Oh my God I told you not to come back until you’ve thought about this shit yet here you are wasting more of my time.
I never said the relationship is likely to end, only that it could sour, and that this would hardly be a good thing for any of the parties involved. The US and China are heavily dependent upon one another for trade, but that doesn't mean that if diplomatic relations take a hit, both economies won't suffer consequences as a result. I don't understand why you are apparently so resistant to the suggestion that the people at the top should actually take this stuff seriously, and act like it.
Diplomatic relations are inseparably tied to trade and defense and they do not sour until there is sufficient material incentive to do so. Thank you for ignoring this and forgetting that
motherfucking trade is at the very heart of diplomatic tensions with China in the first place.
You seem so obsessed with rhetoric and decorum that you’re forgetting how Trump, despite brash public statements, is dead fucking serious on actually executing policy.
This is what matters.
I guarantee Merkel, Macron and Johnson care considerably more about the folder on their desk with trade negotiations and troop reports than they care about what Trump is tweeting about on the toilet. I suggest you start doing this too.
I’m not saying rhetoric doesn’t have its place. It has a potent effect at shifting public opinion, but at the end of the day, a flowery speech about the bonds of brotherhood and Democracy means jack shit if you let your allies get complacent and actively move your assets away from them, Obama style.
The Palestinian territories are right on Israel's doorstep, and Israel has absolutely no sane reason to risk international sanctions and massive instability in the region just so they can nuke Hamas. They're not in a position where a major regional power is invading them. It's a totally different scenario.
Thank you for making your ignorance so painfully obvious.
Long before Hamas existed, Israel fought major ground wars with regional powers.
While they had the fucking bomb. It’s really my fault for assuming that you knew the context I was referring too. Last I checked Egypt and Saudi Arabia aren’t smoldering craters.
Also, what somehow makes France more likely than Israel to risk international sanctions, cataclysmic instability, and, oh yeah,
fucking mass murder on behalf of a minor European player?
If you’re going to rush into this discussion without thinking, thank you for at least doing me the courtesy of making my argument for me.
Public opinion isn't necessarily reflective of how militaries would respond and cooperate with one another in the scenario we've been discussing. Public opinion polls in the United States have shown for a long time than an overwhelming majority of Americans want the US to withdraw from Afghanistan, and yet, American troops are still there.
If this is true for a war as fruitless and morally suspect as the one in Afghanistan, what on Earth makes you think that it wouldn't also be true in a situation where Europe was facing the imminent threat of total annihilation?
First off, I love how suddenly public perceptions don’t matter and we’re down to strategic realities and pragmatism. I know you probably just let that slip but I’d like to think that I’m getting through to you.
Secondly, holy shit, how many times do I have to say to you that the main danger the EU faces without US support is
incremental aggression against allied states. This, and the catastrophic effects it would have on European political and economic stability. It’s their main incentive to keep dealing with the United States in the first place.
I wanted to illustrate to you that a protracted ground war with Russia was
possible which I’m hoping you’ve come around to. Especially since it informs my view of what’s at stake for Europe and NATO, as well Trump’s relevant diplomatic behavior. I’ve even agreed with you that the instant Russia eyes total domination, an alliance of European states
will likely win.
But in the vastly more likely scenario of incremental aggression, the polls illustrate that the their alliance is fundamentally tenuous, doubly so without US intervention.
Nice try bringing up Middle East involvement too, because not only is that one of Trump’s premier foreign policy victories (vastly reducing ISIS presence and actually following through on withdrawal), but it’s a wholly different set of circumstances. Bringing troops home from a protracted conflict that had overwhelming public support when it started is not the same as a populace endangering itself on the behalf of a culturally distinct neighbor.
If Russia made it clear they were an immediate existential threat to the whole continent, expect Europe to band together, but if a nation thinks they have more to lose by entangling themselves in a border dispute, they will
absolutely sit it out.
The reality of “sucks for Ukraine, the best we can do is sanctions” (that we ease off in 4 years because we need Russian oil) is not so different from the theoretical “Sucks for Romania, the best we can do is sanctions.”
The financial crisis created an unavoidable spike in the deficit, but the fact remains that it did come down, and it has gone back up since Trump took office. In case I am mistaken, you insinuated in your last comment that it would likely go up further under a Biden presidency, and barring the inevitable deficit spending to get America out of the economic hole created by Covid-19, I have thus far seen no evidence of that.
Yeah but Obama didn’t lower shit till Congress was in a position to make him, and you still wanted to paint a dishonest picture of his fiscal priorities. Plus, accounting for deficit as a percentage of GDP, the difference between the stabilized Obama budget and Trump’s pre-Covid numbers is minor, and only started to really change when the DNC won the house.
Biden’s website indicates a desire to
expand the ACA. That sounds like more money than Obama to me. Fiscal responsibility is but one of the issues I’m taking into account before pulling the lever, but to be quite frank a lot of that went out the fucking window when we decided to commit to a deficit of 17% of our GDP in a scramble to save the economy. Either Trump or Biden could run historic budget surpluses for 4 years and it still wouldn’t undo that.
So riddle me this friend. You seem like a decent guy. You want America to be respected. You don’t much like the face Trump puts forward, which I get, even if you’re painfully uninformed as to the real world impact and context of his actual policies.
Hell, I don’t think you’ve been fair to me in assuming I don’t wish the guy showed a little more decorum in the first place. I wish he would. I just put a little more weight on actual results.
After all of that, are you willing to cast your vote for a man with dementia? Are you
really comfortable throwing your support behind the walking corpse that was the best the DNC could come up with? Can you really, truly, look at Joe Biden playing with his dentures and trailing off mid-sentence during
the best fucking press clips his desperate campaign can muster, and say that you want that man to be the face of the free world? That he’d do a better job than Trump, despite the President’s own flaws?
More importantly, are you willing to ignore the domestic culture war and say with a straight face that
Donald Trump is the one undermining American democracy and not the rabble of assholes perfectly willing to resort to violence and intimidation to push their myopic and self-destructive views?
If you’re at least willing to
even consider “No” and start looking at the positives of a Trump presidency, I’m happy to keep talking but until then, please don’t fucking reply to me anymore.
