If Donald Trump has the goal of destroying American power, breaking up the European Union, dismantling NATO, lifting Russian sanctions, and helping to elect a bunch of Russian-aligned far right fascist parties in Western Europe, at least he’s willing to tell us exactly that. There’s very little subtlety about it at this point, and the only fig leaf he’s going to offer is the prospect that Putin will agree to some kind of reduction in our respective nuclear arsenals.
Is that a fair trade?
I don’t think so.
Donald Trump called NATO obsolete, predicted that other European Union members would follow the U.K. in leaving the bloc…
…Trump predicted that Britain’s exit from the EU will be a success and portrayed the EU as an instrument of German domination designed with the purpose of beating the U.S. in international trade. For that reason, Trump said, he’s fairly indifferent to whether the EU stays together, according to Bild…
…The Times quoted Trump as saying he was interested in making “good deals with Russia,” floating the idea of lifting sanctions…
“…[NATO is] obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” Trump said in the Bild version of the interview. “Secondly, countries aren’t paying what they should” and NATO “didn’t deal with terrorism.” The Times quoted Trump saying that only five NATO members are paying their fair share…
…With Merkel facing an unprecedented challenge from the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany as she seeks a fourth term this fall, Trump was asked whether he’d like to see her re-elected. He said he couldn’t say, adding that while he respects Merkel, who’s been in office for 11 years, he doesn’t know her and she has hurt Germany by letting “all these illegals” into the country.
Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov makes a couple of obvious observations.
Every FP position Trump takes, starting from total ignorance around year ago, is on Putin's wish list. Brexit, Ukraine, NATO, EU, Merkel.
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) January 15, 2017
I'm still waiting for Trump to say something about global affairs that hasn't literally been said first by the Kremlin. https://t.co/b6ZLd2h7Ka
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) January 15, 2017
That Trump is doing all of this without any embarrassment in the midst of widespread accusations that Russian intervened to get him elected and that they have him under their control is maybe the most astonishing thing of all.
The Reaganites are supposed to go along with it because Trump will reprise the iconic 1986 anti-nuclear summit Ronald Reagan had with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík, Iceland. Or, maybe, this last bit is just a little too obvious since both the Kremlin and the Trump team are now denying that it is in the works.
A real move to reduce nuclear stockpiles would constitute a massive pivot for a candidate who has shown more interest in building more nuclear weapons and suggested that Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia should get their own nuclear arsenals rather than relying on the United States to provide them with security.
Of course, weakening the American relationship with its allies in the Far East is a goal that an ordinary Russian president would see as unattainable, and breaking the alliance between Washington and Riyadh would also serve Putin’s interests.
It’s hard to believe that Putin has struck this much gold.
Are Republicans really going to go along with this?
All in the name of white ethno-nationalism and petro politics?
Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov makes a couple of obvious observations.
Kasparov is a far-right nut. One that prefers Davos to Putin and Trump but still a far-right nut.
He’s not a nut, and he’s not far right.
If he’s a nut, and far right, he still had the good taste to get cuffed and stuffed in the Pussy Riots protests.
Having the right enemies counts for something….
Did you see the links others have posted? He’s a nut every bit as Evan McMullin and David Frum.
Hi everyone, and welcome to Simple Answers to Simple Questions.
Today’s question is:
Today’s answer is: Yes.
You wrote my answer almost word for word, even down to the “simple answers to simple questions” part. The GOP cares about power. It doesn’t care how or why or what for. The GOP does not govern, it rules.
Many people in my circle of friends and associates are so confused about how the Republican Party has allowed Trump to hijack their party. It’s about power…the answer is that simple yet many don’t seem to grasp this. They already have the money, the resources…now they need to lock in their power over all of us.
But, but, but, they’ll get that all important Obamacare repeal.
A lot of people on the left — myself included — do not support the current world order and would certainly prefer reduced American military power. However, only a useful idiot on the left would cheer the present world order being scrapped so that it can be rebuilt by fascists.
Trump is just joining with Putin in the vital process of freeing non-Germany Europe from the snares of the ECB and the Franfurt Börse.
The salvation of the Ukraine and the liberation of the Crimea show the way forward!
Trump also wants to team up with Putin and bomb the hell out of ISIS. I know antiimperialists and people of the left used to oppose the war on terror, but that’s not important right now. The real prime directive is “fuck the USA”, and if Russia does it then it’s ok. And if anything like “reality” starts to set in, don’t worry, Trump has shown the way. Just force it to be bent and twisted to That Narrative.
People on the left opposed the war on terror? I don’t understand this statement. Can you please explain?
They oppose the ‘War on Terror’, not the war on terror.
The quotes are important.
Being opposed to the intervention in Iraq, opposed to the escalation and (potentially depending on who you were) start of the war in Afghanistan, the current bombing of ISIS, and any other incarnation of freedom bombs being dropped in the name of The War On Terror.
My main point is that I have seen a lot of people on the left saying “why shouldn’t we be friends with Russia? Putin is bombing al Qaeda in Syria, we could team up together. Don’t you want to prevent WWIII? We should cooperate with Russia.”
I know you meant your comment as satire.
But unfortunately is the failed austerity policies of the center-right and what passes for center-left parties in many countries of Europe that has allowed the ECB and the Franfurt Börse to empoverish the Europeans South, the so-called PIGS countries. Until Ireland raised itself up by its bootstraps; the remaining countries were Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain. The people of those countries very much resent the PIGS acronym that the media has been using.
That and the xenophobia from an influx of refugees just subsequent to the Paris terrorist attack has raised xenophobia in Europe just as the continuing lackluster income growth in the rural and small-town former manufacturing areas of the US have led to Trump’s electoral college squeak-through.
Looking at a map of Crimea and at the ethnic composition would have alerted many to the unstable settlement that was with a government not friendly with Russia.
There are developments in the world that American’s myopia and sense of privilege as the “exceptional nation”, and not in the good way that Obama pointed to in his Farewell Address, that are rapidly transforming the global situation.
No the least in the US loss of respect and power as a result of a protracted war of attrition in Iraq, Afghanistan and minor semi-permanent presences in several African countries. That has allowed Russia and China especially more latitude and the opportunity to extend trade in a way that the US free market religion will not allow it to do.
China’s currency management, kosher or not, has given it the US cash to invest in massive infrastructure projects, wasteful or not, that position it to economically integrate Eurasia. Putin and Russia have signed on to that and a pan-Asian mutual defense organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, that most Americans don’t know exists. Check out the list of members and observers of that organization.
The US national security establishment and Congress (even the Republicans, especially the Republicans) have been approaching this new reality as if the US had the power it had in the 1960s. It so sad to see Democrats buying into that view whole-heartedly just because they think it counters Trump. W squandered it. Not even Barack Obama could successfully repair that power because of GOP opposition to any success of the first black President.
Change is happening whether Americans like it or not. And Putin and Xi have their blind spots too about how easily their plans for Eurasian integration will go. But the US thinking that it can delay that deployment of infrastructure by threatening the borders of Russia and China (and, like it or not, that is how Russia and China see the US encirclement of base through foreign agreements) is likely to destroy more of the globes’ economic infrastructure and wealth even it that destruction does not touch the US. And that means continuing impoverishment of people who otherwise could be customers for a revitalized US economy, itself a problematic issue with concern about public debt but not private corporate debt (including Trump’s by the way).
As best I can tell it is only the Democrat-leaning part of the country that can be said to be in cardiac arrest because they are focusing on the lemons and not thinking of how to make lemonade.
Looking at the changed environment and understanding that Putin, Xi, and Trump are authoritarian nationalists means that it is possible (more likely than Putin, Xi, and Clinton actually) to have an early three-way summit in which they lay out their nationalist interests privately and determined the framework of their competitive bullying. In fact, such a summit would be clarifying about how Trump actually intends to operate. Better early than limping along with provocative tweeting.
Austria voted in a Green Party head of state when the maneuvering is done. Iceland has shifted leftward as well.
Most of Europe already is center-right (outside of the European South). It is not a foregone conclusion that either France or Germany will elect Marine Le Pen or a working majority from Alterative fur Deutschland or even further right-wing parties.
In retrospect, it looks like George Marshall’s strategy for facing the Soviet Union was to force European unity through NATO first and allow the economic union to develop from the defense need to rebuild and integrate the coal and steel industry if a pan-European defense was going to work. Everything flowed out of that decision and the favorable environment of a generous economic policy from World War II to 1980.
The response to terrorist attacks and floods of refugees of restoring pre-Schengen borders has the effect of disintegrating Europe by reimposing a cost of intra-Europe trade in delays and border checks. Or course, the nationalists cheered this retreat from unification. Europe did this to itself. Putin did not have to do anything.
What Democrats and Americans need to decide is what is their goal in interaction with Russia and China is to be. Focusing on Putin as a person and the Chinese Community Party as an institution seems to have led some US nationalists and liberal interventionists to envision some sort of regime change as happened in 1989. I don’t know where the idea of sanctions against Putin came from but is solidified his power and increased the ability of Russia to redevelop its economy and finance its modernizing of its military.
As for China, the US has been subcontracting out necessary dual-use military components that are manufactured in China by US-based corporations under contract. Even as US manufacturing jobs disappeared. That must rank in folly as equal with selling scrap iron to Japan in the 1920s.
The way out of cardiac arrest is to reframe our vision of what we expect from politicians (especially Democratic politicians) in their resistance to Trump. Not that we are seeing any resistance beyond several hundred thousand activist and newly activist people in protest, which is good.
What won’t work is four years of trash-talking and no actual rethinking and different strategies for action.
You shouldn’t even joke about this; appreciate your sentiments but I fear we face the abyss.
Iceland. Could they find a country any whiter? The photo op is better than anything Bush did. I don’t know if the EU will show up. The donald has already withdrew from NATO and going to put a 35% tariff on their export to the US.
It’s symbolic and has nothing to do with the skin color of the residents of Iceland.
Reykjavík Summit. Trump can claim that he’s being like Reagan (the bestest and most wonderful of GOP Presidents as nearly forty years of PR has sold), but for internal consumption, Putin will not be touting that he’s being just like Gorbachev, only being his usual self.
It’s really fascinating to see the responses.
It is a classroom case of the reactive and the reflective mind.
Trump says our NATO allies are not paying their fare share. This is of course true. For 50 years the thinking governing US policy is that it is too hard to ask the allies to pay this. We permit this as as a price of “American Leadership”.
You can find similar parallels in economics. Google the phrase “Customer of the last resort”. Read this from Stiglitz:
There are policies of empire.
Trump is now challenging them. When he says these things are not in the interests of working people he has a point.
Why should the US pay a larger share than its portion for collective defense?
Why should the US permit the German exporters to reap the benefit of a Euro that has collapsed?
Are liberals forever chained to supporting the “costs of US leadership”?
There is race at play here, in its disgusting and immoral presence.
But the questions on the table here are far reaching, and if liberals simply react and not think, they are headed for the same bankruptcy the Socialists are headed for in France.
A liberalism that fails to represent the interests of working people is headed for oblivion.
Pieces like this are reactive – not reflective.
What exactly do we propose? What are we FOR?
I am going with seabe’s response (below) to this.
More broadly, governance of any political/ideological stripe “that fails to represent the interests of” the governed is illegitimate (may or may not be headed for imminent oblivion — authoritarian suppression, bread and circuses, etc., can stave that off for significant periods).
fladem,
‘Trump says our NATO allies are not paying their fare share. This is of course true. For 50 years the thinking governing US policy is that it is too hard to ask the allies to pay this. We permit this as as a price of “American Leadership”.’
Maybe it was more the case that the US didn’t want to get the Europeans to pay more because they’d then have a right to more say in matters, including defense contracts, etc. They accepted the US’s dominance as a trade off, for which they had initially little choice. The US accepted their subservience as a means of extending power and control. If the Europeans start paying more, they’ll definitely feel entitled to saying and demanding more.
Apparently there are several different we’s in the current US political landscape. Two of those we’s are FOR either A or B groups of wealthy elites. Both of which invest heavily in snookering the general public. The natural resources and land owners and LEOs won this electoral round and the “national security”/finance/tech/entertainment/educational snobs, flunkies and/or owners are having a conniption. A fit not just to impeach Trump as unworthy and that SHE should have been installed, but also to distract and misdirect attention away from how badly the DP did (and has been doing) below the Presidential level.
There is no “we”.
Cardiac Arrest ?!
If we’re seeing cardiac arrest now, what will you call the currents events in 6 months when the Emperor has Fed forces in the streets knocking heads, “security risks” like Rachel Maddow and Alec Baldwin in Gitmo cells (assuming they’re still alive), and the only TV “news” will be FOX?
Strap in. kiddies! You’re living through “the good old days” you’ll tell your kids about. This is nothing!
The real wake-up call … when the Emperor orders a nuclear strike on some uppity U.S. city … L.A. or San Francisco comes to mind … to show the rest of yus that “he’s not to be screwed with and you better fall in line … OR ELSE”. Think I’m kidding?
The “war” isn’t even on yet and you people are crapping in your pants.
I hear valium can sometimes be effective with your condition.
Go ahead, joke all you want. Just what city are you in?
My “father” built a fallout shelter under his front porch … I helped dig out the dirt when I was 5/6 years old. Never considered where the nukes would come from.
“obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago…”
This comment reminds me of a certain constitutional provision which I’m certain Der Trumper doesn’t consider obsolete, haha.
The more famous Fuhrer also brokered a surprise peace with Stalin’s Greater Russia in 1939. It was rather short lived, and also was undertaken the dictators in order to destroy the world order of western Europe, circa 1940…
Quaint 20th century history aside, quite a momentous barrage out of the mouth of our current illegitimate Fuhrer. The difficulty is how much of his daily vomit of bombast to take seriously, although the same was said of Mein Kampf, I guess.
If Europe’s citizens are actually committed to the EU project, then such statements by Der Trumper should be taken by their leaders and diplomats as a declaration of (very) hostile intent, and the US must begun to be treated as a hostile power. The unfortunate EU citizenry are between a rock and a hard place given the Trumper/Putin Pact of Steel, and they best begin deciding how seriously to take the threat to their union. Presumably Putin and Trump will begin by undertaking coordinated efforts to throw Europe’s upcoming elections—with the French election already being called “Europe’s Stalingrad”. Expect no coverage of this by our doomed “media”. But European nations also have no fascism-friendly “electoral college” to frustrate their democracies.
Over here in this end of the Axis, we already understand that the only hope for real journalism is to look to Europe’s outlets, with our own now in the course of being reduced to essentially the controlled media organs of Gruppenfuhrer Bannon. Hopefully, these sort of Trumperian statements of ill will and open hostility will steel the continent’s journalists into useful reporting on the actions and intents of the Trumper/Putin New World Order. Of course, they will also be under siege, and may also go under as the New Fascism advances…
As for our Trumper Party (previously known as Repubs) it’s sort of difficult to see much protest (however feeble) coming from them based on their performance so far. And relying on “Repub” courage is quite a weak reed, indeed…
The EU is all about capital, and not the workers. Freedom of movement, the ECHR, labor standards, the social chapter — all just a smokescreen.
What we need is socialism in one country.
27 times.
That is the way forward.
I know your comment is intended as satire, but your first sentence is straight up what has been happening to the countries under troika management. The EU, in the form of the Troika, has demanded member states to go against labour standards and the social chapter, which has lead to support for the far right that wants to scrap freedom of movements and limit human rights.
At the same time power has been moved to the ECB and the informal eurogroup, both unaccountable. Think if FED (if FED was appointed by state parliaments) and an informal group of governors wrestled power from DC, and used it to punish any state that got out of line.
At this point socialism in one country, 27 times looks to be in similar neighburhood of chance as succesfull reform of the EU.
One big union; the fascist internationale will not stand.
We are currently in what can be described as a cold civil war. No shooting yet, but it’s clear that at least one side would rather ally with a power external to the nation than to compromise with what they perceive to be their internal enemies.
What are Putins interests? This is, once again, a completely useless description lacking any meaning whatsoever.
One of these days, we might have a useful discussion of American national interests. I’m fairly certain that the fate of Saudi Arabia isn’t very high on my list.
If climate change is the threat many think it is, then cheap oil is not in our interests anymore.
I give up. Let’s at least despise trump for a reason that makes sense. This Russian nonsense is silly. Bring out the sex tape!
you are not supposed to eat the paste.
Both of these foreign media interviews with his full hand laid out on the table suggest to me that the Trump administration is running on an urgent schedule. I sense the calm, believe it or not, before a storm.
This is where this liberal Dem finds some agreement with Donald. Destroying American power — well, if not destroy it, at least begin to substantially reduce it. The trendline clearly shows the US big footing it around the world militarily has not brought peace and has not been a net positive for our image in the world. I thought progressives mostly agreed about this overuse and overextension of US military might. A no brainer. Not that I think Donnie is going to call for any substantial reduction in Pentagon spending; probably the opposite.
Nato — yes, get rid of it, as the old Soviet Union no longer exists and the current Russia, contra some liberal interventionist voices, is not a threat to its neighbors. Or let Russia join, as they asked to do years ago.
EU — too many neoliberal austerians running the show. Probably best to break it up and start over.
Merkel — again agree. It was foolhardy in the extreme to allow so many mostly unscreened immigrants in to Germany (and Sweden and France, etc) in such a short period of time; bound to cause a political backlash. Inclusion and acceptance are worthy ideals, but letting in a sudden flood of refugees, many who probably aren’t interested in ever becoming fully assimilated, is just too high a price to pay, far too socially destabilizing for the host country.
Kasparov: Saw him in a 2 vs 2 debate, the Art Munk Debates, a couple of years ago in Canada on YT. He was arguing, along with conservative anti-Putin hardliner Anne Applebaum, that Russia under Putin should not be engaged with by the West but instead isolated and punished. Taking the contra was Stephen Cohen and commentator Posner. Kasparov seemed too reflexively anti-Putin to be credible in my opinion. I would probably trust him on chess advice however.
Yet Kasparov proved correct in his assessment, no?
Not sure what you mean. Is the world safer with deteriorated US-Russia relations two years later after the sanctions and all the latest nonsense about Russian hacking and meddling (all unproven still) promoted by our curious IC? Is ISIS/AQ largely contained? No and no.
But had Obama chosen instead to work with Putin instead of demonizing him (recall the other unsubstantiated charge of Russia being responsible for the deliberate downing of that Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, most likely shot down by Ukraine govt forces), we wouldn’t be in another Cold War (more dangerous than the first — S Cohen) and would be working together with the Russkies to destroy ISIS.
Isolating and punishing, along with demonizing by propaganda, though it might give some (even, alas, some misguided and poorly counseled progressives) a sense of justice and feeling of power, is not going to help the situation, and Russia under the very popular Putin is no longer the manipulable pushover country it was when highly unpopular and hungover Yeltsin was taking orders from the US.
Heh, like clockwork:
” would be working together with the Russkies to destroy ISIS.”
Hey, you can’t admit you got your man installed into the White House and still pretend to be of the left. It take a bit of dancing around the subject.
You are blaming chemotherapy for the cancer.
People in this comment thread as well as our host continue to think Trump is a serious person because he is now President. Unfortunately, he is not. He is a narcissistic psychopath with a complete lack of interest in policy unless it is transactional dealings that will reflect well on him as a dealer (Carrier bullying) or meaningless, grandiose statements based on absolutely nothing (his current health insurance statements). He has brought in a boatload of Goldman Sachs people into his government to fleece the country after previously condemning GS and Clinton. His Cabinet nominees are incompetents or outright enemies of their agency’s mission. Trump is a serious danger but not because he has some grand design with or without Putin. Putin recognizes Trump as a “useful idiot” to use Lenin’s phrase and nothing more. We, as a nation, need to drive Trump out of the Presidency (short of violence of course).