The real shock to Americans will be when they discover this can’t be fixed.
Americans want to believe that relations will return to normal once the democrats are back in power. But, they don’t understand that the loss of trust in the US is permanent. Sure, if the democrats take back power and want to negotiate trade deals, other countries may sign them. They’re just not going to believe that the US can be trusted to honour the terms of those trade deals, and will structure the deals accordingly. Trump’s 2 terms show that a treaty signed by the US is meaningless, because a president like Trump can come along and just rip it up. They’ve also showed that support for someone Trump-like is close enough to 50% that it can easily happen again.
The momentum of international trade, and the vast power the US wields means that there won’t be a sudden cutting off of the US. But, bit by bit, even former staunch allies are going to start slowly pivoting away from the US whenever possible no matter who’s elected and how big a landslide it is.
Trump has ripped up or tried to cancel deals he made in his first term. Why any nation would bother to negotiate with the US right now is beyond me. Nothing can be trusted from this administration or any one to come
Why any nation would bother to negotiate with the US right now is beyond me
It’s because they don’t really have a choice. If it were say, Australia, that had gone off the rails, they could just be ignored. But, the US is still such a central part of the world’s economy, and there are so many important companies based out of the US, that it’s not possible just to pull the plug. In addition, if countries didn’t negotiate with Trump he might see it as a slight and send in the navy to interdict “drug boats” or something.
This also makes things look like they’re better than they are. People see trade deals being negotiated and think "well, if that’s happening, then things aren’t that far gone. The reality is that countries used to negotiate trade deals with the US because, even when they felt they were being pressured to cave to US demands, they could at least count on the US to more-or-less honour the terms of the deal when it was done. I think countries are now dealing with the US because they have to, but they’re really just going through the motions, not expecting that the result will actually be a binding agreement.
Americans do not take the situation seriously. They either think they have no power to personally fix it, so contributing to any effort is pointless, or that it’s just more of the same politics as before and can’t tell the difference. They are encouraged to stay out of the way because they are the only force that seems to be capable of stopping it at this point.
Once Trump and the GOP destroy the framework of power the constitution defines, there are no rules anymore, only power, and the constitution really does mean nothing. The relationship America built with the world since WW1 will be over and won’t return as democratic nations can not remain interdependent with a fascist America. America will be another authoritarian regime using violence as the solution to every problem, including domestic problems. Those problems will only increase because an authoritarian leadership is functionally incapable of managing a non-authoritarian system. America will transition, painfully and violently, to a fascist state and the dream that was America will be dead. All at the hands of a TV show personality and the generations raised by TV, which is both sad and painfully American.
Edit: Not enough Americans…
Maybe the US won’t become fascist. Maybe the democrats will win in a landslide and reform things so that no rogue president can do what Trump did ever again.
But, even in that unlikely scenario, the trust the world had with the US has already been burned, and isn’t coming back easily. It’s obvious that other countries might try to avoid doing deals with a corrupt, fascist USA. But, what’s less obvious is that thanks to Trump, countries also won’t want to do deals with an apologetic, democratic, tolerant, liberal, honest USA. That USA can get voted out of office and replaced with a fascist in just one election cycle, and all the deals mean nothing when that happens.
i mean, some of us legitimately have next to no power. or have good operational security.
me, i have 3,000 miles distance between me and krasnov at any given time and putting in a lisa novak style cannonball run would be sure to tip someone or something off. I’m going to leave it to someone closer.
Just be a part of a group who are trying. That’s it. Nobody needs to action hero a solution with a fist fight finale.
This is the other problem with Americans. You think the next step after words is going in guns blazing. Your media is full of it, so it’s no wonder you’re brainwashed into believing it. It’s why there are so many mass shootings. Someone disagrees with someone else and reaches for his gun.
That’s not the next step. The next steps are to organize, protest, disrupt, disobey, obstruct. You can do all that from your own city.
They’re just not going to believe that the US can be trusted
Yup. The damage to the American brand is permanent, and that will become painfully clear when the post-tariff trade deals take effect within the next year and a half and trade routes itself around the US rather than through it.
The worst part is it won’t affect Donald in any meaningful way, because his perception of reality is wedded to his algorithm and his wealth makes him untouchable.
Good. Obviously it was wrong to trust the US this entire time. It’s time to dismantle the post-WW2 American dominance over the world, and move toward a more multilateral future. This process feels scary and might be quite difficult, but it’s important and it’s time. No one country should be considered the world’s policeman or supreme authority. I just hope that everyone shaking their head at the US realizes that they can only sit there doing that for so long, because the very next thing they need to urgently do is step the fuck up into that leadership vacuum before dictators do.
Will it really be a multilateral future though? Or will it be a Chinese future?
A multilateral future would be great, but multilateral alliances aren’t very stable. Just look at how Orban is disrupting what the EU wants to do, even though Hungary is a relatively small and weak country in Europe. Or, look how toothless European regulations are when Ireland just refuses to enforce things like the GDPR, so the tech companies just declare themselves as Irish.
Meanwhile China seems very unified and their mixture of a command economy and a market economy has been very effective so far. I don’t think the Chinese model is all bad. They’ve been massively effective at doing things like building high speed rail, developing and deploying solar panels, etc. OTOH, the Great Firewall and CCTV state is not how I would like to live.
Without the US, I don’t know how well the rest of the world will be able to resist China. I think Australia might be the canary in the coal mine. I think China considers Australia to be in its sphere of influence and will try to put more and more pressure on it. Australia’s outlook on the world is much more similar to Europe, but it’s geographically really far away.
“Multilateral” may include a very powerful China. The two are not mutually exclusive. China has been very prolific already in exerting its soft power around the world. They probably do stand to gain from the US losing standing. However I very much doubt that the US losing standing will immediately lead to total Chinese dominance around the globe. China has a lot to deal with, surviving its impending demographic apocalypse. There was a time we feared Japan in the same way: nonstop economy, strong culture, they bought a lot of American assets and real estate… soon they’ll take over the world! They’re still here, and very powerful, but the “big bad” fears were overblown. I think similarly, China wants its historic provinces back, and would like to exert the same kind of influence over Asia that it once did, and be a global trade power, but all of that put together is still far less than the imperialism which America has actually achieved and maintained around the world. So yeah, an ascendant China may be one feature of this future but I don’t see the problem with that. I don’t start from a position of hating and fearing China.
the US losing standing will immediately lead to total Chinese dominance around the globe
The US didn’t have total dominance around the globe either. They just had a lot of soft power, a lot more than any other country.
There was a time we feared Japan in the same way
Sure, but Japan was always relatively small. It was a country with a low population and few natural resources. China is a huge country with nearly 10% of the world’s population and is one of the largest countries in the world. There are no guarantees that it will still be a major force in 10 or 20 years, but it’s different from Japan which was a relatively small country that had a temporary niche in manufacturing certain kinds of goods.
The biggest issue with China is that they don’t believe in the right to free speech and free expression. While the US has been more of an outlier in allowing unfettered free speech until recently, free speech and free expression is pretty central to European identity.
US didn’t have total dominance around the globe either. They just had a lot of soft power
The US has military bases, nuclear subs and aircraft carriers stationed around the world. That’s a little more than soft power. And our military spending has always been outsized.
Sure, but Japan was always relatively small. It was a country with a low population and few natural resources.
This stopped being the yardstick for influence around WW1. Japan has the number 4 GDP in the world right now and they were number 2 for a while, very close to the US. China’s landmass and population don’t mean much to the rest of the world if all they represent is impoverished agrarians, which fairly describes a lot of China still.
The biggest issue with China is that they don’t believe in the right to free speech and free expression.
They don’t. They believe in collectivism and order. However I don’t know that they aspire to bring Hanification to me here in California. Their ambitions are more regional. The US definitely reached around the entire globe.
While the US has been more of an outlier in allowing unfettered free speech
For whom though? This is more myth than reality. The US deposed democratically elected leaders all over South America, and has supported dictators around the world if they offer us resources or control. Look at the Middle East. China has a long long way to go before they even begin to be as scary as the US has been for the last 50 years.
free expression is pretty central to European identity.
I’m not sure what “European identity” has to do with this conversation, which has been more about the US and China. I worry that we are veering into vague concepts like “western civilization” that are more myths for white supremacists than actual entities.
That’s a little more than soft power
It’s soft power until they start using it.
This stopped being the yardstick for influence around WW1
And that was a mistake. Population and resources is key to a nation’s power. It’s a large reason why the US is so powerful. Per capita a lot of European countries have similar levels of wealth, but the US has nearly 350 million people, which is only slightly less than all the states in the EU combined. If the EU were more centralized it would be a single state with a power to rival the US. But, as a collection of 27 countries which only surrender some of their power to the EU government, it’s not able to match the US.
I don’t know that they aspire to bring Hanification to me here in California.
Only on a limited basis. They definitely don’t want you to talk about Taiwan and how Taiwan is an independent country. Right now, because the US is strong, you’re free to talk about Taiwan all you like. But, as China gets stronger, they may require that their trade partners have local laws enforcing the one-China policy. They’ve already managed to push that onto the Olympics. And after they get that rule everywhere, what’s next? Maybe laws forbidding people from using Winnie the Pooh to mock their leader?
The US deposed democratically elected leaders all over South America
That’s not really about free speech. That’s about who holds power in various countries.
It’s soft power until they start using it.
And what do you call Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan…
Seriously man if I have to point out the obvious to you like this, the conversation isn’t worth continuing.
At least in my circles, I think we’re aware? People are looking real hard at ways to leave. We’ve also got a higher than usual chance of reforming/refurbishing some of those broken guard rails. Fingers crossed.
The folks supporting Trump, on the other hand, already believed that these relationships were dead and bad. They’ll scapegoat somebody else for the decay; I do not see the avenue for this to be a learning experience.
I’m specifically talking about Americans thinking that the rest of the world will get over this. I think that trust has been broken.
Like you talk about broken guard rails. The US has been lecturing the world on how the US system of democracy is the best for decades now. There’s always talk about how there’s a system of checks and balances, and how US democracy can be messy, but in the end it’s a system that works. I don’t think anybody believes that anymore. The guard rails were always an illusion, and even if all of Trump’s changes were rolled back, the rest of the world would know that the guard rails, and the checks and balances are all just an elaborate delusion.
And I guess I’m specifically reporting on my circle of american’s, who are both aware that we’ve burned a lot of goodwill and trust (though tbh, I’d hoped the trust was lost already after trump 1…).
The checks and balances held for Trump 1 relatively, and held for previous abuses before that (at least, sufficiently that folks would let the US say such things). I don’t think it’s obvious that they are irrepairable/irreplaceable: we could have a revolution and rebuild from scratch, as an extreme example. It is obvious that systems must change to do so; reorganizing the supreme court, changing campaign finance, etc. If they change, and how much, idk what to expect. But I think ~half the country knows it’ll take serious reforms, and it still wont put the US back where it was. Trust != systems.
Yeah, trust has been burned and it’s not coming back quickly. Maybe reform the systems and trust will eventually be built back. But, by that time the US won’t be a major power anymore, so it won’t matter as much.
Major power computations I think are harder. I agree the US is falling, but I don’t think I’ve seen a serious analysis claiming that the US will become merely a power amongst a few dozen others anytime in the next few decades? We’re about to become much poorer and less diplomatically influential, but still nukes, still the huge military spending, still capitalists with hands in other economies?
This this THIS!! ^^^
If you only consider Europe most the world it would be true bit no the usa beem a malign actor for several decades
I was gonna say, only now? I’m in the US and can see it’s been a bad actor since at least the end of WW2.
Before WWII was also very bad
Banana Republics come to mind. But during the time frame the US was doing that, Most of Europe was still doing their own colonialisms.
It was only when Hitler brought colonialism back to Europe that they started to wake up to how bad it was. Well, some of them. France and England had to start losing colonial wars, mostly due to losses suffered in due to WW2, before they slowly started freeing colonies.
Just shows that everyone is shit, and cheering for a team is kind of stupid.
For sure, but was it our primary internal relationship before?
If that was a typo and you mean international, then certainly for Spanish speaking, African, and nearby countries as well as china (which is all we could manage at that time, though we probably would have aggressed Europe as well if we could have). If you’re talking about domestic, then yes if you weren’t the right kind of Christian white man.
I did indeed mean international.
I mean, the Marshall Plan was benevolent. USAID and similar may make us net beneficial to Africa.
Let’s not talk about South America.
I mean, the Marshall Plan was benevolent.
No, it wasn’t. It was meant to stop the URSS from expanding further west, and as a bonus shackle the rebuild countries as loyal lapdogs that attended to any and every USA whim.
USAID and similar may make us net beneficial to Africa.
Mostly posturing. If the USA were serious about benefitting Africa they’d do something similar to what China is doing right now, partnering and building infrastructure, instead merciless exploitation and throwing a few breadcrumbs here and there.
Let’s not talk about South America.
But we should. What the USA has done here can only be labelled as evil. Overthrowing governments left and right, supporting murderous dictatorships, merciless exploitation like what it did in Africa as well. Foul, evil stuff.
The Native Americans called about their genocide way before WWII.
I suspect when our founding fathers were blowing up and murdering their fellow colonists as seen in the Sons of Liberty they were bad actors.
I was gonna say, only now?
We love to play the “Obama/Biden were the good ones, they knew how to bomb people and sanction countries ethically” game.
For all Trump’s poison, he was dead to rights on the idea of the Deep State - the core bureaucracy of the US government that demands global hegemony and just can’t decide how to achieve it.
Trump’s been miserable at executing hegemony the liberal way. And we’re expected to believe this will make his administration a failure.
But then you look at fascist Middle Eastern states expanding their territory, South American dictatorships sprouting like weeds, and far-right parties gaining ground all over Europe. Hard to ignore that Palantir is doing just fine. White Nationalists are having a heyday from Texas to Tel Aviv.
Clearly, US hegemony is expanding, just not in the way the Clinton/Cheney neocons imagined it.
Corporate Media can’t seem to decided whether we’re undergoing a fascist takeover or finally Making America Great Again.
I dread to read what the history books say about our country in another ten years, knowing what kind of fucked up AI is writing them today.
That’s not what Trump has ever meant by the “deep state”.
Trump complained that a secret inner cabal of career bureaucrats would oppose him. And he wasn’t wrong. The various federal agencies are a seven layer dip of careerist holdovers from prior administrations, many of who were hostile to his brand of politics for one reason or another.
Trump’s framing of the existence and internal opposition by career bureaucrats was that of some insidious anti-American cabal. But the fundamental problem is one every new President faces. Namely, the Burrowing In of political appointees to civil service career roles.
This isn’t a new problem, either. Thomas Jefferson was complaining about the problem hires left behind under the Adams administration. Burrowed-in Democrats plagued Lincoln for much of his tenure and were behind many of the smears aimed at Kennedy after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion (an Eisenhower-era plot that cost Allen Dulles his job when it humiliated JFK).
How presidents deal with recalcitrant career staffers and opposition party moles can define their administrations. This isn’t a problem Trump just made up. It’s one he doesn’t know how to deal with gracefully.
hostile to his brand of politics for one reason or another.
Because his brand of “politics” is dumb, destabilizing shit that’s bad for America and Americans. That is what they’re there for, to serve the American people and the Constitution of the United States of America.
Trump only serves himself, Putin, and indirectly, Xi.
Also, did you just link me Trump admin propaganda justifying their firing of anyone not loyal to the furher?
Because his brand of “politics” is dumb, destabilizing shit that’s bad for America and Americans.
We’ve had dumb, destabilizing policies in this country since its founding. That’s got nothing to do with the politics of the civil services. Plenty of civil servants are full-on MAGA adherents (and have been even before his first election in '16). Plenty more are die-hard Hillarycrat Libs who have dragged the country in another direction. Trump’s game is to stack his MAGA cronies above the Hillarycrats withint compromising the function of the civil service entirely, rendering it useless.
Trump only serves himself, Putin, and indirectly, Xi.
Jesus fuck dude. Have you really been watching US politics for this long and still not seen Trump acting in the explicit interests of the American billionaire class? Why do you think the Chinese President is closer to his heart than the people he pulled into his own cabinet - Lutnick, McMahon, Vought, and Loeffler? Nevermind Peter Thiel, a man who has become the nation’s premiere military contractor over the last year.
Nevermind fucking Israel.
How are you liberals this fucking blind? Trump’s CIA is systematically picking apart what’s left of Russian industry. His Pentagon is fixated on purging Chinese businesses from the Western Hemisphere. His Treasury has made cryptocurrency speculation a central tenant of fiscal policy. But y’all can’t stop saying “Foreign Men Did This” every time you look at your own decayed socio-economic system.
Also, did you just link me Trump admin propaganda
Go Lib Out to the WaPo if that’s your poison of choice.
Or reference Congress.gov for an official definition.
Or just bury your head in the sand for another four years.
You’re also blind if you just say “America bad” at every opportunity. No, many of the things he’s doing are absolutely not in the interest of the billionaire class. How do you think bringing back measles benefits them?
Some of the dumb ones might think the pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates is good for their bottom line, but they’re idiots.
All of them will suck up to him regardless, for survival. It doesn’t mean they think everything he’s doing is right by them.
And yes, he’s serving some of them, particularly Peter Thiel. But he’s mostly serving Putin and himself.
We have a wealth disparity/capitalism problem. We have a Trump problem. There’s some overlap, yes, but they’re not the same.
And even Hillary isn’t the devil incarnate you think she is. She’d be more content with the status quo than I’d like, and I voted for Bernie over her, but she’s not part of some grand conspiracy to keep the American people down.
Yeah this isn’t really headline news, unfortunately.
Way more than several decades. They startded in the South-East Asia more than a century ago. Latin America shortly after.
The triumph of disinformation, greed, and self-centered ultraconservatism; a country about to implode.
Conservatives have absolutely destroyed America’s soft power. At least for an entire generation. They’ve made the rest of the world believe their shitstain childlike behavior is how all Americans act. This rapist president has made it clear to the rest of the world that agreements with the U.S. are worth no more than the paper they’re written on.
These fucking knuckle draggers are weighing us down and will continue to do so after their rapist idol is dead and buried.
The Democrats were unabashedly supporting genocide in Palestine and ran a candidate who vowed no deviation from that policy. If you think it’s just Conservatives, you haven’t been paying enough attention.
Don’t worry it’ll for more than a generations. China is already a peer competitor and what America had going for it was incumbency as the global unipolar hegimon. Trump has openly reliquished this position and, regardless of who succeeds him, it’s not something that can be easily restablished.
Winning goodwill back is almost certainly not going to happen. Even with assurances, other countries will feel as if they’re only one election cycle away from potentially unfair treatment. The only way we go back to American unipolarity is another world war which America somehow gets rich off of like WW2 or achieving artificial general intelligence before anyone else.
I think the leaders of the US understand this which is why they’re pushing for higher military spending everywhere and also going hard on AGI, no matter how far fetched it is in the near future at least.
Yup.
They have always been. It’s now just impossible to ignore.
Thanks to MAGA, the 1st World views the USA on the same level as Russia, China and their allies. The article is spot on in regard to the future.
Where I live we have square kilometers of american GI’s that liberated europe. As a first in human history victors did not loot or rape. Instead they scrambled to be home by christmas. Europe is forever indebted to these men and the people that led them.
Yeh and 99.5% of them have since passed away, all that’s left is grift riding on the coat tails of stolen valor.
I’m a German guy from Berlin, next year I’ll be 50. My dad was born in 1944 and it’s pretty safe to say he survived being cut off from food supplies by the Soviets only because Americans pulled off the Berlin Airlift. These brave pilots helped save the lives of people they had considered enemies not much earlier.
So I would not be alive were it not for Americans. Am I indebted to America? Fuck yes, of course I am.
Having said all that, it’s so painful to see America turn to fascism - the very thing those GIs you mention fought against. A country I love, people I love, losing their minds and their hearts. Literally turning evil, led by a criminal lunatic who so obviously follows the demagogue playbook…
If you’re German, then your government aided and abetted the genocide in Palestine just like America did. I’m not sure what Germany’s current state of involvement is, but I doubt they’ve entirely severed support for the fake state. It’s not just us being run by criminal lunatics.
bin laden warned us!!! !!! !!! !!!
No shit. Ostracize the hellhole.
I’m sorry but this article is a laugh: “But while it has fallen short in the past, there was always broad bipartisan agreement over what the U.S. should be: a reliable ally; a country that supports those less fortunate, stands up against tyranny worldwide and is a beacon of freedom for human rights defenders.”
I think it would be more accurate to say that the USAs optics have tried to pander this way. But now they are not even bothering with their PR. The USA has been wheeling and dealing even during WW2.
It’s actually in some ways refreshing in a sense that the US is embracing its role as imperial villain in many peoples stories. Shocking to people that live in America sure but to anyone that has experience with America’s foreign policy as an external entity it seems like America is finally accepting itself for who it really is and embracing its decline in a sort of reverse coming of age manner.
You could have had Jeb! but you got greedy.
It should’ve been me. Please clap!
Ironically the idea of an alternate 2016 where Jeb! won the election is why I’ve used variations of the Jeb! username across platforms. Not saying Jeb! is any good, but lesser of two evils and all.
For most of us in the US, as well.
Most, cause USA is still part of the world.
More like apart of this world rn tbh
I think they are deliberately trying to anger and not just being incompetent.
Why are they doing this? There’s money to be made with this somehow, and it has to be a LOT of money, so obviously the USA is planning to fuck them over financially in some bigly fashion.
Seizing every nation’s accounts would be my best guess, but I thought Trump would lose so what do I know.
IDK, it seems almost transparent to me those in control of the US are doing a racketeering-like thing to solicit bribes, and doing whatever whoever bribes them the most wants. They aren’t thinking on a national level, just personal; and would burn the US or any other country to the ground to gain more power and wealth.
So, Musk and Bezos and Saudi Arabia? My top 3 suspects
Ding ding ding! The US went from being a covert to an overt kleptocracy. Now you know what it’s like to live in the Balkans during the 90s.
Imagine ruining 250 years of a successful democracy so you can line you and your friends pockets with filthy lucre while having sex with tweens. That guy stands for nothing and most of america has lost it’s ability to feel shame or have any empathy. Both human traits.
