Shame. Have you written about it elsewhere? I seem to recall you talking about how China’s Covid response was better than Western countries at some point.
Ah, I see.
And I already assumed you didn’t support China’s treatment of Uighurs or anything of that sort. I doubt anyone here does.
Even President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, noted that what he called the “military-industrial complex” was terribly bloated and wasteful. Much of it was, and is, little more than handouts to large corporations, what some economists have called “military Keynesianism.” Imagine what the US, indeed, the world, would look like if that money had gone to housing, education, and healthcare, as Eisenhower suggested.
Nuclear weapons being used on this continent will end in helping no one.
Can’t be seriously discussed without realizing we’d kill ourselves in the process.
No one in the world would land on US beaches with help fighting a tyrant.
As usual, Americans are on their own.
In the end, the clown in the Whitehouse is not only dangerous to us, he’s dangerous to the world. The tide is turning. The whole world is slipping into fascism.
It may end in WW3. Will any country stand with us? Doubtful.
I feel Trump is mentally ill. He will implode.
Then what?
Yep absolutely. And, ironically, stationing soldiers in foreign bases, or giving old weapons to Ukraine represent some of the best “bang for buck”, so to speak, of that vast military budget.
If Elon Musk can make them, I’m sure Canada can too. If not, it can buy rockets from one of the many civilian space programs around the world. I understand the limit on nuclear bombs for most countries is access to fissionable material but Canada has natural resources in spades.
The US is unlikely to start a nuclear exchange with Canada in any event. The Canadians that the US would want to kill live inconveniently close to the US border. I don’t think the US government could withstand the fallout from dropping nuclear bombs essentially on its own people.
Literally and metaphorically, obvs.
It has in past, during the era of open air nuclear tests. And the government back then was far more likely to care about public opinion and welfare than Trump.
I don’t have much current faith in our procurement system that took over ten years to buy new pistols.
Russia might.
How are we supposed to stand with the USA when the USA is threatening us? Should we have stood with Germany in 1939?
This is a fair assessment. I could quibble about how the testing was conducted in low population areas, that people are more informed about radiation risk after the Cold War, how much of the testing was underground, and how much of it was overseas, but even excluding the earliest tests, the ones before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the ones in the Pacific, there were some pretty horrific tests right at home. Some involved US troops as guinea pigs. You’re probably right.
Now this take is simply as wrong as a take can possibly be. Russia has always wanted an empire formed of the remnants of the Slavic parts of the Byzantine Empire. Trotsky’s “communism in every country” was just a sublimation of Russia’s lust for empire. This is why Russia allied with Germany to start WW2. This is why they conquered all of Eastern Europe, and they wanted the rest of Europe as a safety buffer. Russia has always wanted this, and they still want it, which is why we’ve seen them invade Ukraine and Georgia in this century. They only stop when they face overwhelming force.
The threat of WW3 was (and is) always going to be Russia attempting a conquest of Europe. NATO existed only to stop WW3 and it’s been going great up until now.
No serious analysis starts by suggesting that America was ever spoiling for a fight with Russia. Russia feels entitled to invade Europe, and if anyone suggests they shouldn’t do that, they claim they’re being provoked into war. This is why Russia invaded Ukraine. If Ukraine joined NATO, then Russia couldn’t invade it, and Russia couldn’t live with that.
“American hegemony” couldn’t have happened without Russia helping Germany destabilize Europe. America was glad to avoid overseas entanglement until WW2. Many of the horrors of the past 100 years wouldn’t have happened if Russia could content itself with remaining in its own fucking borders, which includes most of Asia. We wouldn’t even be talking about whether Europe needed America if Russia could learn to stay in its own fucking borders.
I’m seeing America as the guy who’s hoping a bar fight breaks out so he can show off his nunchuck skills and ‘protect poor little Europe for the third time’.
What I remember from the Cold War era is how it was taken almost as a given that Europe would be basically exterminated in the resulting nuclear war. So they weren’t fans.
I’m sorry but this is just absurd and childish as well as being ahistorical. The US tried its best to dodge WW1 and WW2 and stay out of European business. After WW2 it was obvious that the same thing was going to keep happening (and as proof, observe that Russia rolled over half of Europe during the cold war).
There are arguments to be had as to how the US abused its position having emerged as the dominant force after WW2, to be sure. But it’s simply unserious and ahistorical to blame US presence in Europe on anybody but Russia. None of that was ever going to happen if, as I previously said, Russia would stay in its own fucking borders. Russia couldn’t control itself then, it can’t control itself now, and that’s why Europe has a critical need for a strong defense. The US absolutely didn’t create that situation.
That’s the historical truth, it is not the American historical myth.
What’s the historical truth, your ridiculous gag about the US spoiling for a fight with Russia? Please.
Ask yourself why this thread even exists. Why is Europe asking itself if it can trust the US? Trust the US to do what? To protect itself from Russia. Why? Because Russia fucking wants to invade Europe, and Europe doesn’t want to be invaded.
The suggestion that NATO was a US plan for hegemony isn’t historical, that’s Russian propaganda to undermine NATO, so that they could do what? Again, invade Europe. Which they’re doing at this moment in Ukraine, which they’re intimating that they may also do to the Baltics.
By all means let’s have a rational conversation about American abuses. Lord knows there’s no shortage of them. But don’t sit here and regurgitate tired Russian propaganda in the very same moment they’re trying to expand into Europe yet again.
To not attack the rest of the world, or break treaties, or sabotage allies and business partners.
The OP of this thread literally spelled out the question as to whether the US could be trusted as a military ally. The dominant conversation among European heads of state is how to shore up its own defense against Russia now that the US can’t be relied upon. That is their critical question right now.
Along with the “will the US attack another NATO country” question, which is just a tiny consideration for NATO. And the “will the US actively aid Russia” problem.
I can’t stop thinking about Russia’s ‘insistence’ that Ukraine NOT be allowed to become a NATO member, and Donald Trump’s default position (ie, opening gambit for negotiations) that NATO membership for Ukraine is simply off the table.
The rapist wants the gun, and before the rapist will agree to enter into negotiations, the rapist insist that the victim hand her gun over to him.
NATO membership for Ukraine should be a total non-issue for Putin … unless … [the obvious].
It’s fucking insanity, and we’re being gaslighted in a major way by the Trump administration.
Why would anybody in Europe trust the US when Trump is so overtly hostile to the fundamental concept of European sovereignty and collective defense?
It isn’t that he’s pulled back from the Pax Americana. It’s that he’s nakedly switched sides.