China is doing really fine right now, why would it destabilize its own region? Free PR, outstanding manufacturing capabilities, a lot of manpower, most amount of trades, US being written off as unreliable partner and etc.
This. I spent 6 weeks in Taiwan last year traveling around the island. Unless there is a US President as brave as Bill Clinton who put two aircraft carrier strike groups between the island and the mainland in support of democratic elections, it will take 3 days to take over the island and not a single shot will be fired. Since the chip lithography systems can be shut remotely, there isn't any reason to attack the island.
Pretty much. My understanding of current US realpolitiks is that leadership finally realized that they can't really do much about Chinese superiority in every single competing industry, and all these unwelcoming outcomes are just freak outs and bunch of "hail mary"s with the hopes it can somehow reverse something. It's just not acceptable from an American PoV to not perceived as "best and strongest", so everyone is having a hard time coping with it.
Japan kinda went through the same problem in 80s/90s, but from a different angle. The problem is, US can't pull the same on China as it did with Japan.
The worst part is, it's only been half a year since Trump took office. We're experiencing crisis after crisis in the world stage, and it's the worst possible time to have someone unstable as him in charge of the world's most powerful military. Who knows what's going to happen in the next, sigh, 3.5 years with this shortage of adults who know patience and diplomacy.
How do you, logically, draw the line from "cavalier use of deadly force" to "our enemies are going to take bolder action against US allies"? That leap of logic doesn't make sense; its a leap of pseudologic someone speaking from fear would make.
If anything, a better standpoint is: Illogical and cavalier use of deadly force should scare our enemies, because it makes expression of our nation's military power more unpredictable. If China invades Taiwan; Trump might just blow up the Three Gorges Dam. Other Presidents might move with care, logic, and intrinsic sanctity for human life; Trump doesn't.
I never suggested that our enemies might move with care, logic, and intrinsic sanctity for human life. I suggested that Trump's disregard for many of these cornerstones of national leadership might cause them to not move at all.
It's literally what you wrote and continue to argue for. But anyways, I strongly disagree with the premise that threats and violence results in deescalation.
It's almost impossible to imagine Netanyahu acting so emboldened under any previous US president. And it's hard to deny that Trump now looks extremely diminished on the world stage, between his leading from behind with Israel over both Gaza and Iran and his comprehensive failure to have any impact on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This needs a citation. Israel developed their nukes 50 years ago with the assistance of Jewish nuclear physicists from around the world and french materials. They didn't need to steal nuclear secrets.
Yeah but Netanyahu tried the same shit regarding Iran with the last few presidents, including the previous incarnation of Trump who had better advisers.
This is the first time the lie has worked to this extent.
Netanyahu has warned that Iran is minutes away from the bomb for the last 30 years. Trumps own intelligence community was telling us that Iran is incapable of producing a bomb just a week or so ago.
Death to America is a great motto, but that's all it really is, they sadly lack the capability to follow through with it. With or without these latest strikes.
> While Trump is a complete pushover, Biden was also well in pocket.
There no evidence to support that. US policy has been to fully support Isreal, full stop. At least under Biden there was talk of suspending arms supplies due to Gaza, Trump just wants a shot at that beach front real estate. Not comparable at all.
If Trump is unstable then how can you predict his actions? How is this an example of not acting in time / for deterrence, when it was in fact a preemptive strike? (And he did the whole "2 weeks" ruse).
In the same way you can predict what will happen to a bridge that is unstable. It doesn't matter which bad option he winds up choosing, the fact he's not choosing the good option is what makes him unpredictable.
Look, I'm no Trump supporter and not trying to defend his actions. But this comment just doesn't explain anything. Why would the Russians or Chinese choose to drive over the unstable bridge? The 'bad option he chooses' could be "bomb Three Gorges Dam" or something.
I'm also no fan of war or playing world police. I don't know whether destroying Iranian nuclear sites was ultimately the right or wrong decision. But there is clearly enough debate here in the rest of the comments that it's not obviously the wrong option. Even a broken clock can be right twice a day.
Was this dropping the ball? There seems to be a lot of debate about whether it was ultimately right or wrong long term.
In any case, it certainly doesn't weigh towards "not belligerent". I'm no Trump supporter or apologist, I just don't see how one can claim that this action changes the calculus for Russia and China. Maybe if he really had fully abandoned Ukraine then yes. But he's been happy to attack Yemen and Iran (and possibly Greenland for that matter) so why would China think they are immune? I suspect he also harbors more racism towards China than Russia.
I think looking at the news since we first started this conversation pretty clearly explains that this has been nothing short of a cluster as usual.
As usual he is contradicting his own intelligence apparatus saying the mission was a failure - he and his administration keep lying to us all making sure you always use the word “obliterated“ to sound big and strong. Even Israel says they didn't do the damage Trump is claiming.
Stupid people being back by other people doesn't mean they aren't stupid. It actually means the contrary - there's more stupid people than we previously thought...
I'm being a bit mean I suppose, it's not actually stupidity. It's naivety and fierce propaganda campaigns. Everyone longs for a simpler time and the domestic economic struggles of the US are plain.
OP predicted Trump will mess up not that he'll lose an election. His electorate is largely supporting him via emotional response, hence his constant appeal to emotions, morality, demonization, etc - it works very well. The title of the book on my manipulated mothers shelf is "Democrats hate America" not "Iranian nuclear enrichment policy” — because this isn’t about policy, it’s about identity. Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t have to withstand scrutiny; it just has to resonate. And it resonates because it offers a simple moral binary: good vs. evil, us vs. them. That’s why failures, scandals, or even authoritarian gestures don’t shake his base — they’re not evaluating him on outcomes, but on whether he reflects their emotional reality. The real danger isn’t just that he might “mess up,” but that the political incentives now reward this kind of performative grievance over competence.
So i don't buy into trumps instability being a factor here nor bidens deteriorating mental health as president being ok. Yet i still think this is false equivalence.
I've watched many people deteriorate mentally and their are many routes. Biden was clearly the "i misplace stuff" route, not "i will now attack an ally".
He definitely shouldn't have been allowed to run for president again but Trump is far more belligerent. I'm not even necessarily opposed to his actions in Iran. But he's now verbally, fiscally, or actually attacked several allies and enemies. He'll likely attack more. I think it's fine to argue for or against his actions. But it's silly to equate the scale of his actions, or risk of mental deterioration, with Biden. The stakes are much higher, the strong allies and enemies are all making reactive bold moves in response. Things are moving fast now.
Yes, thank you. Anyone who has taken care of old people recognized Biden as the passive type that was content to sit in a chair while other people did stuff around him - which wasn't all that problematic given our bureaucratic delegation-based style of governance. Meanwhile Trump is the manic aggressive type. The more you try to get him to recognize his limitations the more he denies he has any and acts out to prove it.
While we are arm chair quarterbacking, many Americans prefer to not let the government be led by what you are literally describing as the deep state (whether you agree or not with the terms people use).
No, many Americans think they do not prefer the deep state, because they do not realize how good they actually have it. A successful marketing campaign by the corporate government has played off their over inflated sense of self-independence and entitlement, to convince them that the problem with bureaucratic authoritarianism was the bureaucracy and not the authoritarianism. Now that bureaucracy, meaning the last little shred of nominally democratic government, is on the chopping block in favor of full blown corporate authoritarianism. And if you think the deep state was entrenched...
All politics is preference though, and the issue is that all bureaucracy fails to have a function that shrinks itself. We already spend about $0.25T paying people or entities that don’t exist according to the accountability office…
Sure, as a libertarian I'm well read on the failings of bureaucracy. As I said, the deep mistake here is letting our frustrations with bureaucratic authoritarianism be pinned on the bureaucratic aspect rather than on the authoritarian aspect. We're all acquainted with being on the wrong personal side of a committee member who is then able to vindictively hold up your application. Getting rid of the bureaucracy in favor of autocratic authoritarianism just drops the pretense of impartiality.
And sure, the resources spent on make-work bureaucracy running would be better used elsewhere, even if it was just paying people to walk through their local parks and pick up litter. But we're pretty bad at resource allocation, especially resources from that centralized fountain of new money that seems to be necessary due to Gresham's law. So make-work paper pushing is still better than just giving those resources to asset holders via banks bidding up the everything bubble. Given that those resources are going to be somewhat wasted somehow, the authoritarianism seems like the more important part to be focusing on.
(as for the numbers from the Ministry of LLM Slop, understanding is harder than generation, so I don't see the point of trying to scrutinize them rather than doing a good faith analysis to begin with)
