US Ends Support For Ukrainian F-16s

I think this from French senator Claude Malhuret sums it up:

    This is a tragedy for the free world, but it’s first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. [President Donald] Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, because he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories, while supporting the dictators who invade you.

I’ve thought for a while now that the U.S. has spent a long time building up subjective resources in goodwill, trust, reliability, etc. (you can certainly bicker about the details here). But with Trump, they’re cashing in on all of that. They’re selling the laptops and office chairs (sometimes quite literally) as a business strategy.

I think there’s a fatal misconception among many Americans about where their prosperity comes from. They’re not special or exceptionally capable by any means. It comes from wielding tremendous economic and military power gently, preferring cooperation over conquest.

My concern is that the consequences of the current strategy are too far into the future to act as a sufficient deterrent. It’ll feel like it actually works for a time. But then eventually everyone hates you and adapts to exclude you.

Does the US have total control? They sure have wide influence, but influence is different from control. The power to take something diminishes when you use it.

Yes. When the rubber meets the road, they have total control because what is anybody going to do about it?

What are you going to do to keep the American tech sector up? Point guns at people so they post on Instagram?

We are talking about geopolitical and financial power, not Instagram.