The American order for decades provided not only security commitments to allies and partners but also common access to vital resources, military bases, waterways, and airspace. “In the absence of the United States playing that role, all of these once again become targets of a multisided competition,” Robert Kagan argues. [https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po](https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po)
That competition won’t be limited to Europe and East Asia. Until now, Germany and Japan have been content to rely on the United States to preserve naval access to Persian Gulf oil, for example. Now they and other countries will need to find ways to take care of themselves. Many will seek to rearm.
Since the end of the Cold War, China and Russia have been chronically unhappy with American global supremacy and have sought to restore what they regard as their natural and traditional regional dominance. “If the first four decades of the 20th century taught us anything, it is that achieving a stable peace with have-not powers is hard. Every nation or territory conceded to them strengthens and emboldens them for the next demand,” Kagan argues.
“In the past, when Russia or China went to war, it went alone. When the United States went to war, even in an unpopular conflict like Iraq, it had the support of dozens of allies,” Kagan continues. “But they may reconsider if the U.S. no longer guarantees those nations’ security, and instead wages economic warfare against them and makes political and ideological demands that they find offensive.”
“Trump officials seem to expect European and Asian countries to join the United States whenever Washington needs or wants them—to put pressure on China, for instance—even as the U.S. offers them nothing in return. But can you ditch your allies and have them too?” Kagan asks at the link. [https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po](https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po)
“Among the most remarkable things about this administration’s foreign policy is that, for all the talk of ‘America First,’ Trump evinces seemingly unlimited global ambition. He enjoys wielding American power even as he depletes it.”
— Kate Guarino, senior associate editor, audience and engagement, *The Atlantic*
hoopjoness on
„We deserve Trump, though. God, do we deserve him. We Americans have some good qualities, too, don’t get me wrong. But we’re also a bloodthirsty Mr. Hyde nation that subsists on massacres and slave labor and leaves victims half-alive and crawling over deserts and jungles, while we sit stuffing ourselves on couches and blathering about our „American exceptionalism.“ We dumped 20 million gallons of toxic herbicide on Vietnam from the air, just to make the shooting easier without all those trees, an insane plan to win „hearts and minds“ that has left about a million still disabled from defects and disease – including about 100,000 children, even decades later, little kids with misshapen heads, webbed hands and fused eyelids writhing on cots, our real American legacy, well out of view, of course.
„Nowadays we use flying robots and missiles to kill so many civilians and women and children in places like Mosul and Raqqa and Damadola, Pakistan, in our countless ongoing undeclared wars that the incidents scarcely make the news anymore. Our next innovation is „automation,“ AI-powered drones that can identify and shoot targets, so human beings don’t have to pull triggers and feel bad anymore. If you want to look in our rearview, it’s lynchings and race war and genocide all the way back, from Hispaniola to Jolo Island in the Philippines to Mendocino County, California, where we nearly wiped out the Yuki people once upon a time.
„This is who we’ve always been, a nation of madmen and sociopaths, for whom murder is a line item, kept hidden via a long list of semantic self-deceptions, from „manifest destiny“ to „collateral damage.“ We’re used to presidents being the soul of probity, kind Dads and struggling Atlases, humbled by the terrible responsibility, proof to ourselves of our goodness. Now, the mask of respectability is gone, and we feel sorry for ourselves, because the sickness is showing.
„So much of the Trump phenomenon is about history. Fueling the divide between pro- and anti-Trump camps is exactly the fact that we’ve never had a real reckoning with either our terrible past or our similarly bloody present. The Trump movement culturally represents an absolute denial of our sins from slavery on – hence the intense reaction to the removal of Confederate statues, the bizarre paranoia about the Washington Monument being next, and so on. But #resistance is also a denial mechanism. It makes Trump the root of all evil, and is powered by an intense desire to not have to look at the ugliness, to go back to the way things were. We see this hideous clown in the White House and feel our dignity outraged, but when you really think about it, what should America’s president look like?
„Trump is no malfunction. He’s a perfect representation of who, as a country, we are and always have been: an insane monster. Frankly, we’re lucky he’s not walking around using a child’s femur as a toothpick.
When it’s not trembling in terror, the rest of the world must be laughing its ass off. America, land of the mad pig president. Shove that up your exceptionalism.“
• Matt Taibbi, RollingStone
Chogo82 on
A weak article pulling from outlier thought case in point this quote:
“But can you ditch your allies…” implying that the US has ditched its allies. This is a false statement because the US has not “ditched” its allies.
The US still sells its most advanced military technology to allies. The US still maintains trade while also trying to protect and grow its strategic industries. The US has historically been on the receiving end of far more protectionist tariffs from the EU and Eastern allies than it has placed on allies.
The US is still the only country that has the guts to enforce sanctions against an emboldened Russia supported by NK and China, that confidently and openly evades sanctions using military might. Multiple EU countries have backed down against Russia before the US decided to step up to enforce sanctions against the Mariana.
The US is also the one that has sent the most military equipment to Ukraine which is arguably the last line of defense before Putin has enough strategic advantage to try to take EU land.
This article comes across as pro-democrat but anti-US given the current geopolitical environment. Has the Atlantic even talked about NATO’s mistake of sanctioning Russia and pushing Russia into the arms of China and NK during the Biden administration? I would be surprised if they did.
ttown2011 on
And when we conquer Greenland, Trump will have to put a chair in the sea, just to show he can’t control the waves
Leave A Reply
Du musst angemeldet sein, um einen Kommentar abzugeben.
4 Kommentare
The American order for decades provided not only security commitments to allies and partners but also common access to vital resources, military bases, waterways, and airspace. “In the absence of the United States playing that role, all of these once again become targets of a multisided competition,” Robert Kagan argues. [https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po](https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po)
That competition won’t be limited to Europe and East Asia. Until now, Germany and Japan have been content to rely on the United States to preserve naval access to Persian Gulf oil, for example. Now they and other countries will need to find ways to take care of themselves. Many will seek to rearm.
Since the end of the Cold War, China and Russia have been chronically unhappy with American global supremacy and have sought to restore what they regard as their natural and traditional regional dominance. “If the first four decades of the 20th century taught us anything, it is that achieving a stable peace with have-not powers is hard. Every nation or territory conceded to them strengthens and emboldens them for the next demand,” Kagan argues.
“In the past, when Russia or China went to war, it went alone. When the United States went to war, even in an unpopular conflict like Iraq, it had the support of dozens of allies,” Kagan continues. “But they may reconsider if the U.S. no longer guarantees those nations’ security, and instead wages economic warfare against them and makes political and ideological demands that they find offensive.”
“Trump officials seem to expect European and Asian countries to join the United States whenever Washington needs or wants them—to put pressure on China, for instance—even as the U.S. offers them nothing in return. But can you ditch your allies and have them too?” Kagan asks at the link. [https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po](https://theatln.tc/yTbsQ0Po)
“Among the most remarkable things about this administration’s foreign policy is that, for all the talk of ‘America First,’ Trump evinces seemingly unlimited global ambition. He enjoys wielding American power even as he depletes it.”
— Kate Guarino, senior associate editor, audience and engagement, *The Atlantic*
„We deserve Trump, though. God, do we deserve him. We Americans have some good qualities, too, don’t get me wrong. But we’re also a bloodthirsty Mr. Hyde nation that subsists on massacres and slave labor and leaves victims half-alive and crawling over deserts and jungles, while we sit stuffing ourselves on couches and blathering about our „American exceptionalism.“ We dumped 20 million gallons of toxic herbicide on Vietnam from the air, just to make the shooting easier without all those trees, an insane plan to win „hearts and minds“ that has left about a million still disabled from defects and disease – including about 100,000 children, even decades later, little kids with misshapen heads, webbed hands and fused eyelids writhing on cots, our real American legacy, well out of view, of course.
„Nowadays we use flying robots and missiles to kill so many civilians and women and children in places like Mosul and Raqqa and Damadola, Pakistan, in our countless ongoing undeclared wars that the incidents scarcely make the news anymore. Our next innovation is „automation,“ AI-powered drones that can identify and shoot targets, so human beings don’t have to pull triggers and feel bad anymore. If you want to look in our rearview, it’s lynchings and race war and genocide all the way back, from Hispaniola to Jolo Island in the Philippines to Mendocino County, California, where we nearly wiped out the Yuki people once upon a time.
„This is who we’ve always been, a nation of madmen and sociopaths, for whom murder is a line item, kept hidden via a long list of semantic self-deceptions, from „manifest destiny“ to „collateral damage.“ We’re used to presidents being the soul of probity, kind Dads and struggling Atlases, humbled by the terrible responsibility, proof to ourselves of our goodness. Now, the mask of respectability is gone, and we feel sorry for ourselves, because the sickness is showing.
„So much of the Trump phenomenon is about history. Fueling the divide between pro- and anti-Trump camps is exactly the fact that we’ve never had a real reckoning with either our terrible past or our similarly bloody present. The Trump movement culturally represents an absolute denial of our sins from slavery on – hence the intense reaction to the removal of Confederate statues, the bizarre paranoia about the Washington Monument being next, and so on. But #resistance is also a denial mechanism. It makes Trump the root of all evil, and is powered by an intense desire to not have to look at the ugliness, to go back to the way things were. We see this hideous clown in the White House and feel our dignity outraged, but when you really think about it, what should America’s president look like?
„Trump is no malfunction. He’s a perfect representation of who, as a country, we are and always have been: an insane monster. Frankly, we’re lucky he’s not walking around using a child’s femur as a toothpick.
When it’s not trembling in terror, the rest of the world must be laughing its ass off. America, land of the mad pig president. Shove that up your exceptionalism.“
• Matt Taibbi, RollingStone
A weak article pulling from outlier thought case in point this quote:
“But can you ditch your allies…” implying that the US has ditched its allies. This is a false statement because the US has not “ditched” its allies.
The US still sells its most advanced military technology to allies. The US still maintains trade while also trying to protect and grow its strategic industries. The US has historically been on the receiving end of far more protectionist tariffs from the EU and Eastern allies than it has placed on allies.
The US is still the only country that has the guts to enforce sanctions against an emboldened Russia supported by NK and China, that confidently and openly evades sanctions using military might. Multiple EU countries have backed down against Russia before the US decided to step up to enforce sanctions against the Mariana.
The US is also the one that has sent the most military equipment to Ukraine which is arguably the last line of defense before Putin has enough strategic advantage to try to take EU land.
This article comes across as pro-democrat but anti-US given the current geopolitical environment. Has the Atlantic even talked about NATO’s mistake of sanctioning Russia and pushing Russia into the arms of China and NK during the Biden administration? I would be surprised if they did.
And when we conquer Greenland, Trump will have to put a chair in the sea, just to show he can’t control the waves