Since Trump's election was certified, Trump has talked about international matters much more than he talks about domestic matters. And his international talks have been just as imperialistic as prior US governments. Maybe Putin should not give him 4 weeks of trust. A scorpion is a scorpion.
There is no longer a sustainable economic basis for the US to oppose China. Military power alone is insufficient to sustain itself in the long term in an attack like this. Propaganda and sticks do not pay the bills! There is no economic basis! The US does not produce a single nail compared to China and an industrial reconversion is completely impossible because American capitalist corporations operate under the logic of the system: profit, i.e. the lowest possible cost of production. Financialization has bankrupted the US.
I've been sympathetic to views like you espouse, but I now think that this mistakenly assumes that economic logic governs/constrains America more than it actually does. If forced to choose between corporate profiteering and global hegemony (which provides the material basis for corporate profiteering), I believe a critical mass of American elites will swallow some bitter pills in the short- or medium-term to secure US hegemony over the long-term - pills like suppressed profits, forced investment into US Treasuries, temporarily inflationary tariffs, depreciating the USD, etc. And make no mistake, US corporations are thoroughly infiltrated by people who understand this. They're not out of options. They're just out of morally legitimate options. Moral illegitimacy has never stopped them before and it won't stop them this time either. Hold a damocles sword over global non-US energy supplies in general (and states selling oil for yuan in particular) by embroiling West Asia in military comflict + reindustrialize by seizing de facto control over Mexican factories (laundered as "fighting the cartels") = America Made Great Again.
The population in the US is not fit any longer for world hegemony. US has not the people and the infrastructure necessary for that, and everything is past its sell date and degrading.
We don’t have the people for what? Reindustrializing? We have a lot of people employed in unproductive service industry jobs. Sure, those people can’t just pivot to making semiconductors, cars, etc. overnight - but we can print money for training & education the same way we bail out our banks, airlines, etc. And, as we set fire to countries across the world for trying to stay neutral, much of their skilled labor will jump ship and go where the money is. The US has a lot of cards to play. I think those cards have been ill-gotten, undeserved, and ones that shouldn’t be played, but we need to recognize them and plan accordingly if the US is going to go gently into that good night.
You are burning down countries that themselves are not industrialized and don't have a skilled labor force, so that pool is empty.
In the US, the qualified personnel is well retired or dead for many of the industries that actually create stuff, not that cutting edge or cutting edge. The US doesn't have the people to educate on the shopping floor these newcomers from unproductive jobs.
The factory floor and operations in optimizing and improving production is a lost art & craft in the US and it could take decades to rebuild if all stars were to be aligned, which will not be.
And the US will always stay uncompetitive due to high living costs (housing, education, and healthcare, and maybe slowly food - we don't know what the impact of warming will bring to the US). Printing money IS a very nice gig to have and helps, but it will do only so much. The plutocracy in place will not give any gains back to the working class, so the tensions will increase.
The ownership of Panama and Greenland might sound nice, but it will not provide any benefits to the public at large and will really look bad and extremely hypocritical. The cognitive dissonance in the MAGA people would reach explosive levels....
South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, and France aren’t industrialized and don’t have skilled labor forces? Disagree and those migrants are the ones who know the “lost art and craft” you talk about and, last I checked, their economies are burning to serve US geopolitical interests.
US living costs are unsustainably high - and that’s one of the bigger pills we’ll have to swallow, I.e. inflation higher than interest rates to reduce the nominal debt burden + force savings into US treasuries to keep US government funded despite negative real interest rates. The other way to counteract our economic uncompetitiveness is to devalue our currency. The US will only remain “economically uncompetitive” as long as we refuse to swallow these pills, but people like Trump’s Treasury Secretary want us to swallow them.
I agree that ordinary people won’t really benefit from taking the Panama Canal or Greenland. Americans have no right to take them. Controlling choke points is, however, an important part of the great game and the MAGA people I know don’t give a single shit about Panama’s or Greenland’s rights, only whether an action or expense helps them against the non-American hordes that MAGA propaganda dehumanizes. We’ll see what happens.
Why do you think South Koreans, Germans, Taiwanese, or French professionals will think about emigrating to the US as the first and only options? It seems to me that for instance, in Germany right now, for the upcoming federal elections, AfD is at the forefront, and they are not eager to follow in the US drumbeat. Same with others. SO no, the US will not have the ability to poach skilled workforce at will.
Controlling choke points that nobody else is using any longer is not that a smart thing to do, methinks.
As for the MAGA hordes don't giving a shit and seeing as their god given rights to take this or that, I don't disagree with it, in the US (like Israel most evident and actualized now), that is baked in from the original recepie...
As an American, I have an extremely low opinion of the US electorate. In general, we lack coherent views and have extremely short attention spans that shield us from cognitive dissonance. This is what happens when politics is reduced to kayfabe theater and our sick body politic is stuck on an IV drip of corporate propaganda and scapegoating.
We can simultaneously say that Americans voted against President Biden's party primarily because of inflation - and that they voted for Trump and Republicans who clearly campaigned on tariffs that will cause another round of inflation. Some knew what they were signing up for and those who didn't will go back to drinking, drugs, fantasy football, and pornography.
In effect, the pills I'm talking about involve another wave of inflation, but it can be construed as biting-the-bullet on the inflationary impact of re-shoring and friend-shoring - after which inflation will be "defeated" for the foreseeable future. Will it be destabilizing if the process creates more productive jobs while nominal wage increases match or exceed inflation? No. Will we re-shore enough high value-added operations to accomplish that? That's what the deep state (Biden-Trump uniparty) is trying to negotiate right now with all this bluster and blackmail. Taiwanese, South Korean, and German firms are opening factories here, so it's working to some extent and the economic dividends from those projects are just starting.
Trump popular support is basically a cult of personality, irrespective of any policies or changes in policy.
This is not entirely irrational. When the average frustrated American recognizes that the system is rigged, and not in his favor, he can resign himself to an ever-shrinking alice of the pie, or he can Burn It All Down.
Trump wants U.S DOMINANCE OVER THE WORLD and to deny NATIONS OF SOVEREIGNTY (Economic,Financial,Resources)disallowing to Trade with their own CURRENCIES BETWEEN EACH OTHER,And to take away their Territorial Integrity . To save the $USD as a WORLD RESERVE CURRENCY. A control that the USA have been using since WW1. Without the WRC the U.S Government cannot function. That’s the threat that worries Trump , NOT MISSILES. THE USA will BECOME THE FOURTH REICH OF FASCISM.
Hitler used SOCIALISM TO CONVINCE GERMANS OF BETTER TIMES. When he became Chancellor he embraced FASCISM AND CAPITALISM . We all know how it ended. The Holocaust (11+million killed ), total destruction of EUROPE. USA Capitalist Benefited with the MARSHALL PLAN , that started the slow take over of Western Europe. Through the USA Militarization of Europe under the disguise of NATO and the Threat that RUSSIA posed(COLD WAR). It’s been AMERICAN CAPITALIST FASCISM that has now destroyed EUROPEAN COUNTRIES and around the World. American Fascism (World Dominance). The Fascist in AMERICA ARE NOW BENEFITING FROM THE SEEDS SOWAN BY ADOLF HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY. It was a SLOW PROCESS. But the FOURTH REICH IS HERE and present in USA.
Eh, not if the good people of Greenland object. Nobody here in the US wants to harm a single one of them or make any more enemies than we already have. Same thing with Canada, all the funny trolling of that idiot Trudeau aside. We love Canadians as much as we appreciate each other. Not their present government, but hopefully the days of those fools are numbered.
Utter rubbish. But if we assume the usa did invade both or even one of the two territories mentioned, and the BRICS+ did nothing, especially China and Russia, what does that say about these two and their attempts to build a multipolar world order?
Trump has been talking about US territorial expansion in Greenland, Panama and Canada. A serious US bid to take control of Greenland would reawaken Canadian nationalism fear of and opposition to the United States. The combination of Trump's threat to impose 25% tariffs and Canadian fears of US aggression would likely cause a dramatic reducation in cross-border trade and even moves within Canada to defend itself against US invasion. Of course an American invasion of Canada on the scale of Russia's attack on Ukraine would succeed in conquering Canada. But the US probably would not invade unless it expected a nearly bloodless occupation. A serious Canadian defence and the prospect of high casualties would probably deter US attack. The end result: destruction of the world's largest trading relationship, a Canadian repudiation of alliance/alignment with the USA and no US control of Canada through conquest.
Why not do it? Take Greenland and secure the neutrality of Panama. The right people are against it, that we know this will create the multipolar world that will avoid ww3.
I'm not sure that even the US could completely scale the mountain of hypocrisy required to justify such a raw exercise of military force. It is at least possible to envision the manufacture of some lame justification, based on some political event inside the country, for marching into Panama.
An "invasion" of Greenland, however, would be much more difficult to justify. No communist dictators to topple, no flow of fentanyl or drugs from there to the US, no stream of uninvited migrants, no military threat, no terrorists--what is left?
Few people are aware that when the United Kingdom gave its former Crown Colony of Newfoundland its independence the money-starved island of fishermen and loggers could not afford to govern itself without external aid. They pleaded with Britain to take them back to no avail. Then they approached Canada seeking to be admitted to the Confederation as a Province. Canada balked. But then when the Xi Newfoundlanders indicated they would ask the United States for admission to the Union Canada then accepted them. Who knows what the Master of the Deal could achieve with Panama or Denmark?
Fortress America doesn't exist with the financial weaknesses present in the US. Considering the geopolitical dance that has been going on between the great powers in the last ten years, it's a mystery that any one of several financial triggers were not used on the US at various pressure points since 2008. In any case Trump has four years to fix them before anyone can call the US a fortress.
What about Diego Garcia? The Labour government seem desperate (goodness knows why) to agree the handover to Mauritius before January 20th but as a US base with only a token British presence (and none yet from Mauritius) surely it would be even easier for Trump to buy it outright (if he's feeling generous) or simply annex it unilaterally?
We will need a “full-on” national effort with an authoritarian leader to blunt China’s persistent, amoeba-like infiltration if not actually grasping control of life in the Western Hemisphere.
Since Trump's election was certified, Trump has talked about international matters much more than he talks about domestic matters. And his international talks have been just as imperialistic as prior US governments. Maybe Putin should not give him 4 weeks of trust. A scorpion is a scorpion.
There is no longer a sustainable economic basis for the US to oppose China. Military power alone is insufficient to sustain itself in the long term in an attack like this. Propaganda and sticks do not pay the bills! There is no economic basis! The US does not produce a single nail compared to China and an industrial reconversion is completely impossible because American capitalist corporations operate under the logic of the system: profit, i.e. the lowest possible cost of production. Financialization has bankrupted the US.
I've been sympathetic to views like you espouse, but I now think that this mistakenly assumes that economic logic governs/constrains America more than it actually does. If forced to choose between corporate profiteering and global hegemony (which provides the material basis for corporate profiteering), I believe a critical mass of American elites will swallow some bitter pills in the short- or medium-term to secure US hegemony over the long-term - pills like suppressed profits, forced investment into US Treasuries, temporarily inflationary tariffs, depreciating the USD, etc. And make no mistake, US corporations are thoroughly infiltrated by people who understand this. They're not out of options. They're just out of morally legitimate options. Moral illegitimacy has never stopped them before and it won't stop them this time either. Hold a damocles sword over global non-US energy supplies in general (and states selling oil for yuan in particular) by embroiling West Asia in military comflict + reindustrialize by seizing de facto control over Mexican factories (laundered as "fighting the cartels") = America Made Great Again.
The population in the US is not fit any longer for world hegemony. US has not the people and the infrastructure necessary for that, and everything is past its sell date and degrading.
We don’t have the people for what? Reindustrializing? We have a lot of people employed in unproductive service industry jobs. Sure, those people can’t just pivot to making semiconductors, cars, etc. overnight - but we can print money for training & education the same way we bail out our banks, airlines, etc. And, as we set fire to countries across the world for trying to stay neutral, much of their skilled labor will jump ship and go where the money is. The US has a lot of cards to play. I think those cards have been ill-gotten, undeserved, and ones that shouldn’t be played, but we need to recognize them and plan accordingly if the US is going to go gently into that good night.
You are burning down countries that themselves are not industrialized and don't have a skilled labor force, so that pool is empty.
In the US, the qualified personnel is well retired or dead for many of the industries that actually create stuff, not that cutting edge or cutting edge. The US doesn't have the people to educate on the shopping floor these newcomers from unproductive jobs.
The factory floor and operations in optimizing and improving production is a lost art & craft in the US and it could take decades to rebuild if all stars were to be aligned, which will not be.
And the US will always stay uncompetitive due to high living costs (housing, education, and healthcare, and maybe slowly food - we don't know what the impact of warming will bring to the US). Printing money IS a very nice gig to have and helps, but it will do only so much. The plutocracy in place will not give any gains back to the working class, so the tensions will increase.
The ownership of Panama and Greenland might sound nice, but it will not provide any benefits to the public at large and will really look bad and extremely hypocritical. The cognitive dissonance in the MAGA people would reach explosive levels....
South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, and France aren’t industrialized and don’t have skilled labor forces? Disagree and those migrants are the ones who know the “lost art and craft” you talk about and, last I checked, their economies are burning to serve US geopolitical interests.
US living costs are unsustainably high - and that’s one of the bigger pills we’ll have to swallow, I.e. inflation higher than interest rates to reduce the nominal debt burden + force savings into US treasuries to keep US government funded despite negative real interest rates. The other way to counteract our economic uncompetitiveness is to devalue our currency. The US will only remain “economically uncompetitive” as long as we refuse to swallow these pills, but people like Trump’s Treasury Secretary want us to swallow them.
I agree that ordinary people won’t really benefit from taking the Panama Canal or Greenland. Americans have no right to take them. Controlling choke points is, however, an important part of the great game and the MAGA people I know don’t give a single shit about Panama’s or Greenland’s rights, only whether an action or expense helps them against the non-American hordes that MAGA propaganda dehumanizes. We’ll see what happens.
Why do you think South Koreans, Germans, Taiwanese, or French professionals will think about emigrating to the US as the first and only options? It seems to me that for instance, in Germany right now, for the upcoming federal elections, AfD is at the forefront, and they are not eager to follow in the US drumbeat. Same with others. SO no, the US will not have the ability to poach skilled workforce at will.
Controlling choke points that nobody else is using any longer is not that a smart thing to do, methinks.
As for the MAGA hordes don't giving a shit and seeing as their god given rights to take this or that, I don't disagree with it, in the US (like Israel most evident and actualized now), that is baked in from the original recepie...
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/nikhil-pal-singh-pervasive-power-settler-mindset/
As an American, I have an extremely low opinion of the US electorate. In general, we lack coherent views and have extremely short attention spans that shield us from cognitive dissonance. This is what happens when politics is reduced to kayfabe theater and our sick body politic is stuck on an IV drip of corporate propaganda and scapegoating.
We can simultaneously say that Americans voted against President Biden's party primarily because of inflation - and that they voted for Trump and Republicans who clearly campaigned on tariffs that will cause another round of inflation. Some knew what they were signing up for and those who didn't will go back to drinking, drugs, fantasy football, and pornography.
In effect, the pills I'm talking about involve another wave of inflation, but it can be construed as biting-the-bullet on the inflationary impact of re-shoring and friend-shoring - after which inflation will be "defeated" for the foreseeable future. Will it be destabilizing if the process creates more productive jobs while nominal wage increases match or exceed inflation? No. Will we re-shore enough high value-added operations to accomplish that? That's what the deep state (Biden-Trump uniparty) is trying to negotiate right now with all this bluster and blackmail. Taiwanese, South Korean, and German firms are opening factories here, so it's working to some extent and the economic dividends from those projects are just starting.
Trump popular support is basically a cult of personality, irrespective of any policies or changes in policy.
This is not entirely irrational. When the average frustrated American recognizes that the system is rigged, and not in his favor, he can resign himself to an ever-shrinking alice of the pie, or he can Burn It All Down.
I suspect that the establishment has figured out that Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
It will continue to be effective as long as everyone else is dead afraid to oppose it.
Both the geopolitical control and the limitless money printing, which are the two sides of one same medal.
Trump wants U.S DOMINANCE OVER THE WORLD and to deny NATIONS OF SOVEREIGNTY (Economic,Financial,Resources)disallowing to Trade with their own CURRENCIES BETWEEN EACH OTHER,And to take away their Territorial Integrity . To save the $USD as a WORLD RESERVE CURRENCY. A control that the USA have been using since WW1. Without the WRC the U.S Government cannot function. That’s the threat that worries Trump , NOT MISSILES. THE USA will BECOME THE FOURTH REICH OF FASCISM.
Hitler used SOCIALISM TO CONVINCE GERMANS OF BETTER TIMES. When he became Chancellor he embraced FASCISM AND CAPITALISM . We all know how it ended. The Holocaust (11+million killed ), total destruction of EUROPE. USA Capitalist Benefited with the MARSHALL PLAN , that started the slow take over of Western Europe. Through the USA Militarization of Europe under the disguise of NATO and the Threat that RUSSIA posed(COLD WAR). It’s been AMERICAN CAPITALIST FASCISM that has now destroyed EUROPEAN COUNTRIES and around the World. American Fascism (World Dominance). The Fascist in AMERICA ARE NOW BENEFITING FROM THE SEEDS SOWAN BY ADOLF HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY. It was a SLOW PROCESS. But the FOURTH REICH IS HERE and present in USA.
Colonizers gonna colonizer.
Eh, not if the good people of Greenland object. Nobody here in the US wants to harm a single one of them or make any more enemies than we already have. Same thing with Canada, all the funny trolling of that idiot Trudeau aside. We love Canadians as much as we appreciate each other. Not their present government, but hopefully the days of those fools are numbered.
What US reputation? War criminals?
Zion Don will do and say just about anything to distract the masses from him not following through on his America Fiest campaign promises.
somehow, somebody died and left them to Trump, just like Syria's oil
Utter rubbish. But if we assume the usa did invade both or even one of the two territories mentioned, and the BRICS+ did nothing, especially China and Russia, what does that say about these two and their attempts to build a multipolar world order?
Trump has been talking about US territorial expansion in Greenland, Panama and Canada. A serious US bid to take control of Greenland would reawaken Canadian nationalism fear of and opposition to the United States. The combination of Trump's threat to impose 25% tariffs and Canadian fears of US aggression would likely cause a dramatic reducation in cross-border trade and even moves within Canada to defend itself against US invasion. Of course an American invasion of Canada on the scale of Russia's attack on Ukraine would succeed in conquering Canada. But the US probably would not invade unless it expected a nearly bloodless occupation. A serious Canadian defence and the prospect of high casualties would probably deter US attack. The end result: destruction of the world's largest trading relationship, a Canadian repudiation of alliance/alignment with the USA and no US control of Canada through conquest.
Why not do it? Take Greenland and secure the neutrality of Panama. The right people are against it, that we know this will create the multipolar world that will avoid ww3.
I'm not sure that even the US could completely scale the mountain of hypocrisy required to justify such a raw exercise of military force. It is at least possible to envision the manufacture of some lame justification, based on some political event inside the country, for marching into Panama.
An "invasion" of Greenland, however, would be much more difficult to justify. No communist dictators to topple, no flow of fentanyl or drugs from there to the US, no stream of uninvited migrants, no military threat, no terrorists--what is left?
Few people are aware that when the United Kingdom gave its former Crown Colony of Newfoundland its independence the money-starved island of fishermen and loggers could not afford to govern itself without external aid. They pleaded with Britain to take them back to no avail. Then they approached Canada seeking to be admitted to the Confederation as a Province. Canada balked. But then when the Xi Newfoundlanders indicated they would ask the United States for admission to the Union Canada then accepted them. Who knows what the Master of the Deal could achieve with Panama or Denmark?
Fortress America doesn't exist with the financial weaknesses present in the US. Considering the geopolitical dance that has been going on between the great powers in the last ten years, it's a mystery that any one of several financial triggers were not used on the US at various pressure points since 2008. In any case Trump has four years to fix them before anyone can call the US a fortress.
What about Diego Garcia? The Labour government seem desperate (goodness knows why) to agree the handover to Mauritius before January 20th but as a US base with only a token British presence (and none yet from Mauritius) surely it would be even easier for Trump to buy it outright (if he's feeling generous) or simply annex it unilaterally?
We will need a “full-on” national effort with an authoritarian leader to blunt China’s persistent, amoeba-like infiltration if not actually grasping control of life in the Western Hemisphere.