tbh the 3d chess ppl aren’t that numerous. Even the biggest trumpists are like so what and fuck you and blm to any complaint about trump. They don’t even bother trying to dress it up that much anymore
Trump's got an agenda, and it doesn't exactly "begin and end" with Reduce the Democrats to Crying Babies in The Timeout Corner, but a lot of his policies, foreign and domestic, do seem to point that way...
The rest seems to be driven by his love for Israel (which, to be honest, confuses Israel -- "And you're telling me we Don't have blackmail on this guy?")
Sardinia Piedmont was awesome: they were winning the Second War of Independence against Austria but they had to cede Nice (it should be Nizza, bitches) and Savoy to their “ally,” who then quit and made a separate peace deal with Austria. At least they got most of northern Italy, but Emperor Napoleon III of France does sound a bit Trumpy here.
For those that either don’t know or don’t yet care, NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001, evidently at Canada’s urging. If you lived through that, it mattered. Except for Trump and MAGA. Again, what desiccated, disgusting dishonest demented evil fuck he is.
Ridiculous. NATO's Article 5 was never intended to be used in response to a CIVILIAN attack on the US which falls under the purview of the FBI under US law.
WTF are you babbling about? A civilian attack? Planned, plotted and trained for in Afghanistan? I guess that why it was called the GLOBAL War on Terror. C'mon. Don't be a fucking tool. Facts are facts: NATO invoked article 5 to come to America's aid after 9/11. You have got to be a Russian bot.
The fact remains that "terrorism" within USA falls under FBI purview. Not the military, not NATO. The events of 9/11 were a transparent excuse to put the PNAC plan into play.
The military's quite willing to help out with intelligence on terrorism within America. Not policework, but intelligence? Oh, sure, they'll help with that. I agree it should be the FBI's job, in the main, but we Fact Check our Spy Agencies, which means double coverage.
Trump doesn't really seem to respect real laws all that much outside of plausible deniability when he is not the president, so of course he doesn't respect imaginary laws which are only enforceable via much stronger countries forcing compliance on much weaker countries.
On the flip side, International Law is doing a poor job on granting itself legitimacy when it keeps being used in increasingly convoluted ways to try and attack Israel via Lawfare when it clearly doesn't apply (trying to expand the definition of genocide as it is written in international law to apply to Israel for Gaza when it clearly does not apply) trying to claim jurisdiction over Israel in some international treaties that Israel never signed (international court of Justice is supposed to only apply to countries that sign, and for all the claim that the Palestinian Territories have signed, who is the responsible party to make sure that any treaty obligations that the Palestinian Territories have signed are being followed? For a treaty to be considered valid (regardless of if it has followed) some government has to be recognized as the responsible party and the Palestinian Territories don't have that, similarly to how it is not a functioning county. Hamas comes closer to ruling Gaza in a way that is considered to be a country even if despotic than the PLO has over the West Bank which makes any claims that Palestine is a country for any of these international agreements dubious, since everyone also refuses to consider Hamas a legitimate government for obvious reasons, so the claims of international jurisdiction over any of it looks more like a power grab by the international community to better attack Israel than any legitimate action. The UN's preoccupation with Israel to the extent that the vast majority of any denouncements for a country over the past 20 years have been of Israel instead of actual despotic regimes).
I am not saying I like everything Israel does, but it is obvious to anyone not a Muslim or religious leftist (yes, extreme leftism is a religion, they have clear core beliefs that no amount of evidence is able to sway all for a cause of utopia, i.e. heaven) that there are much bigger international concerns than a tiny country that seems more focused on trying to protect itself in a hostile region.
Please ignore the russian spam bot that responded. It's a pity the comment threads here are getting more probably bot responses and less polite and nuanced responses. Be well everyone -
I'm no fan of the Israeli government, and to be honest kind of skimmed the comment you're replying to, but: this sort of passive-aggressive "let's pretend people I disagree with are bots" response is low-quality crap.
Fuck you and your shabby hasbara. Nobody buys your bullshit, and everyone knows that "israel" was founded through terrorism, by terrorist gangs, that went on to become the "idf"...a terrorist army in an apartheid entity that, itself, has elected no fewer than three terrorists to it's highest office of Prime Minster.
"israel" regularly carrys out attacks on sovereign neighbous in direct violation of international law (six or seven nations in 2025? Who can even count t them all?), Carrie's out terror bombings and attacks in sovereign nations, extra-judicial assassinations, attacks on US servicemen and assets, theft of US nuclear materials and secrets and theft of 4 Billion dollars a year from US tax payers to fund the Palestinian genocide.
I’m sorry, raver, we don’t speak like that around here. Aaron’s comment was a bit long and plenty of readers will disagree, but “Fuck you” is not the way to begin a response.
I never said anything about personally supporting Israel, I just said that the UN and international court’s obsession with going after Israel over other clearly worse countries and human rights abuses discredits them.
Also, anything that starts with “everyone knows” is probably something wrong in the sam way that claims of something being settled science to shut down the debate are usually wrong.
Anyways, your comment seems to prove my point pretty well in that some people who come across as unhinged seem obsessed with Israel when there are bigger issues elsewhere, and International Law going along with those unhinged people does a lot to discredit international Law as a concept.
The problem there is “to abide by UN resolutions”. Sudan, Lebanon, Somalia, Rwanda among others have had worse human rights abuses than Israel (there are others too, but this is enough for my point), but UN’s obsession wIth Israel means that Israel has broken more UN resolutions than those countries. UN resolutions on their own without security counsel support are not binding, so Israel breaking them is meaningless anyways.
Lastly, I agree than the extermination of a nationality should be the biggest concern, which is why you should be focused on Sudan not Israel. There are more Palestinians today than there were 2 years ago, so why do you keep bringing up Israel and not the places where a nationality is about to actually be extinguished? Sudan is not the only place where a nationality is at larger risk of extermination than the Palestinians as well.
Simply state that you are a racial supremacist, own it like a proper Nazi, because this pussy-footing around pretended misunderstanding and legal interpretations is just more Zionist circle-jerking.
It was oddly satisfying to see Jeff Maurer call out the roster of Russia's military humiliations, though I'd have enjoyed it even more had there been more space (and more hilarious Maurerisms) given to the Russo-Japanese War. You just have to love it when a pathetic fleet of coal-burning antiques takes seven months (!) getting from Latvia to Tsushima for its appointment with a comically epic ass-kicking, going straight to the bottom in a little over 24 hours. Yep, Trump sure has cozied up to a great choice of ally while ditching the ones he's got.
See "The Fleet That Had to Die" by Richard Hough for an account of perhaps the most lopsided naval blowout in history.
"Trump is virtually the only figure in American politics who thinks it’s smart to ally with the country that lost the Cold War, the Afghan War, World War I, the Russo-Japanese War, the Crimean War, and basically any conflict that didn’t involve a foreign army charging into the vast Russian wilderness wearing light windbreakers."
This is fantastic. It really CANNOT be overstated how bad Russia actually is at war. The Russians famously beat Napoleon but until he invaded he absolutely slapped them around too. Austerlitz is his best win by most historians' accounts iirc.
Huh...and yet Russia has beaten every international volunteer, three NATO-equipped and trained armies since 2022, and every wonderwaffe that USA and NATO can throw at it...and USA is BEGGING for a peace deal. Facts.
When we speak of military incompetence, we need to remember that Americans spent TRILLIONS of dollars and twenty years to replace the Taliban with.. the Taliban, and left them millions of dollars of weapons, aircraft and equipment, to boot.
That's TWICE as long as it took USA to lose Vietnam.
Afghanistan and Iraq were different conflicts with different costs and outcomes. You can’t attach the whole price tag to Afghanistan and also claim only the outcome of Afghanistan.
We did Afghanistan on the cheap using warlord proxies. We didn’t achieve any lasting change, but we did deny its use as a nest for terrorism for a good while.
We did Iraq differently because of the Afghanistan experience. That had big downsides as well, but the world’s most powerful military managed to utterly reinvent itself as a counterinsurgency force in about 10 years. I’ve never seen any comparably-sized bureaucracy evolve so fast before. We won and installed a government that, at the moment, doesn’t look so much worse than our own.
Well, let's see the score...20 years, and Trillions spent to replace The Taliban with The Taliban, and 20 years and Trillions spent on a war crime predicated on known false pretenses in Iraq that has resulted in MORE Iranian influence in Iraq, now trending Shia...
That's two losses by anyone's accounting...especially the Million or so innocent Iraqis who died at the hands of US and UK war criminals.
Monocles are for non-binocular problems -- generally inspecting for forgeries and what not, where you're looking at fine details. This is a "not normal use", unlike say eyeglasses, where we expect people to use them constantly.
“I think that the transatlantic alliance has been incredibly beneficial to the United States”
I don’t. I think after the Soviet Union dissolved, mission creep set in, and it turned into an entangling alliance engaged in all kinds of things it had no business doing, and mostly on the back of the American taxpayer.
I think NATO is still very important. It’s just that the US is no longer really needed in it. I totally agree that it’s appropriate for us to tell Europe they need to take the lead because we have our hands full with China, and Russia isn’t the global threat that it used to be.
Nevertheless, I think there are more noble ways to bow out than invading Greenland.
The point about NATO being like Santa is low key the most depressing analogy Ive heard in awhile. But the idea that it can spring back under a diffrent administration is kinda the silver lining here. Alliances are really just vibes backed by credibility, and credibility can be rebuilt faster than ppl think.
I’ve been subscribing for quite a while now, but this is the first piece that I’ve been motivated to thank you for. As a big believer for decades in what NATO does (did, I guess) to avoid another world wide war, this was one of the most accessible and well laid out description of what these clowns are throwing away. I know, just a comedian and we shouldn’t take it too seriously, but in this case, I did. Thanks.
Just In Time did FAR more to stop a world war than NATO ever did. Tying economies together such that all the businesses would fold without ever-increasing ties to the "globalists" was a masterplan for Peace.
Agreed, I was only commenting on this piece, but in another of Jeff’s posts I commented that the primary damage to the post world war 2 US prosperity and security was the destruction of our trading alliances and worldwide alliances. I still have lived long enough to watch how NATO has effectively kept the horrors of the 20th century from repeating. As bad as the Ukraine situation is, fear of a unified NATO response has been a deterrent protecting the smaller members on the border.
Nuland killed Pax Americana when she decided to weaponize the world financial system against Russia (sanctions would bring them to heel in two months).
Romania and Moldova have both had very... fucked elections. Look them up, it's been like a true crime show. "This popular guy got arrested!" "That one's not allowed to Run!" "Anyone pro-Russia must be disenfranchised!"
It is actually of interest to me to hear a Russian perspective on the issue of American decline that does not key on Trump’s acquiescence to Putin’s justification for the first major war for territory in Europe since the end of WW II. I can certainly see where the downplaying of the effectiveness of the NATO alliance is germain to that argument. You are absolutely correct that the sanctions did expose the weakness of US ability to force compliance, but the serious damage didn’t come until this administration began to systematically weaken America’s security and trade alliances.
All said, however, without your comment I would never have put an undersecretary of state’s idea to sanction an enemy agressor state as the cause of system wide collapse!
This is NOT a Russian Perspective, this is scuttlebutt from American strategists. The NATO alliance has been very effective at giving America vassal states that are essentially de-militarized, but in a multipolar world, America must safeguard itself first. There's plans for AFTER, but first we must change a whole hell of a lot of things.
Russia stood tall against the sanctions, which is the real problem. If Nuland had pulled the "S Bomb" and Russia had collapsed, the world order would have continued in the unipolar manner. But Russia proved that Western Sanctions more or less did nothing.
The Santa Claus analogy is unexpectedly sharp. International law really does collapse when the enforcement mechanizm is just mutual agreement. I remember when experts dismissed Trump's first term NATO skepticism as bluster, but watching European allies move troops to protect Greenland from the US feels like crossing the Rubicon. Makes you wonder if alliances ever had teeth or if they just benfit from nobody testing them too aggressively.
NATO is not going anywhere, Russia is never invading Estonia, Trump is just re-arranging the furniture in his usual bullying way regardless of the opinion of the interior designer consultants. The least offended diplomat of the entire Davos shindig was the Secretary-General of NATO. We will contribute our share of the NATO defense budget through next-gen defense systems on Greenland and will not give two hoots who otherwise governs it.
And if I hear one more time Trump is doing anything to distract from the maybe someday revelations of the Epstein investigation (other commenter), I am going to puke.
Nato is dead as a doornail. You do realize "free and fair elections" are included in the Treaty? Trump can leave at any time, without having to pay up. Europe broke it first, and not just Romania (and Moldova), citing France as well (and probably Germany, with the afd).
I don’t think we will leave NATO though. Trump will still want to keep Russia honest. Yeah we pay 70% of NATO’s total cost but most of that double counts what we spend or would spend separately. We just force other members to increase their share and we save the difference.
Dear commentator.....have you read any of Thomas Fazi's writtings on the subject of EU/NATO unity as seen thru the eyes of the individual nations that partake in EU/NATO. If so you would realize that the sovereignty of many nations want thier independance back. Think of it like: "out with the old" (unipolarity) and "in with the neo-new" of multipolarity.
I'm not a Trump fan and not rooting for NATO's demise, but Europe has been 'hiding behind our skirts' for 80 years now. Shouldn't Europe as a bloc be strong enough on their own to counter Russia or any other threat they would face? I do wish they would take the lead in their own security with US involvement only as a last resort.
Part of the problem is that, in today's connected world, Russian and China don't need to physically invade in order to destabilize us. Hell, they took out the Polish-Lithianian Commonwealth through election interference, and that was centuries before botnets on Twitter.
The physical front in Ukraine is just one dimension of the conflict, and one in which we could be scoring an easy win--not just for Europe, but domestically as well. Plus, letting Putin play empire only gives the other probably adversary across the Pacific ideas as to what is and isn't acceptable, opening the door for future conflicts with even more direct economic impacts.
The physical front that happened to include the Nordstream pipeline was just one reason why Europe should want out of any alliance that includes the United States. (NATO training exercises were ongoing, nobody flagged "Ukraine" got to be around without being constantly monitored, and deepwater explosives are a tricky business. Russia could do it, America could do it (Navy Seals)... pretty much nobody else has demonstrated the training/capability).
These and other internet comment boards are at least one front in Russia and China's attempts to destabilize Western democracies. Please don't engage the bots.
I think it's worth occasionally speaking sense for the benefit of actual humans reading who might be on the fence, but yes, it's important not to lose oneself in the bottomless pit of misinformation that is the modern internet.
The verb tense is important and correct here: "I think that the transatlantic alliance has been incredibly beneficial." Once upon a time Europeans needed protection from Communism. Now, they are purchasing it all on their own by the bucketful.
Trumps speeches and social media posts the last few days have convinced me: the man has lost his mind.
Some people will say he's playing 3-D chess to distract from the eventual release of the Epstein files. I say no.
The only one with Trump derangement syndrome is Trump himself because he is deranged. He's not kidding folks.
He really believes that shit.
It's time for the straight jacket.....
tbh the 3d chess ppl aren’t that numerous. Even the biggest trumpists are like so what and fuck you and blm to any complaint about trump. They don’t even bother trying to dress it up that much anymore
You should listen to more military analysts, and get prepared to hear about the demise of Pax Americana
Trump's got an agenda, and it doesn't exactly "begin and end" with Reduce the Democrats to Crying Babies in The Timeout Corner, but a lot of his policies, foreign and domestic, do seem to point that way...
The rest seems to be driven by his love for Israel (which, to be honest, confuses Israel -- "And you're telling me we Don't have blackmail on this guy?")
I have spent time in that Timeout Corner.
It certainly isn't the Champagne Room For Winners.....
sounds like another topic or thread here
Sardinia Piedmont was awesome: they were winning the Second War of Independence against Austria but they had to cede Nice (it should be Nizza, bitches) and Savoy to their “ally,” who then quit and made a separate peace deal with Austria. At least they got most of northern Italy, but Emperor Napoleon III of France does sound a bit Trumpy here.
I am a giant nerd.
Maybe the real NATO was the friends we made along the way.
For those that either don’t know or don’t yet care, NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001, evidently at Canada’s urging. If you lived through that, it mattered. Except for Trump and MAGA. Again, what desiccated, disgusting dishonest demented evil fuck he is.
Ridiculous. NATO's Article 5 was never intended to be used in response to a CIVILIAN attack on the US which falls under the purview of the FBI under US law.
The FBI, not fucking NATO.
WTF are you babbling about? A civilian attack? Planned, plotted and trained for in Afghanistan? I guess that why it was called the GLOBAL War on Terror. C'mon. Don't be a fucking tool. Facts are facts: NATO invoked article 5 to come to America's aid after 9/11. You have got to be a Russian bot.
Russian? What the fuck has any of this to do with Russia?
You Americans and your zany phobias..Gong Show.
The fact remains that "terrorism" within USA falls under FBI purview. Not the military, not NATO. The events of 9/11 were a transparent excuse to put the PNAC plan into play.
The military's quite willing to help out with intelligence on terrorism within America. Not policework, but intelligence? Oh, sure, they'll help with that. I agree it should be the FBI's job, in the main, but we Fact Check our Spy Agencies, which means double coverage.
Are you still trying to pretend that USA and "israel" didn't pull off the events of 9/11?
Have an infant explain it to you.
Trump doesn't really seem to respect real laws all that much outside of plausible deniability when he is not the president, so of course he doesn't respect imaginary laws which are only enforceable via much stronger countries forcing compliance on much weaker countries.
On the flip side, International Law is doing a poor job on granting itself legitimacy when it keeps being used in increasingly convoluted ways to try and attack Israel via Lawfare when it clearly doesn't apply (trying to expand the definition of genocide as it is written in international law to apply to Israel for Gaza when it clearly does not apply) trying to claim jurisdiction over Israel in some international treaties that Israel never signed (international court of Justice is supposed to only apply to countries that sign, and for all the claim that the Palestinian Territories have signed, who is the responsible party to make sure that any treaty obligations that the Palestinian Territories have signed are being followed? For a treaty to be considered valid (regardless of if it has followed) some government has to be recognized as the responsible party and the Palestinian Territories don't have that, similarly to how it is not a functioning county. Hamas comes closer to ruling Gaza in a way that is considered to be a country even if despotic than the PLO has over the West Bank which makes any claims that Palestine is a country for any of these international agreements dubious, since everyone also refuses to consider Hamas a legitimate government for obvious reasons, so the claims of international jurisdiction over any of it looks more like a power grab by the international community to better attack Israel than any legitimate action. The UN's preoccupation with Israel to the extent that the vast majority of any denouncements for a country over the past 20 years have been of Israel instead of actual despotic regimes).
I am not saying I like everything Israel does, but it is obvious to anyone not a Muslim or religious leftist (yes, extreme leftism is a religion, they have clear core beliefs that no amount of evidence is able to sway all for a cause of utopia, i.e. heaven) that there are much bigger international concerns than a tiny country that seems more focused on trying to protect itself in a hostile region.
Please ignore the russian spam bot that responded. It's a pity the comment threads here are getting more probably bot responses and less polite and nuanced responses. Be well everyone -
I'm no fan of the Israeli government, and to be honest kind of skimmed the comment you're replying to, but: this sort of passive-aggressive "let's pretend people I disagree with are bots" response is low-quality crap.
I think you wouldn't know a "bot" if it swept your rug, and probably even less likely to recognize a "Russian"..do you even have a passport?
Fuck you and your shabby hasbara. Nobody buys your bullshit, and everyone knows that "israel" was founded through terrorism, by terrorist gangs, that went on to become the "idf"...a terrorist army in an apartheid entity that, itself, has elected no fewer than three terrorists to it's highest office of Prime Minster.
"israel" regularly carrys out attacks on sovereign neighbous in direct violation of international law (six or seven nations in 2025? Who can even count t them all?), Carrie's out terror bombings and attacks in sovereign nations, extra-judicial assassinations, attacks on US servicemen and assets, theft of US nuclear materials and secrets and theft of 4 Billion dollars a year from US tax payers to fund the Palestinian genocide.
I’m sorry, raver, we don’t speak like that around here. Aaron’s comment was a bit long and plenty of readers will disagree, but “Fuck you” is not the way to begin a response.
Fuck off Jay, enough of your whitewashing of war crimes.
I never said anything about personally supporting Israel, I just said that the UN and international court’s obsession with going after Israel over other clearly worse countries and human rights abuses discredits them.
Also, anything that starts with “everyone knows” is probably something wrong in the sam way that claims of something being settled science to shut down the debate are usually wrong.
Anyways, your comment seems to prove my point pretty well in that some people who come across as unhinged seem obsessed with Israel when there are bigger issues elsewhere, and International Law going along with those unhinged people does a lot to discredit international Law as a concept.
I appreciate the restraint of your reply.
Oh, can you name one of these countries with a worse record of abuses and failures to abide by UN resolutions?
What is a "bigger issue" today than the genocide of an entire nationality?
I sense a great deal of intellectual dishonesty in your response, quite typical of a hasbara troll..
Ethnic cleansing in Israel, proper, is confined to the removal of Eritrean and Ethiopian immigrants. Yes, they are racist SOBs.
Oh? What are "Israel's" borders? It seems that "israel" is whatever Zionists can grab by force, and changes daily.
Israel's borders are where arabs are citizens, not the "occupied territories."
The problem there is “to abide by UN resolutions”. Sudan, Lebanon, Somalia, Rwanda among others have had worse human rights abuses than Israel (there are others too, but this is enough for my point), but UN’s obsession wIth Israel means that Israel has broken more UN resolutions than those countries. UN resolutions on their own without security counsel support are not binding, so Israel breaking them is meaningless anyways.
Lastly, I agree than the extermination of a nationality should be the biggest concern, which is why you should be focused on Sudan not Israel. There are more Palestinians today than there were 2 years ago, so why do you keep bringing up Israel and not the places where a nationality is about to actually be extinguished? Sudan is not the only place where a nationality is at larger risk of extermination than the Palestinians as well.
Spare us your cowardly hasbara, Aaron.
Simply state that you are a racial supremacist, own it like a proper Nazi, because this pussy-footing around pretended misunderstanding and legal interpretations is just more Zionist circle-jerking.
Nobody buys your bullshit anymore.
"israel" delenda est
Sudan is a civil war. Palestine is an occupation. Even a child graps the difference, perhaps have an infant explain it to you?
Read the relevant international law as regards occupation and obligations.
Educate yourself, you sound a fool.
Is Yemen an occupation then? What's the difference between "Um, we won the war," and an occupation?
It was oddly satisfying to see Jeff Maurer call out the roster of Russia's military humiliations, though I'd have enjoyed it even more had there been more space (and more hilarious Maurerisms) given to the Russo-Japanese War. You just have to love it when a pathetic fleet of coal-burning antiques takes seven months (!) getting from Latvia to Tsushima for its appointment with a comically epic ass-kicking, going straight to the bottom in a little over 24 hours. Yep, Trump sure has cozied up to a great choice of ally while ditching the ones he's got.
See "The Fleet That Had to Die" by Richard Hough for an account of perhaps the most lopsided naval blowout in history.
"Trump is virtually the only figure in American politics who thinks it’s smart to ally with the country that lost the Cold War, the Afghan War, World War I, the Russo-Japanese War, the Crimean War, and basically any conflict that didn’t involve a foreign army charging into the vast Russian wilderness wearing light windbreakers."
This is fantastic. It really CANNOT be overstated how bad Russia actually is at war. The Russians famously beat Napoleon but until he invaded he absolutely slapped them around too. Austerlitz is his best win by most historians' accounts iirc.
This is good comedy, sure, and I love to see Putin’s nation belittled, but if we’re being serious, Russia really did amazing service in WW2.
Huh...and yet Russia has beaten every international volunteer, three NATO-equipped and trained armies since 2022, and every wonderwaffe that USA and NATO can throw at it...and USA is BEGGING for a peace deal. Facts.
When we speak of military incompetence, we need to remember that Americans spent TRILLIONS of dollars and twenty years to replace the Taliban with.. the Taliban, and left them millions of dollars of weapons, aircraft and equipment, to boot.
That's TWICE as long as it took USA to lose Vietnam.
Afghanistan and Iraq were different conflicts with different costs and outcomes. You can’t attach the whole price tag to Afghanistan and also claim only the outcome of Afghanistan.
We did Afghanistan on the cheap using warlord proxies. We didn’t achieve any lasting change, but we did deny its use as a nest for terrorism for a good while.
We did Iraq differently because of the Afghanistan experience. That had big downsides as well, but the world’s most powerful military managed to utterly reinvent itself as a counterinsurgency force in about 10 years. I’ve never seen any comparably-sized bureaucracy evolve so fast before. We won and installed a government that, at the moment, doesn’t look so much worse than our own.
The current afghani terrorism, WAR CRIMES, are being committed by the WEST (Israel, America, you name it) against IRAN.
Seems getting out of Afghanistan was better for Western State Sponsored Terrorism! Who would have thunk?
Well, let's see the score...20 years, and Trillions spent to replace The Taliban with The Taliban, and 20 years and Trillions spent on a war crime predicated on known false pretenses in Iraq that has resulted in MORE Iranian influence in Iraq, now trending Shia...
That's two losses by anyone's accounting...especially the Million or so innocent Iraqis who died at the hands of US and UK war criminals.
Oh, and the other pressing issue: why did men wear a monocle?
Did only one eye need help?
I say "men" because I've never seen a woman wear one in all those old WW2 movies.....
Monocles are for non-binocular problems -- generally inspecting for forgeries and what not, where you're looking at fine details. This is a "not normal use", unlike say eyeglasses, where we expect people to use them constantly.
Thank you very much!
So basically they're like reading glasses, only cooler.
Drip before all
“I think that the transatlantic alliance has been incredibly beneficial to the United States”
I don’t. I think after the Soviet Union dissolved, mission creep set in, and it turned into an entangling alliance engaged in all kinds of things it had no business doing, and mostly on the back of the American taxpayer.
I don’t mourn its passing at all.
I think NATO is still very important. It’s just that the US is no longer really needed in it. I totally agree that it’s appropriate for us to tell Europe they need to take the lead because we have our hands full with China, and Russia isn’t the global threat that it used to be.
Nevertheless, I think there are more noble ways to bow out than invading Greenland.
The point about NATO being like Santa is low key the most depressing analogy Ive heard in awhile. But the idea that it can spring back under a diffrent administration is kinda the silver lining here. Alliances are really just vibes backed by credibility, and credibility can be rebuilt faster than ppl think.
Pax Americana is dead. Our credibility has gone negative, and we're not getting it back.
Bonus: it died under Biden's Administration, when Nuland thought Russia could be taken out by 2 months of sanctions.
I’ve been subscribing for quite a while now, but this is the first piece that I’ve been motivated to thank you for. As a big believer for decades in what NATO does (did, I guess) to avoid another world wide war, this was one of the most accessible and well laid out description of what these clowns are throwing away. I know, just a comedian and we shouldn’t take it too seriously, but in this case, I did. Thanks.
Just In Time did FAR more to stop a world war than NATO ever did. Tying economies together such that all the businesses would fold without ever-increasing ties to the "globalists" was a masterplan for Peace.
Shame Pax Americana is dead, isn't it?
Agreed, I was only commenting on this piece, but in another of Jeff’s posts I commented that the primary damage to the post world war 2 US prosperity and security was the destruction of our trading alliances and worldwide alliances. I still have lived long enough to watch how NATO has effectively kept the horrors of the 20th century from repeating. As bad as the Ukraine situation is, fear of a unified NATO response has been a deterrent protecting the smaller members on the border.
Nuland killed Pax Americana when she decided to weaponize the world financial system against Russia (sanctions would bring them to heel in two months).
Romania and Moldova have both had very... fucked elections. Look them up, it's been like a true crime show. "This popular guy got arrested!" "That one's not allowed to Run!" "Anyone pro-Russia must be disenfranchised!"
It is actually of interest to me to hear a Russian perspective on the issue of American decline that does not key on Trump’s acquiescence to Putin’s justification for the first major war for territory in Europe since the end of WW II. I can certainly see where the downplaying of the effectiveness of the NATO alliance is germain to that argument. You are absolutely correct that the sanctions did expose the weakness of US ability to force compliance, but the serious damage didn’t come until this administration began to systematically weaken America’s security and trade alliances.
All said, however, without your comment I would never have put an undersecretary of state’s idea to sanction an enemy agressor state as the cause of system wide collapse!
This is NOT a Russian Perspective, this is scuttlebutt from American strategists. The NATO alliance has been very effective at giving America vassal states that are essentially de-militarized, but in a multipolar world, America must safeguard itself first. There's plans for AFTER, but first we must change a whole hell of a lot of things.
Russia stood tall against the sanctions, which is the real problem. If Nuland had pulled the "S Bomb" and Russia had collapsed, the world order would have continued in the unipolar manner. But Russia proved that Western Sanctions more or less did nothing.
The Santa Claus analogy is unexpectedly sharp. International law really does collapse when the enforcement mechanizm is just mutual agreement. I remember when experts dismissed Trump's first term NATO skepticism as bluster, but watching European allies move troops to protect Greenland from the US feels like crossing the Rubicon. Makes you wonder if alliances ever had teeth or if they just benfit from nobody testing them too aggressively.
NATO is not going anywhere, Russia is never invading Estonia, Trump is just re-arranging the furniture in his usual bullying way regardless of the opinion of the interior designer consultants. The least offended diplomat of the entire Davos shindig was the Secretary-General of NATO. We will contribute our share of the NATO defense budget through next-gen defense systems on Greenland and will not give two hoots who otherwise governs it.
And if I hear one more time Trump is doing anything to distract from the maybe someday revelations of the Epstein investigation (other commenter), I am going to puke.
Nato is dead as a doornail. You do realize "free and fair elections" are included in the Treaty? Trump can leave at any time, without having to pay up. Europe broke it first, and not just Romania (and Moldova), citing France as well (and probably Germany, with the afd).
I don’t think we will leave NATO though. Trump will still want to keep Russia honest. Yeah we pay 70% of NATO’s total cost but most of that double counts what we spend or would spend separately. We just force other members to increase their share and we save the difference.
Russia in NATO, and kept honest, though? Russia is far more Germany's natural ally than America is. Tech from germany, resources from Russia.
Dear commentator.....have you read any of Thomas Fazi's writtings on the subject of EU/NATO unity as seen thru the eyes of the individual nations that partake in EU/NATO. If so you would realize that the sovereignty of many nations want thier independance back. Think of it like: "out with the old" (unipolarity) and "in with the neo-new" of multipolarity.
cheers
I'm not a Trump fan and not rooting for NATO's demise, but Europe has been 'hiding behind our skirts' for 80 years now. Shouldn't Europe as a bloc be strong enough on their own to counter Russia or any other threat they would face? I do wish they would take the lead in their own security with US involvement only as a last resort.
Part of the problem is that, in today's connected world, Russian and China don't need to physically invade in order to destabilize us. Hell, they took out the Polish-Lithianian Commonwealth through election interference, and that was centuries before botnets on Twitter.
The physical front in Ukraine is just one dimension of the conflict, and one in which we could be scoring an easy win--not just for Europe, but domestically as well. Plus, letting Putin play empire only gives the other probably adversary across the Pacific ideas as to what is and isn't acceptable, opening the door for future conflicts with even more direct economic impacts.
The physical front that happened to include the Nordstream pipeline was just one reason why Europe should want out of any alliance that includes the United States. (NATO training exercises were ongoing, nobody flagged "Ukraine" got to be around without being constantly monitored, and deepwater explosives are a tricky business. Russia could do it, America could do it (Navy Seals)... pretty much nobody else has demonstrated the training/capability).
These and other internet comment boards are at least one front in Russia and China's attempts to destabilize Western democracies. Please don't engage the bots.
I think it's worth occasionally speaking sense for the benefit of actual humans reading who might be on the fence, but yes, it's important not to lose oneself in the bottomless pit of misinformation that is the modern internet.
How could you score an "easy win" in Ukraine? Be specific.
Hiding? From who? From what? Russia? Nobody believes that, Russia has been trying to join NATO since before Putin came along..
What is this fantasy of "protecting Europe"? It's laughable.
Russia wants to ally with Germany, but probably drive the ship as well.
The verb tense is important and correct here: "I think that the transatlantic alliance has been incredibly beneficial." Once upon a time Europeans needed protection from Communism. Now, they are purchasing it all on their own by the bucketful.
Social democracy is not communism. Not even close.