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It has also greatly benefited America during the whole post-war period. It is not a coincidence that the world's consumers are spending much of their money on products from American companies. Whether the American lower class gets a share of the profits is an other question of course.

This goes for tech too. American companies like Uber, Netflix, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple have been able dominate most of the world market. In a protectionist world they will be locked out, just like they are in China today.

Yeah, whatever you may think of the American hegemony since WW2, that's what made America the #1 world power. Drop that, and the US will just be one of many.

And on the one hand, I think that might be good; I'm not a fan of hegemony and imperialism. But for all its faults, the US is at least a democracy, unlike Russia and China. As a European, I strongly prefer American hegemony over Russian hegemony. But maybe it's time for the EU to finally stand on its own feet and take up the leadership of the free world. Hopefully more benevolently than the US, although recent events don't look very hopeful there either.

With brexit doesn't seem that likely either

Brexit could actually work out well for a more united EU. The UK has always been one of the biggest opponents of further European integration. Without the UK, it might actually happen.

That is a theory I had not heard.

And the economy will not be missed, even when trying to fix the ships that are Greece and Italy and Spain?

At some point it seems like Germany can't have the only economy propping up the rest of the EU

Closer economic integration would definitely solve the problem of Greece and other weak economies. Every country has their weaker provinces that would have sick economies if left on their own, but they work fine because they're part of a country with an economic policy that takes care of the entire country. The US has plenty of poorer states, for example, and they get way more federal money. Every country has areas like that, and takes care of them to some degree.

But Greece has to fend for itself, and has lost the means to fend for itself, because they're not in control of their monetary police. They're unable to devalue their coin as they should. But if they were to become part of a more integrated EU economic policy, the EU would eat up their debt without blinking, and invest in Greece to fix the problem, which is currently apparently against the rules.

Europe is too divided, Russia will most likely rule over Europe. Look out for a Russia backed victory of Le Pen in France and AfD in Germany. If that happens the reorganisation will be total.

While I agree that the EU is divided, I doubt Russia will rule over Europe. Russia is a lot weaker than it was during the Cold War, and Europe is a lot stronger. A lot.

That said, Putin plays a subtle game, and his ties to various European extremist groups is certainly cause for worry. He will continue to destabilize Europe, but a lot more than that is needed for Russia to rule over Europe. Though if the EU is sufficiently divided, the Baltics are definitely within reach.

> But maybe it's time for the EU to finally stand on its own feet and take up the leadership of the free world

As a German, I don't see that happening. The EU is beginning to collapse outright (Brexit, the way Europe still treats Greece and the way Europe leaves Germany stranded with the refugees, esp. Eastern Europe) and even if the EU manages to stay together as an union, the trend to nationalism and right-wing populism is worrying:

- in France, le Pen/Front National has a non-small chance of winning the elections in 2017

- Hungary with Orban basically has a fascist in power

- the situation in Poland doesn't look much better (Kaczynski nationalist government, 100k right-wing demonstrants marched in Warsow today, https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute-in-europa/videos/warsch...)

- Italy is under threat from the M5S party led by Beppe Grillo, they want to exit at least the Euro currency, and the general situation is unstable

- in Greece left-wing Tsipras is in a coalition with right-wing ANEL

- Germany has, mainly fueled by the refugee situation, seen a rise of both a nationalist party (AfD) in parliaments with people predicting 10-20% at the Bundestag elections as well as massive violence against refugees and left-wing people.

- Turkey isn't part of the EU, but I think that the situation in Turkey could explode into civil war sooner than later. Or into a Hitler-level dictatorship.

And should it come to war... well I don't believe that the EU stands a flying chance against the Russians. German tank troops practice with broomsticks instead of blank cartridges (I'm serious, https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article137549045/Bun...), the new NH90 marine helicopter isn't licensed to fly over sea, and the A400M transporter jet isn't remotely useful right now.

Europe without US protection is a nightmare, and I'm afraid that at least Russia will exploit this. Especially as no country in the EU except maybe France actually has the capability or will to fight.

I wish we would, but we (Europe) are fragmented and each country is an easy target for the wills of the larger powers. It's easy to play each EU country against the other, not necessarily by bribes but by exploiting all the conflicting interests and the lack of a central authority. Try to do that with US states without the blessing of Washington.

And in time of danger every country becomes more egoistical, as the many recent crisis demonstrated (bonds, migrants, etc). So China and Russia will benefit of a US downsizing and Europe will get the worst of it.

The only way out would be ejecting every country not willing to really merge into a strong political union, make the United States of Europe, get back some of the other countries when they'll be willing to give away their sovereignty. Problem is: there are zero countries willing to give away their sovereignty now. National political leaders are not going to risk their authority and privileges and run for a European government which only a few of them will get into.

But he's not aware of the whole story. Japan is paying us money (billions, I think) to keep those bases there. I assume the same goes with other countries. This isn't free protection.

but are they paying us what we expend? I think that's the point being made here.

And I don't know the answer to that question, but it's important in this discussion.

If you have to pay the same amount either way, why not spend it on your own military? While you may not get quite the same level of firepower, it will be under your control and you won't have to worry about a newly elected president leaving you high and dry.

Because it gives both of us a firm ally and makes it far easier for us to coordinate.

He just plainly thinks it's not enough. Here he is talking about how Japan is "beating the hell out of this country" and "they aren't paying" back in 1988 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI

He, Trump, started receiving intelligence briefings[1] at the same(?) level as Obama just a couple of days ago.

So we should start to see him become more aware of the facts. What affect this has on him remains to be seen.

1. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election...

He received his first briefings months ago and promptly conflates them with public news reports and then lied about what he learned.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/trump-didnt-lea...

What affect this has on him remains to be seen.

Perhaps very little, since it's been known for some time they've been doctored to, shall I say, achieve certain domestic political goals.

If he wants to start dealing with this stuff sooner rather than later, he needs to get some of his advisers' clearances current again, and have them start digging.

In Korea, the US is paid about $1 billion which is approaching half of the burden to the US.

In 1988, Japan loomed large in the American psyche, the same way China does today, if not more so. It was the unstoppable economic juggernaut that was destroying American jobs.

I doubt Trump would had the same views of Japan specifically, as he did then. He seems to have transferred his ire to China.

He took out a full-page ad in 1987:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ilanbenmeir/that-time-trump-spent-n...

And read it almost verbatim at the third debate. It was quite interesting how little his views have changed in the intervening years.

First off let me clarify that I'm no Trump supporter either. :) That said, I've been reading a book called "The Accidental Superpower" that I find very insightful, and the author makes arguments similar to the ones you mentioned. He argues that since WW2 the US has defended free trade around the world (through "the Bretton Woods system") essentially "for free" - even though we shoulder the defense burden for the rest of the world we haven't used this to negotiate treaties that are biased in our favor. The author sees this system ending in the next 20 years (i.e., the US will no longer defend the world's commerce for free) and he spends a large portion of the book discussing how different countries around the world will have to adapt.

A couple interesting notes: the author predicts that in a world with less free trade the US would do relatively well thanks to shale oil and our other natural resources (like rivers and rich farmlands).

He also talks a lot about demographic changes. He says in the US this will cause some pain from ~2020-2030 as the baby boomers retire, but we'll recover as millennials enter the most productive years of their careers (40s-early 60s).

However he also predicts much more dire consequences for Russia due to demographic changes, and suggests they might not recover from a decline starting around 2020.

Compare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Russia_Sex_by_Age_2015010...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_by_Sex_and_Age_2015-0...

I can't repeat the entire analysis from the book in this box but I've found the author's comments to be thought-provoking so far. :)

Of particular interest to the HN crowd, the author also argues that demographic issues mean that right now there is an unusually large amount of investable capital available, but this will soon change as baby boomers begin to retire and switch from accumulating and investing their money to trying to stretch what they've already earned to last the rest of their lives. He predicts we'll see much less money available for risky investments starting in the next few years, due simply to demographic changes around the world.

Unfortunately, it does seem likely that "Make America Athens losing the Peloponnesian War (again)" is the policy objective.

If one wanted to look on the bright side, there's a chance that "I am a master businessman who can cut better deals" is a merely way to have something say about foreign policy without having to go to the effort of thinking about it.

Providing a launch pad for forward deployment of Armed forces is a pretty good deal IMO. Doing this helped the US keep USSR in check. Now assume that NATO never happened. Life would go on. These countries would be in a lot of debt, but they'd have their own armies for sure with the US twiddling their thumbs from across the ocean. Maybe Russia would've occupied a couple more countries. Although it seems these countries should pay up for protection money, consider the difference a rent that US is paying them for maintaining a military base. A quick google search gave me "...he United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad.."

Exactly. He comes at it like a bean-counter, not a strategist.

That's not necessarily bad. The civil war, world war 2 and the cold war are pretty obvious examples. You can't solve problems by just throwing money at them, but having money to throw at problems makes a lot of those problems much easier.

I'm willing to revise my opinion of the guy. He's done two things i thought were impossible, winning the primary and the presidency. Maybe he will get that trillion dollar infrastructure program in place. I doubt it, but, at this point there's not much for me to do but wait and see.

Many people have said the same thing before only to find themselves in a hopeless situation.

I'm having a hard time thinking of wealthy nations suddenly plundered. All i can come up with is the mongol invasion, and the conquest of the incas. The Incas are pretty marginal though, obsidian embedded in a stick isn't much use against toledo steel.

Being powerful and picking the wrong fight seems like the usual collapse. The Spanish losing their armada, or Germany's first invasion of France.

Help me out, remind me of some of those people, would you?

edit

Maybe Carthage falling to Rome? i don't know enough about the circumstances. I do remember something about Hannibal occupying most of Italy.

further edit

France falling to Germany is a pretty good example.

I can't help but think sudden all out invasion of the US leads immediately to nuclear war.

I dunno. backing away from playing world cop might be the worst thing ever. I'm just not smart enough to foresee what that world might look like. I'd hope some sort of international organization would be founded to pick up the slack, and the U.S. would play a role in that. Really, the election is over. all i can do at this point is watch what happens.

I haven't seriously studied the Punic Wars, and all this is from memory, but the one with Hannibal pretty early on started with one of the worst defeats in Roman military history, I think you'd have to go to Augustus for the next one of that level or so.

But after that, he wasn't able to take Rome, and the Romans refused battle in Italy. Instead, they eventually kicked enough ass in Africa that Hannibal was recalled to there, where he eventually lost. I think that was the 2nd, and the 3rd was simply finishing off a weak Carthage so it would never threaten Rome again, "Carthage delenda est" and all that. Neither fits the pattern you're looking for.

The number 1 thing we should focus on is keeping the sea lanes open. Everything else after that is gravy, and indeed, no longer playing "world cop" now that the Cold War is over is one of many areas where Trump and the people who voted for him are aligned.

As for other examples, maybe the Norman conquest of Britain? But that's seriously complicated in cause, and I'm not sure Britain counted as a wealthy nation back then.

Ah, that's a key, look for battles where the king was a participant and got killed in it. Resistance tends to fall apart after that.

And an "all out invasion" of the US is physically impossible prior to e.g. taking out our hunter-killer subs and otherwise securing a logistics line, unless you think Canada or Mexico/Latin America are up to the job, and there "a rifle behind every blade of grass" suffices.

The late bronze age collapse comes to mind where only Egypt really survived, if you can call it that as they were never the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse

It is interesting in that for Greece, they basically had to rediscover writing the fall was so complete. Though its likely a confluence of things contributed. Also our relative isolation in the USA means its unlikely we'll see anything truly similar but it does show what can happen to interdependent nation states.

Carthage is probably a more recent example we could key off of. But its still a ways off from suddenly as it took about 4 generations and a lot of mutual antagonism between Carthage and Rome. Rome also went a bit overboard in razing the city you could argue.

Another to add to the list, though not for plunder specifically is Portugal with its earthquake in Lisbon effectively ended their global dominance.

> He thinks that isn't enough and that it's time to collect.

Amazon sells their extra servers as a product. The US can start selling their extra nuclear weapons as a product. Business 101!