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Comment by bushbaba | Hacker News Reader

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It's not obvious how he could have prevented Russia from invading Ukraine, or stopped Hamas from invading Israel. Not everything comes back to the U.S.

The biggest EV manufacturers in the U.S. are Tesla and Ford, as far as I can tell. No Chinese manufacturer I'm aware of has made significant inroads.

Chinese's EV's can't break into the us market. Biden put 100% special tairf on Chinese ev.

And Trump has said that he intends to cancel that tariff [1]. Honestly, the narrative that Biden enabled Chinese EV encroachment is very bizarre. It reflects almost the exact opposite of the actions the candidates have actually taken.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-19/trump-wel...

It's only odd until you say the candidate is Trump

I'm not sure you are referencing the correct article. It just mentions Trump threatening to raise the tariffs to 200% and eliminating the EV mandate. I saw nothing about Trump canceling tariffs.

China has had an auto industry for decades. And yet zero vehicles in the US.

That hasn’t been because of Biden. It’s because they make non-US market vehicles specifically.

We can’t make $5000 new vehicles. They can’t pass our regulations and standards while making the profits they like.

I worked with Beijing Jeep awhile back. They have no interest in the US market.

Could have easily pulled back from offering Ukraine NATO expansion possibilities.

If you believe the Kremlin narrative around their motivations for the war, and I think there are a LOT of reasons to be skeptical of that narrative, but even if you believe it, the 2022 invasion plans were likely already well underway in 2020. These things are planned years in advance (Bush was already working on an Iraq invasion plan pre 9/11, for example) and once things are in motion the stakeholders are not easily turned around.

It’s not just Kremlin narrative, a large wing of the foreign policy establishment also recognized the risk in published articles as far back as the mid 90s.

Military people do planning at all times. Doesn't mean that the plans will surely be applied.

Very much a false equivalence to the point that it sounds like a bad faith argument. There's a massive difference between contingency planning for a hypothetical versus actively planning for something that's is intended to be agenda item #1.

The first clue to differentiating a contingency from an active plan is resource allocation. Russia moved about 80,000 troops to the Ukrainian border a full 13 months before the invasion. That's over 50% of the force that would eventually enter Ukraine in February 2022 and also about 25% to 35% of Russia's entire non-conscript military force.

Are you skipping the part where NATO was arming and having people in ukraine in the same period?

But why? That would be a concession to a criminal dictator, and, historically, that _never_ works.

Putin would have just thought up another "reason" to invade in a year or two.

Ah, appeasement? Yeah, that famously always works.

Worked for resolving the Cuban missile crisis (agreeing to remove missiles from Turkey).

The war is not about NATO.

That's what Ukraine wants though.

And the parties who don't want it are now illegal so… 100% of the parties want it.

How are the wars his fault? It shows how shallow some people's knowledge are if they can't see the problem with this argument...

Not his fault per se, but he certainly didn't help the Russia/Ukraine situation by pushing for Ukraine to join NATO. That was one of Russia's hot button issues and he wasn't exactly diplomatic about it.

One take is, Putin is too self-unaware to realize that the reason Eastern European countries want to join NATO is because they're afraid he will invade them sooner or later, just like what he did to Georgia in 2008.

But then again, maybe there's some merit to Putin's paranoia that NATO is "gobbling" up these countries to create a military circle around Russia in preparation for a future invasion. At least in his understanding, that's a logical conclusion.

But he must knows he's running the country like a thug, with oligarchs being forced to tithe to him, and he hates the idea of citizens revolting to topple down other thugs (like they did in Ukraine), because if that idea catches on, that might happen to him too. I wonder if he draws a faulty conclusion that these revolutions are EU/NATO/Western-engineered because they're evil, instead of coming from the citizens themselves who are fed up with being robbed by the elite.

Hah, ironcally enough, Russia runs a propaganda network (or so we've been told) that tricks the population in EU/USA to moan about their rulers and be rightwing populists...

You know so much about Putin and his knowledge - are you his therapist?

Yes I am.

For the non-stupid answer to your opposite-of-that question: these are takes, and for one thing I claimed, I said "he must", i.e. it's a guess, because if he doesn't realize he's a thug, he'd be dumb.

OK I did not signify that the sentence "At least in his understanding, that's a logical conclusion." is a guess of mine. My bad?

Just like how Putin didn't invade Georgia because they appeased Putin's preferences?

No wait a minute, Putin did invade Georgia! He was going to invade Ukraine no matter what appeasement offerings were presented.

The slow ongoing death of Pax Americana is hardly his fault, and reviving it was likely in the cards for him - or anyone in his place

was not*

But it was Trump who pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and attempted to extort Ukraine instead of deterring Russia.

> He also was president to Russia invading Ukraine leading to a Europe wide conflict. Hamas invading Israel.

I put some of the blame on Biden because the botched Afghanistan withdrawal sent the message that the US doesn't want to get involved with regional conflicts, emboldening Russia, Hamas, and Iran.

Except it was Trump who agreed to the withdrawal… Biden just happened to be president during it.

He didn't have to complete it, and he didn't have to rush it.

Rush it?

The agreement was to leave in May. The US left in basically August which is 4 months after the agreed upon time.

That said, if though basically 20 years of "occupation" the US couldn't nation build Afghanistan into being able to defend itself vs the Taliban I don't think you can point at a single president.

> leading to a Europe wide conflict

Which has been good for the USA. It weakens both russia and europe. And if ukraine doesn't lose, makes them forever in debt to USA.

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