US government is stealing money payed by Switzerland for F-35s. Basically Switzerland bought 5 patriot batteries but the USA couldn't deliver so they cancelled payments. Then the USA took payment for the F-35s and applied that as patriot battery payments then came back and said "sorry our f-35 deal has to be renegotiated and you have to pay 2x the original deal". Switzerland lost about 1.3 billion francs - 1.5B$ - so far.
And yet Switzerland is still going through with the deal but just buying half as many planes.
The least terrible option under the circumstances. Any single European country going in either the pivot-to-armed-independence or pivot-to-alliance-with-China route without the rest of Europe buying in to the move is doomed to failure, even before you consider that a couple EU members are very in favour of the status quo.
There's probably a bit of a pivot to European suppliers rather than the US. The gear isn't quite as good but you don't have to worry about Trump issues.
The Iran war demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic arithmetic of hard power. Iran is 3X to 5X Iraq, depending on what dimension of an invasion plan you're thinking of. Failure to gather at least 3X the resources applied to Iraq means certain failure.
The vandalization of US soft power mechanisms by Musk and others comes into this too. Nobody else is willing to jump into this mess and get dragged down with us.
I've also been shocked at the abandonment of US soft power. While I see many possibilities for what is really going on (including the left and right narratives, and a few others) what seems most likely is that the previous hegemony power system was built on oil and gas industrial productivity -> military might - hard power - and the world is transitioning to a new hard power paradigm and during these transitions soft power becomes less relevant/important (at least to the hegemony).
One could argue soft power would extend a weakening hegemony, but maybe only to a point?
Regardless of whatever the US leaders are saying at any given time, it seems to me (as an outsider) that their actual actions, regardless of Democrat/Republican, continually benefit China's long term prosperity.
But I only see what I'm shown, and I have no idea what I don't know... So all I can really do is shrug.
Military might depends either on domestic retention of a skilled machine tools workforce (as Iran has) or the mass import of a skilled foreign machine tools workforce (as Russia did before 2022, their munitions industry was the Siemens corporation's single biggest customer).
Look at the example of the failed munitions plant in Texas in the last two years for what happens without either of the above.
Do you think it's reasonable to say that since at least around the 1970s, on net, the people running the United States have been consistently trading power for greed?
No, I think that's a hopelessly reductive interpretation that mistakes stupidity for malice.
Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world.
Even right now, you see the Trump family, the various oligarch families in the cabinet, fiddling the figures, stealing and enabling mass disasters, they are doing what they believe is right and good while having horrific delusions.
Two excellent primers on this, albeit with more of a focus on the parallel problem in the EU establishment than the US, are below:
> Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world.
My question was grounded in ignorance and curiosity. Appreciate the response, gives me a lot to think about. Cheers
Another really weird take. While George HW Bush was hardly a great president, he did manage to not fumble the liberation of Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War. I think he's underappreciated.
He and his son appointed three of the supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of citizens United, which seems like a massive tradeoff of us hegemonic power for corporate greed to me...
When I said leadership, I didn't mean just the president, but all those with the most power and influence leading the country. Presidents, senators, Congress, supreme Court justices, Federal department heads, etc.
It seems like the things that made america powerful have been chipped away at over decades. Maybe it's just a lifecycle playing out and inevitable?
That's an odd take. The thing that's going to make China think twice would be good relations with Europe, and a joint willingness to isolate China if it comes to that. I don't know any politicians on the left or center who are hostile to Europe.
China's relative advantage is like a club level tennis player: all you need to win is to make fewer dumb errors.
As an outsider with no loyalty to any US political party it looks to me like both sides are weakening US hegemony in entirely different ways and have been for a while now. It's also clear there are two distinct incompatible realities projected via the media, and the Americans who only expose themselves to one of the realities only judge, and therefore can't empathize, with the other.
I'm sure that anyone who is e.g. a Democrat is offended by me saying that I've noticed the both sides weakening the US and will want me to list examples, but I'm not going to do that because anytime I have in the past people respond with extreme hostility instead of curiosity. If you don't agree with me that's fine move along.
> it looks to me like both sides are weakening US hegemony in entirely different ways and have been for a while now.
That's a pretty bold claim, especially insofar as it (perhaps unintentionally) sounds like you're claiming both parties have weakened the US to the same degree.
It wouldn't surprise me if you listed out some ways in which Democrat incompetence has hurt US soft power, since screwing up is kinda their thing. However, given what Trump has done in his two terms so far, it's a tough sell that the two parties are playing the same sport, let alone fall into the same league in terms of damage wrought. It sounds like a strong application of Murc's Law absent your actual list.
My insider's view is that the Republican party will burn my house down, while the Democrats will form a committee that concludes they cannot send a fire truck to put it out and they absolutely cannot hold the responsible Republican members accountable unless they can get bipartisan support. Both need to go, but I have no illusions that one isn't better than the other.
I'm just one person in another country (outside the us) who is exposed to the information I'm exposed to. I have the benefit of sitting back, relatively unattached, and being curious about what is going on. I'm well aware that what I don't know far exceeds what I do know.
From speaking to my US friends who span several states and both parties, and are all intelligent, kind, and thoughtful people, it really seems like the US is being ripped apart - and people who are on one side or the other aren't really seeing the full picture, likely by design.
To what degree the leadership is involved in the ripping is really impossible for me to know. I look at one place and it looks one way, I look at another place and it looks another way, and the ways it looks are mostly incompatible with each other.
The one consistency I see no matter where I look is that we as in all of us living in western democracies are being divided, trust is being attacked and game theory lose-lose is being promoted. There are pockets of resistance, but the consistent theme is of dissolution.
So I may ask some question that comes off as weird, it's because I'm skeptical of whatever media says and asking questions I haven't heard anyone else ask - mostly just to poke at reality and see what happens.
You don’t know if any politicians who are hostile to Europe via threatening to annex Greenland, not recognize the UK’s sovereign claims to the Falkland Islands, or literally stealing their money after the Swiss put a pause on advanced payments for missile systems that were going to be delayed for 4-5 years?
US government is stealing money payed by Switzerland for F-35s. Basically Switzerland bought 5 patriot batteries but the USA couldn't deliver so they cancelled payments. Then the USA took payment for the F-35s and applied that as patriot battery payments then came back and said "sorry our f-35 deal has to be renegotiated and you have to pay 2x the original deal". Switzerland lost about 1.3 billion francs - 1.5B$ - so far.
And yet Switzerland is still going through with the deal but just buying half as many planes.
The least terrible option under the circumstances. Any single European country going in either the pivot-to-armed-independence or pivot-to-alliance-with-China route without the rest of Europe buying in to the move is doomed to failure, even before you consider that a couple EU members are very in favour of the status quo.
There's probably a bit of a pivot to European suppliers rather than the US. The gear isn't quite as good but you don't have to worry about Trump issues.
I wish we had leaders who understood the value of soft power.
Oh well, guess we’ve blown up nearly a century of diplomacy to placate some narcissists.
The Iran war demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic arithmetic of hard power. Iran is 3X to 5X Iraq, depending on what dimension of an invasion plan you're thinking of. Failure to gather at least 3X the resources applied to Iraq means certain failure.
The vandalization of US soft power mechanisms by Musk and others comes into this too. Nobody else is willing to jump into this mess and get dragged down with us.
I've also been shocked at the abandonment of US soft power. While I see many possibilities for what is really going on (including the left and right narratives, and a few others) what seems most likely is that the previous hegemony power system was built on oil and gas industrial productivity -> military might - hard power - and the world is transitioning to a new hard power paradigm and during these transitions soft power becomes less relevant/important (at least to the hegemony).
One could argue soft power would extend a weakening hegemony, but maybe only to a point?
Regardless of whatever the US leaders are saying at any given time, it seems to me (as an outsider) that their actual actions, regardless of Democrat/Republican, continually benefit China's long term prosperity.
But I only see what I'm shown, and I have no idea what I don't know... So all I can really do is shrug.
Military might depends either on domestic retention of a skilled machine tools workforce (as Iran has) or the mass import of a skilled foreign machine tools workforce (as Russia did before 2022, their munitions industry was the Siemens corporation's single biggest customer).
Look at the example of the failed munitions plant in Texas in the last two years for what happens without either of the above.
Do you think it's reasonable to say that since at least around the 1970s, on net, the people running the United States have been consistently trading power for greed?
No, I think that's a hopelessly reductive interpretation that mistakes stupidity for malice.
Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world.
Even right now, you see the Trump family, the various oligarch families in the cabinet, fiddling the figures, stealing and enabling mass disasters, they are doing what they believe is right and good while having horrific delusions.
Two excellent primers on this, albeit with more of a focus on the parallel problem in the EU establishment than the US, are below:
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/not-getting-it-together
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/starting-from-zero
> Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world.
My question was grounded in ignorance and curiosity. Appreciate the response, gives me a lot to think about. Cheers
I’d take the re-election of Trump to mean the US isn’t a serious society/people anymore.
I don’t say that lightly, and it’s certainly not just the US that has that problem either. Australia, where I live, is infected with it.
Another really weird take. While George HW Bush was hardly a great president, he did manage to not fumble the liberation of Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War. I think he's underappreciated.
He and his son appointed three of the supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of citizens United, which seems like a massive tradeoff of us hegemonic power for corporate greed to me...
When I said leadership, I didn't mean just the president, but all those with the most power and influence leading the country. Presidents, senators, Congress, supreme Court justices, Federal department heads, etc.
It seems like the things that made america powerful have been chipped away at over decades. Maybe it's just a lifecycle playing out and inevitable?
Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Obama were OK, too. Clinton probably overrated, but not bad.
That's an odd take. The thing that's going to make China think twice would be good relations with Europe, and a joint willingness to isolate China if it comes to that. I don't know any politicians on the left or center who are hostile to Europe.
China's relative advantage is like a club level tennis player: all you need to win is to make fewer dumb errors.
As an outsider with no loyalty to any US political party it looks to me like both sides are weakening US hegemony in entirely different ways and have been for a while now. It's also clear there are two distinct incompatible realities projected via the media, and the Americans who only expose themselves to one of the realities only judge, and therefore can't empathize, with the other.
I'm sure that anyone who is e.g. a Democrat is offended by me saying that I've noticed the both sides weakening the US and will want me to list examples, but I'm not going to do that because anytime I have in the past people respond with extreme hostility instead of curiosity. If you don't agree with me that's fine move along.
> it looks to me like both sides are weakening US hegemony in entirely different ways and have been for a while now.
That's a pretty bold claim, especially insofar as it (perhaps unintentionally) sounds like you're claiming both parties have weakened the US to the same degree.
It wouldn't surprise me if you listed out some ways in which Democrat incompetence has hurt US soft power, since screwing up is kinda their thing. However, given what Trump has done in his two terms so far, it's a tough sell that the two parties are playing the same sport, let alone fall into the same league in terms of damage wrought. It sounds like a strong application of Murc's Law absent your actual list.
My insider's view is that the Republican party will burn my house down, while the Democrats will form a committee that concludes they cannot send a fire truck to put it out and they absolutely cannot hold the responsible Republican members accountable unless they can get bipartisan support. Both need to go, but I have no illusions that one isn't better than the other.
1. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=murc%27s+law
I'm just one person in another country (outside the us) who is exposed to the information I'm exposed to. I have the benefit of sitting back, relatively unattached, and being curious about what is going on. I'm well aware that what I don't know far exceeds what I do know.
From speaking to my US friends who span several states and both parties, and are all intelligent, kind, and thoughtful people, it really seems like the US is being ripped apart - and people who are on one side or the other aren't really seeing the full picture, likely by design.
To what degree the leadership is involved in the ripping is really impossible for me to know. I look at one place and it looks one way, I look at another place and it looks another way, and the ways it looks are mostly incompatible with each other.
The one consistency I see no matter where I look is that we as in all of us living in western democracies are being divided, trust is being attacked and game theory lose-lose is being promoted. There are pockets of resistance, but the consistent theme is of dissolution.
So I may ask some question that comes off as weird, it's because I'm skeptical of whatever media says and asking questions I haven't heard anyone else ask - mostly just to poke at reality and see what happens.
You don’t know if any politicians who are hostile to Europe via threatening to annex Greenland, not recognize the UK’s sovereign claims to the Falkland Islands, or literally stealing their money after the Swiss put a pause on advanced payments for missile systems that were going to be delayed for 4-5 years?
That is a weak variant of the "Trump is playing 4D chess" argument. No, he isn't - he is an idiot, he's playing tic-tac-toe, and he's losing.
And it feels good doing it. It is terribly funny to see European countries being so lame.
Hit me again, hit me hard.
Sounds like my recent trip to Oklahoma
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Is there not a hole you can crawl back into?
This low effort, bad-faith, anti-intellectual trash is ruining this website.
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