Unity is easier among equals
Trumptards and Amerikaf@gs mistakenly see Europe as weak and Zelenskyy as a mere supplicant who should be on bended knees in the Oval Office before the "Great Pooh-Bah" Donald Trump and the "almighty United States," blah, blah, blah.
The facts, however, point strongly in the opposite direction, as you shall see if you are "man enough" to finish reading this essay (this is how you have to frame things to many Americans to get them to overcome their relative illiteracy).
Whatever happened in the Oval Office the other day, it is not impossible that it was Zelenskyy who was playing Trump and Vance like two suckers at a carnival fair. It certainly had the same result, because the fall out from the "Oval Awfulness" was that the Orange Turd and the Hillybilly Couchfucker looked like two cheap crooks (and puppets of Putin) while Zelenskyy burnished his halo and gained in global popularity.
Argument in the Oval Office: Who's to blame?
This all fits in with my sense that Trump is not even going to last one term this time, and that, whatever happens, the crappiness of America is going to become increasingly evident.
But, hey, that's what the people voted for, rite?
This tweet seems pretty representative of the general vibe about the spat in the Oval Office:
"Cheap crooks," "crappy America," "not even one term"? Yes, America is the weakling in all of this, not Zelenskyy or Europe, and it is in an increasingly weak position.
Actually, Trump's slop politics are an irrelevance here, because, even if there were a "sensible" President in the White House who knew how to behave, America would, more or less, be doing exactly the same thing that the Trump administration is doing, i.e. backing off from the Ukraine and washing its hands of Europe.
Of course, they would be doing with more diplomacy and style, but the essentials would be the same.
Key point: America is increasingly unwilling to support Ukraine because it is weak.
A lot of people mistakenly conclude that Trump's behaviour must be motivated by him being a Putin shill, or because he is being blackmailed by the Kremlin. Maybe, he is, but actually it wouldn't matter if they had Moscow piss videos or paedo kompromat on him, because Trump is just acting the way weakness acts and, yes, America is weak.
Did I say weak already?
Yes, I am harping on this weakness thing a lot, and, don't worry, I still think America is stronger than, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Belgium, but what I mean is that it is a lot, lot weaker than Trumptards and Amerikaf@gs think it is.
I will get resistance on this point because "look at graph":
Yes, it's the almighty military spending graph! All bow down and worship it!
There are several others like this, and they are frequently cited to reinforce the brittle egos of Trumptards and Amerikaf@gs. The problem here is that these dimwits actually equate dollar-spend-on-military with military-bang-for-buck.
What makes the irony even sweeter is that these people are often the same ones who buy into the whole DOGE narrative that most Federal spending is just 99% waste anyway.
Muh magic chainsaw
Yes, they somehow think the Federal government is shitting away money on everything it does except the military, where miraculously America's bloated budget is 100% muscle, 0% fat, and spent on keeping millions of chad Marines and Navy Seals ready to kick the World's ass.
Extreme doublethink like this, by the way, is a good indicator that someone is a pathetic, gas-lit member of a cult.
While there is undoubtedly inefficiencies in the Federal budget, most of the stuff DOGE is cutting is going to cause problems.
The real soft spot of gargantuan waste, however, is the bloated US military budget, where waste, overspend, and corruption have been rife for decades. Unlike some of you, I haven't forgotten about the $90,000 bag of bushings.
Sure, not everything is waste and all those trillions create a few cool toys, but I'm willing to bet that Chinese military spending, although lower in dollar terms, is 5 to 6 times more efficient. This is a combination of PPP and because China does not need to operate a democratic pork barrel system to keep its hick Congressmen and Senators happy.
Here is Foreign Policy trying to wake up Americans a couple of years back:
"U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan recently revealed that U.S. government estimates put the Chinese annual defense budget at around $700 billion. That is far higher than previous estimates and almost on par with the United States’ 2023 defense budget of just over $800 billion.
Sullivan’s number stands in stark contrast to other estimates of Chinese defense spending. One of the most respected independent sources of defense data, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, pegs China’s military budget for 2022 at only about $290 billion. The new, much higher number also completely contradicts the widespread assertion that U.S. defense spending is so lavish that it amounts to more than that of the next 10 countries put together."
My guess is that China's $252-to-290 billion buys it the equivalent of over a trillion in US defence spending, so it looks like China is already streets ahead, especially as America's big fat military ass is spread pretty widely and is still stuck in Europe and the Middle East, trying to get in on some dodgy oil, mineral, and real estate deals.
Really, it's only America's Far East allies, like Japan and South Korea who are keeping anything resembling a balance of power in the Pacific.
So, now, you may see, why Trump -- or indeed any US administration -- would be ultra keen to run away from Ukraine.
But another point of Chinese military dominance over America has to be made. This is the fact that China can take losses, the USA not so much. I estimate America's ability to suck up bodybags in conflicts outside the North American continent to be less than 5,000, 10% of where it was in the 1970s, when they lost around 50,000 killed in Vietnam over 10 years before running for the exits. I also remember US involvement in Lebanon in the 1980s when less than 500 did the trick.
For these reasons, nobody should overestimate the US military. While it has some "performative" military value against gullible states and naïve populations, it mainly serves as an internal economic device to circulate some much-needed pork barrel to keep the malls functioning in the more remote and sclerotic parts of the oversized American Republic.
Now, given this weakness and disparity in strength, America has chosen to militarily confront China in the Pacific. But they can only hope to do this with the cooperation of Europe and the Japanese. Not only does Europe and Japan add to America's fading naval strength in the region, these countries also strengthen America's economic hand against China, as any war with China would be half-military and half-economic.
Enormous amounts of money are spent by the UK to back up the USA in the Indo-Pacific, from the billions being spent to
"lease back" the Chagos Islands to provide a cosy base for the US Navy to the
absurd amounts spent on two over-sized and otherwise unnecessary aircraft carriers.
Now, while America has got itself into a bit of a pickle in the Pacific, how is Europe doing?
Not bad at all. Euro-NATO is not in the least threatened by China. Instead it only has the relatively minor threat of a greatly depleted Russia. As long as it supports Ukraine a little more, that war is probably won, after which it would even be safe for Euro-NATO to drop defence spending to 1% of GDP.
America, meanwhile, faced with its self-inflicted geopolitical challenges, needs, to up its defence spending long-term to around 10% of GDP to generate what a well-spent 2.5% would generate elsewhere, and even then China looks set to be stronger.
And this without even bringing up the fact that America's entire ruling elite seems to have been hacked by foreign powers.
Probably happened but not really important
Alienating Europe, as the Trump administration is attempting to do, is a suicidal policy for America. Without Europe backing it up diplomatically, economically, and militarily, the US has no chance of deterring China long term, and may as well retreat back to the California coast ASAP with its tail between its legs.
It entirely makes sense that America wants to run from Europe and beef up its feeble Pacific position, so no one should blame it for doing that, but before it does so, it should at least get a "note of permission" from its very important NATO allies.
Talking down to allies, might be good for the
slop politics that Trump like to engage in to to keep his moronic followers engaged, but it is the policy of an ex-superpower trying to flush itself down the toilet of history.
Europe, meanwhile, is in the sweet spot. It has a vast ocean on its West to insulate it from any toxic craziness that develops in America (which will probably fall apart without external distractions), while to the East it has a vast Kremlin-created graveyard of poverty, dysfunction, mud, and shit that cushions it from the Chinese, and which it will later be able to colonise and exploit at its leisure.
From this position, dominance of the Middle East and Africa are relatively easy. It's all starting to remind me a little of this, but with a much weaker Russia:
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
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