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Comment by estomagordo | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much lasting damage this administration - well, let's be frank, this president - has done to the US' reputation when it comes to committing long-term to agreements and contracts it has signed.

Consider the Paris climate accord. Consider threatening to not protect certain NATO members. Consider the Iran nuclear agreement.

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I doubt any at all really, people dont judge teams based on their coaches, or companies based on their CEO's, just as I dont judge my friends in the UK based on their governments decision capabilities around Brexit.

The calculus changes significantly here given we are talking about a democracy. The group chose this person (by intention or inaction).

... and consider the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_For...

That was probably coming for a long time. USA withdrew from the ABM treaty under Bush: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

The Paris and Iran agreements were not submitted to Congress for the good reason that they had insufficient support there. Agreement by only one branch of a divided government was a pretty clear sign that the US was not a reliable counterparty to them. The agreements were honored by the entity that made them -- the Obama administration -- whose power had a clear expiration date. Given the political configuration, relying on more than that was unsupported. Although Trump was hard to predict, several of the other GOP candidates may well have done the same.

I would not expect a Biden or Warren administration to feel bound by a unilateral Trump agreement, and any counterparties aren't doing due diligence if they don't understand that.

Are you suggesting untrustworthyness in foreign politics is something intrinsic to the American democracy? Other countries can be relied upon, in spite of them holding general elections.

I doubt that's what they were saying. It's simply that only 1/3rd of the government signed onto the treaty. That was public and well known.

Any foreign power would realize they couldn't rely on continuity as their only supporters was a president who couldn't hold power for longer than 8 years.

If Congress had signed in, it wouldn't matter who was President afterwards.

Countries like the UK, don't have this issue since they are parliamentary governments so there's really only 1 branch of government with legislative and executive power integrated.

Most countries in North and South America though are presidential democracies, so the US is in good company.

It also appears he wants to pull out of the Open Skies treaty. That's a treaty from 1992 between, among others, the US, Russia, and the rest of NATO that allows members to conduct unarmed reconnaissance flights on short notice over the others' territories, including over military bases.

When you see a Tupolev TU-204 flying over various highly restricted US sites, you are seeing Russia exercising their Open Sky rights. If you are in Russia and see a Boeing OC-135B cruising around, you are seeing the US using the treaty.

I've not heard any explanation of why Trump would want out of this.

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