whiterock said:
FLBear5630 said:
I don't doubt he regrets nothing.
Unfortunately, yours is the attitude that has gotten the US in trouble since 1960. There is a difference between being strong enough to deter and ACTUALLY being a bully. Even the cultures that respect power, start looking for ways to undermine it. NOBODY likes to be dominated and be given no choice.
You are truly, profoundly clueless. Reagan complained openly about Nato members not meeting their 2% commitment, and more pointedly in private. I have also held demarches in my hands from kinder, gentler presidents which echo Trump's public comments. "....we will destroy your country, by means including....." The only thing remarkable about Trump is that he says it publicly rather than just privately. You are getting a chance to hear how power actually communicates when it really matters.
What America did well until we started these endless wars was using that "power" we gained after WW2 and use it to make everyone more profitable, we also had a great foil in the Soviet Union. Trump is going one step further, he is laying it on the table and forcing Nations to either bend the knee or be on the outside. (He watched the Godfather too many times...)_ He is stating that our assistance is transactional, see his comments on NATO. He is forcing conflict, if they can't win on the military front watch other fronts because it is coming.
See above. Everything is transactional, all the time. Israel is our greatest ally; they spy on us relentlessly. And the converse is true as well. Also applies to all of our allies. We put up with it because....it is in our interests to do so. Until it's not. And we are slowly approaching that point with Nato. For the entirety of the alliance, they've not pulled their share. And now, with a few notable exceptions, they are totally inconsequential for anything except for adding troops to our units.
The Hubris that you have, naively so, is that "having no choice" is the status quo. A more accurate term is they have no choice now, they are searching... Trump is not the right person for this time, it is starting to become more and more clear. He is stuck in a paradigm of his post-WW2 education and is trying to go back in time. That is dangerous.
No. YOU are dangerous. You are ignorant of geopolitics AND history. I will drink French wine. I will not purchase it. Do you know why? Because the French refused President Reagan's request for overflight for Operation El Dorado Canyon. So did the Spanish. Had to fly the F-111s out over the Atlantic, thru the Straits of Gibraltar, and half-way down the Med...multiple refuelings. So there is absolutely noting remarkable about what we are seeing from Europe. it's what they do. Trump got nothing to do with it. The difference is, times have changed. We do not have to tolerate European alligator-arming their alliance responsibilities. We can poke them a LOT harder. And should.
Watch the reserve currency, that is where I think China is playing the game.
Nobody with more than two rocks inside their brain is going to dump USD for Renminbi.
But, as you say. All is well. Nobody else on the planet has any choice but to do what we want. Right?
We've literally never been better. At no time in my life have we more clearly overmatched our adversaries.
Expect to see our Nato bases start to transition to former Warsaw Pact countries. They are far better allies than the fops in Western Europe. And that's before we get to the demographic and political changes in Western Europe which are dragging them out of the liberal order.
I mean, seriously. Panama cozies up to China, letting a Chinese company take over management of the Canal.....knowing what US interests are.....knowing what what their treaty obligations are....despite complaints from prior administrations. So Trump lowered the boom on them. They quickly submitted to our demands. would you rather Trump have played nice like his predecessors and let the Chinese foothold there grow? or are you going to take the win Trump got?
You are just so incredibly unserious here. LIke as out of touch as all the isolationists we have here.
What? Trump ran on isolationism.
We do agree on the Warsaw Pact Nations, they do not want to go back. Poland will take all our German Bases in a heartbeat.
The French have been the French since the Maginot Line failed. DeGaul was no better than Macron, don't use the French as an example. We didn't "have to" in 1949. The US never HAD to support NATO. The two oceans took care of that.
Submitted to our demands? We are still going through the **** over there and Iran still controls the Straits. The Houthi's still exisist and Hezbelloah/Hamas are still around. Come on, you know this is a 20 year "police action" we will be there in large numbers for the foreseeable future. At least Europe was a good duty station, the Sandbox is a ****hole.
But, I believe that is what you want. This cheerleading is BS, you want the US in it up to our necks.
I just can't believe that actually believed that the Iranians were 2 weeks from a nuclear bomb.
