Der Spiegel Proclaims the End of the West

Right, it would be "fair", but would it do something good for our relationship? Perhaps it's worth a try once, but should I just keep trying to one-up (be later than) him every time?

> Or, try not to work with him anymore.

I think it comes down to this in the end - is the relationship worth it for you even with some faults? To me, it is, so I choose to overlook the faults.

Actually no, because Trump signed the Doha treaty with the Taliban which (though it wouldn't have been impossible) would have required significant effort to undo.

But the drop-kicking wasn't so much in the terms, but in the way the Trump administration openly side-stepped the local Afghan government (leaving them to believe, obviously correctly, that they been effectively hung out to dry, and that wouldn't be able to rely on any promises of support from the US after that).

Furthermore, if it was really Trump who "drop-kicked" Afghanistan, Putin would not have felt encouraged to invade Ukraine under Biden.

No logic there. From Putin's perspective, what matters is that Afghanistan got squarely drop-kicked.

I agree that Biden contributed to the debacle, also. But analyzing the situation strictly in terms of who was sitting in the Oval Office at the times of the respective invasions (and not looking at broader events leading up to them) is way too simplistic, and quickly leads to flawed conclusions.

Trade deficit comes from the US being an immensely wealthy country, people in your country want to purchase things but won't pay the prices if those things were all made in the USA, labour is expensive and so the US exploits cheaper labour offshore to produce the stuff it wants to consume.

> In my view, the cheap labor has hollowed out middle America, the fact is that people over a certain age just can't be retrained. So the moral argument is whether we should pay more for goods, or if labor in our nation should be compensated more. I vote higher labor compensation because I think that disparities lead to worse social tension.

I agree, the moral argument is that you should pay more for goods and have better income distribution but America was never that, for a brief period of time after the Second World War the USA was able to manufacture most of what the world wanted because European factories were razed to the ground. That brought a lot of wealth into the middle class, there's no way to go back to that model. America's view on labour is diametrically opposed to supporting a healthy middle class, people being hostages of jobs to have basic medical needs fulfilled, at-will employment, punishing systems of social welfare, all of that breaks negotiation power from labour to achieve higher salaries in non high-skilled jobs. It's a fantasy that becoming more isolationist will solve any of these foundational issues America has against labour.

Social tension will continue to rise while a class of people see themselves squeezed to support richer folks. Trickle-down economics doesn't work and the longer America depends on finance and huge corporations to drive its economy the larger this social divide will be. America has fostered an environment of corporate consolidation which takes power away from labour, this is completely unrelated to any foreign policy, it's a self-inflicted pain where economic growth was achieved by empowering corporations instead of workers.

> On the technological front, there's much less wiggle room. We should be trying to patriate the technology just like how we stole the steam loom 200 years ago. If its not possible, we must extend security guarantees to our critical partners, and here we probably have less leverage. We need to secure Taiwan and anything west of Poland.

There's no appetite in American corporations to risk their bottomline to advance technology, contemporary American corporations feed on acquisitions and accountancy tricks instead of the heydays of GE, Bell, Boeing, etc. investing in R&D to truly be a world lead in their industries.

Same for EUV chips manufacturing, American corporations showed no great appetite to develop this technology domestically even though the American government invested heavily into it in the 1990s (see EUV LLC).

The thing about extending security guarantees is that, again, America is losing its soft power. It's becoming untrustworthy, its institutions are cracking, there's a breaking point where a guarantee from the USA will mean less than a guarantee from another power and alliances will shift. The longer the USA stays on this course the faster this will happen, even more in case these alliances are tested and the USA falls through on their guarantees, Ukraine is becoming a poster child of that.

> On the military power front this is where we are probably going to have disagreements. Our allies need to be able to fight conventional wars. Its disgusting that Germany, the richest power in europe, consistently misses on military spending and buys russian gas. Germany and France should securing Europe from Russian aggression, a century ago, they would've trounced Russia. Ukraine should be fought with German and French equipment and German and French advisors. Our allies in Europe are not stepping up when they need to. Our allies in the Middle east are creating an entire generation of islamists who will hate us and do anything to take us down. I want them to simmer the fuck down and find diplomatic solutions. For our military alliance to be beneficial, our partners need to strong and be aligned with American interests and that is not happening.

Again, what's the benefit to the USA if other blocs are less dependent on America's power? Germany misses military spending because the Allies after the Second World War instilled an immense sense of guilt and shame (well deservedly) unto Germany, Germans became skeptical of militarism, newer generations were brought up in a culture to reject it. Now you are asking them to do a 180 turn on it, it will take decades to undo the sentiment even though it already started after the Russian invasion.

France's military complex has been undermined exactly by the USA's MIL, France has always pursued selling more of their military hardware to Europe (even though for their own benefit) and was shoved aside many times by USA's supporters in NATO. A prime example even outside NATO: the USA botched the sale of France's submarines to Australia in favour of AUKUS.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, the USA fostered an environment where European powers were to be dependent on the USA's military complex and now you are telling them they should have been better? That's absurd.

I get that people don't like being told that they're stupid and wrong. I don't know if anybody has the communication skills to convince Trump voters how stupid they're being. At this point, I just hope that when shit hits the fan, Trump doesn't manage to deflect too much blame. We're all going to have to learn some hard, hard lessons, together.