I think U.S. allies had long since internalized that they would occasionally have to eat shit from the U.S. The bargain was a place as a vassal state instead of a target, and if those are your choices being a vassal state has a lot of appeal. The occasional overt screwjob is much less damaging than a constant destabilization effort.
The deal will continue to get worse under any U.S. president, but what they seem to be getting at here is the possibility of it getting torn up altogether, opening the door for more direct U.S. hostility. As long as they support NATO they aren’t likely to be the target of a coup like the 2014 one in Ukraine, but what if NATO is gone?
Trump isn’t going to be allowed to unilaterally withdraw from NATO on a whim, but he could do a lot of damage to it, and he can rile up the reactionary hogs against it, which would at least lay the groundwork for a still more impactful change.
I think U.S. allies had long since internalized that they would occasionally have to eat shit from the U.S. The bargain was a place as a vassal state instead of a target, and if those are your choices being a vassal state has a lot of appeal. The occasional overt screwjob is much less damaging than a constant destabilization effort.
The deal will continue to get worse under any U.S. president, but what they seem to be getting at here is the possibility of it getting torn up altogether, opening the door for more direct U.S. hostility. As long as they support NATO they aren’t likely to be the target of a coup like the 2014 one in Ukraine, but what if NATO is gone?
Trump isn’t going to be allowed to unilaterally withdraw from NATO on a whim, but he could do a lot of damage to it, and he can rile up the reactionary hogs against it, which would at least lay the groundwork for a still more impactful change.
So you are saying Trump is the harm-reduction candidate?
There is no harm reduction candidate. They’re both far past the point of any reason to support them, they’d probably do different bad things, though.
True enough.