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Very easily, I assure you - though there's a difference between 'did' (past) and 'would' (future) Legolas Send a noteboard - 04/07/2024 07:23:44 PM

View original postSeriously? What precisely did Trump "fuck up"? The US was at peace, foreign nations were wary of doing anything that might set off "madman Trump" and US foreign policy was actually effective. Trump started the Abraham Accords, which were substantive steps to peace in the Middle East. At the same time, he denied Iran any access to cash and killed Soleimani, which, although Iran was incensed, it didn't dare retaliate for.

I suppose your theory of 'it's great to have an unpredictable madman in charge, then other nations will be more afraid of us and won't dare to attack as easily' is at least less absurd than suggesting that Trump had, or will have again, any idea of what he was doing. Though even if one accepts your argument that having a madman in charge is good for US interests (which I really don't), it still doesn't follow that it's also good for the rest of the world. Both politically and economically, smaller countries depend on stability and predictability in international relations to be able to flourish. Moreover, if we want the world to make any progress in rooting out blatant corruption and power abuse in less developed countries, it really doesn't help when the US or other developed countries set examples like Trump (or Berlusconi, or various others).

But you switch apparently at random between 'would fuck up', in a future administration, and 'has fucked up' in his previous administration. I only spoke about the former. I'm far from impressed by what he did last time around, see below for a lot more detail on that, but before getting into that, I will admit that it could also have been even worse - and that probably in advance I expected it to be worse than it actually was. Would that again be the case in a second Trump administration? It's possible, can't rule it out. But after everything that's happened during his administration and since then, in terms of 'the adults in the room' all getting discarded and discredited, in terms of the Republican party getting purged of any serious opposition to Trump, in terms of his radicalization and further confirmation of his view that his supporters will let him get away with anything, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect worse behaviour now than last time.

So, on to his previous administration. Whatever one thought of the Abraham Accords at the time they were signed, the October 7th attacks and subsequent events have made it pretty glaringly obvious that 'hey, let's just ignore the problem and pretend it doesn't exist' isn't actually a solution and won't actually bring peace in the Middle East - or anywhere - any closer. Israel is now a much bigger international pariah than it was then, but it's hard to find any country involved in the Abraham Accords whose position isn't looking worse now than it was then, except probably Morocco, which gained US support for its dubious position in an entirely unrelated conflict, because Kushner was too clueless on the topic or just too eager to get his deal signed.

You don't mention North Korea, which makes sense as I don't believe even you would try to pretend Trump's cozying up to probably the worst dictator in the world was in any way a good thing.

View original postI'm sure all the Europeans are angry he forced them to contribute to NATO as they were supposed to and was friendly with Putin. However, we see the results of pushing Putin into China's arms and simultaneously failing to properly build military capabilities inside NATO right now.

The European contributions to NATO are increasing not because Trump was more rude in the way he made the request than his predecessors had been, but because of the war he encouraged Putin to start. You'll forgive me for not seeing that as a positive thing.
View original postBy contrast, Biden has overseen a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that almost certainly emboldened US adversaries and potential adversaries, a botched NATO strategy that encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine, a rudderless policy on the Middle East that seems intent on pissing off everyone and accomplishing nothing, and a southern border that is wide open, letting in millions of illegal aliens who are now murdering and raping innocent Americans in record numbers.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan was certainly disastrous, but it was always going to be disastrous - and had been negotiated with the Taliban during the Trump administration, Biden was merely the one who was in charge by the time it actually happened. Not that I necessarily blame the Trump administration for that negotiation - in the end the US couldn't remain in Afghanistan forever. The failure of the US (and their allies) to create a viable, stable alternative to the Taliban in Afghanistan is a shared responsibility of all the presidents and administrations in power during those 20 years, but really most of all it's just because there wasn't enough desire for it in Afghanistan itself and it almost never works to impose these things from outside.

As for Ukraine, we've had long discussions before about the roots of that conflict over the past 35 years and everything you think the West and Ukraine have done wrong during that time - and on some of them I do agree with you. I think the various 'pro-Western' Ukrainian governments (and to a much lesser extent also the Baltic governments) have treated their own Russian-speaking citizens absolutely shamefully and the West/US/EU have been shamefully silent on that topic, even before the war. And ever since the war started, it's as if Russian-speaking Ukrainians don't even exist anymore and nobody seems willing to have a realistic conversation with Zelensky about how it would even work if Ukraine could somehow reclaim the Donbas, what would happen to the people there, most of whom hate his guts. But trying to somehow blame the conflict on the Biden administration specifically is pretty silly - and as I said above, if anyone encouraged Russia's external aggression and made Putin feel the US was less likely to intervene if he invaded, it was obviously Trump.

I do think the Biden administration's foreign policy has been disappointing to many foreign countries, but to a large extent that's because it displayed rather more continuity with the Trump administration than expected, didn't recalibrate or change policies nearly as much or as quickly as partner countries might have wanted. Whether it's on trade struggles with China, on rejoining the Iran nuclear deal, on support for Israel despite Netanyahu's increasingly open contempt for the Democratic party, or even on illegal immigration where for a long time the Biden administration continued the same policies introduced during Covid by the Trump administration - and while liberals still protested against those, that wasn't remotely as loudly or as dramatically anymore than when Trump was doing it. Which you certainly can consider a sign of weakness, and of hypocrisy, and of course it's due in part to the Republican strength in Congress, but if you think the Trump administration did such a great job, I should think you'd be happy about that.

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