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.
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.