Yet.
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Complicated things are complicated. Russia’s actions and interests are very different than China’s.
There are also bad scenarios for Japan and South Korea for having to accept the US’s security interest and 50 years a hair trigger away from fire and fury is one them. The US interest, as demonstrated consistently for the last 50 years, is to maintain this status quo. And that’s the best possible thing?
The Muslims who are banned from America, the children in cages, the immigrants in the iceboxes, and the citizens who have been deported “in error” might think you’re a garden variety ignorant American for saying this.
Even though you’re probably right about how he’d be remembered, he’d still be more evil and incompetent than W, and only the disengagement of millions of ignorant Americans would protect his reputation as a garden variety bad president.
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Are the South Koreans happy that stable genius jacked up the cost of US troops 500% and then skipped town, precipitating this? Maybe you know better than they do. You think the Japanese like US China policy atm?
Neither the US or China have or will meaningfully promote the freedom and better living of ordinary foreigners. Whether one is better than the other is a local issue, more-or-less a fluke and changes over time. I honestly don’t know if I think this development is good or bad for Koreans, but that’s not the issue here, which is invoking the freedom defence for US foreign policy and is always bullshit.
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I’m distinguishing Trump, who I think is a malignant Chance the Gardner more or less, from the truly evil shitbags in the administration - I think it’s telling if you Google “racist Trump adviser” the first eight hits are Stephen Miller. I think if you define evil as requiring the intellect to plan, Bush laps Trump easily. Incompetent is another story.
Putting it another way, cut off his thumbs and just have garden variety grifters in the White House, he’d be fine (at least, fine by the standards of a general GOP administration). Miller et al dragged Trump in a direction I doubt he intentionally wanted to go. Not that he’s not fine being there…
MM MD
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So you must have been very very happy in the early days of the Trump administration when he looked like the biggest hawk. You really did love that stable genius then didn’t you?
You still like him when he says “CHINA CHINA CHINA!!!” right?
And it’s YOUR argument that TRUMP (he’s the President of the United States you know?) should be running the show in the Korean peninsula, not mine!
China overtaking America as the lone superpower is (and has been for some time) an inevitability imo
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The best country for the promotion of freedom and well being around the world is the one that just elected Donald J. Trump. Not.
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Don’t think so. But it not happening will be pretty ugly. If China is lucky, it may have the largest economy in the world mostly by virtue of having the most people, but I’m not really bullish on their long term stability. The authoritarian government will not survive too large of a middle class.
(Also, “superpower” here can only mean economic. The US and Russia, by virtue of being able to destroy the world many times over, will never not be superpowers in the military sense.)
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You’re giving him way too much credit. This man has been a racist his entire adult life. It’s not a coincidence that he’s surrounded with racist grifters instead of garden variety grifters.
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No, my main complaint is that an utterly corrupt, crazy level -1 thinker is reversing foreign policy for personal gain that was not only decades in the making, but was arguably the a result of geopolitical luck that no nation will ever see again. If non corrupt, non crazy people think it’s a good idea to pull troops out of SK, I suppose I’d listen, but it’s against SK’s national interest as I understand it, and it’s against American national interest as I understand it.
I think the dotard’s saber rattling was/is terrible, but to the extent that he has not (yet) followed through on any of the saber rattling makes it less concerning than the fact that he’s following through on destroying alliances with good actors around the world.
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Did I say we were the best? No. Do I think we’re better than China in this regard? Absolutely. Than Russia? You bet.
I don’t see anyone else rushing to the forefront in this regard.
I think most people think that, and there are logical reasons for this but I don’t think it was necessarily inevitable and I do think we’ve very much hastened that transition during the Trump presidency. Whether that’s reversible and we can slow it or stay on top is another question all together.
No, I think superpower in the context we’re discussing is mostly based on military influence around the globe and using it to advance geopolitical and economic interests. Sure, we have like 6,000 nukes and so does Russia, but how much of a military advantage does that give us over China’s ~300?
The real key here is that whoever is protecting these countries from their regional enemies is able to exert tremendous political influence on the region.
OK so when in history has a growing middle class led to political instability?
eta:
Too much inequality in a society preceeds revolution, if an authoritarian government can spread the wealth effectively enough it can last indefinitely imo.
A growing middle class is generally bad for autocrats, and a stabilizer for more liberal regimes, although I have no idea what will happen in China.
We weren’t arguing about Trump’s policy decisions until you decided to imply that I’m taking the side of the stable genius. You were supporting a strong US role in things because you were imagining a US that has like good leadership or something. We don’t. Don’t count on us not having terrible leaders in the future either imo. “Go USA - guard freedom around the world” means “future Trump and future GWB - guard freedom around the world”.
I don’t support any of Trump’s actions. Unpredictability and thoughtlessness are horrible for FP.
Whenever it’s happened in an authoritarian government. Start with the US in 1776.
I appreciate all of your points. Just wanted to comment on this one to say how important I think it is not to miss how important how he will be remembered is. At least as I see things. It’s why I value stopping the bleeding but will inevitably feel cheated if he isn’t successfully impeached and put in prison.
Without him at least being impeached, in forty years he will be remembered by the GOP as a super-powered Reagan. I think that’s almost a lock to happen anyway unless he goes to prison, which means yep, if you’re here in forty years, look forward to that.
That in itself enables the GOP to reshape their approach without abandoning racist values all over again. I want Trump to stand as the symbol for how hard you will fall if you don’t stop this shit. Without it, no one will.
I looked at the rural village I lived in when I was in central China seven years ago and now it looks like a modern city.
It’s amazing how fast that country is developing and it won’t be stopping any time soon. Almost everybody is living a life better than their previous generations. Can millennials genuinely say that in America? In 1989, the Chinese people made an implicit bargain: in lieu of fighting the government for civil rights, they chose economic prosperity and haven’t looked back. People there in general have absolutely no qualms living in an authoritarian regime so long as their quality of life is what it is now. They love Xi Jinping and he is developing a cult of personality around himself.
China may not have the military might of America but through the sheer amount of trade and business China does, they will have an incredible amount of soft power to wield in diplomacy: something that America no longer sees the value of.
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Yeah nobody is ‘taking the US’s place’. Our dominance is unprecedented in world history and pretty weird. Even at its height the British were nowhere near as powerful as we are today. For evidence see the many many wars with other great powers they had which they did not win close to all of. They definitely had real military/economic competition at every point.