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The remaining primaries and convention at this point serve as little more than a coronation for the inevitable Trump nomination. It was discussed last week the unlikely circumstances in which Trump is prevented from running. The questions now are:
The likelihood Trump wins? Betting markets put the odds between 40-60%, which is not that useful but is what I would expect. The election will be very close and come down to the usual swing states like in 2020 and 2016. Biden's approval ratings are precariously low for an incumbent, especially given that the Electoral College works to Trump's advantage.
What will a second Trump term be like? My guess is much like his first term. A lot of hollow populist gestures to his base but not much happens. I still don't understand these people who are otherwise centrist or middle-left like Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith, who predict or expect a foreign policy crisis if trump wins , but always fail to articulate what this entails. I guess they have to keep toeing the 'orange man bad' line even though he was not that bad, and the economy and other metrics did well under his presidency (until Covid, which was out of his control anyway). Key alliances were strained much, as commonly feared in 2016-2017. The leadership of allies like Germany and France begrudgingly accepted Trump, and not much else happened.
I can't ascribe this to anything other than not paying attention:
(for just one example I dug up in 20 seconds)
Maybe you agree with these prognostications, maybe you don't. Saying that Trump's critics can't or haven't articulated their positions is just confusing.
"'Orange Man Bad' is the 'Buy index funds' of political commentary.". If historically left-of-center political commentators who have spent the past 8 years criticizing Trump and his policies continue to do so, odds are pretty good that they actually believe it.
If anything, the sudden flurry of "Oh, Trump wasn't that bad"-type statements from figures who previously criticized him reeks of groveling and bet-hedging. Jamie Dimon doesn't have to worry that Biden is going to punish him for making critical statements. Likewise for his many critics within the party who have 'come around'.
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
This so isn't happening it is comical. But I accept it as an example of the hysterical detached-from-reality "what-if"ing that some people like to do about Trump and why he will ruin the entire world.
This seems like a willful misreading. Do you think "dominate" means "conquer by force of arms"? Because it's not as if the EU has been putting up vigorous opposition to Russian hegemony absent US spinal prosthetics.
Russia is not going to dominate Europe, force of arms or otherwise. Again, an economy about equal to Italy.
Hydraulic despotism using their oil is their only possible influence on Europe. Push come to shove we'll bomb every oil pipe and free Europe from that addiction.
This would also entail freeing Europe from having an economy beyond subsistence farming for a generation or two. The actual work required to free Europe from Russian oil would have to have been started at least a decade ago, maybe even more. This doesn't give the US hegemony over Europe - this just pushes Europe into the BRICS sphere and leaves the US even more isolated, because when EU leaders are given a choice between "reversion to third world despotism to keep the USA happy" and "having profitable trade with one of their closest neighbours" you don't have to be a genius to see which one they'll pick.
No one needs to ask Europe for permission. Pipes can just start blowing up. They are really long and as best I know not practically defensible.
Sweden is a cold country. They decided to largely use renewable energy and nuclear power. For the little fossil fuel they import, almost all is not from Russia. A modern developed European nation could just not rely on Russia for energy.
I get that transferring from an oil-for-energy scheme to something else is an enormous lift. But they may not be given the choice if more pipeline ""accidents"" occur.
And I'm not some hardass Anerican warmonger hoping Europe gets fucked and Germans can't heat their homes in the winter. But hitching their wagon to this particular mule appears to have been a mistake.
This proposed strategy is utterly moronic and I really don't see how you can think this is a viable approach at all. What, exactly, is the carrot being offered to keep the Eurozone outside Russia and China's sphere of influence when the American offer is just "if you want an economy more advanced than the middle ages we are going to bomb your infrastructure back to the stone age"? The US military is not going to have nearly as easy a time operating in Europe when they're enforcing a zero-development policy against the wishes of the EU.
For Europe, the only alternative to Russian energy is deprivation - remember that Biden just turned off the LNG exports designed to cover the shortfall in order to get back at Texas. You can't have a modern first world economy (or a modern first world welfare state for that matter) without copious amounts of fossil fuels. Green and renewable energy cannot make up for the shortfall, and neither can nuclear. There is no alternative to Russian fossil fuels - right now Europe is still using them, they just have to pay a big premium to India in order to get around US sanctions and pipeline bombing. I was one of the people who thought the sanctions would have caused massive problems in Europe last winter, I just didn't think the US would accept such an obvious and naked end-run around their sanctions.
It isn't just an enormous lift - the calculations on exactly when the transition process has to start in order to avoid severe involuntary reductions in societal complexity have been done, and the answer was several decades ago. Switching to a new energy source is going to be a massive, society-wide challenge WITH Russian fossil fuels. Without them? lol
The moment the US switches to an approach of "You are going to stay poor, cold and freezing because we want to hurt the people you buy gas from, and we are not going to make up for the shortfall in the way we promised because our own states are rebelling and need to be punished" the Europeans are going to just welcome the Russians in through open doors. Of course, now that I think about it, that doesn't really seem that unrealistic given the fecklessness of the current administration.
There's only 20 something oil pipes from Russia to Europe and 3 have already been bombed. Call it dumb and correctly point out the negative consequences. But if Europe is in real danger of being dominated by Russia because of oil then any nation with a naval diving team can anonymously bomb a few more sections of pipe. Or like how the CIA likely destroyed a section of Rusdian gas pipe in 1982 by engineering a computer ""accident"". The leaked Pentagon documents include Zelensky discussing bombing Russian pipes to get back at Hungary.
I'm not saying it is a good thing. I'm saying it already has happened a few times and will keep happening if need be. And it can be done anonymously and Europeans can be left speculating who blew up the pipes.
Sweden imports a single digit percentage of their fossil fuel from Russia. If they were cut off from Russia they wouldn't suffer. It is possible to be a modern Western nation and not hopelessly dependent on Russian fuel. Sweden chose this. Germany did not. Rather than shut down nuclear power plants in order to replace them with even more imported Russian fuel, Germany could have built more and then have imported less Russian fuel.
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It's in the process of conquering the second largest country in Europe and would have succeeded if Trump had been president.
It's not so much that Russia is stronger than Europe, it's that it's crazier. Someone willing to fight can dominate a room full of equally strong people who aren't.
Lol wut?
Either Trump is critically destabilizing the region by allowing US sales of advanced Air Defence systems to Poland, publicly entertaining the possibility of Ukraine Joining NATO, and undermining the Russian economy by increasing US energy exports to Europe. Or he's secretly in Putin's pocket. Which one is it?
In either case the Russian military has been revealed as a paper tiger and clearly aint conquering shit. The best they can hope for at this stage is to turn Eastern Europe a desert and call it "peace".
That would be quite the inconsistency, if I'd accused Trump of doing the former.
Given massive US support. And even with that, Ukraine is far from winning.
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Interpreting the war in Ukraine as a sign of Russian strength and capability is quite the contrarian take.
Russia is exhausting itself in a multiyear grinding war against a flat open nation of 35 million people. Their economy is so small that they can't replace much of the expended equipment and weapons. They still might win, either keeping a lot of territory or conquering the whole country.
But, having battled so hard for so long at such a great cost to fight a nation of 35 million people to a standstill, I'm now taking Russia's larger threat to Europe much less seriously. They are willing to fight, but frankly not very capable.
Ukraine is feeling a lot like Winter War II at this point.
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Indeed, but it's not my take: "It's not so much that Russia is stronger than Europe, it's that it's crazier. Someone willing to fight can dominate a room full of equally strong people who aren't."
Russia has shown that it's aggressive. It would have been successful if Trump was president, because Trump is more favourable to Russia/Putin than Ukraine/Zelenskyy. That's why RT etc. likes Trump and dislikes Biden. And I say that as someone who also dislikes Biden.
A flat open nation that has had massive aid from the US. Assuming that sort of assistance, I also have little worries about Russian expansionism, but the question is whether Trump would be true to his word and be less supportive of the Ukrainians etc.
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Why didn't the invasion happen during Trump's presidency then? 4 years should certainly be enough, right?
Other hypothesis is that Russian financial system was not sanctioned proofed back then. Pro-war Russians would not like getting their Visa/Mastercard blocked; Russia built Mir cards since then.
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In 2016-2020, Russia hadn't even prepared for annexing the Donbas, let alone invading Ukraine. Russia also had hopes of reversing Euromaidan. After all, Poroshenko was unpopular, Zelenskyy was an unknown quantity, and Ukraine had performed a similar reversal from West to East after the Orange Revolution in 2005. Invading Ukraine would guarantee that such a reversal would not take place.
By 2022, Russia and its Donbas puppets were militarily, politically, and administratively prepared, while Zelenskyy turned out to be just as much of a problem for them as Poroshenko.
Trump's reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine would have been to cry a few tears for the Ukrainians, praise Putin's savvy and genius, and provide less support for Ukraine than Biden has done, and hope to appease Putin by encouraging Ukraine to cede the territory that Russia wants. We can predict all that, because that's what Trump's position has been on the Russia-Ukraine war.
I am no fan of Biden, but it's irrefutable that Trump is far softer towards Russia than Biden. This is one reason why many people like Trump! Trump's policy towards Russia has always been appease, withdraw, and sincerely pray to the Almighty for the victims of the consequences.
The problem with this take is that by the summer of 2015 Russia had already annexed the Donbass and Crimea in all but name, or have you forgotten all the talk about "friendly green men" from 2014?
The Russians problem seems to be that they drank their own Kool-Aid. They seem to have seriously underestimated the degree of support that Euromaidan enjoyed on the ground in western Ukraine and seemed to genuinely believe that if they landed some paratroopers in Kiev and seized the Rada they'd be welcomed by the populace as liberators rather than with a hail of gunfire and molotov cocktails. That shock of expectation vs reality seems to have set the tone of the war going forward. Ukraine may eventually lose this war but Ukraine losing doesn't necessarily mean a win for Russia.
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Huh? And what further preparations would have been deemed sufficient? Because we're aware of the extent of preparations made before the 2022 intervention, and they turned out to be, well, more or less laughable, at least in the Northern areas of operations for sure. I mean surely the Russian state had at least the same amount of resources and troops available in 2018 or 2019 as well.
Fair enough. That said, this is the same Russian regime that, according to the mainstream interpretation, successfully manipulated the results of the Brexit referendum and US elections of 2016, and colluded with Trump. Surely it was within its means to manipulate Poroshenko or get him replaced by someone more pliable, to let Russian puppets gain positions all over the Ukrainian state apparatus, and to collude with Trump to rob Ukraine of US assistance! And yet Trump did the opposite, by allowing the supply of lethal military aid to Ukraine in 2018, which no other US administration had done before. Something doesn't add up.
I suggest that his position might have something to do with no longer being in power.
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We can't even agree to aid the people who are currently in a hot war with Russia. Until that happens, the idea that we're going to comprehensively destroy European energy infrastructure is a touch laughable.
Even if true, it kind of runs counter to the Trump is NBD narrative.
If Italy could figure out a way to leverage boutique luxury goods into military and political power they could make a play for regional hegemon as well.
It already began: Nordstream pipes were blown, and almost nobody protested.
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I seriously doubt Russia could pull off hydraulic despotism. They'd be cutting themselves off from their own customers.
And after the bombing of Nord Stream pipelines I think it is clear they won't be squeezing Europe this one way. This isn't some weird hypothetical I'm making up, we've already seen an example. The pipelines are inherently vulnerable and too many interested parties get a veto by bombing the pipelines.
I keep comparing them to Italy to say they are equivalent to a small portion of Europe. This talk of small GDP Russia dominating vastly larger in GDP and population Europe is quite the uphill battle.
I'm trying to fairly consider Russia's ability to dominate Europe if the US became isolationist. The prospect is more silly than plausible.
Well, sure, but isn't this old timey war of conquest on Russia's part a scheme to add Ukraine's economy and population to its balance sheet? A disinterested, Trump-led US makes Ukraine and the rest of the Eastern bloc sitting ducks and their aggregate could form a threat to Western Europe.
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Great spot for a laconic 'If' here, but more loquaciously:
If you take this at face value while it proves that Trump's critics have articulated some criticisms, it also proves that they are utterly insane -- in what world could Trump cause Russia to dominate France and China to dominate Japan/India/take your pick?
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It's not like US institutions have done a great job thus far, maybe a little chaos would help lift their performance. It wasn't Trump that ran the US military ragged in pointless Middle East wars, giving China and Russia a chance to catch up. It wasn't Trump that caused white recruitment to plummet. They did that all by themselves.
Putin didn't invade Ukraine under Trump - perhaps Putin was worried about Trump's unpredictability or felt he had something to lose regarding US-Russia relations. He had nothing to lose with Biden. There was a chance of US-Russia rapprochement under Trump, something the oh-so-smart US institutions spent enormous effort into demolishing and undermining with the Russiagate hoax, amongst other things. US-Russia rapprochement was by far the biggest win the US could've made, it could reshape the balance of power decisively against China. The US institutions apparently think a struggle against a combined Russia, Iran and China is a great idea, fun for the whole family. Biden proposed it back in 1997, as a contemptuous put down. The arrogance and stupidity of the establishment is considerable, greater even than Trump's.
I don't think Trump was a good foreign policy leader - he was too aggressive with Iran, undoing the good work Obama did on that front. We may be reaping the whirlwind of that strategy today, Iran is making its displeasure clear. But Trump wasn't terrible on foreign policy or domestic policy, more lazy and outmatched. Biden's sleepwalking into a major war in the Middle East, the US Southern Border is in shambles, domestic political stability is in question. The US is losing a proxy war to Russia in Ukraine (possibly the only place in the world where the balance of willpower and materiel favours Russia). Just look at all the frantic energy in Europe - head of the MoD talking about how Britain needs to prepare for war with Russia, Germany talking about conscription and leaking war scenarios. If Russia was losing, the threat would be diminishing and the war propaganda would be unnecessary.
Who is to say that the US can even win a war with China over Taiwan? The US would need to find some way of piercing the Chinese A2AD grid and resupplying a hopelessly dependent Taiwan with food, energy and munitions. Winning a naval war against a power with hundreds of times more shipbuilding capacity, in their home waters, from the other side of the world is not an easy task. If the US loses a major war and collapses 2-5 years before superintelligence, leaving it to China, wouldn't that be just the biggest joke in history? Trump's instinct to pull away from Taiwan is not necessarily wrong, we just won't know until the missiles fly. Indeed, the US establishment has traditionally adopted a similar mixed strategy, refusing to directly guarantee Taiwanese defence but strongly hinting at it - they want flexibility.
European military chiefs realized that the press is happy to boost stories about being invaded by Russia because fear sells / gets views, and that this in turn can lead to political pressure to raise defense budgets. The German military wants the coalition to adhere to the huge boost to defense spending announced after the invasion of Ukraine (which the Germans now appear to be wavering on because of the tougher economic situation), and the British military, traditionally a Tory institution that got slashed during Labour governments, want to make sure that Starmer continues with the current plans to increase spending, buy more planes, keep both aircraft carriers in service and so on. All this is further bolstered by the fact that the US government and pentagon encourages these European defense officials to make these statements (and leaks some of them to the press itself).
Regarding Taiwan, both the US and China know that America isn’t going to war for Taiwan. It’s not viable, it’s not justifiable directly (the public will switch off at the word ‘semiconductor’) and the American heartland doesn’t want to kill Chinese the way they wanted to kill Arabs after 9/11. China is developing domestic semiconductor / EUV equivalent tech faster than anyone imagined, so there’s less immediate pressure to invade even if the US forces tougher export sanctions, they can proceed with the general plan to wait a few more decades if they have to until the political situation in Taiwan changes for any one of a large number of reasons.
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At this point I wonder how much of this is due to fashion. If even the most uncool members of your group try to rally people by bashing trump, your only options to distinguish yourself are to be even more hysterical (which is getting kind of played out) or play the nuance card.
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I agree that Trump's critics have articulated their positions. I disagree with their foreign policy analyses, though.
Even if America became fully isolationist, Russia would probably not dominate Europe because the EU has nuclear weapons and a larger population and economy than Russia.
Even in America became fully isolationist, China would probably not dominate Asia because an anti-China alliance of India, Japan, and possibly some other countries like South Korea and Vietnam would have nuclear weapons and a larger population than China, and an economy that is at least capable of holding its own against China.
The real risk that isolationism poses to US domination of the world is not that Russia and China would take over, it is that if the US's current allies in Europe and Asia had to fend for themselves, they would probably be quite successful at it and then they would not need the US anymore, so the US would lose its control over them.
There is also some risk that in a more multipolar world, wars and nuclear weapons would both become more common, which could potentially lead to a nuclear war into which even an isolationist US might get sucked in.
It's not only that. Such a course of events would eventually result in Western European powers negotiating some sort of overall bargain with the Russians, which might later lead to the formation of an Eurasian power bloc that no outside power can dominate.
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I think this is proving too much, or at least using an inappropriately strong definition of "dominate". The total population of the EU is also greater than that of the US, and the total GDP is at least in the same ballpark, and yet it's quite fair to say that the US dominates it, at least in the sense that a hypothetical future in which China has the level of economical power and social influence over Asia that the US has over Europe would be terrible for US interests in Asia. If you consider the entirety of the US empire that is the "western world", it exceeds the US in population and GDP for sure. Dominance is not just about "more bulk wins"; it is also about how much of that bulk you are willing to use on dominating others, rather than on hookers and blow, and how much will to power and good maneuvering you are actually capable of engaging in. In that regard, the US, Russia and China are all far superior to the hapless prize damsels of the international sphere that are Europe, Japan etc., because the former would to some extent rather go sick and hungry than be weak, but the latter generally reinvest any surplus to be a bit more lazy, comfortable or self-satisfied on some ideological metric.
US domination of Europe is overstated, most of the close relationship is because the US and Europe are part of the same general civilization and because the US is by far the strongest individual power within that civilization.
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Agreed, but I'm pretty sure that Europe, Japan, etc. would change their tunes pretty quickly about being willing to be hapless prize damsels if big daddy US packed up his toys and went home.
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If the vassals are comfortable and self-satisfied, how can their wills be said to have been subverted by the hegemon? This isn’t domination, it’s don’t-mind-ation.
Let’s say you had an all-carrot-no-stick hegemon, who uses his bulk surplus to bribe his ‘vassals’ into recognizing his nominal overlordship. The vassals can still do whatever they want. The vassals can even get him to do their bidding because he wants their approval. I mean, when is it no longer domination? Surely at some point of hegemon softness, the relationship is more accurately described as transactional, friendly, or even reverse-domination.
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I would say the real risk of American isolationism is American economic decline, which in turn could lead to a loss of military power that could leave America vulnerable even in its own lands. Free trade really is mutually beneficial, and nations that wall themselves off will inevitably find themselves less prosperous and powerful than others.
Multiple East Asian nations serve as examples of this. The Ming and Qing dynasties in China had broad import-export bans, eventually leading to such a massive power imbalance that European nations, from thousands of miles away, were able to force them to open up for trade at gunpoint. Japan has a similar story, as does Korea.
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Yes, and for context: France by itself is a nuclear power with a larger GDP than Russia. As is separately the UK.
Russia is neck-and-neck with Italy in terms of economic size. And Russia has a very distorted population pyramid. Looks like a child's drawing of a Christmas tree. I rather doubt their large population will be mobilized to invade Western Europe.
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