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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.
America is throwing its empire away for nothing, like @doglatine says. There was no reason to do it. It cost almost no American lives and secured America's place as the richest major nation on earth. The American public were and are wealthier than ever. There were zero downsides bar the occasional volunteer getting hit by an IED in a military they volunteered for. As a percenage of American GDP, it amounted to a pittance, whereas for the British and French, Empire was always an economic burden. What is the reason? Pure arrogance.
Neither Trump nor Vance are controlled by Putin. But both have a strong, angry contrarian streak, which is more than sufficient to explain this. The US has an extroardinarily overvalued currency and has a deficit that will now exceed 6% GDP; Trump is currently trying to pass $4tn of tax cuts with $2tn of spending cuts. That the US can borrow so much, so easily, so cheaply is testament to its extraordinary power and influence, easy to lose, hard to gain.
There were a lot of downsides for the people that were getting hit by those IEDs, which is why they stopped volunteering. If there’s another war it will have to be fought by conscripts.
If there's another war the core red tribe will demand a draft, because we don't want to bear the brunt of the casualties again. The cultural memory of stop losses and foreign national guard deployments is still there and there's anger about national guard activations for foreign peacekeeping duties today. Act like a major war is on or don't have a troop surge.
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