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Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

He didn't acquire a single bargaining chip. If anything, he handed Europe, China, India bargaining chips.

Trump is in for a rough time next time he tries to negotiate anything internationally, now when he has shown that he backs out of what many regard as a very important international agreement just 2 years after it was reached.

And on yet another issue, Trump shows the world that America is no longer taking the lead. Positioning yourself with Syria and Nicaragua is not taking the lead. He has put America last.

And I doubt it will be without repercussions from other nations. In the coming weeks we will see how there will be calls in Europe for blocking America in all kind of other international cooperation, including trade deals.

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To be fair, Nicaragua only refused to sign on to Paris because they didn't think it went far enough.

> Trump is in for a rough time next time he tries to negotiate anything internationally

Yeah because China, India and everybody else are totally willing to sacrifices other deals because they are unhappy about this climate deal.

I think you vastly overestimate the importance of this deal to the governments around the world.

> And on yet another issue, Trump shows the world that America is no longer taking the lead.

He was the first to leave. So he is taking the lead at something.

> Yeah because China, India and everybody else are totally willing to sacrifices other deals because they are unhappy about this climate deal.

It's not a case of unhappiness over this deal. It's a matter of trust. The US pushes for this deal for years, then abruptly abandons it. So, next time the US pushes for a deal, who's going to believe it?

This will absolutely increase the caution with which countries reach deals with the US. As it should.

Its international politics. Its well understood that democracy have a very hard time making long term promises.

Politicians understand that internal politics dominates (at least for big strong countries).

If they wanted to figure out that US goes back on its deal they did need Paris. They could ask Cuba about the Platt Amendment.

>>Its international politics. Its well understood that democracy have a very hard time making long term promises.

Very few countries in the world are a direct democracy where this would be a concern.

In contrast, representative democracies like the US are very resistant to sudden shifts in populist sentiment. Specifically for the US, the entire government is structured to prevent drastic changes in policy based on the whims and daily desires of the populace. For example, it is part of the reason why Congress is split into two houses.

In contrast, a dictatorship is unreliable, because all decisions are made by one person, whose mood swings can result in lots of unpredictability.

> In contrast, representative democracies like the US are very resistant to sudden shifts in populist sentiment.

Representative democracies are notoriously prone to populist shifts; the US, though, has a system with many different and conceptually independent levers of power checking each other which is generally thought to make it resistant to populist shifts, and this was probably quite true in practice before the era of modern mass communication and nationalization of most politics and political movements when those levers really were largely independent in practice as well as in theory. But it's not the late 18th Century any more.

You are correct for the most part, but I think you are drawing the wrong implications.

Yes, they are resistant to swings based on mood changes in the population. However, this does not hold for changes of mind or strategy by elected people themselves. They might promise something at some point and then not do it. US history is full of broken promises.

A counterpoint is that Trump and Obama are elected directly and specially on foreign relations they have a huge power to do whatever they like. Obama promised some stuff, Trump retracted it.

> In contrast, a dictatorship is unreliable, because all decisions are made by one person, whose mood swings can result in lots of unpredictability.

That is true in theory but in practice many dictatorships are remarkably stable. A dictator has to please his cronies, he can't do whatever he likes. He can do what he likes as long as it does not touch the interest of the cronies.

Check "Selectorate theory" in political science. Or this nice little video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

The US is leading noone if nobody follows. Who do you think will follow?

Thousands of treaties, conventions, agreements, and other arrangements are negotiated all the time. The Paris accord is just one, but a major one. The belief that the American government can be trusted to stick to a good cause, let alone stick to deals it has made before, has been eroded. American diplomats will find it harder to persuade other governments to do anything. They will also find that they have fewer favours to call.

Democracies change their mind. Big update! You should write a international relations paper on this.

Everybody understand that a treaty like Paris is just a big PR thing. Its is unenforced and the waste majority of people working on it will not be around when the results of it are in.

This is all about signalling. Trump wants to signal that he doesn't give a fuck and he is tough (or something).

If they wanted to know that American diplomacy is not consistent they could have looked at literally any point in US history. The could call Cuba what happened with the Platt Amendment.

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