuinely hope that Europe really awakes and does support freedom from tyranny and imperialism.
Update:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/19/britain-and-france-working-on-plans-for-reassurance-force-to-protect-ukraine
Raging Trump is also stopping aid to other countries that will soon be up for grabs, including several that will also expand as bases for anti-American - and very probably anti-European - terrorism.
Quoting ssu
So do I. But they also have to take a broader view and team up with pro-democratic factions in Asia, Africa and South America.
PS - Earlier, I forgot to mention Panama among his imperialist targets. Right after the national parks are opened to drilling and mining.
And North America (Canada). ;)
I'm guessing things would have to keep up pace with Trumpistan, though, at least in some respects.
Not have to, and I wish we could all see that resistance is imperative. But some of the elements have been here for some time already. There is a better than even chance that the next government will be conservative. How close to the extreme right they'll go is still an open question. I admit to not sleeping well these nights.
So has Vance.... It's easy to say no when your self-interest is not at stake.
This is interesting but could do with clarification for those not in the know.
In what way is Poilievre a 'nuisance' ? What and when did he say "No" and why?
I admit my ignorance.
I've read that he is a Canadian, Tory leader in opposition with an eye to winning the next election. An aggressive populist. It seems he was/is against Trudeau's 'Team Canada' approach to the criminal who wants to take over Canada. He kept pressure on Trudeau with various accusations and criticisms.
But then Trudeau announced his resignation. Not long after that, the criminal was sworn in as US President and so, tactics were changed.
Now, everybody is talking about the criminal. He is consuming all political space.
Threatening Canada in all kinds of ways.
So, now the Tory message is 'Canada First'. This will appeal to voters. To put Canadians first.
Cue increased patriotism and nationalism.
And the questions, I suppose, of who is considered 'Canadian'?
Will this be a Trumpian MCGA? It sounds very much like it. McGa?
Vance may well have been against the criminal in the past but now he is excelling himself.
It was his speech that provoked the European Crisis. A Trumpian tirade to refuel populism in Europe.
Quoting BBC - Vance attacks Europe
That is only one example of how he 'questioned' European democracy.
And now we have the criminal, fascist US President calling Zelensky a dictator, in retaliation for Z telling him that he was living in a 'disinformation bubble'.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/19/ukraine-zelenskyy-says-trump-living-in-russian-disinformation-bubble
How do you envisage this happening? Who are these factions?
Democracy itself does not guarantee human rights, fairness or justice. As clearly seen in USA and elsewhere. But, yes, it is better than the alternatives.
I am glad that it is not a hard-right Tory or populist Trumpian Farage who is in charge of the UK right now.
Not all who partake in democracy hold a progressive vision.
I agree that there needs to be a more cohesive and concerted global effort.
However, Europe needs to deal with its own crisis, first and foremost. Fast!
It's like when flying, passengers are instructed to put their own oxygen mask on first.
If you run out of oxygen, you can't help anyone else. If you die, you can't help.
What can be done to prevent the swing to an extreme right, once the Tories are in power?
Or what can be done to improve the chances of progressive parties in the election?
I think many people are anxious and uncertain of how this will affect their own lives.
Already, there were/are many in crisis situations, now those in relative comfort feel under attack.
Fear fuelling anger and resentment. Or v.v.
Who knows where this will lead...
The progressives need to get their act together. Give a clear message and counteract the lies.
Show their faces and speak out loud! A fresh and higher profile to rinse out the Trumpian mug shots.
Who and where are they?
Compulsory voting?
Education of the citizens.
For participation to be effective, we should know the relevant facts, be able to evaluate political arguments, and understand where our interests lie.
Education - how people can be manipulated. Education of the importance of words.
Education about emotions and anger. Educate to enable good questioning.
***
But then, what recourse if things don't turn out as expected. If chaos ensues.
How do we make rogue, criminal Presidents accountable?
When constitutional laws are overturned. When trillionaires and multi-billionaires call the tune.
Did we vote for them? For them to enrich themselves at our expense?
Did we vote for dictatorship? Perhaps some did, without realising the full implications.
We pay the price for ignorance.
By the time you know what is happening, it's too late to ask for your vote back.
Quoting AmityI
No. It's only a right and can only be a right.
Quoting Amity
Yes. Starting with an education system that educates how the democracy works and general knowledge about the economy, history and international relations. You cannot have a democracy with ignorant citizens.
Quoting Amity
It's up to the people themselves. How strong are your institutions? Is your population engaged in politics.
Just ask yourself: Have you been active in your country's politics, are you a member of a political party or have been at least a candidate in elections? Or among your friends and family, do you have these people?
I haven't been active myself, other than consistently have voted. But I have friends that have been candidates and know from childhood one member of Parliament and have in my work several times met and discussed things with members of Parliament.
Yes. And doesn't that take someone to start the process, whatever name you want to call them.
From the article, the plan is:
I don't know how much of this is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. But isn't it a start and better than nothing.
Just standing by isn't an option, is it?
What do you propose?
It's only a very bad option.
And Q&A debates about current political parties and their policies. Without focus on personalities.
Testing understanding and arguing from a position opposite to your own. To better understand other perspectives. I would say that voters should have a capability test but that would not be realistic!
Quoting ssu
No. I didn't realise the importance of politics until late in life. I found it boring.
I only knew that Tories were bad! I didn't have that education that is sorely needed.
At some point, I did consider joining a party but not convinced it was worthwhile. Also, indecisive.
The thought of being a candidate never even crossed my mind. Too busy with other life activities and then too late, for health reasons.
I have friends who have strong political opinions who are not activists. We all vote.
So, there you have it. I am probably like most of the population.
Nevertheless, I am engaged in an effort to discover what is going on.
Quoting ssu
You are fortunate. I am still very much in the process of learning. And asking questions.
There is no clear route to hold dictators, criminal Presidents to account, is there? Before irreparable damage is done, is there?
No legislation. No way of turning back the tide until the next election, even if that is allowed...
I'm curious. Why did you delete all your posts?
Oh, that's a shame. I often write without an order in mind! I don't always know where my thoughts and questions will lead.
I understand impassioned responses. You could have returned to edit your posts but I respect your decision. Thank you for your honest reply. Cheers! :sparkle:
With a great deal of perspicacity, tact and healthy by-pass-the-US commerce.
Quoting Amity
The governments of Cape Verde, Seychelles, and South Africa; Taiwan, Japan and South Korea; Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Jamaica, plus, of course Mexico, with whom Canada does a lot of trade already and who should be fairly disgruntled with Trumpism by now. Besides making pacts with established governments, the anti-Trump confederacy should also support democratic opposition in non-democratic counrties, as well as aid to agencies that promote health, justice and education. Oh, and as many micro-loans as possible.
Quoting Amity
The one advantage it does have is the periodic user-review: the people are able to remove bad governments by legal, orderly means and opt for something they perceive as better. Even if it's not, they can still turn back next election. Once a dictatorship is entrenched, builds fortresses and removes all access points where the people could influence decisions and arms itself against all opposition.
Quoting Amity
Nothing short of organized resistance - which is costly.
Quoting Amity
Tighter organization. Identification of pressure-points - both positive and negative*. Simple direct communication with the voters, addressing their immediate concerns.
(*The single biggest misstep in the Harris campaign was that ad by Julia Roberts, and the Handmaid one; more generally, the loud harping on reproductive freedom. The Dems totally failed to understand the prevailing misogyny, especially among the non-white, working class and young voters.)
Vance is comfortable adjusting his sheep outfit as needed. His pow wow with the Alternative for Germany party coincides with AfD MEP Hans Neuhoff calling for normalization with Russia:
I think the point has been passed; we're in for the bumpiest ride in human history.
Thank you for the video. Times radio interviewing AfD MEP, Hans Neuhoff.
So, arguments plainly given for the need to deal with Putin. Economic and energy interests being the main concern. The view is that Putin as being protective of Russia, hence the need to attack Ukraine.
What caught my interest was when the presenter introduced an AfD policy; the preference to have larger families than more immigrants. (01:04 - 01:080).
This is a recurring theme of the hard-right. And is in line with Trumpian politics.
From an earlier post:
This is concerning. How do they propose to make all this baby-making happen?
And will the babies need to be of a certain race, colour and pedigree...
Put Canada first - not Canadians. Yup, MAGA Jr. It means whatever he says it does. Tax cuts for the rich owner class, which in practice means curtailing social services for the poor. Invest in domestic industry, which actually means rapid automation, lower wages and union-busting. Support construction, which usually means high-end condos in residential districts, pushing out the residents and the 'development' of agricultural land and green spaces for the upper middle class. More spending on the military, which means less on health and education. And, of course, the eternal cry of "Drill, baby, drill!"
Economic self-sufficiency is a good idea. The way capitalists go about it does not benefit the people.
Quoting Amity
And when the right wing is in charge, who sets the curriculum? Rampaging Trump wants to squash public schools and replace them with them education-for-profit and religious indoctrination. Given what previous conservative governments have done to education, no doubt a Polievre administration would follow a similar route. So.... where is all this improved electorate through education supposed to come from?
Not commercial mass media! And the public broadcasters will soon lose their funding, if not their licenses.
Quoting Amity
Sound's familiar. Keep the wimmin barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, for the greater glory of the Fatherland. Or Stalin's slogan to the effect that childbearing is the duty of married women and a laudable public service from unmarried ones. That'll load 'em down with responsibility and fear; keep them out of politics.
Exactly this. And less of the party pantomime and complacency.
Organised resistance may well be costly but so is not doing anything.
There was plenty of money being thrown around at USA Election time.
By then, it is too late and the money could have been better spent.
The Democrats need to get their act together all year round. The time and energy of electioneering activists harnessed not just in door-to-door and phone calls. I don't really know how it works or what really goes on to help people at ground level. Just giving my impressions of out-of-touch leaders and politicians.
Quoting Vera Mont
The Dems seem not to get what is staring everybody else in the face.
Or if they do, then they have a strange way of getting the message over.
I hope they sort themselves out as soon as.
Like a primary modus operandi of dragging others/opponents down with it ("beating them with experience"); not exactly a role model, and he's seemingly not going that way.
I'm not getting an impression of bona fides concern, trustworthiness, strength/ability to stand up to others, including foreign.
The politics, which should be the topic I suppose, are the usual these days, some go "left", some go "right", ..., shopping at the political supermarket.
Maybe "nuisance" wasn't the right word, apologies for that.
Actually, the Biden administration accomplished quite a lot for the people" class="external-link">http://accomplished quite a lot for the people.* Remember, they came in after a disastrous Trump-administered pandemic and civil unrest and still made so much progress. (It's a longish article, and will probably disappear as soon as one of the trumpets learns of it.)
But, while Trump was out rabble-rousing and chest-thumping for those three years (he basically never stopped campaigning since 2008.), they just got on with the job, and the big broadcast networks kept it all very quiet. They really do need to speak up, celebrate their successes and stay in touch with the grass roots between elections.
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge. As always, your posts are substantive and thought-provoking. Helping to keep me - and others - engaged with your engaging approach. :flower:
OK, thanks. I now have a better understanding of Canadian politics than I did first thing this morning! :sparkle:
I think this is absolutely crucial for the whole system of democracy to work. It's not boring and above all, it's crucial that people actually do have a link to the actual political system. I don't think people especially at the communal level are weasels or are trying to make a career out of it. It's many times that these people have more of a duty. So if the conservatives are bad, then meet your local labour, go really to listen to them.
I cannot overstate the effect of what it means to really have a small discussion about political issues as we have here with members of parliament. They usually are quite sane and far more intelligent and aware than you get from the media.
Far too easily politics and those involved in it carry like a stigma. At worst, they really in the Third World are thugs, who use violence. It's the alienation of people from the system that drives them to people like Trump or the populists, who depict other parties as the enemy.
One crucial issue is that you can talk about politics even with strangers. That's the first thing that happen in real authoritarian regimes: nobody talks politics. It's far too dangerous.
:up: Poilievre is susceptible enough
Right on, Brother Bear! The news makes the running of our national and provincial affairs sound boring - in good times. In good times, too, when we have no crises to be alarmed about and no outrage to shake our puny little fists at, we find entertainment elsewhere. Most people can tell you more about the Star Wars franchise, or their football club's performance, than the doings of the people we entrust with making our laws and spending our tax money. As long as government does a good job, we tend to ignore it. We don't notice corruption creeping in, foreign, special interest and financial influence guiding government decisions. We don't notice until we're well on the way to frog soup.
Quoting ssu
Joke from the old 'communist' Russia: Two men are standing on the corner, waiting for a streetcar. A Mercedes goes by, shortly followed by a Lada. One man turns to the other, "Tell me, comrade, which is the better car?" The other answers without hesitation, "The Lada, of course." "If you think that," asys the first man, "you don't know cars." "Oh, I know cars. But I don't know you,"
Yes, yes and YES!
Re: education and involvement.
Quoting ssu
Yes. But what, where and how?
Quoting Vera Mont
I think our education system still provides for political literacy in the curriculum but not sure of all the details. I found this but there has to be more:
'The resources could equally be used or adapted to engage parents, guardians and carers in the discussion. They also provide an extensive list of external resources which can be used by practitioners.'
https://education.gov.scot/resources/you-decide-a-political-literacy-resource/
***
Quoting ssu
That sounds wonderful. How does that work in practice?
I don't know that people even know who their MP is. Never mind, their contact number.
The MPs have difficulties of their own re increasing levels of threat. And accessibility issues:
Quoting Sky News - New MPs struggle to set up offices
It is dangerous even in non-authoritarian regimes. Our political representatives are at increased risk from threats and attacks. There is so much anger out there, usually stoked by hard-right extremists.
From Feb 2024:
Quoting BBC News
You don't have to look far to see why people are 'emboldened' to attack.
Their role models of the hard-right with their hate-filled rhetoric encouraging 'wars' against the 'enemy'.
The Jan 6th insurrection. The criminals now pardoned by the Criminal-in-Charge US President.
It's good and patriotic to attack or hang 'traitors'.
People are scared when e.g. even the wearing of masks during Covid was politicised.
The Dems for. The Idiots against.
Imagine being attacked for being vulnerable or health conscious...no matter your political colour.
[ Sorry, off on a rant! Time for a break, methinks...]
Part of it is their indifference - some of which comes from past disappointment. Part of it is that representatives are not readily accessible in person. But the incumbents do - in my riding, anyway - send around periodic newsletters with their contact information at the constituency office as well as the one in Ottawa or Toronto. The losing candidates don't have money for that, and they're busy with their regular life; don't know if they'll even run again. However, there is nothing stopping them from maintaining a website, or at least a presence on the party association website. This is not a superb production, though better than the NDP's. I do wish asking for money were not the banner headline, but, well, there is an election coming up. Not a hope in hell for my God & cattle conservative riding... I vote anyway. And I've attended small group meetings with candidates, as well as informal discussions with the local oh-so-righteous Humanist chapter. (The mean well, really.) The Ontario public tv network has a program called The Agenda, where they discuss issues with experts as well as politicians, and they film some of these in college auditoriums where the guest takes questions from the audience.
Also, if you're upset or concerned about something, you can always write to their office, express your views on social media. I'm sure they would be even happier to hear from constituents who approve of something they did.
What they're really not good at is listening to suggestions from the voters.
It's a reality that I experienced in my youth. I have told this, but I'll tell it again. My parents were scientists and they invited many visiting scientist to our house. Twice were there scientists from the Communist bloc, which both encounters taught me a lot. First came two Soviet women. In pairs, of course, as they had to check each other. At first the dinner table conversations were science and family and how lovely places are in the summer. Then came Glasnost, openes, and the second time only one came. And basically the first thing she told to us was "Did you know that Stalin killed my father?" Her father's mistake was that he had been an aircraft engineer and had studied in Germany, which naturally made him a spy. In the 50's her mother had been informed about the death of his husband and said that it had been an error. The other example was a lively latino man from Cuba, named Jesus. He could visit Finland as he was a card carrying member of the Communist party of Cuba and a staunch believer in Castro. It was 1989 and I asked him what he thought about the events in Romania (which was having it's revolution). My father tried to show with his hand that this wasn't a good topic to talk about. But Jesus got so excited, yes, he had been in Romania and Ceaucescu's secret police, Securitate, had jailed him for a while. Because, he obviously was a foreigner as he didn't look Romanian. And we had a lively discussion on Cuba, Finnish economic history and how he hoped that Cuba could be like Sweden. When I was taking Jesus back to his hotel (I had just gotten my drivers licence), Jesus admitted that he had been for years in East Germany and in the Soviet Union and never had he talked about politics with foreigners. Never.
Those encounters made a huge impact on me. Now people are usually friendly and nice, but once there is this authoritarian rule forced down upon them, it does change things how they behave. And of course now Russia has gone back to those days of the Soviet Union. Russia has far more political prisoners now than during the time of Brezhnev or later. Expats are really frightened what has happened to their country.
Hence this is one of those true alarm bells, a "canary in the coal mine": when open political debate dies, when politics becomes too heated, too divisive or people become too scared to talk politics with people they don't know so well, the foundations of a democracy are threatened.
Social media and it's algorithms is one thing to blame. But yes, I would encourage people to be active in politics. Even more active than I am.
I'm pretty sure Trump will shut down PBS and NPR, as soon as he finds out they exist.
We left Hungary in in 1956, November. I was old enough to understand quite a lot of what the adults said in murmurs around the card table. My mother went out to watch the night they pulled Stalin's statue down and smashed it with hammers. We spent some days in the cellar and stood in line for bread and milk on the quiet days. A couple of young boys from our building had rifles; one was killed. Finally, we had to leave because the Russians were winning and my father didn't always speak in murmurs; he had too much of a temper - but was such a good fellow that the policeman down the hall gave him a warning.
The funny thing is, I was a pretty good little communist then - it sounded right, the way the ideals were presented - and I'm a marginal communist now. The government wasn't. They persuade the well-meaning with lies. Fascists persuade the angry and aggrieved with the promise of power and revenge.
***
Quoting Vera Mont
Thank you both. It is stories like this and worse that people need to hear. To realise how lives change under a fascist movement and dictatorship. How we take our freedom of speech for granted. We don't use it enough to present or maintain the progressive vision.
The positive aspects e.g. of migrants and the EU, haven't been promoted by politicians, who may well fear that this would lose them votes. And perhaps because their own beliefs are swinging away and they sit on the fence.
In the UK, this resulted in Brexit. Lies and propaganda painted on a bus. Like:
More here:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/final-say-brexit-referendum-lies-boris-johnson-leave-campaign-remain-a8466751.html
***
We need to see the faces. We need to hear the words. Of positivity. Not fear or hatred.
To reach beyond the superficiality - oh, he is a man's man re Farage. What a character - Boris.
The cult of personality and charismatic showmanship - are we still mesmerised by it?
I've heard more from Bernie Sanders lately than ever before. See previous post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/970530
A Sad Moment in American History - Bernie Sanders
***
In Germany, a major issue seems to be that of migrants. Apparently, according to the fascistic far-right, we need less of them and more of their own kind of babies.
We are in, what some call, a Discrimination Crisis:
Quoting The Guardian - Germany's Election
Everyone should stand up against far-right views when people are attacked and live in fear of their lives.
But this is where fear enters the picture. The bullies are big, powerful cowards. Criminals.
It is not just a 'sad time in American history', it is a revival of a terrible European past.
Trumpian tentacles have a global spread. That is their Regressive Vision.
Oligarchs are in charge. Their global vision is power and increased riches for themselves.
Greed beyond belief. The people be damned.
This is not the time to be silent.
Where are those whose voices should be ringing out. Those Democrats who lost the USA Election.
If serious about their professed beliefs, they should not be licking their wounds, or working on next election strategy. They should be doing what is necessary. Now!
Perhaps they are and I'm just not seeing it. That is the problem.
Hungary had it's uprising in 1956 crushed by the Russian boot, yet Orban is now pro-Russian seems a bit puzzling. Putin is quite the similar Russian as the Soviets were in 1956, only doesn't have the intact Empire that Soviet Union had.
And Trump is falling totally to Putin, with the dictator telling him lies of possibilities of investments in Russian energy and mineral wealth. Which is all bullshit, he won't give anything to a fools and Putin's idea isn't to open up his country.
It has been eye-opening.
However, I think it is time for me to stop posting.
The more I learn, the more I know.
But knowing, even at a superficial level, isn't really helping me.
I find it dispiriting. And I should be attending to other matters.
Thanks again. Take care. Enjoy what you can, when you can. :pray: :flower:
Keep your good spirit and a stiff upper lip. These jerks are not the only people in the scrum.
Ours, too, though it's under a lot financial pressure. The US one suffers greatly from state governments that have been dressing right forver. There were a few reforms after the world wars and a few more due to the civil rights movement, but all the old prejudice is still there. Now, they've added science denial to the list of falsehoods they teach children.
Quoting Amity
That's what the Harris campaign attempted, and I fully approved of their approach. They simply underestimated the racism, sexism, xenophobia and paranoia that had seized so much of their population. And they didn't phrase their positive message in slogans of five words or less; they hammered on the one that least concerned men. They should have hit their contribution to wages and unions a lot harder and abortion, not nearly as hard.
It's difficult for candidates to find just the right tone to reach the most voters. If they try to gather in one demographic, another feels left slighted.
Quoting Amity
This is a perennial theme with them: racial and/or cultural purity. It resonates with all those people who were weaned on patriotic songs and stories. That national identity I mentioned earlier is a very, very strong motivator. And for a great many men, young ones in particular, the idea of dependent, subservient women is very, very appealing. It gets worse: we now have a generation of young people who were never socialized at all; they've grown up digital, with 'social' media, sports, violent films and games and pornography. They don't know how to talk to real people face to face; they're more alienated and dissatisfied - hungry, they know not what for - than ever, and totally superfluous in an automated world.
I've always loved Bernie. He should have been elected president in 2016.
Orban's stance is not so puzzling when you realize that he, too, is a populist dictator wannabe (Hungarians have been calling him Victator for years), without the power of a Putin or Trump, so he can only hang onto their coattails. Secondly, if he turned against Putin, he knows Hungary would be next after Ukraine - there's usable bauxite and fruit, but also, geographically, it's a nice buffer between the east and west. Putin wants the big USSR back, with no interference from the west. Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were never of much interest or value to the West, until the 199'0's, when they were opened up to capitalist predation.
Well, before the 1990's they were behind the Iron Curtain and basically it would be WW3 to mingle with them. The Iron Curtain was also in the minds of the Western alliance. As is now the idea of all Russians being on the side of Putin.
This was first seen in Hungary actually, when Eisenhower didn't intervene. As I've said on the Ukraine thread, Russia has always tried to mimick not only the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, but especially the military operation Danube, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It tried to repeat at the the start of the first Chechen War and tried again to do this in the start of this war in February-March, and utterly failed in the operation of capturing Kyiv.
Yes, and as soon as that curtain came down, all the vultures who had been waiting for a chance to exploit those countries came flapping in. They bought up government properties cheap, took over industries, agriculture and resource extraction before appropriate taxes or regulations could be put into effect by the weak, divided and broke new government. And there were plenty of opportunists inside, waiting for the opportunity to sell out their country. They've been trying, clumsily, half-heartedly, to clean up the damage ever since, but couldn't, which is why so many disenchanted people and reactionaries put Victor Orban in power. (idiots!!)
Simple enough for wanna be dictators to understand.
sad smile
This is part of the European Crisis. A tipping point.
It is linked to religion. I posted something earlier. It bears repeating. It is the first time I've heard Farage talk in this way:
Religious rhetoric is a divisive strategic tool, seen as a vote winner given Trump's victory.
Britiish Rightwingers are singing from the same hymn sheet. Hallelujah!
Will this work in the UK's mainly secular society? It seems to be gaining traction.
This is the message from the ARC conference. Get it? The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.
All western civilisation is at a tipping point because it has lost touch with its 'Judeo-Christian' foundation.
No. The tipping point, this European and Global Crisis, is because of your greed for riches and power. And lying through your dishonest teeth.
***
There has been an infiltration of the US Evangelical conservative Christian groups in the UK. MPs have been lobbied on issues such as abortion and assisted dying. The restriction of women's reproductive rights. Women are reduced to being baby producers.
Quoting The Guardian - UK Populists mix faith and politics
The article points out that the UK is not similar to the US. Religion doesn't play a major part in our life.
However...in politics it does.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at University of Manchester:
Quoting The Guardian
There is clearly a danger coming from those who are appropriating Christian values for their own political ends. Those greedy, self-interested Trumpian liars who hold the Bible aloft to sway their believers.
The Criminal who thinks himself God or King. His rich, powerful, corrupt Gang who remove all human rights at a stroke. To rape the Earth of all its goodness, to enrich selves at the cost of everyone else. For the sake of Peace?
Why is the Criminal so intent on seeking the honour of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize?
And what if he isn't so honoured?
Well, let's see.
'The World Peace Prize' - organised by oligarchs for Right Royalty. Yup!
A Gold Throne Toilet just the job:
Quoting Wiki - America (Cattelan)
The fact is that he holds and lives his honest and progressive beliefs. He speaks plainly and clearly to camera. He knows how to reach out in a 5 minute YouTube clip. He spells it out. Ending with his hope that, in this critical moment, every American, regardless of political perspective will stand tall and say:
"YES to Democracy. NO to oligarchy, and NO to authoritarianism!"
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes, I know what Harris and team attempted.
I am talking about NOW.
Where is the messaging, where is the attempt to fight back or even to tell it like it is?
How are they helping?
I'd even forgotten her name.
It is also dangerous. Women are increasingly being targeted and eliminated from political positions.
Many are fearful of females gaining power. They are consequently reduced in status.
Baby-making machines by whatever means.
Quoting The Atlantic - Four More Years of Unchecked Misogyny
Crisis within a Crisis within a Crisis.
The least we can do is be aware and vigilant. To defend and protect the vulnerable against the abusers. To speak out when we can. To be together in humanity. To forget small differences and join forces. Educate, inform and encourage to vote.
The People v the Dictators. The winners will be...
Those in power dictate the power. They can sap the energy of people, they kill and destroy in a predictable pattern. So, why are they never nipped in the bud? The signs are all too clear. Lessons should have been learned from history, if not psychology.
Is it that some are energised by the promise of the deal-makers and breakers? Hypnotised by the charismatic? A desire to belong in a cult of strong brotherhood. Tribal behaviour.
No matter who is in charge, the world and the environment moves on.
Dictators despoil the planet to enrich themselves.
The degradation of nature is already affecting the wellbeing of billions.
Quoting Earth Org. - 15 biggest environmental problems of 2025
The Global Crisis.
Trump's slogan: "Drill, baby, drill!" is influencing others.
The call to transition away from fossil fuels has been weakened. Many are following suit.
If the US can do it, why not us?
For example:
Quoting BBC News
Trump does not like windfarms. In Scotland, he met his match when he launched legal moves against them. But now what?
Previously:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Trump_and_Scotland
Trump has more power than ever before. Scotland watch this space.
***
European Crisis (continued)
Trump is intent on making a deal with Ukraine.
Allegedly for the sake of peace. He is no peace-maker, he is a bully.
He is going all out for mineral wealth and making demands and threats to realise his ambition.
Quoting The Guardian
This is extortion and blackmail. Sen. Van Hollen speaks to the shame of it: [embedded video]
Quoting The Sentinel - Van Hollen Blasts Trump for Betrayal
Because he never got over Obama getting one. I think he wants two, by whatever means, just to one-up Obama.
Quoting Amity
And here's more of it, coming to a province near me. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/csis-antisemitism-violent-extremists-1.7463398?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
Quoting Amity
The messages are being suppressed by the Trump mafia. Facebook and Twitter have gone over to the dark side; the broadcast media are shaking in their boots, and the opposition is increasingly threatened with violence. Soon, they will also be persecuted by the trumpized legal and financial agencies.
They're underground, gathering resources for the next showdown.* The protests and outrage against the Trufia's more extreme actions have begun; even church groups are turning openly against them.
*That's a guess, not something I know.
Not enough momentum yet, but the mid-term elections should be interesting. Trump may try to steal them, or there may be armed confrontations at the polling stations - anything can happen, including a strong Democratic majority.... but more likely a civil war.
According to some pundits, they can only do this by shifting farther right. To me, it seems that would just slow the decline until a more competent and less insane spokesman takes the extremist lead. Quoting Amity
Sounds good. How?
Yeah, one-upmanship is the name of the game.
Quoting Vera Mont
Media outlets are still available. Bernie Sanders seems to have mastered the art.
Use of YouTube. Also in speaking out on an organised grass roots tour.
They should not be 'undergound' in hiding. It shows weakness. There is always the threat of violence for politicians. Unfortunately, security has to be increased due to death threats. But they must live their lives. As do others who have other daily fears and uncertainties. Basic survival.
If they can't speak and listen to the people all year round, then they don't deserve their support. I hope this is happening, even if it is not publicised.
Of course, they will show up at the next pantomime. But now is the moment of crisis, for real. For ordinary people no matter their politics, religion, class or race.
Thanks for the link re strategy of moving more to the right.
I think if they are sensible, they should listen to those whose votes made the difference. Those who swing. Depending.
Discover the main issues of concern. Right now. And address them.
Even listening will make an impact. Take the time to show you care. Connect and develop trust.
Take appropriate action to solve problems. Then, evaluate the outcomes. Review and revise.
They have 4 years to do this personal, progressive work. To earn respect.
Above all, people need to see their faces, hear their voice, know who they are and what they stand for.
From the article:
That is obvious, even to me! But there is no clear mover and shaker, is there? Perhaps, it would be better not to have a single person but a group. A close, collaborative team. Is that possible?
Where is the leadership?
Quoting Vera Mont
If I knew that, I would be the bestest most benevolent dictator in the bigliest of all worlds. Complete with a full hand of Nobel Prizes.
Perhaps best discussed in another thread? If it hasn't been already.
Yes, there is a lot of good, progressive stuff on You Tube. Robert Reich, a brilliant economist, The Meidas Touch network, Democracy Now some good series on law and social affairs. And tyhe public broadcast media are still operating.
These people have been speaking up, explaining, attempting to educate the public - for years. But they failed to mobilize, persuade, convince and consolidate a large enough voting bloc. And they cannot reach the right, the religious, the disaffected and the indifferent, who simply don't tune in - and the right has more, louder and better funded platforms. There, too, it's a contest of reason vs rage-stoking. Quoting Amity
Sure, but who would endanger his or her family to make themselved look strong. They lost the stage for now: the media are focused on Trump's depredations and that's what the masses are paying attention to. No point in individual grandstanding, anyway; they need to work out a strategy and send out a single, coherent message. Bernie's different: he's always spoken as he does, is familiar to the viewers and too old to have anything to lose.
He had the leisure to do nothing but gripe and snipe. Indeed, he never stopped campaigning and propagandizing the whole time he was president and did nothing remotely presidential, leaving a shambles to clean up. When Biden was in office, the Dems were getting the job done, in the mistaken belief that the record would speak for them. The system is so badly skewed toward the splashy and shocking and against the sensible and positive, it's hard to be heard on commercial media unless you're screaming. However, the things he's doing now are getting the same attention as his screaming did, so the public has to realize what dangerous criminals the Joker, Mr. Moneybags and the Kennedy Mutant are. That should go a long way toward the necessary change.
And I'm extremely suspicious of courting what has become 'the middle' - what used to be the right only a couple of decades ago. Even the lamentable Shrub didn't try to tear down the country. Their concerns are: "The Hispanics are taking my job and my inheritance."; "The women are taking my power."; "The progressives are sidelining my Gawd." and "Make the prices and rents go down without regulating capitalists." The proper way to 'address' those concerns would be: "Stop whining, do your chores and share your toys!" but they don't want tough love, only tough hate.
Thank you, and others, for all that you have given. Everything written so well and easy to follow. Providing insight into the stuff of life and politics. Thought-provoking and challenging.
There is so much going on right now. I need to cut this thread loose. It has been enlightening but, for me, it is time to pop out of political commentary. It's too easy to become obsessed, with daily checking.
Best wishes :flower:
We don't need further escalting conflicts at this moment. Russia doesn't need it either. What it needed was to not have a US-vasal state on its border. So open up diplomacy with Russia, agree to neutrality of Ukraine and end the war. If the US leaves Europe as it plans to do, a lot of the tension will go away... Russia felt threathend by the US, not that much by Europe itself.
Build up European security and foreign policy apart from the US, and try to normalise relations with Russia and China. This is the only way forward long term. We will need them (and they need us) to keep the continent stable, we need them economically, and we might need them to stop the US from derailing the world into a downward spiral.
We should defend our values, but stop trying to impose them on others... if we keep making geo-politics about morality we won't get anywhere.
The present US government wouldn't recognize morality if it was rotting chained upside-down in its dungeon. None of this BS is about morality.
Poor little Russia was not shaking in its boots at the prospect of NATO, whicyh has never waged a war of aggression, getting one more member - that had been next door all along. But the countries were under Russian occupation not so long ago, especially Ukraine where Stalin perpetrated his greatest atrocity, have plenty to fear from Russia. Putin didn't attack Ukraine out of fear: he wants the grain and the minerals, as well as the territory.
All the oligarchs are out to eat as much of the world's wealth as possible before closing time.
Just how do you imagine that working? What interest do China or Russia have in a stable and independent Europe? None. There's only two ways to have a stable and independent geopolitical position: 1) Be a great / hegemonic power, 2) play off hegemonic powers against each other.
Everyone else ends up in one sphere of influence or another. At least that is what history teaches us.
Obviously Europe can cooperate with powers like China or Russia, but to expect a benevolent cooperation seems a bit naive. There is no equivalent alternative to US hegemony. If the US retreats, as appears incresingly likely, the result is instability which can easily result in wars.
(Feb 19, 2025) The Kremlin feels threatened by loss of control over Ukraine. NATO talk gave them their excuse.
If Europe builds up a unified European security and foreign policy to replace Nato it could become one of the powers in a multi-polar world. It's not going to be easy, but with an economy 10 or more times the size of Russia it shouldn't be impossible either.
The US has waged wars of aggression, and that's 2/3 of the NATO. Not wanting an alliance specifically designed to keep your country in check, on your border, seems pretty reasonable to me.
The US and NATO are separate entities. Why do you think the US wars of aggression required a coalition of consenting nations? Only four of the thirty-two NATO members were involved in Iraq and six in Afghanistan - nowhere near two thirds.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
So, you can understand why Ukraine wanted to join NATO. They've been under threat from Russia their whole lives.
In terms of market, a disunited and splintered EU offers much the same market and the nations can be played against each other to avoid moves that threaten China's interests.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Obviously it doesn't want a world war. But China cares about a lot more then just selling products, otherwise they would not invest so much into expanding their power projection capabilities.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
My problem with that is that multi-polar worlds aren't stable and degenerate into imperial spheres of influence, usually in the course of wars.
They will try to play nations against eachother, but now that the US has forfaited its role as garantor, a European security is what make the most sense for Europe in this kind of world. Geo-political forces are driving it in that direction.
Quoting Echarmion
Maybe you could be right. Big imperial powers tend to become unstable too over time and split or dissolve, it's not certain for example that the US will still be there in a few decades the way they are going at the moment.
2/3 in terms of military/power. And I don't think the current US administration is all that worried about forming coalitions.
Ofcourse I understand it from the perspective of the Ukranians. But that's what I mean with not making it about morality. Europa had just been told to take care of it's own security after been asleep for 70 years. The economy isn't doing to hot, and you have the US waving with tariffs and supporting pro-Russian Far-right parties all over Europe. Should Europe have to carry a drawn out war against Russia, and devote a lot of its allready strained budget to the military, where do you think this is going? It's a trap strategically, and would make sure Europe will become technologically dependant on the US for decades to come because that's where it would be forced to buy its weapons.
The question mark can be dropped.
Yesterday's scenes in the Oval Office horrified the world.
Dealing for Peace. Trump sees this as a game, whereby he holds all the cards, and Zelensky holds none. There was an angry and troubling exchange with bully boy Vance adding to the hostility.
What Zelensky wants: a long-lasting peace with security guarantees before any cease-fire. This is to deter further Russian aggression. He looks to America and Europe to support Ukrainian sovereignty.
Apparently, the bi-partisan talks with US Senate went well. Then came Trump and disaster.
What Trump wants: peace on his and Putin's terms. He views Putin as a friend who can be trusted. Does not speak of him as a dictator and does not view him as the main, initiating aggressor. He wants peace.
So, Trump will not provide security guarantees, because they will not be needed. Trump also stated that Putin would have no problem with Western forces on the ground. Wrong!
Trump called Zelensky a dictator and believes that Ukraine had started the war. Wrong!
Later, he tried to make a joke of it, did he really say that?
Trump wants to recoup money spent on military support for Ukraine by signing a deal for a 'very, big agreement' on 'rare earth and other things'. He has been told by both the UK and France that Europe has contributed more but he doesn't believe this. Starmer, indeed, said that most of the support was gifted.
For all I know, there may well have been deals made but this is not seen as part of a peace-making process. The seeking of long-lasting peace is about defending Ukraine against Putin's war-mongering. The gears are changing to keep pace with an unreliable Trump. In fact, I doubt that even if he decided to provide security guarantees, they would be worth the paper they are written on.
***
As to the game being played.
Trump's words were chilling as he accused Zelensky:
You are gambling with world war three.
If Trump is holding all the cards, then this is a threat. If you don't deal nicely with us, then all bets are off. He will side with Putin and others of his ilk. Instead of peace, war will continue and escalate.
"Make a deal, or we're out". And off we merrily go...
And here's another potential reason Echarmion. If China's biggest enemy, the US is befriending next door neightbour Russia as it seems to be doing now, China might start getting a bit worried... . Maybe China would like some counter-balance. The geo-political balance is changing.
For sure, there is a new world order. That much is obvious.
We have an unpredictable American foreign policy, courtesy of Trump who seems to be siding with Putin and Russia. The US voted with Russia against the UN resolution condemning Putin's war.
A view from France on the way forward:
Quoting The Guardian - Europe's moment of truth
There have already been urgent discussions with more in the pipeline.
European leaders are to meet in London on March 2 before a special summit on March 6 to discuss European security and Ukraine.
How this pans out is anyone's guess. So many factors and actors...
If they don't stand up to Russia now, and exhaust its military and economic capability, all of Europe will be salami-sliced. More quickly, if Russia is allowed to gobble up the Ukraine's resources. Quoting ChatteringMonkey
The present administration is not worried about anything. It's insane and undirected, except toward the profit and aggrandizement of a few oligarchs. They may or may not make land-grabs around the globe - starting with Greenland, which is European property, while Putin bites off Kosovo. Chubby-T will make a deal with Putin, on which one or both will renege, unless one or both is/are assassinated before they can.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I guess it will - assuming the US weapons industry survives Trump's disastrous economic policy. But it will be done on a very dark market, not as international trade. Then again, there is always China.
Quoting Amity
I don't see order here. I see upheaval, crisis, imminent threat to all life on the planet. But if we do survive this one, I maybe the asteroid will sort us out.
Let's not overrate Russia's strenght, they have managed to take a small part of Urkraine in 3 years of war where everyone expected it to be over in weeks. Russia will have to recover from this. Europe should use this time to build up strenght, which is the only thing Putin will respect. Time is what Europe needs because it is weak now but has the potential to be stronger.
How it could go wrong is if Europe goes in unprepared without the US in a foolish attempt to become the champion of the free world. A bad economy together with dis-information efforts from all sides will divide or even flip a lot of European countries... there won't be a salami anymore to slice.
The current US administration is nothing remotely like the "champion of the free world" and has no intention of saving any country from any aggressor; is, however, intent on getting its greedy little fat hands on Ukraine's resources, even if it has to go halvsies with Putin. Who cheats whom in this arrangement is moot, as far as Ukraine and Europe are concerned (though it's obvious which one is smarter) : they're to be sacrificed and served up to dictators willing to share with the TP monster.
Agree that it's a good idea to sell out Ukraine?
If by 'good', you mean idiotic, self-destructive and downright disastrous - sure.
So now can you stop chattering about that option?
Like Chamberlain did? It doesn't matter; neither of us has any influence.
Wait and watch.
Quoting Amity
Quoting Vera Mont
The term 'new world order' is, of course, not necessarily the same as 'order'.
I meant it as the major change in American politics with its global implications. A new balance of power in international relations; we see history in the making. Where Trump's vision of 'peace' is all about 'making a deal' and if he says it often enough, and loud enough, he will be seen as 'Peace-maker Extraordinaire'.
He is fixated not just on the riches and power at his fingertips but the holy grail of the Nobel Peace Prize.
One of the reasons he is trying to minimise and decry the efforts of Europe and its leaders. According to him, they have done nothing and are not interested in peace. Zelensky is not interested in peace. Only Trump wants Peace, not War. Really?
Trump and his gang are turning the world upside down with their wilful ignorance and manipulation of facts. I won't go on. The picture is clear. It's a mess!
Their 'order' is their 'state' - their 'organisation' - the scope of their interests has been well planned. Their manner of acting is designed to create this chaotic situation where politicians are scrambling to adjust. Where people's life conditions have dramatically changed for the worse. The supportive systems destroyed.
However, it has its own chaos within, in the form of Trump's madness. His blind hatred, an angry need for revenge, adoration from 'fans' and yes, public acknowledgement by the UK's Royalty. A real honour from a special gentleman. Bigly medieval.
Quoting Vera Mont
That's all we can do...
"This is going to be great television" - Trump on the Oval Office blow-up with Zelensky.
This characterisation of his bully boy set-up says it all. It's all a game to him. He holds all the cards, Zelensky has none. We will see...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/mar/02/ukraine-war-volodymyr-zelenskyy-keir-starmer-donald-trump-us-europe-eu-russia-defence-latest-live-news#top-of-blog
Quoting The Guardian - Ukraine Peace Summit
Those present:
Yes, I realize it meant change in the balance of power. Just can't resist some fun with words. What I meant was that, atm, it's all up in the air; we can't tell whether will land on its ass or its head - for damn sure, not on its feet! - or whether there ever will be a balance again, or just more flux and heave until we blow it all up.
He may get a chunk of Ukraine - after all, he's had it in for the Zelensky government since 2019, when they wouldn't give him any dirt on Biden - but he's not getting that medal. Meanwhile, he and his merry band of monsters are tearing apart their own country. There may not be an America left that holds any kind of power in the world. Probably China's turn anyway. At least they don't want to accelerate climate change.
You have now a former Superpower dissolving it's power and the other Superpower shedding it's power by it's own actions.
The first example is of course Putin's Russia, with the Russian dictator hell bent on correcting the greatest tragedy of his lifetime, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and trying to reinstate Russian power to it's former glory. He gambled heavily and won big with a bold military operation of annexing Crimea. But then, as usual, he thought that it was true what his underlings eagerly said to him, that the rest of Ukraine would be a walkover, that he could quickly take Kyiv and install a puppet regime there and annex parts of Ukraine to create again Novorossiya. Then Russia would be back on it's former glory and could deal with Europe.
Well, the luck of the gambler change and he was mired into a large conventional war.
The second example is far more curious, and I think never has happened in history. Simply put it, the two power sharing parties in the US have always have their "fringe" groups, but with Trump, populists with ties to the alt-right took over the Republican party. In the first Trump administration, when Trump hadn't so much thought he would win, this fringe wasn't ready and many parts of the administration was manned with conventional conservative Republicans. But after January 6th, Trump has gained total control of the party and molded the old Republican party to a MAGA crowd, which has no resemblence with being conservative and old school Republican. Nobody will question him, because anybody that would oppose him is threatened with a MAGA candidate opposing him or her in the primaries. And better to lose in the general election, than be banished by the MAGA tribe.
And with power going to his head, Trump as the "Master of the Universe" starts with royal decrees called executive orders (because why would he try anything as difficult and time consuming as passing legislation) to mold the US and the World to his liking. Make Gaza a resort! Annex Greenland and Panama, make Canada the 51st state of the US, have a drug-war in Mexico! And then of course, have quickly a peace in Ukraine and get that Nobel-prize, just like Obama. And do deals with Russia.
And the asset and his handler have a wonderful relationship as Trump will help Putin from the quagmire that Putin is in Ukraine and Trump can be lured to believing that he will get lucrative deals from Russia. If Trump fell for those talks of having hotels in Moscow earlier, he surely will fall for Russia deals worth billions and billions of dollars.
This will alienate the European allies of the US, which Trump sees no importance in valuing. They, perhaps with the exception of Hungary, talk of those values that Trump's enemies, Obama and Biden, talked so much about, like international rules based order and the stuff. Hence in his ignorance, Trump will push away the former allies of the US. Trump simply doesn't understand how irritating is for someone like Musk and Vance supporting Germany's AfD. It is similar to what Putin did in the US. Now some might argue that Trump can easily change his stance, but I disagree. He has never said anything negative of Putin, ever.
Yet it's always the ineptness of Trump that will backfire here. I gather that there's not going to be the Trump peace in Ukraine, just as the new shared friendship with Russia won't become the success story that Trump think it will be. Trump has already started the smear campaign against Ukraine.
And anyway, Trump's popularity will fall with the economy, which is heading likely to a recession. But even if then Trump has to focus on the domestic economy, he has already done a huge disservice to the US.
I think Trump will organize a yalta-like moment where he sits down with Putin and maybe XI and/or Modi too, to settle the war, come up with the beginnings of a new plan for Europa and the middle east with less involvement of the US, so they can re-locate forces to the pacific to where the balance of power has shifted.
They will leave the war, whether Europe agrees with it or not. And then Europe will be faced with a decision to either continue the war, and face possible consequence of twarting Trump, or go along with it and agree to peace on his terms.
Now there's a lot of support for continuing the war, but I don't expect that to last when the consequences of it start to dawn on the more pragmatic elites in Europe.
And really you can look at it in two ways, 1) a bunch of illiberal autocrats carving up the world that must be opposed at all cost, or 2) the beginnings of a more stable organisation of the region without the US.
I think we should stop fighting the geo-political wave lest we drown, and try to ride it in a direction that actually has some potential.
Thanks to you both. Most interesting to hear your thoughts and speculations as to the European and Global Crisis. Useful analyses to consider.
Quoting ssu
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
***
Pertinent to the conversation. Another Opinion Piece and summary of where we're at:
Quoting The Guardian - Simon Tisdall
BTL Comments are open and should be interesting to read...
Do you think he'll continue to have enough domestic support?
At the moment, it seems to be going down among the general population and officials.
When asked, some of Trump's voters wanted a cultural revolution in the US, "anti-woke", against homosexual marriage, etc, not an alliance with Putin.
Some fans don't care much either way about much of anything, but just want Trump; I'm guessing they're a (small) minority.
Maybe there's also a question of what Vance might do, and/or Johnson/others.
Quite a difference:
Jan 6, 2021 - Capitol Building in Washington DC - against election
Mar 1, 2025 - Times Square in New York - for Ukraine
It's important to realise we too have been living in a propaganda bubbel... both sides had their propaganda. A lot of the things that have been dismissed as Russian propaganda were actually true. This was a war instigated by the US trying to expand its sphere of influence, it was the US and Europe that have made negotiations and a peace deal impossible, Zelenski has been cultivating or at least using "blood and soil" nationalism to gather troops, etc etc...
So it's not that world has changed per se, it was allways clear to the outside world that what we were doing was not what we said we were doing... it just wasn't clear to us.
Liberal democracy had become the only viable alternative with the idea of 'nimmer weider' in mind, and that entailed exclusion of the far left and far right from political dialogue because that were the forces that let us to all these attrocities. So the natural tendency is to view violations of our values in these terms, i.e. Putin or Trump are the second coming of Hilter. But this isn't the thirties of last century, Putin will not conquerer Europe if only because he can't. That's not to say we shouldn't be vigilant, there was a certain reasoning behind the exclusion of the extremes, it could devolve into that again, but I don't think it necessarily allways does.
Yeah I think foreign policy isn't exactly what most American are worried about. The domestic policies musk is trying to implement at home seem a lot more problematic on that account.
It looks like he's making an alliance with Putin from our point of view because he's moved so much towards Russia's position, has similar authoritarian values etc etc... but I don't think that's actually what's going on. I think he really wants to make a peace deal, and realises that he will need to make these concessions to Russia to get it done. He would probably like more cooperation with Russia for economical reasons and maybe to drive a wedge between Russia and China, but that doesn't happen overnight because of geo-political realities. If he gets a peace deal I think the Americans will mostly be fine with that eventhough it was a loss and 'betrayal' of Ukraine... he can allways say all of this was Bidens fault (which it to a large extend was).
Vance is much more ideologically driven, but reduced US intervention in the world fits perfectly within that frame of regionalism, multi-polar world etc.
Likely Trump doesn't understand just how against this goes his allies, if we can call them those, who aren't for this kind of decision making. Above all, any meeting of this kind would be either a nonevent or at worst, a total disastrous for the US as Trump is really a bad negotiator. If he would have written himself the Art of the Deal, he maybe a negotiator, but he isn't. Everything from surrender deal made to the Taleban to the castigation of Zelenskyi shows this.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
And just what will Trump leave? This isn't and hasn't been anymore the question of just Ukraine. I think Europe will leave an open door for the US to come back, if it wants, but otherwise the thing is written on the wall. Only Trump can withdraw from NATO, but now Europe has to go alone. Nobody would think that Trump would lift a finger to defend for example the Baltic States, which is the reasoning that Europe has to restructure it's defenses. Naturally it can say it's just doing what Trump wants when rearming
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
It's not a question of pragmatism, it's a question how close Russia is to you. Let's remember that Russia wants NATO to withdraw from the Baltics, from Sweden and Finland, from Poland, from Romania. So for a lot of NATO countries the support for Ukraine and spending more on defense is quite pragmatic and logical approach. Not perhaps for Portugal.
You already are seeing how closely is the UK and Norway working with EU countries, so what is forming here is a "coalition of the willing". Likely the UK with France and Germany and Northern Europe, the Baltic States and Poland. Naturally all these countries want to keep the US in NATO, but you never know what agent Trumpov will do.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
How about a synthesis: an unstable World were bunch of illiberal autocrats try carving up the World and others desperately trying to hold on to a rules based order.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
We aren't drowning, even Ukraine isn't yet. Those who think the MAGA-movement is the new geo-political wave might be the ones that will do the drowning, thanks to the wisdom of their awesome leaders like Musk, Trump and Vance.
This is the reality of their immense brilliance:
People really should wake up to see how insane these morons are. I can easily agree with Friedrich Merz that NATO won't last to it's next summit in the summer. Or perhaps there Trump walks out of it. Something that is totally possible.
.
Quoting The Guardian - Simon Tisdall
This is as stupid as the Project for the New American Century was that was cherished by the neocons, who then actually got into power. The problem that the decisive diplomatic and military victory that the US had with liberating Kuwait went to the heads of the neocons. So they thought they really could mold the Middle East into something new. Because the US foreign policy didn't have to anticipate any countermove from the Soviet Union anymore, the sanity of US foreign policy was lost... at least in the Middle East. Now you have an even more insane MAGA-thinking dominating the US. This kind of thinking is really as damaging as was going for Iraq, that didn't have any nuclear weapons.
If Rubio truly talks about Russian domination, what would the Russians dominate? What is he letting Russia and China dominate in this surrender deal? I think Europe has a say to this and naturally threatened the EU and other members of NATO will find each other. This kind of thinking is the worst kind of defeatism that one can think of. Why alienate your friends and bow in front of your enemies? You think Putin that has Trump on the ropes will genuinely have the respect? No, they have a word for this in Russian, a "useful idiot".
And China? Likely China wanting to be in good terms with Europe will resent this kind of division. And Russia can go along with these warm ties as long as it divides the US from it's former allies.
This all is possible, because the MAGA-crowd believes their worst enemy is the US government itself. So they have to decapitate themselves by attacking the "Deep State". And because Biden and Obama were for NATO, it's natural that Trump is against it.
I don't think I agree entirely. He's not a good diplomat in the sense of fostering good long term relations maybe, but I think he does have a very good sense of where the leverage is, and he's using it to get what he wants. And I think that is the problem for Europe, he has a lot of leverage on us because we have let ourselves become dependant on the US... and so i don't think he's particulary worried about alienating Europe because of that.
With Russia I think he knows there isn't much leverage considering how the war is going. If he wants out and end the war, he probably needs to get closer to their position to get it done.
Quoting ssu
Here's a question for you ssu, wouldn't a normalisation of relations with Russia be better in the long term for the states close to Russia too? What are we trying to accomplish with fighting Russia untill the bitter end? Do we really want to keep playing this game until the end of time... hate breeds hate.
Quoting ssu
Problem is the autocrats have most of the power. A rules based order only holds if you have the power to enforce it... the sheriff left town.
Quoting ssu
I would agree that it's far from certain that the MAGA-movement will stay in power indefinitely, it can just as well swing back in the other direction. But there is damage that can't be undone, it has now become clear that no country should want to bet its security and future on a wildly oscillating 4 year election cycle... the gene is out of the bottle.
Quoting ssu
NATO probably gets dissolved, as maybe it should have been a while ago. Russia isn't the same superpower anymore that needs a special alliance to contain. A European security arrangement where the biggest country in Europe is excluded from and its concern aren't taken into account, will allways lead to more tension. Maybe we should try to actually talk to them and see where we can accomodate each others security concerns?
Since that failed a month in, he needed someone to blame, anyone, and had one plan for that someone to be Zelenskyy.
No hint of admission of failure, certainly no apologizing to his voters, nothing, but instead blame the victim in the war, by any means possible that his voters might buy (just watch them amplifying it all over the place).
Trump and Vance displayed vulgar arrogance in front of everyone (some roots in Kremlin (and Netanyahu) lines). They more or less assaulted someone alone and surrounded on their turf; well, Rubio seemed to wish he was somewhere else. Circus. AP banned, Russian state media present.
It's been clear for some time that Trump's word is worthless, even though they all have to be considered carefully.
Zelenskyy is accountable to the Ukrainians and the Rada not to Trump and has other allies that don't ramble or turn so easily, and don't have an affinity for Putin.
Trump apparently chose to play Putin's game, which would make his voters extensions of the Kremlin. Well played, Putin.
Quoting Trump
What an embarrassment.
Usually his words aren't meant to convey literal meaning, but rather to ellicit some effect.
It is possible to do both and more. Look at the effects at all levels.
It is not a case of 'either/or' as your previous suggestion:
Quoting ssu
***
@jorndoe is correct. Trump only cares about peace on his and Putin's terms. This is his power play. To be the ruling King. To break up Ukraine, Europe, human rights across the globe...and more.
It is about the turn to autocracy and tyranny. The power shift from democracy to dictatorship.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
The words are divisive rhetoric. The words are those of a narcissistic bully who cares for nobody but himself. I don't want this thread to be all about him. Unfortunately, he is the main player, but I'd like to broaden it out to look at other aspects and perspectives. An overview of global rights:
Quoting Guardian - Human Rights
The world is indeed changing, dramatically. I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Who is this 'outside world', who is 'we'?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
It doesn't just look like there is a pact with Putin, it is obvious from Putin's positive reactions that there is a deal going on...
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
For what purpose?
Overall, the actions taken are not those of a peace-maker. A deal-maker and breaker, perhaps. But only for the benefit of himself, the oligarchs and authoritarians, not for the people. He couldn't care less.
Where does all this idle speculation get us?
Who are we trying to convince and why?
Even in our 'understandings' of a situation, we never know all the facts.
And perhaps, this is a good time for me to leave the conversation, again.
Thanks to all who contribute to an increased, improved understanding. As far as it is possible.
The ouside world are the ones not caught in the mainstream western information bubble. 'We' are the ones in the bubble. Maybe an example can help :
In the western media: Russia has invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked act of aggression because Putin is an evil dictator.
Ouside of it: Russia has invaded Ukraine as a reaction to the US pushing it to far in trying to expand its sphere of influence.
Quoting Amity
I was referring to a more formal alliance. I'm sure they make personal deals, but that doesn't mean they can formally commit their countries.
Quoting Amity
Isn't the fact that we get peace more important that what the motivations are?
Quoting Amity
I'm trying to convince fellow Europeans so Europe doesn't make what I think would be the biggest strategic blunder in recent memory. It isn't going that great.
Putin would walk away scot-free with no concessions, no change except no further resistance, incidentally also free to continue their modus operandi against the rest of Ukraine (like proxy or similar, somewhat deniable, Russification campaigns). Almost like invisible/absent in any peace talks or deals, though a great victory in the eyes of his domestic peers; might otherwise have turned out bad for him at home.
Trump would walk away with rights to Ukrainian resources/minerals/metals (good for Musk, incidentally). Much like Putin would be free to drain resources/minerals/metals in Donbas (plus, free of pressure, redirect efforts). Trump would have, though belatedly, ended the war he said he'd end in a day if elected.
The Ukrainians would get American workers on the ground, concessions to the Kremlin, and US$s. No (other) security guarantees though? Evidently, the US + Russia + the UK + France (+ China) couldn't provide such guarantees before, which Putin has violated since 2014; NATO plausibly could. As an aside, what could they do if some "American workers" turned out to have, let's say, ulterior motives?
I wouldn't call the deal a work of art (pun intended), especially not for the Ukrainians, and it's about them. It's fairly easy to come up with hypothetical analogies for your (whoever's) home soil, try it.
Well, maybe it's time for democracy to concede or give way to aggressive-regressive authoritarianism?
That's not what i'm getting at. I think one should pick their battles a bit more carefully. The war was going nowhere, and not likely to go anywhere without the US, at some point you have to deal with the reality on the ground.
Do you think it would be better to send thousands of Ukranians more to the grave for nothing?
Do we have to think about consequences at all, or do we just have to rush in whatever the consequences because it's a just cause?
What, if anything, would convince you that it's a bad idea eventhough it's a just cause?
The Ukrainians will decide what the fighting is worth. They are the ones who do it.
What others may think of their fortunes will not replace that decision.
And if he decides it's a good idea to stay in the war, do we just support him no matter what, effectively delegating our foreign policy to him?
Who are your "we" ? I imagine the several sovereign - for the moment - nations of Europe will formulate their own foreign policy according to what they perceive as their own long-term interest and commitment to one another. If any one of those heads of state and his or her compatriots choose to fight for their homeland to the bitterest of ends, it will be up to the others whether they support that action.
I'm really fed up with references to "the war" as if the Ukrainians had any choice in the matter. This is not a two-sided conflict: they were attacked and have been defending themselves. The "stability of the region" was not endangered by Zelensky or his people and they are not responsible for restoring it by letting themselves be subsumed in Putin's empire.
Shall we ask the Palestinians to seek refugee status in Greenland in order to maintain Nyetenyahu's 'stability'? Who's next to be required to give up their freedom and their home for stability in some region?
"Surrender now or nukes will level Seoul and other places."
(Kim Jong Un to generals: "Gather 1,000 children in Pyongyang and broadcast them playing.")
[quote=Talgat Azimov]What concessions will Putin be asked to make?
So far, all the peace talks have been about what Ukraine must give upterritory, NATO aspirations, sovereignty. So what exactly is Putin offering?
Is he withdrawing his troops? Paying reparations? Acknowledging war crimes? Or is his big compromise just taking less of Ukraine than he originally wanted?[/quote]
[quote=Talgat Azimov]If a guy steals your house and offers to return half of your living room, thats not a compromisethats a hostage deal.
When one side just wants a pause to reload, thats not diplomacythats preparation for the next invasion.
A peace deal where only one side makes sacrifices isnt peaceits surrender with better branding.[/quote]
But it is a US-Russia proxy war. Regime change has been a standard practice of the CIA and policy especially of the democratic party for decades all over the world. Without the supplies and military assistance of the US and Europe Ukraine wouldn't have stood a chance... we can hardly be more involved, and yet here we are pretending like this is just a matter of Ukraine defending itself.
Of course nobody will hear this, because if you say something that doesn't conform to the Western mainstream narrative it must be Russian propaganda.
Quoting Vera Mont
Russia has 6000 nuclear bombs, but sure let's just brush away the stability of the region like it's a nothing burger.
Liberal democracy has been the ideological underpinning of the expansion of the US empire. It is uniquely suited for that because it's an offshoot of Christian morality that holds that morality is objective and universal. That means that any country not adhering to those values is objectively wrong, and can therefore justifiably be undermined and fought until they do adhere to those values. And that's essentially what the US has been doing the past 70 years, toppling regimes left and right, and invading countries because women can't wear miniskirts.... usually leaving a huge mess in their wake.
Thrasymachus was allways right folks, justice is the interest of the stronger... the liberal democratic world order was there to serve our interests.
Alas it's hard to convince true believers.
Deus vult!
The region has no stability. A Putin-Trump divvy will not provide one. What the hell are you on about?
Where do you get the idea that a uniquely defining factor of Christian morality is that it's objective and universal?
I'd say the opposite is true. Christian morality, especially the protestant version, is uniquely personal. All morality has some claim to objective and universal application. Indeed that's a common definition for morality. What's unusual about Christianity specifically is that it has no fully fixed moral code and that the scripture offers a lot of room to insert personal beliefs. Notably Christianity has no religious law, unlike it's sister religions.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Obviously it's true that the "liberal democratic" world order was to a significant extent shaped to serve US and also European interests, particularly economic ones. I don't think anyone supposed that past US administrations were somehow solely motivated by altruism.
It does not follow though that it did not also foster actual liberal values and actual democracy.
It's a offshoot of judaïsm, To belong to Judaïsm you had to be ethnically a jew, the rest were gentiles. Christiany broke that open and made it universal by allowing everybody in the religion and making it appicable to everybody. Even pagans go to hell if they disobey a God they don't believe in.
The other unusual feature, which they inhererited from Judaïsm, is monotheism, there is only one God (one set of values and morals). Pagan religion in the Roman empire used to allow a whole panteon of Gods, where every city has some different particular God or Gods they were allowed to worship. They didn't shun or exclude other religions, but incorporated them into their pantheon.
Christianity also was instrumental in colonising the world. Judaïsm for example never had this same religious conversion fervour.
Quoting Echarmion
No that's right, but then that is only a good thing if you already assume that liberal values and democracy are the values one should aspire to, which other societies clearly do not.
You know you really have to look at this in a bit of a wider context. We are part of the reason why the situation has evovled the way it has because we excluded Russia from participating in the western world after the second world war. We stabbed them in the back after they had lost millions of people fighting on our side... because communism became the new big bad. And after the Iron curtain fell there was another chance to normalise realtions with them, instead we just pushed NATO (an alliance specially designed to keep them in check) up to their border, breaking our word that we wouldn't do it.
Maybe it's time to rectify that mistake? You have to create the conditions for stability, if we never try we will never have it.
That's how we typically view morality because of the Christian origins of our culture, And chirstianity took its inspiration from platonism that was in vogue in the Greek Hellenistic world at the time of its devellopment.
Instead of morality being tied to a certain group living in a certain place, it became abstract and universal, applicable to everybody (Plato's ideal forms).
Have you followed the discussion JD Vance had with Rory Stewart about Christianity On X?
·
I don't know how deliberate all of this is, but he's essentially trying to remove the platonism, the universality from Christianity.
Brethren, stop looking down at thou tracks in the sand, and lift up thy heads. Hast thou not seen that the night sky has shifted, around a new axis the world will churn.
I tell you brethren, out of the old world we were born, towards the new world we must turn. Verily I ask you, stop chasing the dimming light, the other way is the rising sun.[/i]
Or maybe I read to much Nietzsche.
OK, then we won't.
I do, however, resist the urge to correct you King James English.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?
I don't think eating Europe is on the to-do list right now.
Hope you're right.
The plot thickens.
I agree that the U.S. over reacted to the communist threat following WW2. But this wasnt the root of the problem, it was a symptom. The root lies in Communism itself, it consists of a hidden hierarchy. Which is authoritarian by nature, because it marks its own homework and promotes people from within its own ranks. There is no accountability to the nation, or the people, just a mask, a facade of accountability, or democracy. This lie requires a secret police etc etc, KGB, Stazi, Gestapo.
The problem develops when this mentality becomes projected across borders into other countries.
Putin did spend a lot of time being courted by and working with European countries at the beginning of his reign and people thought it was a positive move towards normalisation, bringing Russia in from the cold. He even flirted with joining NATO. We were all getting along swimmingly for a while, but then weird things started happening and recriminations quickly developed into resentment and distrust.
It struck me when there was a diplomatic incident when Russians accused Britain of spying by hiding a camera in a stone, in 2006. Things went rapidly downhill from there. Im not a Kremlinologist, but I expect Putins imperial ambitions were already developed by this point and he was already planning how to restore the USSR in its entirety. A plan which has been remorselessly carried out over the last 2 decades. The problem being that the entire continents of Asia and Europe were now subject the hidden ambition in one mans head. A man who was enslaving his population and preparing to change the face of those continents to his will.
What can a bunch of peaceful democratic countries who find themselves in the scope of such ambitions do about it?
So was Russia imperialist, or was it reacting to the US being imperialist? Probably both, but one has to note that Russia was not the one meddling in other countries affairs on the other side of the globe.
From what I gathered from sources that seem reliable to me - and boy is it hard to find information that isn't extremely biased on one or the other side at the moment - we do seem to have managed the relation with Russia very badly. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because Putin is indeed a ruthless dictator, but you don't know if you don't really try.
And that is the logic I want to counter a bit here. If we have already decided that Putin is the devil incarnate that will break any agreement we sign with him anyway, then there is no reason to try diplomacy or negotiations, and if we don't try that you can never have peace... the only option left is to fight until one party is destroyed, or both in case of use of nuclear weapons.
At some point we will have to try to de-escalate. And that's why Trump pushing for peace isn't the worst thing IMO, whatever else one may think of the man, it at least creates some space for something other than an ever escalating cycle of destruction and violence.
Going back to what I was saying about Europe. European countries did extend the arm of cooperation and friendship, including becoming involved economically and in terms of shared resources for a period of over 30yrs following the fall of USSR. But it turns out that economic involvement was exploited to fund the war chests for Putins wars with and infiltration of former soviet states. While developing the means to conduct a cyber war against the West.
On the other side of the argument is the idea that NATO expanded eastwards. Which brings us to the argument of whether peoples should be able to choose their own futures. All the countries that joined NATO following the fall of USSR asked freely to join, for purposes of defence. Because they as small states would be vulnerable to defeat by a strong Russia. Why would European countries deny them this opportunity to secure their safety and future as free countries?
Canada might not be a good example, here as she may soon be annexed by an autocrat. She missed her chance to join USSR.
Anyway that moves away from the point I was making.
Because we said we wouldn't do it. And because Russia allways has signaled that they view eastward NATO expansion as a thread to their security. And to me that seems reasonably because NATO was an alliance against Russia afterall. That's how you build up good diplomatic relations, by taking into account each others concerns.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/
Also the idea that NATO is a threat to Russia, that there needs to be a buffer zone of neutral states between NATO and Russia are Kremlin talking points. A narrative used to mask Putins plans to invade and absorb all the previous states that formed part of USSR. An ambition thwarted if those states are members of NATO, a purely defensive alliance.
Thucydides Trap
Not a country like Russia, that has the economy a bit smaller than either Italy or Canada and has blown through it's Soviet era weaponry and only can sustain the war with a war economy.
At the same time the Trump Movement seems hell bent on shrinking the size of those boots:
Inside U.S. spy agencies, workers fear a cataclysmic Trump cull
The sole Superpower wasn't a "rising power" after WW2. It was the other Superpower and then after Soviet collapse it was the only Superpower.
And now the US is by it's own action deliberately destroying it's Superpower status. Something that never has happened in history, actually. Russia, China and Iran can truly laugh at this as Trump is doing the utmost destroy the position that the US has.
Or who are you meaning?
Russia?
Yes, Trump is hell-bent on destroying the US government, department by department, agency by agency. He doesn't give a flying fig about international relations or long-term stability: he wants revenge on his opponents, real and imagined, harm to everyone who has ever been 'disrespectful' to him and the last big money-grab before closing time.
Well, I like to call it the confederacy that desperately wants to be an union. Member states aren't anything like the states in the United States or somewhere else. These are sovereign nations states with distinctive unique cultures, languages and history. They naturally have different objectives and agendas as they are situated politically and geographically in different situations. If the English could lure the Welsh and the Scots to all unify under being "British", there is no program of making a German, an Italian, a Greek and a Swede to be similarly "European" as being British.
The only way is... actually this way. Unlike Trump says that it was him who forced the Europeans to "pay up", it was Putin's attack on Ukraine that woke us up. And then the next thing was Trump hopping in bed with Putin.
So a Trump-Putin pact that is against Europe. Yeah, that's gets us to do something together.
Quoting Vera Mont
It is absolutely crazy, but it's understandable when people are so full of hubris that they think that their government is just a service that costs too much and could better done without. And these anarco-libertarians who seem to think they are the heroes in an Ayn Rand novel and their government is their enemy, go smashing everything is just creative destruction and the means to get cuts implemented because the actual legislative course wouldn't work... because liberal democracy and liberal democracies don't work.
Ignorance and hubris becomes a really potent intoxicating shot in foreign policy, where these idiots can really assume that similar smashing will get results, because the pinko-liberals in "gay Europe" won't do anything and hence the war in Ukraine can be stopped by Ukraine admitting to the terms from Kremlin, because Ukraine doesn't mean much to them. And everything is just a deal, a transaction. After all, JD Vance never has been to Ukraine and thinks Russia isn't a threat to Europe, but culture war issues are. So, that tells something about the ignorance and blindness to Europe, just his remarks about possible peacekeepers.
End result is that the US won't have allies, or at least allies that truly trust it. The US won't be looked as bringing stability and definitely not as being the leader of the West. Canadians have now understood this. They have understood that this isn't at all about American jobs and fair trade... which usually was usually the reason for trade wars. Trump really wants the US to have the total Northern hemisphere of the Continent (excluding Mexico) and Greenland on the side. The US is the bully and while Trump is in power, you have to be equally straightforward as diplomacy would be a sign of weakness.
Just listen to this Canadian politician. This is where the relationship has gone to thanks to Trump:
That is really what one can call a breakup in close ties between two nations. Likely Canadians start to think of Americans like the Mexicans do, as the "Gringos". Yes, times can change and Trump does go away at some time, but this is something that people won't forget, even if things would go back to normal. The trust is gone. And the MAGA-people can come back, even if the next administration would try to heal the relationship.
Hence this is the end of the American Superpower. From now on, the US is just a great power among others and bully and a threat to the neighborhood.
They have better uses for the money: their own enrichment. There is more to the wrecking of government: Trump wants to be king, which he can't be until the constitution is well and truly scrapped. So do Vance and Musk.... I wonder which one will do him in. Either way, it won't be an improvement: he's evil, crazy and stupid; they're evil, crazy and smart.
I doubt any of these thugs have ever read a novel. Trump probably couldn't.
Not because it doesn't work - it worked fine until their forerunners corrupted it - but because it still limps along and might bring them down, unless it's destroyed very quickly. Quoting ssu
We've been eyeing them askance since Bush II, but Obama was a welcome change. Now, we're back to 1811, waiting for the invasion. We need to make friends across both ponds and around the Gulf of whatever it's the gulf of, to trade and form alliances around the disunited states of America. Trudeau won't be here to do it, and I despair of a Polievre government, so..... we are either in some god's hands or royally f'd, maybe both.
The point of Thucydides trap is that it's not about how we view ourselves, but about how the rival percieves us. Sparta felt threathened by rising power Athens building a defensive wall... we expanded the EU and NATO, a defensive alliance.
Still I would say that the example of a rising power is more China and the US, because China becoming an economic colossus caused the US to see it as a threat. Before it was Japan, which actually was an ally.
What you forget is that Russia isn't a normal country, it has imperial aspirations and will be because of them a real security threat to it's neighbors. In fact, an existential threat when you are next to Russia and have been part of the Soviet Union. Russia is not like UK that after losing the Empire after some brief colonial wars, then created a Commonwealth and is fine with losing it's imperial status and just holds on to the position of being an international banker. The British can laugh about losing their empire. Above all, the UK isn't calling Ireland and artificial country and demanding that all of the British Isles ought to be in the UK.
That's the goddam difference with Russia, what those with the "NATO-enlargement-made-Russia-to-do-it" obsession will not admit. Nope. ONLY thing is NATO enlargement and the US and actually Russia is hence the victim here.
To understand this one has to remember that for Putin the collapse of Russia was the greatest tragedy that had happened in world history. This isn't just some one off remark. Putin has repeated this:
Yes, Putin milks Russian fears of Europeans trying to invade Russia, because there was Napoleon and Hitler. Well, Napoleon or Hitler isn't running Europe. But that doesn't matter.
Threat of NATO gives a credible reason for the Russian reconquista of the former Empire and many in their anti-western self-criticism think that NATO enlargement is the only real reason. Yet Putin's Russia wouldn't have been a benign country that would have left the former Soviet states alone if there wouldn't have been a NATO. Only NATO has kept the tiny nations of NATO independent. Moldova is a prime example that for Russian imperialism, you don't need NATO. So without NATO, the Baltic States would already have been under the control of Putin for a long time.
I've always accepted that NATO enlargement has been one genuine reason. I've myself pointed out that in their military doctrine they stated NATO enlargement as their biggest threat. However
The fact is that NATO membership has to be accepted by all member states. Just look at how difficult it was for Sweden to get in to NATO. Several member states even now are against Ukraine being a partner. This is something extremely important to understand, just as that prior to 2014, there had been all the "reset" attempts even after the Russo-Georgian war.
Above all, the large military exercises on the Ukrainian border were enough for Germany to promise that Ukraine wouldn't be a NATO member. So if this would have been just about NATO membership, a show of force would have done it. But did Putin fine with this? Of course not! Because it wasn't just about NATO membership.
No, he went to demand NATO that Russia would have to have a veto on any new members. And btw. have to withdraw from the new member states. NATO couldn't go against it's own charter. And this shows that Putin didn't have in mind just stopping NATO enlargement. In fact, when Russia demanded this veto, that was the time when Finland understood that NATO membership couldn't anymore be just an option. Putin really wanted to take Ukraine back, because he assumed that Ukraine was as ripe for an easy picking as it had been in 2014 and the US and NATO wouldn't do much, as they had just given Afghanistan to the Taleban (with both Trump and Biden being culprits for the Afghan catastrophe).
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Please, do not forget my country and Poland and Sweden and Lithuania and... the goddam 30 countries or so involved in this!
This isn't just the US and Russia. Or EU and Russia. The whole NATO enlargement isn't just an action done by the US. The US and the West didn't think much about NATO enlargement. It was the little new member applicants themselves. They were themselves the ones pushing the US here. You have to stop looking at this from the old Cold War lense of there being just two Superpowers. You won't get the real picture if you just brush off other states here as being the stooges of either the US or Russia. That's not how the game goes. For starters, Ukraine itself is here an actor.
Just look at the war in Afghanistan. There the US was totally obsessed with Al Qaeda and later the Taleban and didn't care a shit about Pakistan. Well, Pakistan did care a lot about Afghanistan and the Taleban. And they played both the US and the Taleban and finally got their victory with the US leaving the place. This happens to the US when it doesn't give a fuck about anybody else.
SSU has covered this.
The small Baltic states and Poland would by now have been invaded, subjected to brutal abuse and assimilated into Russia by force. Or had Putin puppet governments installed, if they had not joined NATO. This why those countries requested NATO membership.
Making comparisons with other countries doesnt account for these circumstances. Again we have been gaslit with Russian propaganda for decades on these issues. Propaganda behind which naked imperialist ambitions were played out.
In fact the real criticism against NATO shouldn't have been the typical anti-Americanism, but the fact that the US had seem to lost the reasoning just why NATO was so successful, because European countries genuinely loved it. Comparing to CENTO and SEATO, nothing of the kind of synergy happened between members states in those historical treaty organizations. Above all, the success in creating a team from independent nations is the true accomplishment in NATO.
As we have this incredible situation where the US president is in love with Putin and has become the enabler of Russian aggression and is ruining the position of the United States, we clearly see what the result is. Once the US leaves, then the need for a new security system is evident.
Now some argue that Russia isn't a threat to Europe because it hasn't been able to defeat Ukraine. Well, earlier the same people were saying was that Russia couldn't fight itself out of a brown paper bag when it didn't achieve success in the first Chechen war. And now with the American president supporting Russia, Russia is really an existential threat to Europe. With the actions that Trump has now taken, I wouldn't be surprised if Trump would start limit European weapon deliveries to Ukraine.
And we see the outcome here: Europeans will make an effort to defense. Even if it's not declared by everybody, the French idea of strategic autonomy has finally won. People are in denial if they think that the Trump administration can be trusted to fall in line if a NATO member feels threatened and calls for article 5. Only few years earlier this was a pipe dream, but thanks to Trump, it isn't.
Just as by invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin put Finland and Sweden to join NATO, now in 2025 Trump's actions have put the European NATO members plus Canada to think about a world without the US seriously. The question is, that once Europe does get it's act together, why would then afterwards listen to the whims and the rants of the US president later.
Indeed. The only viable strategy for democratic nations right now is to work around the US. Withhold intelligence, reconfigure trade agreements among themselves, shutting the US out whenever possible, exclude the Trump regime from discussions, negotiations and diplomatic endeavours. It won't be easy... but it may not have to be carried on for too long: once the Trumpites are kicked out, relations can resume.
All of those are part of the EU and/or Nato, so from the perspective of Russia it does look like its rival is in the process of overwelming them... that's what Thucidides traps is about.
And sure reality is allways more complex, it's just a model of how these situations tend to evolve, and can help us to think about these situations in more long term strategic ways.
Aside from the question of who is to blame for what, what do you think we should do when the US leaves the war? What are we hoping to accomplish with continuing the war?
Do you think we can take back territory to eventually force a better deal with Russia? For that you need a lot of troops and Ukraines manpower is down a lot already. In any case it seems we would need years to maybe eventually reach that goal. Is that really in our, or even Ukraines best interest?
I just don't see it. The case that's been made for it is allways only a moral one. But the reality is that you need to take the territory back to be able to force our demands on the negiotiation table.
Convince me.
You don't see Putin as a future threat to the region?
Only if the US would flip to Russia's side more permanently, and in that case the US is probably the bigger threat.
If Europe unites more military, as geo-political forces push it to do now, then we can detter Russia on its own form attacting other countries I would think. We obviously shouldn't be naïve about it, and assume they won't attack, we definitely should detter it with military strenght.
It's the prospects for this particular war that are bad I think, not the overall picture.
To put it in another way, I don't get why people think prolonging this war helps in protecting us from further future Russian aggression. I would think going in unprepared in a war that's going to be difficult to make progress in, is worse for our security than using that time and resources to build up strenght to detter future aggression.
The US administration isn't hawkish, in spite of the talk about taking Greenland and Canada. There's a lot of cognizance of the costs involved in governmental projects. If a tariff would make Canada give up their sovereignty, that would be on the table, in fact Trump publicly floated that.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
:up:
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Honestly, I don't think Biden counted on Putin allowing his economy, society, and military to be laid to waste by the war in Ukraine. That's just such a bizarre thing to do. Or maybe it's just bizarre from an American point of view? There just hasn't been a rational pivot from Biden's hawkish stance.
This actually is the reality. How you kick out the MAGA lunatics will be the question, because as you can see the Trump recession is already here, even if Trump is waivering with the tariff-destruction. WIll it happen through elections, demonstrations, a revolution or civil war. Because with Trump those last horrible scenarios aren't just imagination for Hollywood-movies, but theoretically totally possible outcomes.
Perhaps the way here is just to keep the door open for the US to join it's allies once this mental breakdown called the Trump administration is over. Perhaps how France under DeGaulle went away from the alliance in the 1960's to join later back would give us an example of how to deal with the Trumpian tantrum.
Unfortunately I think it won't go so diplomatically. Once Trump really understands what is happening, it's not only Denmark that will be badmouthed to the MAGA crowd. And naturally Russia as the enemy of the US will try it's best to make the rift even bigger.
Biden probably couldn't lose face after all the propaganda propping up the war and making it seem like winnable war.
One semi-plausible explanation I've heard is that Putin needed the war to stabilize his position internally... a war tends to call for unity and makes justification for expelling dissidents more easy.
I don't read the situation that way. Biden was a career politician. He could have backed out in a way that would have made everyone happy. He just wanted to grind Putin into the ground. I think it was personal.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
This is exactly what I thought. He came to power on the heels of a bogus war. War is his friend. But everyone I talked to about it nixed the idea.
Not for us; for Americans. Other countries are forced to defend themselves against Trump's economic wrecking crew, and that will hurt innocent Americans. I can only hope that other countries won't be held responsible for that pain: Trump is well practiced in diverting blame to things he caused onto his victims, and far too many American voters have fallen for his line of bullshit more than once.
Are the Democrat up to organizing a good enough opposition, or will the bitterness erupt in random acts of violence against random scapegoats? One glimmer of light: this insane pogrom on government workers is getting some blowback from former Trump supporters.
Quoting ssu
I think they're sensible enough to do that. And hope a savvy Dem leadership reaches out to them though non-official channels. For sure, there will be a thriving black market back and forth, so lines of communication will still be open.
Quoting frank
It's been working to Netanyahu. But then, his war is not so costly that they'll depose him and lock him up for fraud.
Could be, it is weirdly personal between the three of them.
Models are valuable only if they truly depict reality.
Yet I would emphasize that taking the "minor states" only as either proxies or allies of Greater powers, which then can be erased from the equation, is wrong and creates huge, dramatic mistakes. When you go through the objectives and agenda of the regional players, even the smaller ones, you can create a functioning and effective policy, that actually will work. Otherwise, it will sooner or later be a fiasco.
First think of Vietnam.
The Domino Theory just put Vietnam, China and the Soviet bloc all together. Just this Red communism that would collapse country after country like falling dominoes. Well, even the Commies in fact they weren't so together, which can be seen from the Chinese-Vietnamese border war fought only few years after the South was defeated and the country unified. And then it was the Vietnamese who intervened in Cambodia and fought of the Khmer Rouge. But hey, they are all just a bunch of commies unified through their ideology!!!
Then there's Afghanistan.
As I've said, Pakistan had an absolutely crucial role in war in Afghanistan. After all, the Taleban had been their proxy. And Pakistan could burn the candle from both ends: it gave officially support to the "War on Terror" and also aided the Taleban finally to it's victory. And it's real existential threat that it looks at is India, and why it wants to dominate Afghanistan. But how did the Americans approach the war? For them they fought the Taleban because "otherwise Afghanistan would be a safe haven for terrorists to attack Continental US." That was the line given and parroted by everybody as it was the line given to the domestic audience. But that was then really what the policy came to. Absolutely no thought given here to the power structure of the region. And that's why the US kicked out from all of Central Asia, not just Afghanistan.
Similar thing is happening here when Trump wanting to get good relations with Russia is sacrificing Ukraine and trying his best to give the country on a silver platter to his friend, that "he has been through hell", will continue to chip away the ties that have been the foundation for the largest alliance ever.
I think the Americans could be better served by a total reform of the two party system. Centrist Democrats and actual conservatives, not the MAGA-church, could find themselves and simply demand justice, respect of the Constitution and the end of oligarch rule. Fight against the robber barons, act II.
I don't think so because the US largely decides for NATO-members in practice.
Number 1: DON'T BELIEVE THE BULLSHIT FROM TRUMP
Putin doesn't want peace. What Putin will accept now is surrender. Or a deal that put's Ukraine in such a difficult position that it cannot defend itself if Putin rearms and then attacks again. Only peace terms that Putin cannot win on the battlefield is interesting to him. What Putin has said is that he is interested in normalizing the ties with the US and that's it. No negotiations have even started. The only the thing what has happened is that Trump is amplifying Kremlin propaganda, attacking Ukraine and giving every card away.
Yet the truth Russia will only negotiate if continuing the war can be more risky. That's the thing what history has told us and that's that the peace deals that my country has made with Russia/Soviet Union tells us:
In 1939-1940 Finland with a population of 3,7 million faced over a country with well over 170 million people. Stalin didn't end the war because Finns put up a defense. Stalin chose to negotiate with the "illegal Capitalist Finnish government" because there was the possibility of France and United Kingdom coming to the side of Finland. Stalin, even then in 1940, thought that the West (even Germany) could then ally against him.
In 1944 Stalin chose again peace with Finland because his assault against Finland in the summer had stopped and was out of steam, we even had made a successful counterattack and we Finns still had behind us our main defensive line, the Salpa Line. The Allies had already broken through from Normandy and rushing towards Berlin. Soviet Union had launched it's successful Operation Bagration and the last thing Stalin had in mind was to put more forces on a separate not so strategic front and perhaps lose the contest to take Berlin.
The fact is this: True peace, or even a cease-fire, can be dealt from a position of strength. Of course, you can always surrender. If the Ukrainians want to surrender, nobody cannot do anything about that. If they want to defend their country, we should assist them. It's us next if they fall.
You think so?
We the pitiful paracites, that ought to pay...
And how did that go with Obama and his red-line in the sand? Tell me.
If you believe that NATO is similar to the Warsaw Pact, then you are quite ignorant.
It has similar consequences, which just are arrived at in a less hardhanded and obvious way.
Yes, of course. The electoral process has always been flawed and the corruption that's crept in over the last few decades renders it damn near unworkable. But who can effect a major reform? In Canada, we've been flirting with and even courting a more representative model than first-past-the-post, but nobody can get it done, because the legislature is composed of people who won by the old method and have a vested interest. The US system is so deeply mired in money and circuses, I can't see politicians being able to change it, even if they were willing.
No.
To have the Soviet Union or the satellite Warsaw pact states or to have a free democracy don't have the same consequences. Just as being under Russian or in an independent state is far different. Obviously you never had been in the Soviet Union or behind the iron curtain when there was one. I have, it really sucked.
In fact you will just now witness just how different NATO is from the past Warsaw Pact, if Trump tries to bully his (former?) allies.
There only one answer: only the people themselves.
But if the politicians can instill that polarization and hatred at each other, then the current system can system go on. If the people come together, then the change can be rapid. Anyway, Canada could have a G6 meeting in Kanaskis in June and think what to do with Trump. That would send him a signal.
There is no two party system. It's just that a third party always cripples one of the main two, so there's effort on both sides to avoid fragmentation.
Not yet. And the division is so deep, maybe never without a revolution or civil war. Which, depends on whether the present regime has time and sufficient support to entrench a dictatorship, or their egregious actions cause massive opposition. Even if the progressive forces win either kind of confrontation, it will require leader of enormous vision, courage, wisdom, persuasive powers and stamina to close the rift.
I'm not expecting a rapid or neat resolution.
We were talking about military power, as that is what is relevant for the Thucidydes trap... it has similar consequences on that account, I wasn't talking about the rest.
I think NATO is done de facto... which would be a good thing for Europe in the longer term.
How spy ring did Russia's dirty work from the UK
[sup] Chris Bell, Tom Beal, Daniel De Simone · BBC · Mar 6, 2025[/sup]
That doesn't really answer the question, why it would be better to prolong this war for European security, instead of using that time and resources to build up strenght to detter future aggression. If it's us next, going unprepared in a war that will be difficult to win, doesn't seem like the best option.
No, what you are stating is the two party system that I'm talking about, which is actually in the minds of Americans. Oh... I have to vote the Dems/the GOP, because a voting to third party candidate would be a vote to the candidate I hate even more.
And then Americans have the idea of primaries. As if the only way for bring change would be through the existing parties. The US just like other countries have only the primary elections. What political parties do is totally dependent on the party works.
And finally the belief in all powerful POTUS. This is the problem. A Republic and a democratic system doesn't work like you elect a King/Emperor for four years, and he'll change everything. But that's what you do have now: a modern day version of emperor Nero.
Quoting Vera Mont
Neither am I. Yet Trump will his utmost to create destruction and destroy the economy and the foreign relations that the US has. In the end this will anger a lot Americans. It's just over a month of his rule and look at what chaos he has already been capable of doing.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
But ask yourself really, is it good that Europe and the US go separate ways? How does that make the World better?
Naturally they will go separate ways, when the US acts like a bully and with hostility and contempt against it's allies.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Look, Russia hasn't changed it's objectives and it wants far more territory than it has now and wants a "finladized" Ukraine, realistic option would be a puppet leader for rump Ukraine, if not the total annexation of Ukraine in the future. Either Russia gets what it wants or is put into situation where the continuation of the war has worse consequences than a cessation of hostilities. Those are the only two reasons for the war to stop.
What from above that you don't understand or doesn't answer your question?
There is no option like "Let's stop the war now because it's killing too many people." It's either of those two situations that Russia will stop the war. Anything else doesn't exist. And what Trump is doing now is enabling Russia to reach it's objectives by making it more difficult for Ukraine to defend itself. But Russia is here the attacker and it calls the shots. Now as Trump is helping Russia, Putin's dismal situation is improving rapidly thanks to Trump.
And if Russia achieves it's objectives, what are the consequences? Have you heard about the millionaire that after getting his second million dollars and said "OK, that's enough for me"? That millionaire doesn't exist, he will try to get the third million and the fourth and so on. His success is defined by the amount of millions or billions he has. With Putin it's the territory and the power Russia has in the World.
Trump already gave Afghanistan to the Taleban. That is how he treats his "allies". And it seems he is pushing for a similar resolution again with Ukraine. The next thing that likely is happening already behind closed doors, is that the US is hindering the efforts of Europe to give support to Ukraine. Europe really has to stand up here, because the Trump negotiating tactic is to surrender to have the quick peace he wants. Which is a very dangerous policy which already has had devastating effects, because the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan did enforce Putin's reasoning that he could have the three week war and conquer Ukraine.
I think something more fundamental is going on, they are essentially trying to overthrow the liberal democratic order because they think it was destroying the US. And they think it's destroying Europe too... Europe is their ideological enemy now.
It isn't about the world, it's about Europe, at least for me. It would be good for Europe because they have shown that they can't be relied on to have our interests in mind. I think we would be better of if we could determine our own direction.
Quoting ssu
I understand that it would be bad for Ukraine. What I don't understand is why you think our negotiating position will become better if we continue the war.
To make our negotiation position better we need to take back territory. To take back territory you need a lot of troops, which Ukraine has less and less of. That means we would probably need to send a lot of European troops, which would escalate the war into a direct Russia-Europe war...
If the US leaves we lose the intelligence, tactical and logistic support. At this moment the European coördination is lacking if the US isn't filling that role. So we'd essentially be sending in troops without much experience and lacking propper support.
We should take the space Trump creates to get or at least try to negotiate a peace deal. If it doesn't work fine, then we fight... but we should at least put all effort in the negotiations first, and not constantly antagonise and assume it will fail beforehand.
The alt-right is diverse, but for some, it's that liberal democracy failed to protect the people, leftism tried to help, but is now fossilized. So it's: 'what do you do about the anti-social aspects of neoliberalism now that leftism is clearly useless?' Think about this from Vance's perspective as a man whose mother was addicted to heroin. The US government knew huge amounts of life-destroying drugs were coming in from the rest of the world. They let it happen. Finally, Canada and Mexico are being forced to help. Why didn't this happen sooner?
So it's real social disintegration driving some of it. Europe is heavily neoliberal, so their goals are now at odds with American ones.
Thanks for the lecture. :smile:
That's my hope. Right now, he's pissing off veterans again - the US has alot of veterans from its many unsuccessful wars - and maybe servicemen, too, which should make it harder for him to consolidate a military dictatorship. OTOH, those very actions may precipitate a change of leadership (".... peacefully, at his big white house, while tweeting in all caps....") After all, he's an old man and Vance is a relatively young man, sane, intelligent and master of the quick change. That's my fear.
Perilous times. But first, we just have to get through this brutal winter.
Unfortunately I have to agree with you. Yet Trump is more of a threat to the US than he is to Europe. Europe can go it's own way, but Americans should deserve better than have this bully destroying everything. Power has simply gone to the head of the senile narcissist.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Because what is there to negotiate but Ukraine surrendering? As I've said, if Putin can get what he wants, what is there to negotiate? Perhaps that Putin can weaken the resolution of the Ukrainians by Trump's "negotiations", which basically is that kick the hell out of Ukraine and lick the ass of Putin.
What the fuck is there to negotiate? How much more Ukraine has to surrender? And if those negotiations don't go through (meaning Ukraine doesn't want to surrender), you think Trump won't support his friend Vladimir and blame everything at Zelenskyi? Likely Europe will support Ukraine and then Trump leaves NATO. After all, how could he know that France actually did come to the help of the US when article 5 was implemented after 9/11.
First, we have not given everything that Ukraine has needed, the effort hasn't been to support Ukraine so much that it could destroy Russian capability so much that Russia would accept a negotiated peace, it was give only so much, that Ukraine doesn't lose. That has been the error here. If everything would have been given then immediately, the F-16s, the long range artillery missiles, things would have been different. Biden opted not to do that. And now Trump is effectively hampering down the capabilities of Ukraine to defend itself, which just helps Russia to improve it's stance.
It hasn't been such a triumph for Russia as some even in this forum have portrayed it to be and Russia isn't the Soviet Union.
Quoting Vera Mont
Since Trump, the draft-dodger, hasn't served, he doesn't understand at all that many people who do military service do take the oath that they give dead seriously. It's not just general Mark Milley, there will be resentment in the military if Trump disregards the Constitution.
This is why Trump and the MAGA-people absolutely hate general Milley, as he didn't hide what he thought of Emperor Trump. It isn't the only speech, but the last speech as he retired. Worth listening:
And as many have served with allies, the idea also that Trump throws away 80-years of alliances that have worked and jump to bed with a Russian dictator who hates America and will gladly want to see it's alliances break up, that will stir a lot of emotions.
I'm sure that some Americans take the Constitution and their Republic quite seriously. And aren't happy how Elon Musk wipes his ass with it.
Quoting Vera Mont
Spring is coming. Here it's been very mild, no skiing in the south.
Do you not realize what precarious situation that gets us in? The last thing we should be doing at this particular moment is looking to get into prolonged wars.
Quoting ssu
None of this matters if we can't take back territory, if you can't force a better negotiation position.
Quoting ssu
All of this is in the past, things we can't change anymore. We have to deal with the situation as is.
Quoting ssu
No, and it certainly hasn't been a triumph for the West either... the war is stuck and no going anywhere, certainly not in the direction we would want.
Please stop the warmongering, it's going to be the end of us.
I'd go a bit further: there should have been a much stronger response in 2014, enough to be a deterrent. Putin took a risk, the Ukrainians were hesitant/unprepared, everyone was caught by surprise. Of course that's easy to say in retrospect; things looked different back then. (Say, what might happen if unidentified/unmarked soldiers showed up on St Lawrence Island (Alaska) or something...?)
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Why keep assuming so? Sure it can be taken back, and the Ukrainians are eager to. They don't want to march on Moscow, they want to throw the invaders out of Ukraine. And Hungary ain't helpin'.
The war has been going in the wrong direction the past 3 years, why do you assume that would change, if the US leaves the war?
What is the plan other than keep sending them more weapons to hold on for a little bit longer. Is there any plan?
Try to understand that helping Ukraine isn't such a huge deal, it's not at all so costly, especially compared to the War on Terror thing. The West is NOT IN A WAR. The only thing Ukraine has asked is weapons. And if we push them to accept peace, their argument of having some kind of security guarantees is totally logical. There has already been those peace talks of Minsk I and Minsk II, which Putin then simply ignored and continued fighting.
For the US, the cost of the war in Afghanistan was 2 trillion and the cost of Iraq war was similar, if not more. Now the military aid to Ukraine that the US actually has given is just 66 billion dollars. And a lot of that isn't actually so costly, because it has been old equipment that has was to be disregarded. For example, it hasn't been the US that has given the few F-16's, but smaller NATO countries.
And for Europe, that in all has spent 140 billion in military and other aid to Ukraine altogether? Let's just put this into context with the stimulus package of the past Corona pandemic:
That was actually so much that the money simply couldn't be spent. So we really have to understand that this whole war isn't of utter importance even to Europe and is only existential to Ukraine. And what von der Leyen has now proposed is defense spending of 800 billion, which all naturally doesn't go to Ukraine.
And let's put to context even that 800 billion. Israel's defense spending is about 30 billion, France has 61 billion and both of these countries have a nuclear deterrence. Ukraine is spending in the war 63 billion dollars and Russia defense spending is now something like 106 billion annually. So that people are talking about using the 300 billion in frozen assets and well over 100 billion, what the hell is wrong here?
Why this defeatism?
All of this is just that Trump wants Russia to win, that's all. He wants to punish Ukraine because it hasn't surrendered to his beloved dictatorship. So this war is painted to be a forever war, that somehow Russia cannot be fought to a standstill that is has to negotiate. Nope, have to surrender, Ukraine!!!
Yet even that isn't the real threat for the US. If Americans just let Trump trample the foundations of the separation of powers and the Constitution, the US will really be banana republic itself run just like Latin American states in the past with a Caudillo type person at the helm. And this is a totally different issue.
Yes, you are totally correct. Or better perhaps, after the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. But that was the time when American politicians dreamed about a "Reset" with Russia. And what have we now? A belligerent Russia that seems to be winning the propaganda war at least in the US as the American president blames Ukraine for starting the war.
It is a big deal for Europe because it is one of the big factors hurting the economy. Energy-prices are being pushed higher because of the lack of Russian gas. If energy-prices are that high you simply can't compete in the world economy and you will see more and more industry disappearing.
All of the money will be loaned because European goverments are virtually broke as it is. A tanking economy and a lot of debt will probably lead to stagflation. Meanwhile the world goes on with its merry business while Europe becomes a backwater. If Europe wants to keep some of its prosperity long term you will need Russia to trade resources anyway because we don't have a lot of that ourselves....
I think you just don't see the long term implications of all of this. This is a pivotal point in history because of all the geo-political shuffling going on. If we mess this us, we will bear the consequences for decades to come.
Non of this makes sense from the point of view of Europes interests, but I guess we should just make that sacrifice because it is the 'moral' thing to do.
A bigger reason is that countries haven't had a realistic energy policies in the first place. Especially thinking that renewable energy will take care of everything and fossil fuels don't matter is the primary cause. Germany went and closed it's nuclear energy for no reason and the UK's energy situation isn't bad because of Russia.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
This isn't about "morality", it's about sovereignty and independence of the nation states belonging to Europe. We aren't supporting Ukraine just because Russia invaded it. We are anticipating the next move already.
How can I state this?
Perhaps coming back to video you posted on another thread about Jeffrey Sachs and his speech at the EU Parliament. (I listened to the speech, not the questions later)
First, does Sachs say anything negative about Putin's Russia? Does he mention the annexation of Crimea? No, he skipped that. If I remember correctly, according to him all rhetoric of Russia having territorial aspirations was "childish propaganda". So what Putin talks to the Russian people and has written about the "artificiality" of Ukraine and the injustice Russia has been a victim with losing Crimea doesn't matter or itself is childish propaganda too?
You simply have to be yourself critical about and notice the bias that Sachs has here. Is he right about the US giving up Middle East policy to Netanyahu? Yes, I think so. Did Brzezinski write "The Grand Chessboard" with aggressive hubris towards Russia? Yes, I have the book in bookshelf, yet it wasn't an US masterplan for Russia, because Brzezinski was just one voice in the cacophony of US foreign policy community of competing think tanks and commentators. Just like Jeffrey Sachs himself and his friend John Mearsheimer are. China or Russia might have masterplans, the US, not so.
Please understand that Russia and especially Putin's Russia is equally ruthlessly playing a similar, far more persistent game while every now and then the US administration changes and the priorities change. Even Gorbachev, Sachs' hero, hoped that the Soviet Union could "Finlandize" Europe, which means the Soviet Union having basically a say in domestic politics and in foreign policy of other the countries. That is at stake here. Supporting Ukraine isn't just based on what is morally right. Putin won't end at Ukraine, especially if it is given to him on a silver platter.
You might argue that isn't the US doing the same, trying to influence smaller states? Well, it really is different having been the ally of Soviet Union and Russia or having been an "ally" of the US. Just ask WHY people in former Warsaw countries wanted to join NATO? And btw, naturally every ambassador tries to influence their host countries, yet the vast of them in a friendly and open manner.
Yet since Trump has become the bully here, just watch the outcome of that with the ties with European countries. It won't go well. You see, for 76 years the US has played correctly it's cards with Europe, starting from the Marshal Plan, the Berlin Airlift, from president Kennedy stating "Ich bin ein Berliner" to president Reagan stating "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!". That is the America that critics of US foreign policy will on purpose not talk about, because that would blur their agenda. Yet that is the US that many Europeans remember.
Now all that is being thrown away with the contempt and disregard, near hostility that Trump is showing against Europe. With asking for Greenland and questioning the whole sovereignty of Canada the devils of jingoism and xenophobia are summoned up and the supporters of the Trump/Putin-axis market this as being part of "realpolitik", while those defending the international order are accused to be stooges of the "deep state".
Well, if national security doesn't mean anything to you, have then Putin destroy everything. He will. Because the next target after NATO will be the European Union. Sow discord and discontent in Europe is the way forward for Russia. Trump is doing the work for Putin in an astonishing way.
Yes, mistakes have been made, but again we have to look at the situation as is. Renewable energy is still only a small portion of total energy consumption right now. Maybe we will get there eventually, but we will need gas for a while still.
Quoting ssu
Well a lot of countries do this, Turkey has aspirations of taking back the whole Ottoman empire for instance, that doesn't mean they will start invading those countries necessarily. I would agree that they have those aspirations in general, but I think the real issue was genuinly the fact that Ukraine is vital for Russia's securiy because it's a straight line of 300 miles over plains to Moskou. And given the US trackrecord the concern was not wholy unjustified I would say. That and Putin maybe needed a war to stabilize his rule internally.
Quoting ssu
I'm sure he has some bias, but all the regime change attemps and fraud wars they engaged in over the years don't seem like a mere coincidance. Maybe the hawkish policy makers generally won? Maybe there was a military-industry incentive to choose those policies over the others? For other countries it doesn't matter much if they have a grand plan or not if the consequences are the same.
Quoting ssu
Unless it's via secret CIA operations. Maybe people generally prefer to live in our type of society, but isn't part of it also that we were the dominant power and generally more wealthy than the rest of the world because of that.
Quoting ssu
Here's how I see it.
The liberal democratic order was West-centric, with notions such as Univeral rights not making a lot of sense for other societies, and often used to unnecessarily antagonise them. Maybe it was due an overhaul now that China is more of an equal on the world stage. A new order will emerge, because anarchy is good for nobody. I think we should talk to China who is the one allready thinking in that direction. It doesn't have to end in a worse place, this is just a transition, which is why we should try to look at world not only from our Western perspective now and try to find agreement instead of looking for the disagreement.
NATO should be replaced by our own European security achitecture, and I think that would healthy because then we will need to take it seriously and can determine our own course... and devellop some geo-political consciousness again.
The European Union needs to be reformed too, maybe replaced by a federation or something. You need real agency at the top if you want to be a player on the world stage, and you can't have that if you are perpetually divided with that many member states. Now we are being ruled by a bureaucracy that devellops an internal logic of its own that doesn't necessarily serve the member states. I would stop a lot of the harmonisation efforts of the Commission so countries have more say again in how they want to organise their state. Real diversity in countries and unity in strength under Europe.
I think we need to look forward SSU, and not backwards, clinging to a world that is disappearing. That's why I think we should do everything to get out of this perpetual dance of the death with Russia, it is important.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Actually no. Very few countries have aspirations for territorial expansion. UK, Austria, France, Spain, Germany etc. don't have politicians pushing for conquering the lost territories and bring back the former glory of a past empire. Putin does (unlike Jeffrey Sachs says). We are totally blind if we don't see this. And Russians that I've talked here in Finland (who can openly share their minds) don't like Putin. In fact, only in 2014 I saw two Russians in Helsinki with the black and orange stripes. Countries that have desires like this are few, yet they aren't nonexistent.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
How do universal rights not make a lot of sense for other societies? What other societies are you thinking of? Are they somehow incapable of living up to our level or simply just love more autocracy?
I think the Estonians are extremely happy to live in a democracy with those universal rights than to be under the jackboot of Russia. Besides, Putin's Russia has now MORE political prisoners than the Soviet Union had during Brezhnev... and the country was far larger than now. Why do you disregard and throw away values and rights that at least my grandfathers fought for? And why talk of it in past tense. You think that democracy has already died?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
NATO will be replaced by an European security architechture, if Trump wants to destroy as Putin would desire and if we and the Americans let him do that. And then Russia will go against that European rump-NATO and the European Union.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Nah. Reform it on the way, but no reason to change the name. And a US style federation won't work.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
These two seem to be opposed to the other.
I would suggest the ability to go forward with a "coalition of the willing" in issues and that there isn't the ability of one or two countries to simply oppose everything and bloc action of the union. And simply to understand that EU has it's limitations, it cannot act as a single nation state, but it can act as a pact.
The most urgent issue is that our politicians wake up to the threat that the Putin/Trump pact is for Europe. In no way this appeasement and support that Trump gives to Putin (with the alt-right cheering it) serves the interests of Europe. Likely Putin has promised Trump a bigger "minerals deal" if he hands over Ukraine to Russia. All the actions taken by to undermine Ukraine start unveiling a really bad situation. And Trumps obsession for Greenland (and Canada) perhaps shows that Trump is drooling for riches in this new imperialist game he wants to play with Putin, who is in real trouble otherwise.
No they just have another order of values. They think stability comes before rights, which I would argue makes some sense because you can't protect rights if you don't have a working order to protect them. So Putin or Xi think they can remove dissindents because it threathens the stability of the country. Liberal democracy isn't allways something that works because of the circumstances some countries find themselves in... just look at all the failed attempts of the west to install these kind of regimes. Sometimes it just doesn't work, and then you get violent anarchy like in Irak for instance, or Lybia, or Syria. Or look at the US now, or Nazi germany, democratically choosen! It think the assumption that liberal democracy is allways the best is bit misguided.
Quoting ssu
And we can detter it with military strenght, like the US did untill now, without the antagonising.
Quoting ssu
It's the principle of subsidiarity, you delegate everything you can to the more local levels, and at the highest level you keep only what needs to be dealt with on the highest level. Foreign policy, defense would probably need to be cöordinated at the top level because that makes most sense.
Quoting ssu
You can never devellop a consistent longer term strategy like that I think, which is what all other blocs are doing... you will end up being a leaf in the wind on the geopolitical stage.
Quoting ssu
Ooh they are awake allright. I think they should keep calm and not overreact... that is the bigger danger now.
I think that everybody thinks so. Without stability or in anarchy, the first "value" is simply one's own safety. This has been seen so many times. If the government stops working, then the first thing that happens is that people in the society take on the mission on what the police has had. Either it's by armed militias or gangs, or then local politicians become warlords. Societies with strong social cohesion simply wouldn't have their governments become incapacitated. The social cohesion means that people won't turn to arms.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
In the case of Iraq, Libya and Syria, the road to a liberal democracy is extremely hard, and if there are enough warlords or armed ethnic groups that want their own independence or do not want liberal democracy, it simply won't work. And with outside powers financing the different groups the outcome is that liberal democracy isn't happening.
The US attempt in Iraq makes this evident, you cannot have a functioning liberal democracy if you don't have political resolution of the of power-sharing between the Sunni's and Shia's or what to do when the aim of the Kurds is independence. Just assuming to have elections and those kind of issue will be solved is naive and basically foolish. George Bush the older understood this and took the advice of his Arab allies and didn't continue into Baghdad after liberating Kuwait.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I don't want the EU to be an Empire. It can have a defense, but not be offensive. There's always going to be some Hungary around, but also so many the sovereign states won't start something extremely stupid. At least some countries will come to the conclusion that "this would be stupid".
The weak point of liberal democracy is stability.
Quoting ssu
Yes for sure I don't want empire either, we should build in enough checks and balances to prevent that.
So why I think this could work, i.e. having a more centralised defence and foreign policy, is 1) it would enable us to defend Europes interests better on the world stage, which would be a net benefit for all countries and 2) it would prevent European countries from fighting among each other.
Why do I think the latter is important? I think one of the problems of the EU has allways been the democratic deficit, the notion that European bureaucracy is to far removed from the people and is just doing stuff that is not in the interest of the countries and its people. The way to solve this is to bring back government to the more local level so there is more of a connection again between goverment and the people (the principle of subsidiarity). If you want to do that however you probably get stronger nationalist sentiments forming again, and you risk what has happened again and again in Europes history, European countries going to war with eachother. By tying up the miltary of the countries in a more central European defence you could effectively avoid that from happening. The EU was a peaceproject, it was very effective in preventing intra-European wars, just not that effective in other areas.
I think the reasoning here is that the democratic republic, the needed functioning institutions, are difficult, but not unobtainable. India has been a democracy. Many Third World countries have been democracies and, at least, try to be democracies. We can see just how long that takes, especially with the example of South Korea. It has finally gotten to be a democracy, it's prosperous. And then, the leader tried an auto-coup.
In fact comes to my mind a very prosperous and large advanced country, that tries to be a democracy, but seems to have problems with this.... :snicker:
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
One reason in that Europe is so diverse. Spain and Finland are different, just as Greece and Ireland. That makes the EU to function like an Empire extremely different. There is no leading country, as there would have been if either Napoleon or Hitler had succeeded. And how long those Empires would have lasted? I'm not sure.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Actually, there is now one unifying reason: Donald Trump.
If the US would, just like Obama and Biden and the presidents before them, stand with Europe, Russia wouldn't pose a threat. Now when Trump is in Putin's pocket, Russia is an existential threat. Add there the trade war. Add there the territorial annexation agende of Greenland, which is part of Denmark.
True unification usually happens with an outside threat. That is there now.
Quoting ssu
Yes the Russia threat and US tradewar is a unifying force, certainly initially, but it's also a polarising and splitting force. Militarisation of the economy and a tradewar induced recession will also create a lot of discontent in European countries. That discontent usually gets vacuumed up by far right parties that are financially supported by Putin and ideologically supported by alt-right media. It seems you can expect some countries to flip in coming election cycles should the war drag on another couple of years... and if that happens then you could very well see the end the EU, which is what Trump and Putin want, and/or the war spilling over into Europe.
That scenario, which seems very plausible to me, is what got me blackpilled on this war, but I guess nobody sees it like that.
I remember years ago an EU political advisor stating the obvious. One cannot erase the national identity of the people, one can only create a higher level identity that joins the people. Yet this is an absolutely enormous task to do, having a flag and anthem simply won't do. The creation of people being British shows that this is possible, the example of being an Yugoslav or a Soviet shows this can utterly fail.
What is essential to sovereign nation states is the shared collective feeling about them. Patriotism, the love of your country. Love isn't something that you rationally and logically conclude.
Many Finns get tears in their eyes when the national anthem is played and the Finnish flag is raised. It's not because of the Finnish having paying a price, it's what they have experienced, what their own family, their grandparents and now great grandparents went through to keep the country independent. That's the thing that ties history to oneself and makes it personal. Nothing of this kind of happens when we have the EU flag and the nice peace from Beethoven is played. Here the EU has failed and is failing. It could do a lot more.
Yes I totally agree with you about this, this is why I would give back a lot of what the Commission does now back to the countries... because they have lost a lot of their sovereignity to the EU, and are hampered in their ability to implement effective policies to deal with problems in their country.
I'm talking mostly only about a more permanent centralisation of defence and military because that makes sense in the world we are seeming to be heading to. And really, in practice sovereignity in foreign policy and defence is allready mostly dead letter now because a lot of it is determined by NATO.
Note that the sovereign countries have understood the necessity for integration and for their to be system of having a Commission. They have given some sovereignty over to the EU, but notice that in the end they could take it back (and make a crisis in EU).
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Actually, NATO gives a good, realistic, concept to follow here. Only without the US. So you have to have that command structures. In fact, this can happen inside NATO in the way that European NATO members and Canada just start assuming that the US isn't there and start having exercises without the US.
You could use it as a template, or reform NATO itself sure, but I would do 3 things differently.
1) I think there needs to be political leadership over it, so you have accountability to the public, and also real agency because it has a mandate from the public
2) We need a alliance for European security seperate from the US, because if you are only a junior partner in an alliance you usually have little controle over where it goes.
3) It shouldn't be an alliance against Russia, because all of the reasons I have been harping on about in previous posts.
Ok, for this I have to make some comments.
Defense treaties aren't established when is there is no threat. And alliance isn't formed that then goes look for possible adversaries. That's the way it never happens. There already has to be a real reason.
Secondly,
As Trump has repeatedly question the sovereignty of Canada, the Canadian-US border and made hinted even to use military force to annex Greenland from Denmark. Why wouldn't the US the be then as hostile or even more hostile than Russia?
The reason is that all above is basically statements of Trump, who says a lot of things. Yet the US military isn't training in large scale exercises to invade Canada. US military personnel aren't talking about annexing Canada. US television isn't having television shows how Canada or Greenland would be invaded. The US isn't jamming Canadian GPS system or it's receivers. The US doesn't see that it's in a proxy war with Canada. And The US hasn't declared Canada to be it's enemy.
That's the difference. All of the above is actually the hostility that Russia shows to it's Western neighbors.
I think, as I stated before, that the dynamics or the relation between the two has gotten us to where we are, not only Russia. And I think NATO was a part of that because it structurally creates tension as Russia is the explicit reason for the alliance.
We could have a alliance not against Russia, but for European security and involve Russia so it doesn't threaten its security, but also improves its security.
Putin is not going to live forever, but Russia is allways going to be there. I think we should look to the future, and not institutionalise the current conflict with Russia. Because if that is what you expect and build towards, then that is probably what you are going to get.
There's been enough of "resets" and understanding of Putin's Russia. As long as Putin's Russia is as hostile as it is, we should treat it as a threat, just like the West treated Soviet Union. Appeasement now will just show that Europe is inherently weak and can be forced with the threat of violence to give everything up.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Please do understand that Putin's Russia wants to dissolve the European Union and hence is a genuine threat to it. Someone that is your adversary really isn't your friend and you won't improve your security by going along with it. China isn't such aggressive as Russia.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
And as long as Russia sees itself as a Great Power that should have it's sphere of influence in Europe, that long it's an existential threat. It can have a revolution and understand that the time of it's Imperial greatness is over, just like the UK understood and even France was forced to understand.
There's not going to be any difference if one siloviki is replaced with another siloviki, like Putin replaced by perhaps Nikolai Patrushev or someone similar. But I guess instantly many will again want to push immediately the "reset" button, even if the "new" guy has been all along with Putin.
It think the problem with this line of thinking is that we are in fact weak. Instead of trying to hold up a facade of strenght by not giving into Russia, maybe we should try to actually be strong. And to be strong you need to have a good economy, and for that you need cheaper energy...
I think these psychological considerations matter a whole lot less that we might think, it's the facts on the ground that matter most, and there Russia is winning.
Quoting ssu
I don't deny this, they are our adversary now and we should treat them as such for the forseable future. That doesn't mean we can't try to de-escalate and work towards having a less destructive relation.
Quoting ssu
It think it's going to be difficult to get them that far, the break up of the USSR is still etched in their minds as one of the most damaging things that has happened to them in history... they lost as much people as in World War II in that period. Putin was and is the one holding the oligarchs in check. I don't think you can just have a revolution and expect things to go swimmingly for them.
Why do you think so?
There's far enough resources, technological ability and I would say unity to defend the union. Going on in out of the area peace enforcing or other stuff isn't going to be popular, but the simple fact of defending the member states from outside aggression is an reachable goal.
Look, my country wasn't part of NATO, was left totally to the sphere of Stalin and yet we had enough deterrence to stay independent. Why now would we have less deterrence when we are in an alliance and when Europe is pouring 800 billion into defense procurement?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Nonsense. We are talking of military strength and deterrence. Just look at what a basket case is Russia itself. And look how poor actually the Chinese are compared per capita to us. One has to understand that the NATO countries (minus US) spend more than China and Russia COMBINED in defense. It's really a simply an issue of having will here to really to put serious investment into defense.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Russia isn't winning. Ukrainians can decide if they want to fight for their country or not. It is up to us if we want to give them support. For example: over 70 F-16 fighters have been pledged to be given to Ukraine. Now only 18 have been sent, I guess. We in Europe have to understand that Trump is hostile to us, he isn't our friend.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
How?
By giving into Putin's demands? By sidelining the Ukrainians here, just as Trump does?
This approach was used earlier in history. Then the British Prime Minister stated:
And Chamberlain was praised at the time as the benefactor of the world while Chamberlains critics were war-mongers. That people "felt a very proper reluctance of sending young men of this country to war, especially as there were no personal feelings of ill-will between British men and their German and Italian contemporaries.
Assuming the US bows out of the war, we are weak at this particular moment because they did a lot of the coördination, the intelligence, logistics, tactical support etc... I think we need some time to get those things in order.
We also lack the battle experience. Russia is already fighting the war for 3 years now, they have a military economy going, and probably would want to keep it going because they are allready geared for it now. We're only just getting started.
I'm talking about the Ukraine war specifically... because to turn arround that war you essentially need to take back territory. Deterring Russia in the future is another matter, I think we could do that if we can prepare for it. Defence is generally a lot easier than offence.
Quoting ssu
I think you maybe don't fully appreciate how much a lot of European countries are in debt allready, because you live in a country that is doing really well compared to the rest. You also probably have a military that was taken seriously because of the Russia threat that was allways there for Finland... in Western Europe there hasn't been a serious threat for 80 years, and as a consequence the military has suffered. Large investements are needed, with money that isn't really there.
Russia is maybe a basket case in the overall, but they probably can keep a war economy going pretty easily because of the abundant natural resources they can allways export.
Quoting ssu
They are winning because they have conquered territory from Ukraine. Since they already occupy the territories they are asking for, they don't really need a peace deal... why would they settle for less if we can't get them out anytime soon?
Quoting ssu
Zelenski will have to listen to us because without our support he's losing the war anyway. We support him to get the realistically best possible peace deal, not to fight on indefinately. And yes that will mostly be giving into Putin's demands, i.e. no Nato, giving up the occupied territories for the most part, new elections in Ukraine... the one thing I would push for is a good enough security arrangement for Ukraine so Russia can't just start over. That is called cutting your losses.
Quoting ssu
Russia is in no way in a similar position as Nazi-germany. They have trouble conquering a small part of a neighbouring country. The fear that Russia will invade the rest of Europe is irrational from a practical point of view, and also contradictory with the idea that we should keep the Ukraine war going because we think we can just conquer back the territory.... you can't have it both ways.
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/CAN/FRA/DEU/ITA/JPN/GBR/USA
It's not going to end well.
This simply isn't true. During the Cold War, there was a credible deterrence against the Soviet threat. The Bundeswehr had a strength of half a million soldiers. Heck, Germany would have had even tactical nuclear weapons during wartime. Now you can see this equipment in a museum.
This draw down happened only after the Cold War ended. That is 30 years ago, not 80 years. And naturally the threat that Putin's Russia poses is far smaller than what the Soviet Union did.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Actually, they don't. Putin is asking for oblasts that aren't totally in Russian hands.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That would be the European objective, not Trump's objective, who is basically doing the bidding of Russia here.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Which has been supported by the largest alliance in history, up until Trump. But cut off that aid, and Russia can take Ukraine. And once there's a cease-fire, then Russia can build up in few years the armament that it has lost. Also it drafts hundreds of thousands of conscripts annually.
When Russia says it's at war with NATO and the West, we should understand that he means it.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes, it's not going to end well.
The system is just going to default in some way or another. That simple.
You can default or then you can pay it with inflation.
Yes I was overstating the case a bit, it is 30 years of no threat... the result is the same though, the military hasn't been taken seriously.
Quoting ssu
But then we should take some initiative towards realising that objective, instead of merely antagonising like we are doing now and for the past 3 years. And I don't think Trump is doing Putin's bidding, he just wants out because he thinks that is in US interests... and for that he needs to find some common ground with Putin. Just repeating over and over how evil Putin is, isn't going to get us closer to a peace deal.
Quoting ssu
I think he says that because we keep pretending like we are not in the war, i.e. that we're only providing help "to protect Ukraines soevereignity".
But yes we need to find a workable security arrangement for Ukraine, I do agree with that because otherwise you have the same problem in a few years. That is the single most important thing we should be aiming for, and to achieve that we will probably need to make some other concessions. And it will take a lot of time and effort to get there, so we better get started to move the conversation in that direction.
Quoting ssu
And then what, we end up in a Weimar Germany kind of situation? You don't think that is something we should be trying to avoid at all cost?
This is what I don't understand, rhetorically we have our mouth full of warnings about the looming dangers of fascism, but then in practice we are doing exactly the things we know leads to extremism.
He isn't, really?
If you listen for example to Tucker Carlson interviewing Steve Witkoff, Trump's real estate friend turned negotiator, you can clearly see the wonderful relationship Trump has with Putin. After praising Donald Trump for his wisdom, Witkoff praises Putin several times and says that Putin isn't a bad guy. Witkoff tells to Carlson how Putin has prayed for Trump and how Putin presented a picture of Trump for Witkoff to take to Trump and how moved the American President is from the action. This is nearly something like the US being a negotiator between Israel and Hamas, with the role of Hamas given to Ukraine, the problematic party here that doesn't get it and is disrespectful. And that Ukraine is totally doomed and Russia will otherwise triumph over it.
And the EU? Witkoff tells that the Europeans are simplistic, that it's just all just posture and a pose. And Wittkoff states that with 100% Russia does not want to "march through Europe". Oh, how benevolent and friendly Russia is and how it just wants peace.
Sorry, but that praising and incredible bullshit made me feel like vomiting. Yet with appeasement you do get peace. Putin can have it all. Surrender is the easiest way to get peace. That is the fucking "common ground" the US is pushing basically here.
Trump wants some lucrative deal from Russia and the Nobel peace prize and doesn't care a shit what happens to Ukraine or NATO. For Trump his personal interests are also naturally the interests of the US. He is the US president, after all.
And if you say I'm wrong, that this is the way to negotiate with Russian, then please tell why ALL the previous US negotiators that brokered the nuclear limitation talks or even the kilotons to kilowatts -agreement with the Russians said something else. They all repeat the similar story that you have to be tough as the other side, the Russians, are tough negotiators, and one shouldn't trust, and if you trust, verify.
Putin wants a neutered and broken up Ukraine and after that he will go against the EU with the help of Trump.
Europe truly needs to gets it's act together and understand what a threat the Trump-assisted Putin is for peace in our continent.
Giving arms to a belligerent isn't the same as being in war. That we've learnt from the Cold War. He simply says this to justify his action to attack Ukraine and continue the war in Ukraine. The lie that Ukraine is ruled by Neo-Nazi drug users flies only so far.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Not according to the Trump people. Putin is totally reliable for them. And that should tell us Europeans a lot.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I think sooner or later the paper money system will collapse. But it's not the end of the World. Debts are then either defaulted or repaid by inflation and those that do have their savings in bonds and cash will lose that wealth. But then life goes on.
And Russia isn't going to attack Europe on its own, because they can't.
Non of this is real.
Quoting ssu
There would be massive social and political upheaval the likes we haven't seen in our lifes... but sure life would eventually go on I guess, after all the dust has settled.
It's really something, how blinded most Europeans are by imagined threats so they can't see the real danger right in front of them.
They already have...
doppelganger, matrioska, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2024, 2024, 2024, 2024, 2024, 2024, 2024, 2025, 2025, ... (plus they invaded Ukraine)
And then...
Pete Hegseth Orders US Cyber Command to Stand Down on Russia: Reports ( Brendan Cole · Newsweek · Mar 3, 2025)
If that were true, the world economy would grind to a halt. Money is only a token, people will just replace, or change the token. The Weimar situation was quite different, they basically committed economic Hara Kiri.
Yes, there would be turmoil, but not catastrophic and assets in the form of gold or property will retain their value.
That attack might not take the form which it took in February 24th 2022. Please understand that the objective is to 1) destroy the Transatlantic alliance and 2) weaken the EU. With these objectives Russia gains power and influence over Europe and then can work on enlarging it's sphere of influence.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
It is real alright. I can list just like @jorndoe the hybrid attacks now being implemented against Europe, but if don't care about that. Yet the truth is the following:
Yes, as per usual it will be the bottom and lower middle classes who will bear the brunt of it... and cost of living is already becoming a problem for them as we speak.
Add to that climate change related issues like mass migration out of Afrika or crop-failures all over the world, an ageing demographic that needs more and more care, increasing geo-political instability, technological disruptions like the AI-revolution, fossil energy-depletion etc etc... and you have a recipe for something really special!
The younger generations will have nothing to look forward to, and if history is any lesson they will not go quietly in the night. We need to give them some perspective for a future Punshhh, getting stuck in an endless war is the opposite of that.
We are at war, what do you expect? That Russia would just say, go ahead Europe, you can freeze all our foreign assets, throw us out of the global banking system, give financial and military support to our enemy we are at war with?
The financial measures are always overstated, because for Putin this is an existential endeavor. He will put nearly everything on the line and only won't dare to touch the pool of reservists in the Moscow and St. Petersburgh region. But ethnic minorities, they can be thrown to the meatgrinder.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
We are not in war. In war, the missiles would be flying into the city you or I live in. That's not happening. Basically there's a term in Finnish for what we are in now: harmaa aika, basically "grey time" as these things aren't black and white. And likely Russia will also want to have the time to continue like this.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
And when Russia attacks an non-aligned country that doesn't pose a threat to it, when NATO wasn't on the table (even Germany made this absolutely clear prior to the February 2022 invasion), and Russia breaks dozens of international agreements starting from the UN charter, we shouldn't respond?
Don't lose touch of what is the reason and what is the consequence here.
And I think it's totally consistent to back up Ukraine, as they know better what they can do and what they are facing. The idea of others deciding on behalf of Ukrainians is not only arrogant and condescending, but inherently dangerous.
The sanctions were reactionary. It's not customary to impose sanctions out of the blue. :D Getting into re-re-repetition here.
The Kremlin invaded annexed assimilated. While being bombed, Ukraine has been in the process of reforms (with results). Putin's Russia has regressed longer (press + media freedom, freedom of assembly, democracy + free fair certified elections, gone; industrialized manipulation + propaganda, implemented). Expect reactions.
Let's all sing in choir, "It doesn't matter that you are right if you can't enforce your demands on the battlefield".
On its own it's not necessarily the end of the world, that's right. My point is that we won't be experiencing the consequences of it in isolation, but together with all the other challenges we can expect to face in the near future, which will compound on eachother.
The Ukrainians haven't been supported unconditionally. (Imagine if someone like Utkin had been at the helm in Kyiv. :gasp:) Actually, there's been so much caution that some of it amounted to tip-toeing which is playing Putin's game; recall, the Kremlin says what they want others to hear regardless; they're not omnipotent.
The Ukrainians, the victims, have said "No"; most of the world concurred. :shrug:
As mentioned, expect responses. (Do you really want to see the Ukrainians being sh?t all over (again), plus open expansion of anti-democracy?)
Putin can be deterred if the Ukrainians want to. Non-appeasement + discouragement also mean wider impact.
(Meh Why do the re-re-repetitions (have to) keep coming?)
We have been supporting them unconditionally in rhetoric only yes, and probably never really had the intention to go all the way. I wish we would stop the empty promisses, so as to not give Ukraine false hope, and not to hinder peace negotiations. I think it's disgusting the way we are handling it, with so much at stake either we do as we say, or we shut up.
So when it's your country who will need assistance, will you be then happy with allies that decide that what they can do to answer your call for article 5 assistance is to send your country bodybags, because you need those and anything else would be too "escalatory" for their own safety? After all, they have to think about their own security and not put that on line with you and your decision...
Let's just remind us what Europe has done to help Ukraine: it has given weapons assistance, financial aid and is giving refuge to millions of Ukrainians. Europe is not giving manpower as North Korea is doing. It isn't letting it's airspace or territory to Ukraine to attack Russia like Belarus is giving to Russia.
You should think first how the allies of Russia are behaving here. And just how they are left alone.
And then come the threats from Russia and all the hybrid attacks that it already is making and has made even before 2022. Against my country even before we were part of NATO.
As I've said, appeasement is not only historically, but in this situation logically it is the worst thing to do.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
This is actually confusing. On one hand you argue that the promises are empty, on the other hand it seems that we should not give the promises.
Of course I wouldn't be happy with it. And I think Ukraine has every right to be unhappy with it too. They are fighting for their survival, I don't blame them for anything. But we are not Ukraine, and we do have other things to consider then only Ukraines security.
Quoting ssu
This only follows if we were in the same situation as with Nazi-Germany, which we aren't. Hybrid attacks are not the same as a conventional invasion.
And I'm also not saying we should keep appeasing Russia as a general strategy going forward, just that at this particular moment that makes the most sense, because our main ally who we relied on for some key military functions, isn't willing to help anymore.
Quoting ssu
I don't see what's confusing about it. Empty promises are worse than no promises, right?
Right, the deeds of the supporters haven't been on par with their words.
And then governments change, and things go up in the air (again).
In many ways that half-hearted approach was probably the worst thing that could happen to Ukraine, because it encouraged them to fight on thinking they had more support then they actually were going to get.
It's this callous political calculus of our leaders, without much regard for the very real consequences, that is so infuriating.
And if the problem gets dumped on Europe, you'll probably see the same thing happening again. Now European leaders are stumbling over eachothers feet to shout vacuous slogans like "We stand by Ukraine" and the like. But then when the time comes to actually step up, when it dawns on them what it will actually cost to help Ukraine win the war, the backpedalling usually begins... and Ukraine will probably be the victim of our halfheartedness once again.
The support is never unconditional in reality, we should be explicit and clear about that.
But you would be OK that actually no ally will come to help you. So what's the point of talking about an alliance?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Hybrid attacks shouldn't be tolerated. If you turn a blind eye to them, you don't have deterrence. There isn't going to be the time that you will change your posture from appeasement.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
:roll:
Just that at this particular moment...
Obviously you don't have any idea how deterrence works.
Jesus* man, can't you see how extreme your position is? What is it that makes you so imperivious to all reason on this topic, do you hate them so much?
(*still the root of all evil!)
No, you truly don't seem to understand it:
Putin will stop the war, when continuing the war is possibly a worse outcome than having a peace.
That's it.
Putin could stop the war when he wants! If Putin now says that "OK, we'll have a cease-fire", you think Ukraine would say no? Of course not! Ukraine is OK for a cease-fire. They have shown their willing to accept a cease-fire. It's their call, Ukrainians have to decide that. Russia isn't bombing your country, so why on Earth would you make the decisions on behalf of Ukraine?
Why cannot you get this? You seem to have no understanding how Russia and it's military doctrine works at all.
If you start with your the attitude: "We have to appease now Russia", then you haven't any credible deterrence whatsoever. Never, in anything. Because Russia isn't even pushing your country much. If you appease them now, you will appease them anytime.
At worst, it's like if your country would be attacked, then you "allies" would say to you: "Do not fight! Do not defend yourself, but listen to the attacker what they want and accept that, because that would be better for us."
That's what you are proposing.
For example, do you negotiate with terrorists? At some time, yes. Do you tell after a terrorist attack, "Oh, we will fight them a bit until we negotiate with them" or even say "These terrorists have killed our civilians, so we have to negotiate with the small group now and listen to what they want". So when next time ISIS or somebody attacks people in your country, please urge the people then to listen to the demand of ISIS. That's not what you do.
I think your problem is that for you these conflicts are just forever-wars, something that you can choose to participate and if you participate in something, there's no negative issues. And you can later just withdraw. That might be the problem here.
Putin has no reason to stop because he is winning. A cease-fire is tactically not advantageous for the party that is winning, because it gives the losing party the time to regroup and/or rearm, and thus level the playing field. What could persuade him to consider a deal is pressure from the US and to a lesser extend from Europe. That is why I would push for a peace-deal now while the US is still involved.
If the US goes, you lose a lot of the possible pressure you can put on them, which means you will have to turn the war around without help from the US, to maybe get a peacedeal. I haven't seen anything that gives me reason to think we can do that. There seems to be no plan at all for how to achieve that.
Russia is winning as it stands. They also produce more military equipement than we do at the moment, and can still rely on the help of China, North-Korea and Iran. To me that sounds like a losing proposition. And if you eventually lose the war anyway, if Ukraine gets overrun, then you really don't have any deterrence left anymore.
Quoting ssu
You keep repeating this, but I don't see how this follows. Why would appeasing them now mean we will never have any credible deterrence? Deterrence is a function of military strenght in the first place. We are weak now without the US, but if we build up military strenght as we plan to do, we could have credible deterrence in a few years. Why not?
Quoting ssu
No it's not the same because Urkraine is not an ally, we have no alliance with them.
Quoting ssu
I said many times why I think continuing the war would be a bad idea if the US leaves the war, i'm not going to repeat myself again and again.
I agree. I would just say that he's not losing. It's a stalemate, actually. But that's OK for Putin.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
And you said it yourself: "What could persuade him to consider a deal is pressure from the US and to a lesser extend from Europe."
Again this is my point. But the fact is that there's not much pressure if any, and some could make the argument that the US is putting pressure only on Ukraine, which it can pressure. The US doesn't want to pressure Russia, Putin isn't a bad guy (as Witkoff explained to us).
Threat's of new sanctions if the partial cease-fires aren't held. That's the pressure? Where's the part of putting real pressure on Russia?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Not exactly. It's been a stalemate. But if the US shuts down intel, ceases weapon shipments and at worse, starts to bully European countries that are supporting Ukraine, then Russia will prevail. That's the reality.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
It's the messaging you send. Deterrence is messaging. It's the whole point. When you falter already when there is no actual or only little pressure, who would think you would have this turn around when a push comes a shove, or a blow? Already you are caving in.
You see, something like a treaty alliance or defense of the sovereignty or territory of a nation isn't credible, if you start with "but in this issue we will cave in or that territory we won't defend". That will just break the credibility. That will hurt morale: if you don't stand up for this, what else won't you stand up for? And if you haven't noticed, Europeans are compared already to parasites on this forum by some and the resentment and condescending attitude towards us is already evident in the Trump team.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, if Ukraine would be in NATO, we would already be in WW3. Yet where do you think the alliance will be once Putin has carved up what he wants from Ukraine and has a puppet regime in Kyiv? Or should we then say Kiev, as in the Soviet times.
But yes semantics aside, the point is that Putin doesn't really need the war to stop. That is leverage we do not have.
Quoting ssu
There's not much pressure from the US now, that's right. From the point of view of Europe that is a fact we need to deal with. Maybe we could have tried to convince the US with a more coöperative and less antagonistic approach, but it would likely not have mattered much considering the ideological hate they seem to have for Europe.
So, on this point too, that is leverage we do not have.
Quoting ssu
Here is where I disagree. Deterrence is not messaging on its own. It's messaging with the threat of actual military force to back it up. I think Putin has a reasonably good idea of what we are capable of without the US, and probably knows we would have a hard time pushing back Russia on our own. In poker they say, you can only bluff or represent a hand that you could reasonably have considering how you played up to that point... we haven't exactly shown a lot of strenght up to this point.
So what should we be doing then with very little leverage, and the probability of losing more of it with the US leaving?
To me it seems like we should use the little we have now with the US still in the war to get a peacedeal, even if it's a 'bad' one... it doesn't seem to get any better. And for that you need to coöperate with the US, if we are working towards the same goal of peace, maybe we can pressure Russia more, and maybe have a little influence still over the negotiations and the contents of the peacedeal.
But what are we doing instead, we stick to our initial demands of Russia leaving all of Ukraine eventough we have no leverage at all. Russia will never accept this and the US gets annoyed for not coöperating. The result is that we have no say in the whole proces, which will probably lead to a worse deal for Europe and Ukraine.
It seems to me we are horribly overplaying our hand. Bluffing a hand that you can't reasonably have, usually ends in ruin.
On this I will say a couple of things.
Expect more to come. It's baked into their ideology because they see mainstream Europe and the Liberal democrats as part of the same disease destroying western civilization. The ideology will spread.
Don't take it to personally. Ideologies are usually a bunch of half-truths and oversimplefied answers to complex issues. There will allways be people parrotting around this stuff.
Do take it as a sign to question Europes position in the world. The world has changed, the worst thing we can do is to cling to a past that doesn't exist anymore.
We need new leaders that have received the memo.
Dark clouds circling ever nearer
Dog pile world
War is the father of all things
The old world order was born out of world war two.
Its decline questions its values
Blinded by the light
Black is feared to be behind
The world is grey
Experience of becoming precedes cognition
Cognition produces being which flows into the idea of becoming
The illusion is capturing becoming in being
The logos of the Christian God is not the logos of Heraclitus
It is merely the mother of ten thousand things
Fire is the beginning of heaven and earth
Re-evaluation of values
Primacy of the word led the West astray
Under Dao it should be
If Putin is so reasonable, why did he attack Ukraine? Why did he think it would take only a few weeks? The fact is that he thought and what was briefed to him was that the Ukrainians wouldn't fight back, that it would be like Crimea all over again. Or Czechoslovakia in 1968 again.
We should show that strength, and appeasement isn't that.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
This actually is the real problem, because Trump actually doesn't see any value whatsoever with NATO. He doesn't seem to understand that he is giving the ultimate prize to Russia and China by crippling US power himself. It's quite evident that Trump or his supporters don't realize how much prosperity the US gets from the dollar being the reserve currency, and it's role isn't because the US is so economically awesome.
The only "logical" reason I come to is that Trump truly sees things as personal matters and while business with Russians have been so important to him, why he had these ideas of building hotels in Russia. He also likes autocrats. Then he hates the democrats, the liberals whining about an rules based order, he truly sees all this as a great opening to improve ties with Russia. Just like Canada being the 51st state or the US annexing Greenland. Both of these ideas start to be fantasies of a delusional old man. Yet deals with Russia might be personally very lucrative for Trump, just as is dealing with the Saudis and Gulf State leaders. No EU leader will start talking about issues like this, because it would be their ass on line if they tried to bribe Trump.
Yet geopolitically it doesn't make sense. NATO without the US is still over 600 million people and surpass in every measure (except nuclear weapons) Russia. Furthermore Russia isn't the Soviet Union.
Remember at the time we already had really high energy prices coming out of Covid. I think Putin figured it was the perfect time, because he could really hurt Europe relying on Russian gas. He didn't think we would be willing to put that much on the line to support Ukraine. His gamble didn't pay off, but then there would probably never have come a better moment... I think it was pretty calculated.
Quoting ssu
I think you are giving Trump to much credit, the Greenland to Panama Canal idea of total security for the American continent has been floating around for a long time. And there are others in his administration that are a lot more ideologically driven than Trump himself, like JD Vance, or even Musk.
Quoting ssu
I think it does make sense if you see the global liberal democratic order, NATO, as a problem in itself that needs to be dealt with... because it was more and more overextending the US budget while hollowing out the center of the country. If you want a less globalised world and reduced involvement of the US, Russia could be a more stable partner in a multi-polar world. The problem with Europe is that there is no Europe when it comes to foreign policy and defence.
This line of reasoning is false, the overstretch argument. Especially when linking it to an economically hollowing out of the country.
Any overstretch that can be identified and the hollowing out of the centre, which can be seen, is not due to global security overreach. It is due to China and other Far Eastern economies undercutting U.S. production in all areas and the drive to outsource production from the West to the Far East, capitalised on by Western manufacturers. The same effect can clearly be seen in European countries. Those European countries that are freeloading off this same U.S. overstretch.
Yet the fact is that Putin is a gambler. He did gamble with the annexation of Crimea and that worked well. He gambled with Syria and lost. He gambled again with Ukraine with the invasion in 2022 and that didn't go so well. But if he can snatch victory (thanks to Trump), why wouldn't he gamble more?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Do notice the huge difference: Trump talks of annexation, of enlarging the territory of the US. That is totally different from the usual neo-imperialist playbook. It really is 19th Century imperialism. In neo-imperialism you make regime changes and focus on the trade and security agreements, not the territorial expansion of your own country. This is what makes this so strange and the war in Ukraine so different.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
So now the US is the enemy?
How does that benefit the US?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
A more stable partner? Did you notice how stable it was when Prigozhin made his coup attempt? Did you notice that the prior leader Yeltsin had to fire with tanks his Parliament? A country where in the last 125 years one and only one leader of the country has normally retired from office without being deposed or killed or then died at old age while still in office. That you call a stable government?
And oh yes, we naturally want less globalized world, less prosperity, less wealth for everybody. Because trade is bad according to Trump. What a wonderful objective for the World.
He wouldn't gamble more if he perceives it to be a bad bet. If we for instance build up our defences then the bet becomes worse...
Quoting ssu
They are an ideological enemy, not a military enemy yet. That takes some time considering how much we are interwoven still.
Quoting ssu
I don't know what their plans are long term, but there are a few scenarios that could be good for them.
If they take Greenland and Canada, divide Europe together with Russia, then European countries probably don't pose much of a threat to them. And between the two of them they'd have a large swath of the earths resources which they can use to build up an even bigger economic, technological and military advantage.
Quoting ssu
Ask China. They seem to be thinking of Russia as a stable partner. And I mean if you look around the world the bar is not that high, you can't be to picky.
Quoting ssu
Yup it's not about the world, but about America first.
That's the lie that people believe in. The truth is that you are better off with international trade than you are without it. In the end, Trump is just hurting Americans. But this is what Trump has been thinking all his life, that foreigners cheat the US. He will continue with this, now when there's nobody taking the executive orders from his desk that he then forgets.
(Trump's message in the 1980's about Japan)
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
The two countries are neighbors, they have had good relations and Russia desperately needs now China. As you say, they cannot be too picky. And the likely outcome is that Russia will perhaps thank the US for giving Ukraine to it, and then continue with China.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That's not going to happen. What Trump will do is to alienate it's allies and wreck the American economy. And Russia will be very happy about it.
Now of course I can be wrong here and if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. Trump can fail even in wrecking the American economy and this can be an era of US mental breakdown, which then turns to normal again.
Depends on what you understand "better off" to be, and who exactly is better off. Globalisation was to the benefit of some and to the detriment of others, and it implies a certain kind of world where capital and companies are floating over borders reducing the impact national goverments can have.
In the overall it will probably hurt the US economy, in the short term at least. The long term is hard to say really. But yes, I'm also sceptical that you can just un-globalise from a world-economy because of supply-chains being so international and markets becoming smaller.
Quoting ssu
If it wrecks the US economy, it will wreck everybodies economy I would think, or at least those of the West. And in a more dystopian view of the future where everybody is in shambles, when the dust is settled the position of the US may not be that bad comparitively speaking, protected by two oceans and a ton of resources to work with.
Anyway, a lot of this depends on how you view the future. If you believe the current path of globalisation wasn't sustainable anyway, and was going to break eventually, then yeah maybe there is something to be said for anticipating that and trying to become more self-sufficient in advance.
But yes, at the very least it seems like a very risky leap into the dark.
The security required for global trade is not a military deployment. It is an international world order. The soft power and diplomacy, creating over an extended period an atmosphere of trust, respectability and cooperation between nations and regions. Piracy (which would require a naval presence) has only been a minor issue in certain regions.
So again It is a flawed argument, a non argument. But we do know, dont we that all the arguments coming out of Trumps White House are flawed, or non arguments. As his modus operandi is disinformation. We have to judge him by his actions, while rejecting his reasoning in favour of the established (over a long period) narrative.
There are degrees of wrecking. I dont think we are talking of full economic collapse, just a serious recession, or depression. This would not wreck the global economy, although it would bring on a recession. But the bad effects will mainly be felt in the U.S. such changes over the short period will likely stimulate economic growth in other regions. The crisis in the U.S. is deeper than economic though, so it is very much a U.S. problem and could take a few years to sort out.
I agree for the most part, although I do think all these things can't be neatly seperated from eachother. I don't think you would have the same stable international order if there wasn't a superior military backing it, even if it isn't used in an obvious direct way to protect it.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes they are creating an ideology to support their ambitions for power... to rationalise their actions and garner support from people.
To clarify, my goal is not to find out the truth about the matter per se, but to get a clearer picture of what their ideology is. Because eventhough the ideology isn't necessarily about the truth, it is often a sign for what they want to accomplish, and it does influence people.... and because it influences people it will have real consequences.
For example, let's say they want Greenland to extract future resources and/or maybe for future security. They will say Europe are a bunch freeloaders, Denmark isn't a good ally and doesn't invest enough in Greenland, and Russia and China are looking to controle it etc etc. Aside from the truth about Denmarks and other countries actions, it does create a story which would make it easier to sell a possible take-over of Greenland to the people somewhere down the line.
Just look at Brexit and the thread that we have here on PF. Now basically the last thing that the Brexiteers, who were so enthusiastic about Brexit, emphasize that the "will of the people" in the vote should be respected. And that's it. Nobody is trying to argue about green chutes or the benefits that Brexit has given to them. Yet for many years until Labor took over, they were anticipating the benefits of Brexit to be just around the corner.
And if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, the MAGA crowd won't admit it, and only will start to bitch about the economy when an administration lead by the Democracts replace the Trump administration.
You cannot always evaluate a decision like Brexit on the outcomes a few years later, as if that decision is the sole cause for how the future turned out. It has to be said that the British Republican party was exceptionally inept at implementing Brexit and capitalizing on opportunities it created.
And how professional and able you think Donald Trump will be in capitalizing on the opportunities a trade war against basically everybody? You think there's going to be these advantages?
Just think about it. What could have the UK done to give the promised wonderful future that the Brexiteers argued at? What was to be that great solution with Brexit? There wasn't any. That's the whole issue here. It wasn't that the Conservatives were exceptionally inept, the fact was that the idea of getting this incredible jolt of prosperity from withdrawing from Europe was simply total horseshit, a straight lie.
Just look at how trade with the EU has gone:
And compare then the total trade of the UK:
As both tables above are comparable with each other, one can easily see just how important even today the EU is as a trading partner for the UK. The only thing that has happened is that imports from the EU have increased while the exports from UK (both to EU and in total), after 2020 Brexit drop and recovery have in the last years decreased.
Quoting ssu
I'm not saying this would have solved the problem, but If you're going to go for Brexit you got to use the freedom from European rules (for example state aid rules) to invest in your industry and (energy)infrastructure, and to make your economy more competitive and attractive by cutting taxes and regulation... If you want trade, you have to make something to trade in the first place.
The US is ripping off the band-aid, so to speak, that covered the other war-torn parts of the world after their injury from that global war. It would've been nice if it could have been done more gradually, but I believe doing it gradually would have been negotiated into doing the least amount to keep everyone happy.
In the formation of whatever comes next, past globalization of economic production will have an effect on whatever new alliances are created. Most nations will not antagonize other nations upon whose goods they depend on. Whichever nations build up their self-sufficiency in this new world will be able to determine their own fates. The ones that do it better will be more in control of their situation in the world.
And yes, it will be more expensive, for everyone.
Who is going to be hurt with the ripping of the band-aid is here the real question.
I think it's the Americans themselves that have forgotten that this whole World order has served themselves a lot. The American elite and the foreign policy establishment has done a major error of not informing the American people about this. This is the fact that is totally missing from the understanding of the JD Vance's of today. Every fourth quarter from a dollar that the US government spends is debt, yet that hasn't been any problem as the World has needed dollars because of the reserve currency. What would the loss of the reserve status mean? Well, the US economy is roughly one fourth of the World GDP, so without the reserve status the normal status would be a reserve of one fourth or perhaps one third of the global currencies held. Not the 60% that it now enjoys now:
And here the counterargument that "What then would replace the dollar?" isn't valid. Nothing has to replace it. Throughout history there hasn't been a "reserve currency", only perhaps gold and silver, and you can use a basket of currencies quite easily to handle bigger amounts of money transfers.
How Trump's "Smoot-Hawley II" will go now, let's just see how awful that will be.
Well my take on this is that its a mess, composed of the wims of a senile wannabe dictator, a hard right reform agenda Project 25 and a process of Orbanisation to weaken democracy.
As for the goal, well Im not sure they have one, but rather a trajectory. Again a combination of the three ideologies above.
What it will look like, a skip fire.
The lofty goals might be to get manufacturing back to the US and a third term for Trump, but it's just a trajectory that they have put into motion. Now on what trajectory the US and the Global economy is on is the question, but it doesn't look so good.
Quoting Punshhh
And what is said about Skip fires?
Others seem now to just look how Trump's fire will go and how the starter of the fire will handle his smoky effort. The US and China are now in a full blown trade war and other countries are looking at 10% tariffs. Already Trump has backed down on some electronics like smartphones. And likely many we will wait until those 90 days will pass and see what Trump will do next.
The bond market and the so-called "bond vigilantes" put Trump to back down already from his ultra-high tariffs. And this is the interesting and crucial part here: how will the US treasury market behave in the future? "The flee to safety" wasn't to the US bond market, as it usually has gone to when the market corrects. Gold has gone up. The Swiss franc is already showing signs of being one "harbour for safety" as the US dollar has plummeted to the franc quite dramatically.
Likely again the small European country will have it's exports industry howling for a devaluation and the interest rates might get to be negative again.
How other countries deal with the new situation is going to be interesting. Diversification to new trading partners will be the hot topic now.
Hopefully not.
The UK is actually doing a lot especially when it comes to Ukraine with EU countries. Ukraine is the really one disagreement here with the US and the UK is quite on the side of the EU. And remember that the tariffs are in effect with the UK too. I think there should be a way to form back the close ties. I think best example would be a free trade zone between USMCA and UK and EU. In fact the present Trump chaos might give us reason to think so. After following this quite disastrous tariff policy, the outcome can be something different. Just like the first Trump tariffs in the end resulted in the USMCA.
And note that the EU is really a union. It is made up of sovereign states which have to find common ground. It isn't an Imperial player.
Now we are out of the EU there is a real possibility that the U.K. could become tied in to U.S. trade demands, driving a wedge between them and the EU. We have not diverged yet and the path to a realignment with the EU is clear. Trump is trying to break and prevent this.
A good overall recap how international trade to the US from Asia (especially China) is starting to show:
It seems like that China is not in hurry to stop the trade war. Even so, two of the largest economies being in an all out trade war is not good for the rest of the World.
This can be bad. At worst it could start a dollar crisis along the road and a huge crisis for the whole fiat monetary system.
What is obvious that she does see a role for the Euro and the ECB, and the speech is basically an acknowledgement that things are indeed changing.
The crazy stuff that Trump is doing might bring the issue of the reserve currency to be a current question, not just a theoretical question. Lagarde also goes through what are the strenghts of the US economy and where the EU is lacking.