Empires seem to deploy their powers to the maximum, desisting only when they no longer have the wherewithal. We may soon be reminded that it was American decline that put Mr. Trump in a position to set American foreign policy in the first place.
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As I said in another thread, if these brief military excursions by Trump are weakening the United States as much as leftists and so-called rightwing pundits are insisting they have, then I will wait patiently to see what the international community is going to do about it.
I think you make a good point because America doesn't really have any true allies outside of Japan, just vassals, backstabbers, and dependents.
The problem is the homefront, though. Nobody minds decisive action, but Trump's big ticket items have thus far benefited a tiny cabal while the rest of us are twisting in the wind. If Venezuela does not produce a demonstrable positive change, it's a neutral event at best.
The tariffs were supposed to turn things around for American companies, but the effect hasn't hit manufacturing yet and meanwhile the rest of the country is being sold out to H-1Bs and offshoring.
Also, that cabal most likely just murdered one of the most popular political commentators in America. That comes with consequences!
I'm not in a position to comment on the domestic benefits of Trump's policies, other than that he seems to have succeeded in closing the border and the anecdotal evidence is that millions of illegals have self-deported out of the country. He is waffling back and forth on the H1B thing and that is alarming, but internationally, he is much freer to act without being yanked in a hundred different directions by domestic political interests.
The Liberal ideology of the international rules-based order has, since its inception, been a straitjacket for the United States, designed to constrain America's ability to defend its own interests while everyone else brazenly ignored the rules in order to advance theirs. Whenever a US administration did commit to military action, their perceived obligations were used as a pretext to intentionally bog them down with multiple decades of obligatory forever war, which those administrations were of course fine with because they were on the take. What Trump just did has shown the world that he's not going to be constrained by that artificial framework.
I don't understand how anybody could have believed that America First meant that the United States would give free reign to China and every other global rival to fuck around in America's backyard without lifting a finger to stop them.
I don't totally agree with this. Yes the US has been somewhat restrained by the fiction of international order, but it has a lot of sneaky interventions under its belt via the CIA and proxy conflicts. This is far from the first regime change in South America alone.
You kind of made your own counterargument there. If the forever wars weren't massive money laundering operations, they would have been shut down. The perceived obligations were part convictions of Bush Jr (I grant him that much) and part marketing campaign.
What the hell are you babbling about? The US weaponizes "the rules" against adversaries all the time. That's what all these sanctions are.
Globalist US administrations weaponized the rules against Americans and their interests. I won't apologize for believing that Trump is different, and everything he just did with Venezuela supports that view from my perspective.
That seems to be the heart of this. Does MAGA mean isolationism at any cost, or aggressively pursuing policies that benefit their own people.
If 'their own people' is Raytheon, then the latter certainly applies.
Paul Singer isn't my people. He's not even people.
The living standards in America are continuing to decline under Trump. That looks like weakening to me.
Because standard of living will continue to decline if the Fed keeps printing infinite money, if the federal government keeps overspending by trillions, and if usury and fractional reserve banking/lending continue to exist. These are the reasons the dollar keeps losing value, and has since 1913. If those aren't stopped, we're headed toward complete collapse (not just economic), because no one except the ultra rich will be able to afford food. Jobs won't be worth it any more, so people would rather revolt than work a job that doesn't pay their bills. The exact same thing happened to Rome before it collapsed, which devalued their currency so much that the mercenaries they hired to police their borders refused to be paid in Roman currency. These trends can't continue indefinitely, no matter what the corrupt or retarded economists say.
They might improve when you have access to Venezuelan oil.
We'd have to take it from Paul Singer and the Israelis.
Write sternly worded letters, of course. Or give news interviews claiming things like "breaks international law" but then failing to explain how.
You are now a 'so-called right-wing pundit' if you believe the same thing now as you did five days ago.
I do think he's right that it's not weak, though. And, as you know, I hate the move. But it's not weak.
You're also correct, though, that the people being called "so called right-wing" are just actually being consistent and, I'd argue, much more in line with actual American interests. It's crazy to say they can't be real rightwingers if they don't blindly fall in line with Current Thing.
I might even dispute that. Is 'the biggest guy in the neighborhood' tough or weak if he throws a kid to the wall? You could make the case for either. In terms of states, the best way to win is to win without fighting. Using force means you couldn't do that. Is this cope? Maybe.
But what he said was 'weakening'. Does this weaken the US? I can make a much better case that it does, though of course, I'm not a soothsayer. Of course, dag puts an impossible standard for what qualifies as "weaken". Unless Trump is dragged before a tribunal by other actors, the US was not weakened by this. By that standard, no action ever weakened the US.
I'll admit it's too soon to tell, that's for sure. Sadly, while far from a certainty, I'd say it's likely things to to shit in Venezuela, and it seems the US is insistent on being involved there, so we'll get dragged in. So it might end up being a weak move after all. But if it actually gets pulled off smoothly, it's pretty strong.
To dag's point, it would be throwing a weak kid to the wall, and daring all the other big guys in the neighborhood to do something about it...and they don't. Sadly, that's strong. You can say it's pathetic too, but it's a strong move. And it improves the US's position to try to force other kids to fall in line without needing to be thrown against the wall. Again, as you know, I hate the bullying. But, at least at present, I don't view it as weakening America's position...at least in the short term.
I guess, longer term, it's a weak move, since not every president will behave like this, so we're making America more hated on the world stage, and then we'll go back to being weaker...so the other big guys will be more inclined to bully us.
It's a copout, but I can see it going either way. And I certainly wish it hadn't been done at all.
Once again, if Trump's actions have weakened America's position as much as you insist they have, then who is going to hold the United States accountable for it? I'm waiting to see Trump brought to justice for his crimes against international law. What are they going to do about it?
You repeated yourself rather than addressing the point.
No accountability doesn't mean anything. No one was held accountable for the Iraq War, which you claim to have opposed. By your logic, that didn't weaken America.
I'll keep repeating the point until you address it. If you're free to do whatever you want and there's nothing else anybody can do about it, how does that make you weak?
Yeah. As someone who hates this move, among others, even I don't see it as weakness. I personally find it scummy, evil, and not our business or in our interests...but it's not weak. It was very technically impressive (even if we likely had a bunch of help from Venezuelan traitors; I believe Maduro was almost certainly handed over), and does probably strengthen America's position. It was quite the coup, pun intended.
Sadly, even if I supported such expansionist actions, I don't think the benefits will trickle down to Americans, so it's still not America First. But it's not weak, either.
If the move allows America, and by extension Americans, to benefit from the stealing and selling of a commodity how is it not America First. If I'm following along correctly this seems to be the crux of most good faith arguers of both side. I believe that is what Caldwell is getting at here. Is this MAGA or not?
Ahahaha...I wish. That would at least be something. But I don't think that will be what happens.
And, as I said, I still see this going badly. Not to mention that we have our eyes set on Iran, Columbia, Cuba, Greenland, and even Canada potentially down the line.
Even if our involvement in Venezuela doesn't go to shit, we're massively pushing our luck here, even if you put the moral issue aside.
I assume you're Devil's Advocating this, because you don't use euphemisms.
So here's a question: do you put your own family first? Of course you do. Now, would you kill your neighbor and pillage and loot his home, even if you could get away with it? There are many places in your country where you can get away with it.
If America wants to be Genghis Khan, that's fine. It also means that the entire world will balance against you.
Depending on the circumstances I would kill innocent people to protect my own.
The misconception here is that the US action in Venezuela was simply a manifestation of American expansionism and not a response to expansionism by America's enemies. Venezuela was not just a self-contained hermit kingdom destroying itself with communism and not bothering anyone else. It was a CCP client state in America's backyard, being used as a base from which to coordinate Chinese interference in the US itself. Everything Trump does internationally is about curtailing Chinese interests. Yes, he did then decide that Venezuela's oil is his now, which is kinda shitty, but even that might end up enriching Venezuelans, considering how badly they were managing that resource before.
Highly doubt. Paul Singer owns Venezuela now. Even if quality of life for Venezuelans go up, I said from the beginning - before the coup - that they will have lost their country.
My argument is that they already had lost their country. Whether their government is being run by a Chinese cartel or a cartel made up of American billionaires, it's not theirs. They voted Maduro out and he simply nullified the election and announced he was staying, all the while continuing to sell his country's resources to the CCP in exchange for also indebting his country to the CCP.