I don’t really think this is at all an accurate summary of US Cold War foreign policy.
To the extent that we were ‘partners’ with western Europe and Japan rather than ‘competitors’, that was only because we replaced ‘competition’ with these countries with competition against the Communist countries. I don’t see why a world of two rival blocs (or three, once the Sino-Soviet split happened) that see each other as mortal enemies is better than a world of multiple countries that all see each other as competitors.
I imagine you’re going to say “Cold War era and even more so the post-Cold War era had fewer wars than the pre-1945 era”. I don’t think that has much to do with international alliances, I think it has more to do with the fact that modern weapons are so destructive that international wars are no longer in anyone’s interest. International wars since 1945 have been fairly rare all over the world, even in the non-aligned portions of the world. (Civil wars are a different story).
Also, we were more than happy to use our military (and in some instances other means of financial or diplomatic pressure) to intervene in weaker countries that we were worried were going to go communist, or even to just go neutral. I’d say that our relationship with a lot of the countries in our sphere of influence had a lot more to do with patron / client relationships than with being equal partners.
Yeah, nor do I, especially when those “blocs” have weapons capable of reducing the entire world to a smoldering heap of rubbish.
The current desire of many on the left wing to seemingly restart the Cold War and ramp up belligerence towards Russia and China is utterly baffling to me. If it were a Republican administration advancing these positions, I think most Democrats would be vehemently opposed to it, as well they should be. I get the sense that some people are just reflexively against anything that Trump is for. It’s easy to see why, because he’s so unlikable. But I’d rather that America get along well with Russia, China, and North Korea - even, I daresay, rather that America prioritize relations with those countries over France, Germany, and the United Kingdom - than America be engaged in conflict with them.
People talk about how traumatized all of these students are, having to worry about someone shooting up their school. And that’s indeed traumatic - but previous generations had to worry about nuclear bombs hitting their school, hitting their houses, destroying them, destroying their families, their pets, everything they loved, the whole country, and then perhaps dying of radiation sickness if they managed to survive the blast. Why do people want to go back to these days? Because that’s what conflict with Russia and China entails. If having the EU (which I think probably won’t even exist in 10 years) pissed off at America, means that we reduce the likelihood of that scenario, then fuck it, I’m on board.
I do live in Europe. Specifically the UK, which is painted as being a particularly close ally of the USA.
I’m not at all pissed off about people in the USA electing Trump as their president. Nor is anyone I know personally. Surprised. Amused. But not angry or fearful.
The people who regard Trump as the AntiChristHitlerStalin who will bring about Ragnarok and the world of the Mad Max films and the world of the Fallout games and the sky will fall down yes it will assume everyone else thinks the same way. That’s not the case.
The USA is still the USA. As hegemons go, it’s pretty good. It doesn’t live up to its own ideals, but it has them and makes a pretty good stab at trying to live up to them. It’s not actually changed very much since Trump was elected, nor will it for the rest of his presidency. He’s not very good at the job, but enough Americans decided he was less bad than the only other viable candidate and that’s how democracy by popularity contest works. There will be another election in the USA in a couple of years and probably a different president. If not, there will definitely be a different president 4 years after that. Who may be better and may be worse. Either way, the sky won’t really fall down. There are more important things to worry about.
Sure, but you can’t really blame Trump for all of that; the nationalist movements in Europe predated him for the most part.
What I wonder is if the genesis of the European nationalist movements and of the Tea Party/Trump/etc… are some symptom of some kind of larger force at work in the Western world, or if they’re not really related. Clearly there are a lot of similarities- hatred of immigrants, distrust of international institutions, etc…
I absolutely believe them to be related, in the sense that they are both backlashes against the same kind of things.
I think the fear of Islamic terrorism in Europe is significantly more grounded in reality than the fear of the same in America. Trump played upon the combination of fear and outright xenophobia against people from countries and ethnicities that are predominantly Muslim (though many people from these same countries are also devout Orthodox Christians, something that most Americans haven’t the faintest idea about.) Nationalist politicians have done the same in Europe, but I do think that Europe has more to worry about in that department. Look at the events of 2016 - it was the year that terrorism really “hit home” in Europe, with multiple extremely horrific incidents.
Most of these countries have FAR less assimiliation from their Muslim populations, many of the arrivals are more recent, and there is a very real fear of cultural encroachment - encroachment upon European traditions that very literally go back before Christianity, to the native peoples of the Alpine region whose customs radiated outwards in all directions over thousands of years. (A lot of Americans, because of their country’s short history, forget that these cultures are the indigenous cultures of those lands, going back to the days when Europeans lived exactly as the Native Americans did.) Also, there is quite simply less space in these European countries to accommodate large numbers of arrivals.
It is not remotely comparable to the situation in the United States, where the country has ALWAYS been a multicultural nation of immigrants over a much shorter timescale, and there is absolutely NO justification in claiming that other cultures are “encroaching on American culture” because “American culture” IS, by nature, constantly changing and being influenced by immigrants. In contrast to Europe, there’s been virtually NO Islamic terrorism of ANY kind in America for years; there have been a few incidents motivated in part by someone’s crazy interpretation of the Islamic faith, but these fit much more closely into the general American pattern of random mass-shooting terrorism, than into any form of organized terrorism. Yet from Trump’s rhetoric you’d think that ISIS has had major cells operating with impunity in America for the entire Obama administration.
Just to say these two posts captured my own feelings on the issue better than I could express them. I remember in particular having to talk down a friend from Oregon on election night 2016 after Trump’s victory, yes it won’t be a pleasant four or eight years but the US will survive.
You mean a deity like blankets intentionally infused with the smallpox virus? Or guns that outpowered bows and arrows? Or the systematic takeover of villages and tribes via mass murder and rape? As well as the continued subjugation of such people with barbaric laws that made it impossible for them to advance in a society they didn’t sign up to live in? Are those “deities” that are responsible for the mysterious deaths of Native Americans? That is a really disgusting and ignorant dismissal of what was undoubtedly a genocide. Imagine chalking up the deaths of 6 million Jews to “disease” as well.
Except Israel, but even of they are the only Democracy in the Middle East and actually have Arabs in their government, they are more evil than Trump and don’t matter.
More “evil than Trump?” Israel has its share of problems and I understand that in addition to its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territory, their government is notoriously corrupt - but “evil” is a rather loaded term, isn’t it?
Why imagine that? Nobody was chalking up deliberate killings as “disease”.
I suspect that the person you’re replying to was referring to the pandemics that (as far as we can tell) killed huge numbers of people in the Americas before or seperate to any of the events you refer to. Perhaps as many as 90% of the people. Almost certainly more than 50% of the people. Hence “most of the deaths”. Not “all of the deaths”.
As I have said elsewhere on these boards, it is going to take a long time, even if NAFTA is restored (with these new tariffs on both sides it is effectively dead) before businessmen will set up supply lines on the assumption of free trade; not if it can be reversed with a flick of the pen if some other Trump-like creature should come on the scene.
I just read about a ship-building company in BC that buys its steel from Alabama. They first claimed that it was a specialty product that no Canadian company could supply in the quantity needed. “Nonesense”, said a Manitoba steel mill. “We can supply the steel they need and in the quantity they need.” And they will. Of course, the Manitoba mill will lose US business. But businesses will learn their lesson, which is not to rely on politicians.
In a similar way, no country will sign an agreement like the one Iran did, knowing it can be canceled at the whim of a crazy man. If I were a foreign leader, any agreement would have to be by treaty ratified by the senate. The senate has generally refused to ratify any treaty in a couple decades, AFAIK.