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Trump calls NATO "obsolete"
- Thread starter Bitch Pudding
- Start date
- Status
Sad!
Sorry. We tried to prevent this.
Most of us rejected him, remember.
Maintenance
Member
Fixed.
anonymous_abc
Member
I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we now have a US president who is openly hostile to NATO, a republican no less...
Darkest timeline.
Box of Kittens
Banned
Yes. Frankly it is very disturbing how much support Trump got, but it's also worth remembering that he wasn't even all that close to getting the most votes. The only reason he won is because the US elects its president via an arcane system that was designed to increase the voting power of slaveholders.
John Kerry calls Trump out in his interview.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/16/politics/john-kerry-interview-amanpour/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/16/politics/john-kerry-interview-amanpour/index.html
anonymous_abc
Member
What we need is Republicans calling him out for it...
We need a lot of things. Republicans aren't the business of giving people what they need.
anonymous_abc
Member
True. Regrettably so.
Merkel is the leader of the free world at this point. I mean there is no question of that.
It's sad it has come to this situation where the EU can not consider the US a good actor anymore with the FSB asset in charge. The speculation is that most of the intelligence agencies are acutely aware of the situation.
The only thing that pains me is the thought of abandoning all of those Americans, a majority actually, who did not vote for this traitorous piece of shit.
Hopefully it doesn't come to that and the CIA does something but we're just hoping at this point.
The damage in the next 4 years if nothing happens is likely to be immense and the EU will probably look to China for partnership. Those ties are already being forged and will probably be accelerated.
It's sad it has come to this situation where the EU can not consider the US a good actor anymore with the FSB asset in charge. The speculation is that most of the intelligence agencies are acutely aware of the situation.
The only thing that pains me is the thought of abandoning all of those Americans, a majority actually, who did not vote for this traitorous piece of shit.
Hopefully it doesn't come to that and the CIA does something but we're just hoping at this point.
The damage in the next 4 years if nothing happens is likely to be immense and the EU will probably look to China for partnership. Those ties are already being forged and will probably be accelerated.
Who's gonna stop him? Unless the generals start a coup i don't see how to american people or the GOP are gonna stop him.
If the US leaves NATO is basically dead
He can't dissolve but he can cripple it by leaving.
CrispyBoar
Banned
Will somebody find some way to get this crazy nut impeached or something?
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
had a part in seeing it succeed. Ask yourself what boundaries the internet has.
It's tempting to go with newspapers, but most people are on the internet now, and that means political influencing isn't just possible, it's happening.
eot
Banned
Yeah but what's the actual process? Can he do it by executive order, or does it have to be passed by the senate/congress?
CyclopsRock
Member
But do you have any actual evidence this happened? It's all very well saying "people go on the internet" but that's not evidence. There have been lots of trends suggesting a growing euroscepticism in the UK for a long time.
Hmm I wonder how that started? It's a mystery.
Bitch Pudding
Member
Oh no no no, you won't talk yourself out of this one. The US voted for this giant asshole and all Amercicans take full responsibility for it. It's the result of a democratic vote, and according to your very own laws Trump won. Now get your act together and make sure this never happens again.
CrispyBoar
Banned
As much as I hate to think that way about anyone, I hope so.
That may be the only option at this point.
Sorry, we couldn't stop the influx of idiots who voted for Trump.
CyclopsRock
Member
Right, and your answer to your own rhetorical question is "Putin arguing on Neogaf"? OK.
Actual Russian interference kinda loses its meaning and looks more rediculous when we accuse them of being behind everything.
No Eurosceptism in this festering little shit of an Isle started from the gutter trash tabloid Press.
CyclopsRock
Member
Right. I don't really know why you were replying to me then?
My bad. You are of course correct mate. I have seen my error, I was still laughing about the bloke that dropped his phone in the shitter.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
No, you're right there is no direct evidence that anyone except Google has access to. But then we probably don't have to prove it, because it's literally in the playbook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
And Russian "troll factories" are an actual thing.
It's extremely likely they at least tried. Assuming the tabloids weren't enough to tip it over, that is.
Unfortunately I think only Google can demonstrate it directly, and that would require lifting the curtain on parts of their core algorithms to some people, which means they have no reason to do so without extreme legal pressure. It's possible just looking at the indexing is enough, but that's a lot of data to go through.
But it's really, really naive to still consider the internet apolitical in 2017.
koji kabuto
Member
I'm not sure if Merkel can survive this.
You mean politically? People hate him, it could actually help her.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
The first one never ended.
appaws
Banned
The parties are reverting to their pre-cold war norms. Republicans middle-American and isolationist, and Dems neo-Wilsonian.
Remember, that was the norm until the defeat of Taft by Eisenhower in the GOP primaries in 1952.
The question this raises to me is where two important political movements, the Neo-Conservatives and the Anti-war left, are going to end up in the long term?
Prof. Bathtub
Member
Maybe. Or Republicans love winning so much that they decided their best tactic was to run against the interventionism that made them so reviled (while keeping the islamophobia and torture-fetish, of course.) Anyhow, I'm not sure McKinley or TR fall into the isolationist category.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
No, Germany spends 1.2% of its GDP on its military, while Greece spends 2.4% of it's GDP on it's own military. That's not spending "on NATO", it's spending on military forces in general.
2% is the NATO spending guideline. It recommends spending at that level to maintain a respectable military. But it's not hard and fast, nor is the alliance contingent on meeting that number. The Germans still have a much more powerful military than the Greeks do, and spend more overall, despite spending less proportionally.
appaws
Banned
You are certainly right about TR. McKinley was more of a mixed bag. He was highly reluctant to go to war with Spain, but in the end was weak and ended up being prodded into it. His overall outlook fit in with other Republicans at the time fairly well.
As a strongly anti-interventionist Libertarian, I would like to think that they learned their lesson from the horrible mistakes of the Clinton/Bush years.
I know the Neo-cons did not learn anything and never will, and I was thrilled to see them defeated in the GOP primaries even if it was by a highly flawed individual like DJT.
I was surprised to see him win in the end, but you have to admit Hillary's bullshit about "no-fly zones" over Syria would have been a perfect fit coming out of the mouth of Bush or Cheney. I wondered at the time where the anti-war left would be on the matter. I guess they kept their mouths shut out of a desire to see her beat Trump because he was "literally Hitler" or something.
Not American here, but I would have voted Hillary in a heartbeat even with the moronic no fly zones idea - the other option was Donald Trump, who's proven to be nothing else than lying asshole all election long, and judging from his transition so far that's not going to change. I suppose they (and I) kept our mouth shut about it, but plenty of us thought it was dumb.
For you either candidate would have been shit, I suppose. The 2 party system sucks.
TestOfTide
Banned
The truly "anti-war left" would recognize that an alliance like NATO prevents a lot of war by having most of the western world under one big alliance.
He doesn't even need to dissolve NATO. An Alliance is based on trust. If the trust is no longer there it's an alliance just on paper and the power of the alliance if much diminished. Because there is still a very reduced chance that Russia wants to really go to war, but its influence might grow so much more under these conditions.
Imagine that you're a Baltic country and Russia pressures you into some very unfavourable economic deal or anything that Putin wants and you know that US is ready to dump you at any moment and you're practically in a much weaker position even as a NATO member.
Not to even mention that UK seems to go pretty quickly into the same direction and May seems rather willing to be a Trump satellite for the sake of some kind of trade deal, so one has to wonder how much dedicated will UK be as a NATO member in the future?
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