Many of us no longer feel the juice is worth the squeeze in supporting Europe. We have done enough over the last 100 years. Yes we have benefit some from their troubles, which they caused, but that doesn't mean we have to continue to support them.
You never considered it was just a story to justify shaking "allies" ? I don't know what the truth is, but it smells like it.
And so far there's no announcement about investing in education or health, it seems quite the opposite, isn't it ?
I sincerely don't understand how there can be any trust invested in Trump and his speeches. So far all he's done is creating meme coins and reviving the ruble.
thanks for your answer nonetheless
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/21/clint...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-trump-federal-work...
Dismantling everything in the hope of finding alleged problems is witch-hunt level of political action.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/21/clin...
Not random shotgun immediate firings. Your weather forecasts are about to become less accurate because of some of these firings and planned improvements in them are not going to happen:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/01/weather/noaa-weather-forecast...
Go ask a farmer or pilot how much they depend on weather forecasts.
All the destruction sown by DOGE (outside of USAID) represents (favorably) 0.2% of the US budget. Including USAID it's closer to 1.3% of the US budget.
At the same time Republicans are proposing reducing revenue by 4500 billion dollars.
We need more oversight and less people imho. I am actually hopeful that they will have the ability to push through better software systems to track initiatives and spending. It isn't the number of employees it is where was all the money going, it was/is the lack of insight/transparency which has eroded my confidence in the federal government.
My true wish is they have the guts to pass legislation outlawing campaign contributions. It isn't just parts of the house that need a thorough purging to be honest.
And on the other hand, the immense asymmetry of (non-nuclear) military power between the US and the rest of the world should ring alarm bells across every nation right now. Especially so in the EU, UK and Canada.
Why is this massive military budget and complex supported by sacrificing public services, healthcare, education, and social services, and through higher taxation of the relatively poorest? And why is it not supported through taxation of corporations and the richest of the super-rich?
And for me, the most important reason for why I found today so upsetting:
What is true dishonour if not to betray a friend in need?
There is nothing immoral about getting paid for services or products. If you don't like it go somewhere else. Why is it that everyone expects hand outs from America but never once ask what can they do for America? It is Ukraine who is exploiting the American people for free arms. Finally an America stood up to their ridiculous behavior, the petty dictator was kicked out of the White House.
Great Powers don't have friends. Nor do they have enemies. They only have eternal Interests. (paraphrasing a quote often attributed to Henry Kissinger)
As I was looking for a more exact source for this quote, I stumbled upon this interesting piece in Time Magazine....from 1955:
https://time.com/archive/6798908/no-friends-no-enemies-just-... IT is high time the United States quit throwing money and materials around the world like a drunken sailor and settled on a foreign policy clearly consonant with our national interests first and foremost. We pile deficit on deficit until we threaten ourselves with bankruptcy.
Ukraine is not and has never been an friend or ally to America. We were one of many parties to an assurance that we wouldn't level them if they turned in their nukes. We have given them aide in their time of need. There was a deal in place for more aide and the President of Ukraine came in, in athletic gear mind you, and reneged on the agreement and started grandstanding and threatening the US President in the Oval Office! This was a HUGE mistake, he basically said to America I do not respect you and spit in our faces. I know many people do not see it that way around the world but if a world leader comes to ask for aid from the country they are completely dependent upon for their survival and their plan is threats and leisure attire how is that not disrespect?
I mean fair play for being bold and all. Yet that was unwise in the extreme.
Not that you might care about the moral aspect of it, but we also finished Nazi Germany and prevented that horror from taking over the world.
What we got out of expanding the alliance to Eastern Europe was a further bulwark against Russia, which has always been an expansionist totalitarian empire that enslaves or kills anyone who disagrees with the dictator. It's no different now than it was under the czars.
Europe is basically America's backyard now, and Russia wants it. Giving up your backyard because your violent neighbor threatens you for it, doesn't make you strong, it makes you weak.
No matter what happens America will be blamed and shamed, we didn't spend enough, we didn't xxxx enough, if only America had done yyyy zzzz wouldn't have happened, and on and on. So I am all for putting Americas interests first.
Also I find your last sentence to be the antithesis of what I am talking about. Why does America look weak? Wouldn't Europe look much weaker??? It feels like gaslighting, like someone will call you names so you need to come and die for us! It gets old.
I understand the parent last sentence differently. Considering America's might, giving in to a mediocre aggressor seems weak. It's not that you have to do it, but it was the previous foreign policy / aura of the USA. Leader of the free world IIRC. Now you're free to change course. But it would be wise to operate smoothly.
Some of the countries in Europe to take a cue from Finland and not outsource its defense.
Finland always seemed to be very sensible when it came to its country’s security. I realize “Finlandization” may have had a negative context but during that time Finland made sure it was prepared as militarily as possible if its political “non-alignment” approach failed. It didn’t assume anything.
My point was their approach to their security vs outsourcing defense was a more pragmatic approach considering where we have ended up in 2025 and one that other countries in Europe should have probably followed. If and when your “strong” partner moves away from your interests, you still need internal strength. To a degree Europe (save for a few countries) never expected their strong partner to get wishy-washy on their interests.
Territory lost by the USSR/Russia since the Cold War began: The entire Soviet Union dissolved—Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are all gone. The entire Warsaw Pact flipped to NATO—Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. Germany, the biggest Cold War prize, reunited under the West.
Territory lost by the U.S. and its allies? Zero.
Russia isn’t a rising empire—it’s a wounded animal lashing out, terrified of its own irrelevance. They’re afraid, backed into a corner, and desperately trying to hold onto power. They don’t dictate world affairs.
And as for negotiating with Russia? The U.S. has been doing that for 80 years—and it never made us weak before. Why should it now?
America dictates terms not Russia, and certainly not Europe. If Europe wants to keep playing games, let them but America chooses when, where, and how we engage.
From their point of view, USA being unable to handle both internal and foreign policies like it used must surely be a signal.
ps: and btw, I don't believe that the border thing is not inflated by this camp to distract the american people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9CJmvBXNTc
apparently they're expert at this
Prioritizing America isn’t weakness it’s a strength. No empire in history lasted long by neglecting its homeland while overextending abroad.
Ukraine isn’t America’s priority or ally, our borders, economy, and strategic position in the Pacific are. Europe is more than capable of handling its own security, and if they aren’t willing to, that’s on them not us.
America is powerful because it operates as a global empire. Not by holding land, but by maintaining alliances. Everything you think is wrong at home right now would be infinitely worse if we didn't control global trade, force the rest of the world to buy our debt, and use soft/hard power to shut down every other actor from the Chinese Communist Party to ISIS - over there, not over here.
A lot of people in America, on both left and right, loathe the fact that we are this gargantuan empire. But the reality is, once you're at the top of the food chain, there is no easy exit. If America stopped being the world's only superpower, it would become a third world country immediately. You point out that America will get blamed for X,Y and Z. Of course. It already does. The only reason you don't experience the immediate consequences of that is that America (until today) held a lot of global sway. You can't just opt out of your alliances and still expect to have the preferential treatment you have, or the power you had.
We live in a republic that functions as a global empire. If we weren't that global empire, we would be Argentina or Brazil. You want to give up generations of investment in American supremacy for... what, exactly? Problems at home will not get better if America withdraws from the world. They will get much worse, because the only thing keeping this country from being a disaster is the fact that it is central to the world order.
And the only people who want it to not be central to the world order, who want to destroy the functions of government and weaken us on the world stage, are the autocrats who find America to be a beacon that they wish their populations didn't have to look at.
America is not perfect and you can be Bernie or Tucker or Trump and argue that we have no business doing it, but it's a lot better for you, me, and the rest of the free world that America is in charge of maintaining order than to have no one in charge of that.
So my statement was not that Europe looks weak, but that Europe is already America's plaything. Only a traitor would hand it over to the enemy.
Not really sure I care if the neighbors across the water think we look weak just because we don’t want to defend them because they don’t want to be strong.
And bear in mind that doesn’t mean that we are weak…
Claiming to be strong without any displays of actual strength, both in soft and hard power, is a very typically weak behavior.
There's a lot of research on how the Allies helped move many Nazi war criminals to safe havens in other countries, help the remaining Nazis into positions in government and business in West Germany, used the remaining Nazis as intelligence networks, helped them organize into wild-eyed anti-Communist cells all over the world, and of course absorbed several Nazi scientists into research institutions in the US.
In a moment of madness Churchill put out a plan to hire the Wehrmacht after their defeat to go invade the real enemy, the Soviet Union.
Not helping Ukraine won’t solve any of that, though. Regardless of the US policy regarding Europe, I am willing to bet that military spending will keep ballooning now that the broligarchs are in power and fighting to redirect public spending to their pockets. Ultimately, I understand your sentiment, but this course of action will not lead to what you hope. If anything, everything will get worse because the people in power have no interest in fixing the issues you mentioned.
Why would you think that military spending would go up, given the tasks the executive has currently issued, and diplomatic direction indicated vis-a-vis other world military powers:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-pentagon-cuts-8-troops-budg...
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/13/trump-china-russia-military...
Representatives and senators get a lot of political credit for the military-industrial complex, as well.
I agree now things really matter but why should America be on the hook for wartime sacrifices when Europe couldn't be bothered to do the easy part in peace time? No one ever answers this simple question. They all just down vote me which is fine but if there is a rebuttal to this let me know.
I watched the Trump Zelensky show today. I dunno about you, but I detected a possible calculated confrontation. I don't think Vance is a good actor. He took it to 11 too quickly.
These days the media demands wartime strategy be played out in real time detail. How is that beneficial for actual strategy? To counter this, Trump may be leaning into the media circus by playing some sort of ambiguous good cop bad cop card. Smacking Zalensky while buttering Putin's muffins and arguing against world leaders, might be what's needed to penetrate Putin's emotional bubble. A kind of Trumpian trojan horse. Fascinating stuff. I know many here wouldn't give Trump such tactical credit, but if he were short on tactics he wouldn't have won two presidential elections.
It really looks like a carefully crafted narrative was planned and carried out to intentionally smear the current US administration.
I don't think there's any smearing attempt on Zalesky's part though. Contrary to Vance and Trump's assertion, Zalensky has thanked the US a lot of times. He wouldn't be wanting to smear the US. Trump did begin the meeting diplomatically, it was going fine, he even complemented Zalensky's outfit. Then JD opened his mouth!
It's hard to know for sure what's going on, which may be the point. The theatrics of argy-bargy is like a smokescreen.
I get that people got into this narrative.
What I don't get is that you're now supporting a new groups of tech billionaires influencing policy to get access to rare earth, to the point of threatening to annex USA allies like Canada, and Greenland, and doing deals with Russia to capitulate Ukraine.
Yet Americans seem to be cozy with this idea, and support it, when in reality it's the same. In fact, it's worse because it's not even a conspiracy theory, it's out in the open.
Imagine if Biden or Obama had the Black Rock folks behind them when they took the presidency, it would drive some folks up the wall. The same folks don't mind having the Twitter Guy, Bezos, Zuckerberg... Can you help me understand why?
He writes prolifically about Russia at https://www.intellinews.com/eastern-europe/
(and other places, at a lower URL path)
He believes that Russia's economy is not doing wonderfully, but not nearly as bad as the Western press says it is, and that whoever runs Russia is probably willing to put up with some pain a lot longer than Ukrainians can put up with no power no water no food, etc.
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40bneeditor%20russia%20...
Hard to tell, and I am not convinced if even the Kremlin has a good overview. In the end it does not matter that much. If Russia is really that robust then they wont stop attacking and if they are bluffing then Ukraine should not stop defending itself.
What fraction of foreign owned land is Chinese?