This pretty much sums up MAGA foreign policy in a nutshell. At best, the United States is an unreliable ally and at worst a potential enemy which makes any prospect of a permanent relationship untenable. The United States is driving away many of its long time allies who will eventually exclude the United States altogether by forming their own alliance and maybe even working more closely with our enemies.
If I were Mexico, I’d certainly be willing to consider an alliance of sorts with China just to keep the wolves at bay.
I’m pretty sure that what Trump really wants is total world domination, just so he can say the world belongs to him.
But he’s much too old to pull if off even if that was practical and he was smart enough to play 21st Century Alexander the Great. And he’s also racist. So I think he’ll attack either fast, easy conquests (like Greenland) or regions full of brown people he can kill (Mexico). And probably nuke somebody fairly soon, I don’t think he’ll want to miss his one opportunity to do that to somebody. Mexico City would be my guess.
Can a future president repair the damage Trump has done? I fear not. Other countries now have realized they simply cannot depend on the US and need to go their own way.
Yeah, it’s over, but Trump is the symptom, not the disease. We will continue our decline. I find the linked column overly optimistic.
“America is not falling tomorrow. It is settling into managed decline. Each generation inherits a narrower set of possibilities. Boomers dreamed big. Gen X sought security. Millennials adjusted to constraint. Gen Z dreams of not becoming homeless. ”…
“Trump didn’t save America. He didn’t destroy it either. He revealed it. And what he revealed is a nation exhausted, indebted, aging, and divided — still powerful, still wealthy, but no longer confident in its future. “
Why don’t we just annex the entire continent of South America? So many resources we can plunder! And the natives will welcome us with open arms. Arms outstretched with offerings for Trump to help build his new castle, like gold, jewels, and Big Ballrooms.
All we have to do is hit 'em with enough missiles and bombs, i.e., a little friendly persuasion. Just in case there is some opposition from weak, cowardly nations and reluctant dictators. Dictators who don’t offer enough gold booty to the Trump God or Orange religion.
The rest of the world isn’t too worried by the US military, it’s the US nuclear arsenal that’ll prevent a Nazi Germany / Japanese Empire style end to this situation. No one is going to invade the USA to restore democracy, you yanks are going to have to have to fight American Civil War II yourselves. We might help the good guys, if we can do it without painting our countries with a big target saying “nuke here”.
At this point, I think that the developed world should be actively destabilizing the US through support of separatists movements. The world’s best hope is that America collapse quickly, like the Soviet Union.
His adventurism stops when someone stops it. That’s basically it. The end of it will be when he bites off more than he can chew, and ends up with an outcome that will be humiliating unless there’s a boots-on-ground occupation. Only the public pushback from such an occupation can stop it – because our people are actually dying. I think Trump is actually afraid of facing that, but of course there’s no guarantee it won’t be so bad once he gets into it. Everything else has worked out like that for him, so why not an occupation?
But that notwithstanding, if the US doesn’t intend on a boots-on-ground occupation, and the target is not particularly powerful or internationally influential, the US can keep doing bombings, snatch-and-grabs, whatever it feels like. If you’re thinking “surely the international community will stop this”, well, the US is (was) the primary muscle in all those organizations. It existed mainly to keep the secondary muscle (Russia and China) in check, so they’ll be thrilled to watch Trump ruin the UN, ICC, and the US itself
Trump knows that he will die before he will have to face anything. He wants to be remembered as the one who made tough choices and grabbed as much for America as he could. Which means, land, resources and military outpost around the world. He knows that history will be written by the winners and he sees his side as winning. He doesn’t care who he subjecates now because American history will vindicate him. Its an ego thing, too be remembered by his followers as a great leader while the opposition is delegated to being quite about it. The lower and middle class will be treated like the Native Americans are now, some rights but put away in their place.
As I see it Trump sees running America as no different to running a big business.
A small military operation to get billions of $s from oil is a worth while investment
Breaking the law is not an issue if you can bully the victims to prevent them stopping you
Not sure it will work in the political realm but up to now a lot of other countries have bowed to his pressure a lot more than I expected. For example many countiries have lowered tariffs of imports from the US significantly below pre Trump levels to get the US tariffs to be lower than he initially stated but still well above what they were a year ago, also European leaders have not condemned the Maduro kidnapping.
I wonder about this. I can only guess that other countries figure if the US can get away with this then they can too. Maybe we can all get back to the good old days of empire building.
More like 2 1/2 sides. The American side, the Chinese side, and Russia (the 1/2) swinging back and forth depending on which side makes more sense to side with at any given moment. But yes, what Trump is doing is pushing Europe towards China.
Impeachment is impossible with this chickenshit congress. How they can trust in his “wisdom” after all he’s said and done would be unbelievable if it was in a work of fiction. They aren’t scared of Vance are they?
My guess is they are too scared of doing so as there do not want to face the wrath of Trump. For example Denmark condemning the action could be enough for Trump to invade Greenland.
The human mind is not good at contemplating its own mortality, of what happens after it stops existing, and Trump’s mind is perhaps uniquely so.
While I doubt Trump actually believes he’s immortal or invincible, his mind cannot process his own nonexistence, and he cannot process voluntarily stepping down from the Presidency. Every threat he’s ever faced has yielded to some sort of loophole or deus ex machina. So all of the incentives and evidence in front of him point him to act as if he’s going to live forever, and will be President for life.
So I do think he cares about potential consequences to himself. The only question is whether he’s really in charge anymore, or if he has enough sufficient marbles rattling around in his noggin to correctly assess & act on his future interests.
