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Comment by danielrpa | Hacker News Reader

The current administration speaks for the country right now, but doesn't set an eternal policy that determines the United States' thinking towards its partners or erases the decades of strong alliances from the past.

Actually this is the beauty of democracy, eventually we will change this - many of us Americans aren't happy with the way our country is treating our historical friends in Europe and elsewhere. It's important that democracies stay united through this crisis, and especially after this crisis.

There is nothing China and Russia would like more than long term friction in the Free World alliances.

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The current administration will go away, but I don't see the forces that put him in power going away any time soon. I can't predict the future, but I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the last clearly unsuitable Republican president the US will see.

I wouldn't bet against Trumps re-election, with his approval ratings going up in the middle of his biggest bungle.

Even if Biden is elected, I have limited hope for him to join us in tackling major issues such as global warming.

I also wouldn't bet on a resurgence of the "decent" GOP in the next decades, i.e. a party that "only" starts some baseless wars and doesn't promote antagonistic thinking in general. They will have noted very clearly what brought them their recent success.

I'm sorry to say, but as a German, I'm seriously wondering whether there is a better chance of establishing a reasonable dialogue with China than to stop you guys from messing stuff up.

> I'm seriously wondering whether there is a better chance of establishing a reasonable dialogue with China than to stop you guys from messing stuff up.

IMHO China is much much worse, ranging from censorship (often over very small issues, like comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh resulting in all of Winnie the Pooh being blacklisted), to the massive invasive surveillance state they've got and are expanding, to things like the concentration camps in Xinjiang.

For all the faults in the current US political landscape, it is still vastly better than China.

China and the US have a lot in common. Frankly watching the daily deluge of lies from the Trump administration's highest levels - the accusation that China may not be entirely truthful are hilarious

I agree there are certain similarities and problems in the US. But mass-censorship, concentration camps, and a true surveillance state on the level of China don't exist in the US. Some, like an expansion of the surveillance state, are plausible (maybe even likely?) in the near-future, whereas I don't see mass-censorship, concentration camps, or appointing the president for life happening any time soon.

> The current administration speaks for the country right now, but doesn't set an eternal policy that determines the United States' thinking towards its partners or erases the decades of strong alliances from the past.

I'm curious how that works, though. On the one hand, I can imagine that other countries might look back on all this (Trump) as a momentary 'lapse' in sanity, but honestly I suspect country-level memory lasts longer than that. If this kind of thing happens once, it can happen again, no? It might say something about the quality and stability of a country's 'institutional continuity', or whatever proper term one might use for it.

Can anyone here who knows more about these topics chime in, perhaps? I know very little, but have been thinking about this quite a bit. How does one 'bad administration' (regardless of whether Trump's is or isn't) affect ongoing relationships between countries? How far back does a country's memory go? Is there any kind of pattern to it, or does it depend entirely on the particulars of said country?

And many of us aren't happy with how previous administration's have taken advantage of us. Many of the countries in NATO weren't contributing their fair share, for example. Trump changed that and now those countries have committed to paying their dues.

NATO is brain-dead. The turkish situation buried it and the american failure to show its leadership in this situation was the epitaph. Trump's policy on that matter has just prompted a major european shift about a true European defence system. Germanay did not want to hear about that 5 years ago and now is listening very seriously to the French and Italian. It has become obvious among the EU leaders that the US is not a reliable ally anymore and that de facto the post-war order is totally over.

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