Feel like if it was another country they’d be sanctions or something already.
What the rest of the world is mainly doing is jockeying for position while watching America rapidly lose global reserve currency status.
It is happening far more quickly than I think the vast majority of people without privileged information imagined. Trump wants a weakened dollar and is getting it. No one wants this to happen overnight; the instability this process is allowing and will cause is risky enough. Everyone wants to avoid simmering global conflict erupting into WW3. Well maybe Putin is up for it, I don’t know. The US is a belligerent ally, and has the biggest military in the world so it is about treading lightly and hopefully preparing.
It is about minimising risk, eating shit giving in to Trump’s pathetic demands for fealty, while preparing for the new economic order to emerge. America cannot pay its military without everyone trusting it enough to buy its debt. America cannot pay its debts without its military supporting the dollar. So it is a tricky unwinding of decades of geo-political norms. The world cannot wait to see who America votes for every four years for global stability, so it is done. It is clear to me that very few Americans I came into contact with online ever appreciated this balancing act, or how important their vast military spending was to their country’s wealth post ww2.
I feel bad for the average non-Trump voting American because as a Brit I can tell you that there is always resentment that plays out once a country loses that reserve currency status. A people can make a mistake, but a second Trump vote is unforgivable. It is America throwing itself off a cliff economically, over the longer term. Billionaires are clearly getting stuck into filling their boots - this collapse is going to make some people very rich.
As a Trump-hating American working in defense, I always tried to tell people that our economic dominance was enforced with the barrel of a gun. Friends working in international relations would also reference books like “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” that also pointed to usage of the CIA and international lending terms to enrich ourselves at the expanse of the 3rd world, especially Latin America. I completely agree that a capricious, bi-polar US is an untenable world leader.
But in general, it’s very hard to get most Americans to care about our relationships and interactions with the rest of the world, much less acknowledge the ways we are dependent on it. There is some US-centric vanity involved, as well as some stubborn ignorance due to never interacting with the rest of the world at all. But I think in part it’s also due to the hyper competitive nature of simply trying to live in the US, such that there is no brainspace for anything not directly affecting you. Stressors include corporate expectations that everyone should live to work, so many people a few paychecks away from losing their homes and lifestyle with no social safety net, the struggle to afford to live in areas with good schools for your kids, etc etc. In some ways, I’m hopeful that losing global pre-eminence could make life easier for us, especially if it brings about government reform (I don’t mean the MAGA version of this, obviously).
China, the obvious successor to American influence, assuming a more commanding role on the world stage is a mixed bag. On one hand, they certainly prize stability above almost everything, and an authoritarian state run by technocrats indeed seems more effective at addressing climate change than a Corporatocracy that profits from destroying the planet. On the other, there’s not even acknowledgement of unethical practices (e.g.: labor conditions in Chinese companies in DRC, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) when there is no free press. As the US spread it’s influence and democracy after WWII, I kind of worry that the entire world may be forced to get in line with the CCP.
what are they going to do? look at what happens in the UN when the US and Israel the only ones who vote a certain way and nobody gives a shit
There are 200 countries and the US is one relatively small, isolated pocket hurting mostly themselves.
US problems benefit their rivals immensely and are influencing their former allies to become more independent and form new local alliances; there’s no benefit to either to long jump into one isolated hornet’s nest.
Sanctions are specifically difficult against the US because 1) they’re largely hurting themselves, most countries don’t agree the US is doing the wrong thing about Palestine/ foreign/other policy to warrant sanctions and 2) the US still has so much rapidly dwindling legacy political and financial/banking influence that sanctions won’t make much of an immediate impact if an issue to sanction was agreed upon.
If your dog starts defecating on the floor and rolling around in it, you clean up your dog.
If your neighbor starts defecating on their floor and rolling around in it, well…
putin benefits from countries becoming isolationists to some sort. so russia can eventually take over ukraine, and move onto other former soviet block countries.
…you call for a welfare check on them? I mean, clearly there’s some mental issues going on with your neighbor.
But what are you going to do? Go over there yourself??? Whoa whoa whoa whoa! Easy buddy. This is America. They probably have a gun, and are already proven to be mentally unstable! Plus, they’re covered in shit! I just cleaned my dog. I don’t want to smell MORE shit!
That’s basically what has happened.
Political leaders and journalists have visited and done “welfare checks” on the US, and come to the same conclusions you just have.
The last time the US enacted global tariffs, it created the Great Depression, which hit the entire globe and was one of the major contributing factors to the Nazis rise to power. What happens here might only be hurting Americans and killing American minorities at the moment, but the psychotic demagogue in charge here will have real international repercussions soon enough. Honestly though, I think the tariffs have done what international sanctions couldn’t do, which is help convince some of Trump’s cult that he’s the one hurting them. Sanctions would just let him blame the outside world.
You should keep in mind, it will take time for everybody else to truly divest themselves of the orange shit-gibbon and all the corporations based here, and that means time in which the fan spraying shit can turn towards Europe.
And when your neighbor starts defecating in your house and also all your other neighbors houses and also onto their own wife and children in plain view of everyone else, daring them to do something all while their armies and aircraft carriers point in every direction including at themselves?
I think the answer is still you do nothing. But man would I like to be wrong on this one.
Do you mean Russia? Their attacks have resulted in external military buildup near borders, NATO assurances, local military alliances.
Russia’s aggression directly harms and threatens other nearby countries.
Different measures for different circumstances.
thier propaganda machine mostly is working better than thier military. backed right wing governments into supporting things russia wants to happen(anti-immigration, wokeness, racism,etc)
Sure. I’m not trying to say the US and Russia are equivalent in the volume nor nature of how they implement imperialist and domestic violence (though there are increasingly more similarities as of late). But I perceive the US as a crazed madman with as many arms as Shiva and has amassed more weapons than anyone else, with a gun pointed at the head of everyone in every direction, including at it’s own head. I also view other imperialist nations as having a similar psychosis going on, just with a few less arms and very different origin stories as to how they got there.
I’m just saying telling everybody it’s solely up to the nation to clean up its own mess is, while correct, way too simplistic. I admittedly don’t know how we solve it though, and I’m cynical enough to believe most of us don’t have an answer, and even if we did, we wouldn’t have a strong enough consensus and momentum to pull it off. Hence why I believe nothing will be done.
We, the citizens in these imperialist nations are both slaves and slave masters, with guns pointed to our heads, by both nation states and corporations, they don’t just control whether we live or die, they hold our hearts in their hands, ready to squeeze out our humanity and empathy at their discretion. We in turn wield the whip at our own slaves in those countries in which we colonize. We all have this done to us and do it unto others until we look in the mirror and mistake the monsters we have become as the best humanity has to offer.
EDIT: spelling, grammar, wording.
Thanks. I appreciate simple, correct solutions and I understand why emotional investment and habit makes those solutions difficult to accept and implement.
If you take a step outside of your situation, it will quickly become apparent that the grip you believe others hold you in is largely insubstantial and based on empty proclamations and threats. Magnates can plead for your attention, but you don’t have to give it to them(climb a mountain, play video games), your government can scream for your taxes and you don’t have to hand them over(IRS form 2555, foreign earned income exclusion).
The world is huge and no matter how important someone demands you think they are, you don’t have to.
Look, I wish I had your viewpoint, but truth be told I have no plan of leaving my homeland. Imperialist fascsism comes for us all eventually, and that’s kind of my point. You, me, all of us, actually have got nowhere to run. You either fight or succumb. But my take on life is that I live solely to spite my enemies, not because I believe I can beat them, but because I refuse to make victory easy for them. Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps we can win this fight and solve the climate crisis, but I’ll not get my hopes up. Only spite remains that stirs me from my bed in the morning now.
In this way, my enemies control me, they define me. I am nothing without them now. Such is the horror of imperialist fascism, they do not relent, they are never satiated, and they do not ignore any corner of the world. And so it consumes me.
Eventually the world’s problems end up at your doorstep, whether you had a hand in creating them or not. I just refuse to look away.
I hear you and understand your resignation; tender despair is the most common result of whirlwind threats and proclamations.
You don’t have to leave your spite behind, and I’m not telling you to; I’m letting people know that if they want to live for themselves and others rather than dying for their enemies, it’s possible and I’m here to help.
Yeah, I can’t trust you. Your community you founded is some strange travel blog that gives off marketing vibes. If you try to sell me something, I immediately am suspicious. Sorry, blocking you now.
dog if you think the US is “relatively small”
look at what Nazi Germany, an even “smaller” country did – it started a world war and nearly took over an entire continent.
the fascist US, with a much larger army, is an existential threat to the world.
The US is an existential threat to Canada and countries in the Americas that MAGA has bones to pick with. Maybe also Iran. The vast majority of the world is mostly safe, because America has no interest and/or capability to start shit there. For your Germany example, Hitler made it clear exactly what he wanted to do in Mein Kampf.
To us Europeans, the US also feels like a threat because it means an ally less against Russia.
You’re extremely naïve if you think the rest of the world is safe.
So the US is a threat because… it might not help Europe? That’s not really how the word “threat” works, setting aside how Russia isn’t even a military threat to non-Ukraine Europe in the first place assuming the EU’s mutual defense mechanism holds.
Alright, I see you’re too naïve then. Bye!
In war, if it’s not an ally it’s an enemy.
If the us is not an ally it’s an enemy.
That’s a threat.
That’s the fucking reality of real war. So if shit hits the fan yes. The US is a threat to the EU.
In war, if it’s not an ally it’s an enemy.
Uh… no?
The US is small on a global scale (in terms of population) but adequately equipped to destroy the world.
The third most populated country is small in terms of population?
When there are 195 countries and they only make up 4% of the global population? Yes, that’s small relative to the rest of the world.
The US looks bigger and more influential from the inside. Its tantrums look tiny and rambunctious from out here.
Irritating and embarrassing, but largely self-contained so far.
i think the most dangerous mistake one can make is to underestimate the power of a military budget that’s almost half that of the world’s military budget.
such mistakes can be made only once before the country gets couped or taken hostage by the US.
in these times i think it’s important to band together and set aside our differences!
What do you expect other countries to do? A preemptive strike?
To build up their armies and get independent from American, Russian, and Chinese interests.
And to undermine fascism and its (potential) allies at every opportunity possible.
I don’t think you understand where US military power was coming from. It was not just the money, it was the ability to project that power easily (having bases in Europe, etc for example).
That was the ‘soft power’ everyone was talking about. Orange mongoloid had now destroyed that and I don’t think it’s coming back any time soon.
Everyone is basically letting idiots destroy themselves and watching their moves. There is nothing anyone else can do right now.
Except Chinese and Russians. They are rolling on the floor laughing…
I mean there’s that… but there’s also the fact that nobody has been stupid enough to break the seal on the Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear issue. Report after report shows trump is really really anxious to find a reason to use a nuke.
Key words: so far.
The last time the US enacted global tariffs, it caused the Great Depression.
Sounding extremely privileged.
Without doxxing yourself, what country are you from to say something like that and be assured you are safe from U.S. influence and shenanigans?
I’m being serious. I want to move away and be safe with you over there.
There are no failsafe assurances anywhere, but some places are safer and more comfortable than others and I’m very happy to talk about how you can move to those places.
I’m originally from the US and have mostly been living abroad for over a decade since I left over many of the issues US Americans still deal with today.
Perspective on the US is much more clear from the outside.
If you’d like to live abroad, I can definitely help you do that with information and advice.
tldr is get a passport, secure $500 USD in monthly income (English teaching is in very high demand), buy a plane ticket.
Someone from the US I’ve been offering advice to this year literally left the US today based on that tldr.
I’m very happy to go into details and supply more context for anybody interested in living abroad.
How the fuck do you consider one of the largest countries, in literally every physical, economical, military, and basically every other metric… Small?
The fuck crack are you smoking. Cause that’s some good shit.
The US certainly punches above its weight economically and militaristically. But its population is still a fraction of the global population. While it has wealth and massively destructive weapons, the rest of the world absolutely does have a say in how important we let it be.
If there was a global initiative to not respect American intellectual property and people were universally turned off by its politics / lack of morality, it could become a backwater pond in no time. I believe in human ingenuity to accomplish that.
Now of course the US would respond with violence but in a circumstance where it truly was the globe versus the US I actually dont like the US’ chances very much.
The world is much, much bigger than one sparsely populated country, and there are far more important metrics than the physical size of the US.
Metrics like population, geographic isolation, health care, political instability, violent crime, technical superiority, countless others that mark a country like the US as an entity to be safely disregarded.
Thailand passed the US in health care years ago, China passed the US in renewable and next-gen tech, not to mention manufacturing, most countries citizens enjoy much more robust civil rights.
Yes, the physical country is large, but the US is s small, insecure, violent pocket of the world that people don’t need to pay nearly as much attention to as its groupies demand.
The US looks very tiny from out here, and even tinier from the inside after seeing some of the rest of the world.
Cool music, though. Nice forests.
Because it’s your own fucking mess.
I could be mistaken, but I don’t think that they’re a US citizen asking for help.
I’m mostly surprised that there’s been little response to the boat blasting.
The rest of the world is slowly routing everything around the USA. Assuming things turns back, there will be a lot to rebuild in matter of trust and commerce.
Now, if you’re talking about what happens inside the USA, well, what do you propose other countries do? Invade? Because that’s not happening. There’s enough to do for damage control outside of it.
Assuming things turns back, there will be a lot to rebuild in matter of trust and commerce.
I’m not so sure about that. The US has proven that they’ll make a 180° turn on anything within just the blink of an eye. Even if the US turns back, there’ll be no guarantee it won’t elect the next batshit crazy person as president four years later.
It will take the US decades to rebuild trust. Its more likely the country decays some sort of hypercapitalist modern flavored feudalism with water slaves dying in the streets before other countries put long term trust in the US again.
We’re not going to liberate you. You brought this upon yourselves.
I think part of the issue being brought up here is
- Yes but our policies impact the world stage a lot
- a majority of the people here didn’t bring it upon themselves
They did. Are you guys not a democracy?
No we’re not a democracy, common propoganda
US “allies” haven’t gotten the memo yet, US enemies aren’t going to interrupt America while it’s killing itself and non-aligned nations don’t give a shit. Human rights abuses are almost never the real reason for sanctions, just like the US didn’t invade Iraq to spread democracy.
Canadians are not buying America’s shit, and are unlikely to resume that habit anytime soon. It doesn’t take effect immediately, but when you compound it with the other ass backwards trade policies you’re living under now you will all be suffering greatly within a year.
So will everyone, mind you.
When you make an enemy of a friend, you will have to work 7 times as hard to turn that enemy back into a friend.
7x if you use Newtonian classical physics. I think CERN discovered that it’s actually 9.4x harder when you account for the quantum foam. Plus in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy we might just spontaneously make trade deals with other partners.
deleted by creator
Other countries are learning how to separate themselves economically from the US more.
US “allies” haven’t gotten the memo yet, US enemies aren’t going to interrupt America while it’s killing itself and non-aligned nations don’t give a shit.
Unfortunately by sanctioning the US, they would be sanctioning themselves. The world just needs to wait for the orange madman to destroy the US economy, which is well on the way.
They are sanctioning themselves.
so much winning for US citizens.
Yay! I’m a winner! Wait…
Xi Jingping, Putin, and Trump are all having a feast with each other, meanwhile their respective countries’ citizens starve. We have more in common with the average people across borders than with our own leaders.
To some extent, this has always been true.
It’s just that right now it’s worse than ever
Because our leaders are pussies. If we all league against them we could raze the country in no time
It always comes back to Logistics, Coordination, Consistent Daily Action, & Collective Power
Keep getting more people active wherever you can and I will continue the same
We all got this!!! The more people active consistently and connected to each other online along with in-person the better off we all will be. The more that gets completed, and easier it makes it for us all
