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.

Nothing like a bully POTUS to bring out all the rose-colored glasses praising the US for something that it never was. Set in the context of a representative of neocolonial France speaking about “the free world”.

I don’t understand the causality. Trump reaches a new low and the slogans about the benevolent past reaches a new, even more naive high.

> 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.

For how many years has the US been not-at-war?

I think Trump actually demonstrates just how wrong this perspective is.

The U.S. cooperated with Canada to build cars together for generations. It’s a source of a lot of economic prosperity for both countries. And now the U.S. is threatening Canada with annexation while trying to destroy the current auto industry.

I know there would be bickering about the details because everyone has their own mood on how warmongering the U.S. is, and to whom. But whatever you want to qualify the past as, the present is considerably and undeniably different in contrast.

I guess maybe to Russians this would actually be backwards given the U.S. has always been aggressive towards them and now America and Russia are quickly becoming BFFs.