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This has been an overall issue with the Trump administration. The assumption that any decision made by the US is law, and that everyone else will follow regardless of whether they were present at negotiations or not.
You saw it as US reduced aid to Ukraine, assuming the EU would follow suit.
Next during peace negotiations when America decided to not invite Ukraine, and instead assumed they would acquiesce to whatever decision the two great powers came up with.
In the initial phases of the Iran war, Trump assumed the rest of NATO would help. Even though it was not in their interest and they had not been involved with invasion plans in the first place. This war was notably a surprise for almost all interested parties, yet the US expected help as if they had all agreed on a plan together.
Now you have these Iran peace talks in which one of the parties to the war is not involved. Then everyone acts surprised when said party ignores the terms of a deal they never agreed to.
It's like watching an asshole watch a 20 minute video on realism and then try to implement it IRL.
On the other hand, it does allow him to go back to one of his campaign messages: "everyone is a freeloader that won't help America when we need them."
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Why would they? Trump is an egotistical fool who believes the flattery coming out of any dictators mouth but it doesn't change that nations like China and Russia are our enemies and have no actual reason to listen to him. Putin might have kept whispering in his ear during those late night gossip calls that "I never would have had to start the war under you Trump, this is Biden's war absolutely", but anyone with a brain knows that this isn't true. Putin started it because he wants Ukraine, the same reason he's not ending it now despite years of stalemate and a drain on his country's resources and population.
And Ukraine along with the rest of Europe doesn't want to be taken. You can get a lot out of allies as the top dog, but they're not going to the grave for you, allies doesn't mean chained up slaves.
Those make sense to fail, it's an egotistical idiot believing the lies of any adversarial tinpot who tells him nice things and wondering why his orders to our friends to jump off a cliff aren't being followed. Even the best and most powerful presidents would not succeed here, allies wouldn't kill themselves for a Reagan either.
But Israel is engaged in an offensive war in Lebanon! They're moving large populations out of their homes in mass genocide. And their constant attacks are directly screwing with the US plans to surrender and restore the world economy. If we can't even pressure the nation with no other allies but us, that directly relies on the US, into not engaging an offensive war to save the world economy then it seems the Trump admin has little influence anywhere when it matters.
Start threatening things like Magnitsky sanctions for all the war crimes and human rights abuses they do or cutting aid or whatever. Trump of course won't because he's a weak man who can't stand up to the Zionist lobby even if he wanted to. And Israel knows this, there is nothing Trump is willing to do to bring them to heel. The same thing Iran has learned. The same thing many of Trump's opponents targeted by political warfare have learned. The bark is louder than the bite, you push back against the bully and he eventually flees.
I think Trump is Jewish and it’s not that he can’t stand up to the Zionists. And the US economy is heavily ran by Jews. Israel is a rival tribe as well as an ally but they are practically the only other civilized nation in the world.
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Is this meant to be satire, on people claiming everything is genocide?
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“ The assumption that any decision made by the US is law, and that everyone else will follow regardless of whether they were present at negotiations or not.”
I don’t agree with your Ukraine point. The US decided they didn’t want to pay for Ukraine because it’s not America first and largely not a US interests. The Trump administration has been consistent in wanting Europe to spend more on their military. My understanding of the MAGA position is MAGA never had a problem with the EU paying for a European war.
As far as both countries on the same side needing to agree to continue a war it’s generally not that both countries need to agree to end it. Either can continue or end the war when they want to but when the stronger nation decides to end it usually the weaker ally has to follow the big dogs decision. If Israel keeps dragging us back into the war I honestly would have no problem with Trump bombing Israel. Remind the Jews whose daddy in this relationship. Might even be fairly popular in domestic politics.
France and Germany did not join the US in Iraq, so the US ability to dictate to its allies is at least somewhat limited. They aren't obligated to join everything the US decides to do.
Yes, the US got away with smashing a sovereign nation with no criminal charges or serious reprisals. But:
I'd have thought we'd be clear on this after this whole mess. Yes, the US doesn't have to go with its allies into Iran. Yes, the US can just kill a leader of a formidable nation and Trump will likely retire to golf in peace. What did you achieve though?
We basically won the war so we won’t agree. Their leaders are dead. All aims were not achieved like complete regime change but the reason we failed at that is primarily domestic US politics and an unwillingness to cause a lot of Iranian civilian deaths.
Whether the War was worth it is a much different question than whether the US is in charge.
How America chooses to cope is irrelevant. It's especially irrelevant because, for all of the talk that the US would see red bro and just crush if it really wanted to, the supposed wildcard President backed down. You can't even blame it on the effeteness of some Obama-style figure drunk on dreams of liberal internationalism. This is the most vocally ruthless Presidency in a while, that ran around threatening to wipe out their entire civilization and...what happened?
Maybe don't start wars you can't win without massive casualties you're not willing to inflict? Especially don't threaten it if you won't go through.
In any case, I don't see how this isn't a loss. The strait isn't open. The IRGC is still functional enough that the US has to negotiate with it to open it. The US is apparently going to have to pay danegeld and Trump has downplayed disarming them. Iran just now suspended talks again and is working (successfully) to drive a wedge between the US and Israel*
The reason regime change was such a central pillar of the thinking (not some sort of stretch goal) was that it was the only path anyone could see to stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions decisively. That failed.
* Regardless of how one feels about Israel, your enemy being able to do this to you is a sign of weakness.
People like you make me want to just kill every Palestinian and Iranian to prove a point we won because we can.
Iranian Nukes are pushed back a decade minimum. We can bomb then again in the future because easily because their air defenses don’t exists anymore. Their conventional military is degraded.
You are setting the win conditions to Iranian statehood or turned into glass. We don’t want that.
Yes, but people like you make me want to defect to China. Going full psycho is not just another move you can pull out of your repertoire like you're playing blackjack and deciding whether to hit or stay. When you are in protracted legal wrangling over a breach of patent costing 10m USD, the reason you don't just pull out a gun and waste the judge, plaintiff and opposing council isn't because it won't work, it's because making it clear that you are a psycho with no switches except 'kill' and 'don't kill' acts as a strong signal to everyone else that they need to drop everything and focus on killing you now.
Case in point: all of Israel's former allies now loathe them. To the extent that there is any support for Israel remaining, it is that senior politicians manage to temporarily squeeze it out whilst avoiding increasingly bipartisan pressure from all the up-and-coming politicians. Whatever the provocation, going straight to 'kill everyone' is not a good move unless you are obviously so desperate that there is no other choice. America is very clearly not in that position.
You don’t pull out and kill the judge in a patent dispute is become the US federal government has a monopoly on violence here.
Who has an international monopoly on violence? That would be the US which makes them the judge in this case.
Yes we can just do things and there is no one that can stop us.
And spare me….but but but there are exceptions to the US having a monopoly on global violence. Yes I know it’s not a 100% true it’s only 80% true. We can bomb Israel tomorrow if they disobey us. We can cause Iranian population collapse if we want to.
I have no problem if you move to China.
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Perhaps this is a sign of poor understanding of international relations on my part, but I would assume that you would at least want to present a shared front with your allies during formal negotiations. Make sure you have pressured your ally before negotiations if need be, so that you know ahead of time that they will officially support the deal you sign.
It seems that Trump just skips this entirely. He simply ignores his allies during negotiations, then expects them to support a decision that blindsided them completely.
Lipstick on a pig stuff. Yes Trump ignores the genuflecting to Europe etc to make them feel good that their opinion matters. But realistically the US opinion has been all that matters for decades.
Except that yet again, the gap between “the US is vastly more powerful than its allies” and “US opinion is all that matters” is biting the US in the arse.
How is it biting us in the arse? Ever since the rise of American Tech and Energy Independence what happens in the rest of the world just doesn’t matter to us.
The consequences to the US is a bunch of French men angry tweeting us they are freezing and can’t drive their cars because no petrol.
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I had several hypothesis regarding Trump choices. I thought there was some secret plan explaining his behaviour. For example, asking NATO for help without consulting them could have been a plan to undermine and ultimately dismantle it. But unless he also wants to alienate Israel, I think he has no plan beyond what we see.
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