Originally Posted by
Skroe
The last 11 months. It will take a lot more than just 11 months and Donald Trump to permanently knock us out of the globalization game... a game we invented.
You're being hyperbolic.
TPP is dramatically imporant. I'm not sure how you can say it isn't. The EU plays a critical role in the world economy but it's lack of rapid oceanic access to Asia limits that.
It's not. To be blunt, you... Europe... you "Eurasians"... are not the first generation of of your peoples to think the worst is behind you. Oh maybe not so many or so interconnected, but Eurasia's children or grand children or great grand children will slaughter each other again.
The counter-argument to this usually employed is that economic interdependence will reduce, and eventually eliminate interstate or inter-ethnic conflict. The only way that this is true is if you define active conflict purely as "people killing people". That may be true, now (usually), but economic interdependence has done nothing to reduces the aggression between states. In many cases its actually encouraged it. A death toll will follow. And the reason should be pretty clear: if Iran, Russia or China haven't made abundantly clear the past few years, there are things more important to them than being rich.
So no. It's not obsolete. If anything we're probably in the beginning stages of the next sustained great power competition that will unleash a wave of bloodletting across much of Eurasia and Africa. It is in the nature of people living in Eurasia, which is to say, most of the human race, to dominate their neighbors. America will be loathe to let it hurt us like it did last time.
With good reason. Lest it need saying... piss on moral and cultural relativism. Liberal Democracies are intrinsically morally superior to autocracy, especially the bastardization of our ideas such as "Managed Democracy" or "Authoritarian Capitalism".
For two centuries Europeans have sneered at American moralizing about idealogy. And what was the result? Europe destroyed itself about three times in that time span? It's by contrast tough to argue with our record. Pax Americana - the longest and still enduring period without great power conflict in nearly two thousand years.
If liberal democracy starts getting weak at the knees around the world, it'll come crashing down in a fraction of the time. Or to put it another way, the Freest countries sin the world should be it's most dangerous. China and Russia should actively fear the power of liberal democracies to defend ourselves.
On the contrary, our allies in the region want us to do more. You may not want us to, personally. But our NATO and Asian-Pacific allies have been clamoring for us to do more against Russia and China, literally for years.
Angela Merkel's speech early in the year about European independence was met by Germany planning to get in on the F-35 to replace the Tornado, and starting to look into buying more US defense hardware. Talk is cheap. Actions mean more.
Europe should be a more equal partner to the US. I've said that. But in terms of practical moves to this? Effectively zero, with none on the horizon. The only thing has changed is that our loser President is giving everyone an awful case of heartburn.
The world hasn't changed remotely. It's a global economy where the US still commands around 30% of it, a global finance sector that together America and Europe dominate, a defense scene that the United States is still hegemonic in. The only thing that's changed is that Donald Trump, because he is a policy idiot, isn't going around weilding human rights and democracy like the sword against authoritarianism it is meant to be. It won't be that way forever.
I'm the first person to talk of the importance with regards to moral highground when it comes to foreign policy. But equally that must be recognized that this line here is one that's been used against the US again, for almost two centuries. In the 19th century, Europeans said that about our legacy slavery. In the early 20th century, it was Jim Crow. In the mid 20th century, it was civil rights, Vietnam, nuclear weapons testing and support for coups in the developing world. In the 1980s and 1990s it was our relationship with the Arabs.
When exactly have we had the uncontested 'moral high ground'?
The United States does tremendously shitty things sometimes. It will always do tremendously shitty things, and justify it. That's not a pre-requisit to global power. It's a force multiplier no doubt, but the waxing and waning and waxing again of US moral authority is an old story that's only served to enhance our power. Case in point, during the 1970s, the Soviet's propagandized hard over Watergate, showing that even the leader of the free world was deeply hippocritical at the very top of their system with respect for Democracy and rule of law. Many in Europe on the left, still enraged about Vietnam, agreed with them. You know what healed that? Time and changes of government. US moral authority was restored and then some in a decade and a half.
Impotence? Never mind that the US wiped out ISIS with, how shall we say, rather limited support from our European allies, but in regards to a larger involvement, that was a legitimate political disagreement here at home.
So let me get this right. We rush to War in Iraq. We don't go to war fast enough in Syria. What exactly does "doing it right" look like? This harkens back to a thought I've had since 2003. People around the world forget the relative power to change conditions until the US actually utilizes it power to do so. These talks of "limits"... man, I heard that shit in the 1990s, and it was B.S. then, as Afghanistan and Iraq showed. I heard that in the 2000s, and it was B.S. as Libya showed.
Is it really going to take a war against North Korea to knock that idea dead? The only limits the US has, in this regard, is the ones it sets on itself... to decide the degree to which to commit. Certainly no other countries or set of circumstances impose limits. Or do I need to whip out the old maps showing how every conflict the US has been in since 1995 would lead to World War III, according to someone? Because my personal favorite is how if the US started to bomb Iran, how Russia would come to its rescue.
That's a weird statement. ISIS fucking our shit up? They became your problem because you people let refugees into Europe when you could have slammed the door.
American colonialism would look quite different. The US has to cajole or bribe our "colonies" in your explanation, to do our will or cooperate with us. A true colonial power wouldn't be doing that. It would just demand.
Nonsense, and I have proof. Barack Obama. He went from zero to hero from 1998 to 2008, by making the right moves. No power base. Was the dark horse of the 2008 Democratic primary. He became President on the back of genuine people power, something Bill Clinton did in 1992.
Much of what is actually ascribed to as "corruption" or "money in politics" is a lazy excuse to genuine disagreement in America between political agenda. Europeans may not see it like this, but in this country it is a legitimate political opinion that the government should play no role, whatsoever, in regulating the economy. Market fundamentalism is a bit much for many Americans, but when you see regulations on corporations rolled back, understand, many Americans also sincerely believe that is a good thing.
I'm not sure if you know your history with respect to America, but this is a country where, until the founding of the Federal Reserve System in the second decade of the 20th century, this country fought bitterly over the very concept of a Federal Central Bank for over one hundred years. Perhaps only slavery was the more divisive political issue in the 19th century. And those disagreements never have entirely gone away.
And that's a deeply unfair statement. The executive branch is certainly dysfunctional due to poor management at the very stop. But our elections are highly dynamic. Even Trump winning and upsetting a would-be political dynasty is symbolic of the political dynanism at play here. And today, Americans are talking regularly about concepts that I think you'd find few other countries talk about on a regular basis, like ethics in government.
We're going to be a much better country on the other side of Trump, just as we were Watergate.
But another statement. "Dysfunctional democracy". You mean perhaps our legislative branch? Again, it is doing EXACTLY what it is designed to do. Consider, states send Representatives and Senators to Washington with the promise of repealing Obamacare. And others send them there, in near equal numbers, to defend Obamacare. Is it any surprise there is gridlock, when 50 states and 325 million people fundamentally disagree?
It's much easier to govern a more centralized and homogeneous 20, 30 or 50 million person European country. But the slowness of our system is a feature, not a bug. Even despite Trump I wouldn't want to trade our system for a more responsive parliamentary democracy.
No. Because frankly, we don't trust you people in time to not find new ways to kill each other that will effect us. 70 years of peace does not earn the bulk of humanity that, least of all Europe, with explicitly America's non-involvement with the perpetual European conflict having been, pre-World War I, the single foundation of US foreign policy.
Simply put, you are are not strong enough, even together, to deal with your shit. You never will be. And without us a predator will come for one or some of you. And it will draw all the others in. And eventually us. The lesson of World War II is that Eurasia is now on perpetual probation, and they don't get a chance.
This is truly a bizarre comment. You speak of what _you_ want for the Middle East. Not what they want. The people themselves, living there, have been moving closer to religion for most of the past 150 years. This does happen you know, right? Religious revivals. They've waxed and waned in regions throughout the world for millennia. For all we know Europe could be a hub for Christianity in another 200 years. But with respect to the broader Middle East, the religious path it's gone down predates America's involvement there by over a century. Yes. Some Middle Eastern countries dabbled with democracy, or alternatively, with Arab nationalism. Those never had any kind of roots that Westerners would recognize, particularly Arab nationalism. The role of religion however, has been only increasing.
Maybe it will be this way in 50 years. Maybe it will change. But they will decide, and that'll have very little to do with us.
And the problem is their definition of "what is China" is not the definition. It's actually farcical compared to the other claims.
Would you suggest we just let them have their claim? Like hell.
Of course the United States. You're right, Europe and Americans do have a fundamental difference of opinion. And your opinion is poorly informed, and here's what.
You're from Germany right? Where does the German border end and the American border begin? From the American policy perspective, I'll tell you where. The American border begins approximately one inch outside the German border, and at the threshold of your eyes, brain and ears. The US, in other words, borders 193 countries, not just Mexico and Canada. The US borders 7 billion people.
The concept of a border being a physical thing - the Mexican border, the Canadian border, or the US coastlines is deeply archaic and hasn't been an appropriate or even relvant mode of thinking for many decades. Our border begins where our ideas, interests, influence and economics come in contact with others who are not American. We set our borders so far away because, as history as shown, we can defense-via-offense is the approach that has reaped the strongest rewards for us. We do this with soft-power, which is where our ideas spill and displace other ideas. We do this with economics, where were can exert control (and far more control now than even a decade ago, thanks to how the US has used it). In the case of the SCS, that's even more concrete. A huge percentage of global trade, which the US is deeply effected by, goes through the SCS. As a trade power, we have a direct interest in that not being dominated by China. As such our "virtual border" extends there.
All countries do this, this just don't couch it in such terms. It is really civilians who think that if everybody were left alone to do their own thing, and minded their own plot of land, then all the rationales of conflict would just go away. That's never been the case. It'll never be that case, because that's not how any country operates, which means that their interests and "virtual borders" grinding against each other will create new sources of conflict.
To be honestly, much of what you wrote calls into question the ability of European to be an equal partner to America at all. Being so will require a degree of activism to advance interests, even in a cold blooded manner, that you've expressed an aversion to. People thought the United States was the weird rich democratic cousin across the pond for a hundred years. Then we became a world power and suddenly we're the "World Police" or "Colonial Superpower". A United Europe, with a European Army, will invite exactly the same criticism. Because it, like the United States... like anything that has significant mass, will cause a reaction just by existing, and many people will be outraged by that reaction.
Europe really has two choices. Be mostly harmless, and by extent, mostly ineffectual... our actually wield the tools of power to advance its interests, an deal with the fact that things like that moral authority you're so wedded to... sometimes you're gonna have to look in the mirror and say "we did a shitty thing today".
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