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Comment by lokar | Hacker News Reader

I'm serious. The Trump/MAGA view of foreign policy is that the US sits at the top, we owe friendship to no one. We engage with other nations transactionally, zero sum, with the US always getting more.

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Don't antropomorfize countries. Countries can't have friends. There are only common interests. Or opposite.

How about people?

I think it's legitimately hard to say. Most Americans know very little about international affairs, and care even less. I think interpreting broad opinion surveys can be fraught.

So, who do you count? everyone? only the informed? only people with strong views? Or do you assume people support the views and actions of the people they voted for?

I said "Trump/MAGA", which is the person and controlling faction in US politics

Countries act on people's emotions. Friends and enemies are a pretty good description of a lot of international politics, much better than a dispassionate analysis of interests.

This isn't the Trump/MAGA foreign policy, american exceptionalism is a century old and only gotten stronger. If anything MAGA is the full blown expression of this phenomenon.

The difference was that in the past US understood that you "rule" better when you surround yourself with enemies.

Now the policy is to dictate conditions left and right.

From the 2nd half of the 20th century until Trump there was the view that the US lead a large group of "western" democracies (in the sense that Japan is "western") in a loose coalition that was NOT zero sum. The US provided a lot of benefits to others, this collaboration produced an overall surplus[1], which the US got a large share of.

The new view seems to be based on a zero sum, transactional view of international affairs. In this mode every interaction must clearly benefit the US more than any other participant. We have to clearly "win" every time.

[1] and this is not even counting 2nd order "surplus" from things like no longer having to fight world wars.

The “western democracy” thing was always a stupid republican excuse to justify bankrupting the U.S. with foreign wars.

That’s always been the U.S. view of foreign policy. MAGA is just honest about it.

You may be right, but the honesty has destroyed an insane amount of good will and privilege that the US previously enjoyed (deservedly or not). To throw that all away for literally no benefit is . . . not good.

The U.S. never had any good will abroad, certainly not in my lifetime.

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