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Watching the disastrous discussion between Zelensky Trump and Vance I wonder how you guys here feel? The whole thing made me nauseous , treating an ally like that is disgusting , unpresidential and certainly geopolitcally inept. The EU-US relationship is not salvagable and at this point I would clap if US bases were emptied and NATO dissolved. Decouple the EU from the US as fast as possible and be independent. There is no way to talk sense into lunatics like Trump and Vance and Putin's control over them somehow seems to be absolute. What an absolute disaster. I know that there will be differing opinions here but at least most of you must agree that this is too much, or not , maybe Russian propaganda really has you convinced that Ukrainians are stealing money and started the war or some nonsense.
I just watched it, and I'm pretty conflict-averse irl so boy, it was hard. My face is flushed. Vance and Zelensky are going to be replaying that disastrous ten minutes in their heads over and over tonight. I think Trump already forgot about it.
But, watching it, it's pretty obvious what went wrong.
The administration is getting grilled about a security guarantee because Ukraine is confident a cease-fire will not prevent future incursions from Russia. The US doesn't want to commit to a security guarantee because they know that there's a real chance they would have to intervene because of the same worry. Ukraine and the US both agree that Russia is not trustworthy, but the US cannot publicly acknowledge this, because then a security guarantee would then directly imply that the US is agreeing to take an active role against Russia in a hot war. Also you can't do diplomacy with someone if you've already committed to the position that's it's futile. Zelensky is at war; he can do that. The US shouldn't do that.
Zelensky's point (that Russia has violated agreements in the past) was a good one, and it of course stumps Trump and Vance. I think Vance's aggressive reaction was more like, "Are you really trying to box us in on this right here, in front of the cameras?" I'm sure this really caught Zelensky off guard, because the playbook he was running works very well in Europe and elsewhere, to my understanding. The shouting was a result of Zelensky's attempts to interrupt. In fairness, there was interrupting from all sides.
Ok tell me why I'm wrong.
When you step back the fact the meeting was allowed to take place in the way it did is baffling.
The minerals deal in itself is one sided -- it's not clear why Zelenskyy should give away so much without something -- anything at all -- in exchange, presumably a security guarantee. So one would think he's thinking the purpose of the visit is partly to discuss that. Maybe Trump thinks Zelenskyy is visiting simply to sign over the minerals and pay homage, but Zelenskyy has a different understanding, that there must be a chance of the US discussing Ukraine's terms further before signing. And the administration should know he's thinking that.
Yet despite this stark unfinished business, the first meeting in Washington is in front of the media, as if the visit is primarily ceremonial, and goes on for an hour. This seems highly unusual. Who planned it this way and for what reason? Not to mention, it was staged with both Trump and Vance there but only Zelenskyy from his side -- why??
Superficially it seems like the behind-the-scenes diplomats failed dismally at their jobs in allowing the meeting to happen at all in advance of the signing (of course they may have had a better plan that was overruled). Else the meeting was arranged like this deliberately to go wrong, but I don't really understand why.
How are you coming and taking about this at all when you haven’t read anything about it, or even listened to the interview that js the topic of discussion in this thread?
Seriously what motivates this?
Zelensky is not giving away so much without anything at all. Trump and his proxies explain that giving us access to these minerals (Trump mistakenly at the beginning of the interview calls them “raw earth minerals”) gives us “skin in the game” and an obvious strong financial incentive to protect Ukraine.
But I’m actually asking: what is the motivation to talk about this without knowing anything about it?
What do you think it is I don't know? Zelenskyy is managing multiple open questions -- the minerals deal, the prospect of a ceasefire/peace deal and how it will be enforced, and longer term planning for what happens if Russia musters forces and stages a third invasion. All those things are interconnected. The meeting seemed to suppose that just the minerals deal would be signed in advance of anything else being resolved, which seems foolhardy on Ukraine's part (if they were not in fact expecting further dialogue prior to signing). Negotiations by their nature can't be done piecemeal because once a concession is made it can't be taken back. As much as possible needs to be agreed at once. To think the minerals deal is security guarantee enough because of 'skin in the game' is to assume far too much. It surely only makes sense as part of an overall package of 'what next?' and I think it's likely that additional discussions and agreements relating to security would need to happen for Ukraine to be sensible to go forward with it without being unduly trusting.
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What purpose does serve an army if you prove everyone you will never use it?
We have just come off fighting a continuous war in multiple countries for the last two decades. I am pretty confident that most serious people in the world understand that the US is, in fact, capable of prosecuting wars when we find it necessary. The question is not whether we can fight, it's if we should in this instance. And the answer is a hard no.
Those wars don't count. The US at war with small and poor countries. Nobody in the world will ever think the US are a reliable ally unless the enemy is Iraq and Afghanistan, and even in the later case the US did not win...
Ok.
Given how our alliances have worked out over the last few decades, this seems to be an acceptable outcome. I am tired of being a "reliable ally" to "allies" who offer nothing in return but ever-increasing demands, recrimination, and interference in our internal politics to my tribe's detriment.
Those allies have offered you a mostly free global market. The network effect means that the value of a network is proportional to the square of its number of users, and allied countries users have contributed in no small part to US big tech consummer basis, even though the US use its tech as a mean of spying on them.
That is why I think that the fall of Trumpism will not come from #Resist, or from democracy, or from the juges, but from capitalism itself.
When Scott Alexander explained this concept, it was meant as something to fight against, not as a political compass.
Whether this was a good deal or not is the debate, and the status quo has been losing that debate, worse and worse, for quite some time now in my estimation. Americans do not generally seem to believe that our economic system is working, and the mounting frustration is spilling over into extremism on both the right and the left. You seem aware of this as well with your reference to the fall of Trumpism coming from capitalism.
On that point, my disagreement would be that Trumpism is itself a response to the model of "Capitalism" that we've all been living under for the last several decades. Maybe it will succeed, and maybe it won't; if it fails, further escalation seems inevitable.
Indeed. And in my estimation, Scott Alexander and his supporters, of which I used to be one, lost that fight decisively. Zunger and Ozy were correct, Scott was wrong, as he himself seems to have recognized over time. Tribalism won because humans require values-coherence for cooperation to function, because the range of possible values allows for values-incoherence, and because liberal norms foster unlimited values drift until the norms themselves become unsustainable. Tolerance is not a moral precept, and will never be a moral precept. It is only ever a peace treaty, and under conditions of sufficient values-diversity the treaty stops making sense.
I don't think capitalism will fail and Trump will die with it. I think capitalism will survive but Trump will be destroyed in the process. Americans may be unsatisfied with the way the world works, but they just have unrealistic expectations.
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This means the network is mutually beneficial, so the US is paying with it's own membership, so the allies are still not offering anything.
Effectively this means Scott Alexander wanted to have the values of his tribe be the only ones that can even be considered.
The money? The companies are american, didn't you notice?
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You're wrong because the media coverage for just about everyone else, propagandistic or otherwise, will insist that it's far greater than that.
Trump may still have already forgotten about it, but he'll be asked about it, and be grumpy to be reminded over and over by journalists eager to needle him.
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