Putin's Own Goal

 We are four years into Putin's invasion of Ukraine that was supposed to be days or weeks to completion. The stoutness and adaptability of Ukrainian defenders has held a much larger army, population and economy at bay. Even as Trump has essentially ended aid to Ukraine, Europe has stepped up. This suggests that the longest impact of Trump's childish and short-sighted foreign policy will be the creation of a stronger, more independent Europe. As long as we eventually return to our liberal democratic roots, that's fine. Europe SHOULD stand up.

From Putin's point of view, a unified Europe is a disaster. He could count on Trump and Xi to more or less tolerate whatever he wanted to do, but Europe - especially Eastern Europe - has no illusions about what this fucker wants to do. What's more, the Ukrainian War has demonstrated that the future of warfare is not how much you can bench press, but your ability to leverage technical know-how and financial resources to create robot armies and air forces. The future of warfare is changing in Ukraine, and the US withdrawal from that conflict means we aren't going to be able to learn as quickly or as deeply as we should.

Meanwhile, Russia seems incapable of learning. They continue to demonstrate a lack of creativity, relying on the idea of brute force and brutalizing their troops. It was long assumed that a "frozen conflict" would disadvantage Ukraine, but the way the war has become a drone war seems to benefit Ukraine, who can use their drones to enforce a frontline that Russia can't exploit with their superior numbers.

The impact of this war on the Russian economy is murky, but it is doubtful that it's good. Russia has gotten around many of the sanctions, but not all - and its economy was no great shakes to begin with. 

It is, of course, sad to realize that a President Harris would have likely given more weapons to Ukraine and allowed them, perhaps, to roll back Russian forces. Maybe there is no victory for Ukraine that returns its stolen land. But there can be no question that this conflict has been a disaster for Russia.

Maybe?

 Simon Rosenberg is an optimist - his place is called the Hopium Chronicles. He ponders that for everyone who is doomcasting about the end of democracy in America and the end of the postwar liberal order, what if it wasn't? He points to the protests in Iran, Ukrainian resiliency on the battlefield (something Philip Bump mentions in this conversation) and even a possible democratic or at least not kleptocratic Venezuela. What if Orban finally loses in Hungary?

Imagine if there are far more people like this Iranian woman?

I think history suggests that there are. And maybe the US engulfed in democratic backsliding means that Europe and other places are going to have to step up and maintain the world order until we get our shit together? What if Iranians are protesting not only their awful government, but because they know no one else is coming to help them?

Maybe America remembers its antifa past. 

It's pretty to think so. 

Pure, Unadulterated Trumpism

 This morning's strikes on Caracas and the arrest/kidnapping of Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, is a perfect distillation of Trumpist policy.

First, it was likely tactically pretty sound. If they really did manage to get Delta in and out of the capital with the president of another country...that's pretty impressive. However, we should note that this is fundamentally impressive on the level of staff officers in the US military. Trump - even Hegseth and Rubio - were not stooped over a table gaming out scenarios. They gave JSOC a mission, and the mission was successful. To this point. 

Winning the daily news cycle is Trump's biggest political strength.

Second, what was the strategic endgame here? Politically, Maduro is a bad guy who no one is going to feel much sympathy for. Here are some other unsympathetic bad guys: Saddam Hussein, Moammar Ghaddafi and Sheik Omar. We toppled or helped topple these dictators and the result has been decades of chaos, civil war and civic unrest. 

Trump and the people around them are not long term planners.

Third, this was almost certainly illegal. Having a warrant for Maduro does not give the US the right to invade a country - even for a few hours. Rubio and Hegseth lied to Congress a few weeks back when they said they were not pursuing regime change in Venezuela. There is no recognized "right to attack another country because you don't like their leader." 

Trump and his minions routinely lie and break the law.

The stated reasons for invading Venezuela are going to be some boilerplate about drug smuggling and - I think - weapons charges (which seems thin). Trump has pardoned the former president of Honduras who was convicted of being a drug smuggler and the head of various crypto schemes designed to launder money for cartels. It's not about the drugs. It's about the oil. Yes, Hegseth and Rubio aren't going to admit that, but Trump already has! He can't fucking help himself. This is about looting natural resources.

Trump is obsessed with oil, rare earths, you name it, in the pursuit of immediate material gain.

I saw one response along the lines of "There is no international rules-based order, might makes right and we wanted him gone, so he's gone." This is a form of hyper-realist foreign policy thinking that a state is alone in an anarchic world and must pursue its advantages with single-mindedness. International Law is therefore a joke. This represents a fundamental shift in American policy that is more cohesive than "Trump like dictators." Trump likes power and the expression of power. What we did in Caracas was smarter than what Putin has done in Ukraine, but it's the same fundamental approach to international affairs: might makes right. It is also part of the Trumpist foreign policy that makes the Western Hemisphere America's hegemonic playground. 

Trump's admiration of Xi and Putin is based in their willingness to violate international norms, which he has always wanted to do.

 This is a distraction from a lot of bad news. Millions of Americans are going to be priced out of health insurance in the next week. The Epstein files are trickling out. Trump's declining health is in the news. He's tremendously unpopular.

Trump - when cornered - commits outrageous acts to change the subject.

So, that's it. That's the nature of Trump's political persona in one lethal act.

More to follow.

UPDATE: Trump is basically saying we are going to annex Venezuela because of the oil.

Killing The Atlantic Charter

 Donald Trump and his myrmidons are attacking the fundamental American foreign policy since 1941: the Atlantic Charter. The Charter was an expression of British and American goals for World War II, agreed upon even before the US had formally entered the war. It proposed liberal institutions like the UN and free trade impulses that would become Bretton Woods. It eschewed imperialism and right of conquest and supported freedom of the seas.

Trump wants to make America Hungary, and Hungary's politics is based on racial resentment of immigrants that underpins Orban's authoritarianism. The new national security document is basically a nakedly white supremacist document with all sorts of assertions of the Great Replacement Theory. The attacks on Europe are simply the echoes of Orban's own arguments, and we know Orban is a perverse figure of admiration on the American Right.

There is also, of course, the support for Putin and the criticism of Ukraine for...defending itself from invasion. Trump wants to retreat into a regional hegemony where we can murder Venezuelans with impunity while winking and nodding at Putin doing the same to Ukrainians, Netanyahu doing the same to Palestinians and Xi doing the same to Uyghurs. It is nakedly authoritarian, yes, but it's also deeply, deeply reactionary and opposed to the entire Pax Americana that has brought stability to the world.

Few Americans vote foreign policy. Trump's mishandling of the economy is going to weigh him down more than his killing Venezuelans or even kowtowing to Moscow. However, as Marshall notes, we can likely repair a lot of Trump's damage domestically, beginning in the midterm elections. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, and we have survived worse than Trump's corruption and malevolent incompetence. However, the destruction of the world created by the Atlantic Charter and the postwar liberal institutions might not be so easy to repair. Ideally, Europe learns to support itself without leaning on us, and then when (we hope) non-fascistic leadership returns to the White House, the Atlantic relationship will be one of equals.

It's also worth remembering Marshall's dictum that "all power is unitary." Trump's dismal approval ratings on the economy will - I think - get worse as the economy contracts. Small business are shedding employees, and that's a canary in the coal mine. As Trump fulminates against the Fake News of growing stagflation, his approval will fall further. He might even crack his previous floor. If so, that will actually make his pro-Putin, pro-Orban foreign policy less popular, especially among people who don't really follow the news much. (Hell, I teach International Relations and my students don't even follow the news.)

It's not too late. It almost never is. I'm sure it felt "too late" when Hitler invaded Poland and France and Britain could no longer avoid war. I'm sure it felt "too late" when Paris fell or Pearl Harbor burned. 

Still, this is...bad.

Today In White Supremacy

 The 2025 National Security Strategy document came out and...boy howdy. It's a fevered wet dream is racism and imperialism. It's one of the many instances during Trump 2.0, when it feels like a policy decision was made with the sole purpose of pissing people off. As Richardson notes, it's full of the sort of racial and ethnic panic that Stephen Miller has put at the center of American government. It abandons NATO in fundamental ways. It suggests that we will be doing some incredibly unsavory things in Latin America, that the Venezuela Boat Murders are only hinting at.

Not racist enough for you? The National Parks are - and amazingly this is true - no longer offering free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth. Instead, Trump's birthday will be a fee holiday in the park system. This really combines the two of the three themes of Trumpistan: Trump's narcissism and Trump's racism. (Trump's corruption is the third.) Let's denigrate Martin Fucking Luther King and elevate Trump. I guess MLK's Nobel Peace Prize isn't as good as Trump's FIFA Peace Prize.

It is difficult frankly to completely catalog how awful the petty stuff is. The Park stuff is just lame. The NSS document is way more concerning, and I wonder how much that stuff is coordinated. Do they pair idiotic nonsense like the Park stuff with the NSS in order to hide the manifest evil in the former?

Anyway, if Congress was alive right now, they might have been angry at this. The reality is that no one votes on the issue of defending NATO, but they do vote the economy. When the economy is bad, they tend to turn on the foreign policy stuff ex post. Power is unitary and so on.

Let's hope the stirring of Congress will arrest this abject surrender to Putin.

Stripping Out The Copper Wire

 Ever since he disappeared during Labor Day weekend and subsequently altered his schedule, Trump has looked and sounded weaker and older than ever. Not a bright man to begin with, his blurting out about his "successful" dementia tests and MRI results combined with him falling asleep during meetings suggest that Trump's juice is drained. He's a lame brained lame duck.

This informs the recent spurt of news about seemingly bizarre decisions coming from the White House. The "peace plan" that Steve Witkoff produced doesn't make sense, unless we accept to conditions. The first is that Trump loves Putin. Sure, that's part of it. But Putin also dangled lucrative bribes for Witkoff and Jared Kushner. This administration can be bought.

Don't believe me? We had the outright admission from Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth that he ordered the military to shoot survivors of the attacks on those Venezuelan boats. This blatant war crime was "justified" by saying they had to keep these dangerous drugs out of the US. With almost the same press release, we learn that Trump is going to pardon Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been convicted of...wait for it...working with drug cartels. This one only makes sense as a cash grab by someone.

Trump? Maybe, but I doubt it. The fact is that he has surrounded himself with fellow grifters and grafters, and he will sign anything a hot blonde puts in front of him. Since he can't be challenged by the media, any reporter who asks him about it, he attacks. It's a perfect grift. Take a bribe from the Crypto guy or a drug runner, put the paper in front of the senile old man and cash in, especially if you believe that his days are numbered. 

There are basically two factions working together in the Executive Branch right now. You have the outright fascists like Miller and Hegseth and then the blatantly corrupt like Witkoff and probably Noem and others we don't know the names of. The fascists seize their headlines, directing attention at their violation of our laws and Constitution, meanwhile, the grifters strip the copper wire out of the White House.

Elite Impunity

 Rational people have spent year now trying to understand how a bozo who inherited a fortune and turned it into a smaller fortune could somehow become the avatar of working class and evangelical grievance politics. Clearly, in many ways it's a case of motivated reasoning. People told them their vote in 2016 was stupid and they've spent almost a decade now doubling down on that decision. 

But why did they make that initial decision?

I keep coming back to Trump's empty boast of "I alone can fix it." That seemed to resonate, especially with those who saw the system as hopelessly skewed against them. Trump was a rich insider who promised to prosecute their crusade of butthurt against "them". 

In the Trump Cinematic Universe, Trump's obvious corruption meant that he was a system insider who could take it all down for them. A decade later, it's becoming clear to them that he was never going to do that. 

Many of these grievances are not anything Democrats can leverage to their electoral advantage. The idea that elites get away with everything is one that you could attack. This whole idea is at the heart of the Epstein Files controversy. Is Larry Summers a "Democrat"? OK, whatever, he's also an asshole, so screw him. Was RFK a branch of the Kennedy clan? Yes, but the extent that benefitted from this - especially the latest soap opera with Olivia Nuzzi - is just another example of elites running interference for each other.

The idea that "There is a club and you ain't a member" is pretty powerful. I think we all have experience in our lives of people who were promoted above their talents because they were just part of the group that gets promoted above their talents. There are a lot of reasons for Democrats to embrace younger politicians, but "not being in the club" is a pretty obvious one. 

This, of course, meshes with the oligarchic takeover of our government and the rampant corruption of billionaires in and out of the Trump Administration. Anyone want to bet that Steve Witkoff personally will profit from selling Ukraine down the river?

Time to revive the idea of left wing populism without engaging in crank conspiracy theories. The fact are bad enough as it is.

Clowns Playing With Dynamite

 The worry about the various clowns that Trump has empowered in his second administration is that they would eventually cause some sort of irreversible calamity. Adam Smith's quote that "There is a lot of ruin in a nation" suggests (and I agree) that a lot of short term disasters can be overcome because states are largely resilient and "sticky" institutions. That doesn't mean that there won't be absolute disasters, just that the US might survive as something still vaguely recognizable as the US.

However, we are seeing one of those moments, perhaps, where the damage done could be truly catastrophic, and that is with Trump's embrace of Putin's "peace" plan.

These are transparently ridiculous and maximalist demands from Putin. Some AI studies (sigh) suggest that the text was written in Russian and then translated into English. Would anyone be surprised? There seemed to be some conflict within the administration with Vance supporting the deal and Rubio undermining it, but it's all chaos and clown shoes, so who knows. The "deal" was apparently "negotiated" by Trump's idiot friend Steve Witkoff, who has taken Jared Kushner's place as lickspittle errand boy and bagman. It would absolutely not shock me, if Witkoff, Kushner and others were not being paid off by the Russians to push this capitulation on Ukraine.

This, however, is another area where there are real divisions within the GOP. A few Republican Senators are already outraged over this. As deep as their heads are buried in Trump's diapered ass, they still know that Russia is our enemy. Trump's declining power and poll numbers might make it more likely that some Republicans might defect and support Ukraine.

Can Ukraine survive with just European support? That's the impossible question that Zelensky has to face right now. What's more, it's not clear that Ukraine can survive these surrender terms. 

As for Europe and the rest of the world, they have relied for decades on a United States that could be relied on to speak with one foreign policy voice. Sometimes that voice was toxic (rot in hell, Dick Cheney) but it was always consistent. Now, you seem to have various factions vying for supremacy that have positions wildly at odds with each other.

Absolute disaster, if it goes through.

The New Mutually Assured Destruction

 In the midst of Trump and Hegseth's ridiculous hectoring of America's senior military command, we get this column from Thomas Friedman about how Trump's Gaza peace plan is a great peace plan except for the fact that it's Gaza and the people in charge are awful. Really, "It's a great plan as long as the world were different." He also notes how drones have transformed future warfare. At the bottom of this post is a tweet about how Hegseth's made-for-TV leadership and doing pushup and warrior ethos is all bullshit, when you look at Ukraine who is punching way about their weight with a bunch of middle aged drone pilots and female coders.

As military planners consider the next few decades, they have to consider that disproportionate impact that drones are going to have on future wars. They are cheap - both in dollars and the risk to human life - and they are ubiquitous. For decades, America has ruled the world with the Predator drone - expensive but able to reach around the globe without imperiling American lives. Pretty soon everyone will have that capability.

With the advent of nuclear arsenals, wars between super and great powers became unthinkable. Drones might be the next step in making wars too punishing to contemplate.

Unless you are a dumbass dumbfuck like Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth.

Europe Is Our Only Hope

 There are obviously so many concerns about Trump's assault on American Democracy. This is likely to be a feature of this space for the next three years. However, liberal democracy is not just an American project. We took the lead during and after World War II, but as we see with the emergence of China and rise of Trump, Orban and Erodogan, that progress is not linear nor inevitable. I think in the long run, Americans will not want to live under a dictatorship, but then again, we are pretty stupid.

If there is an entity that can take our mantle of leadership in the fight for liberal democracy globally, it has to be Europe. Krugman does one of his long posts about how the European economy is much stronger than we usually think. The standard measurements of things like GDP per capita don't measure the actual wealth of Europe. What he points out is that Europe has simply made different priorities.

For instance, much of American productivity advantages can be attributed to how many more vacation days Europeans take. That's neither good not bad, but different. Additionally, the US has vaulted ahead in technology, but that technology has also exacerbated wealth inequality. It's not just the Silicon Valley ecosystem of tech millionaires and billionaires, it's the degradation of working class income as it's replaced by automation. America is more "productive" than Europe because we prize that and create technologies that enhance it. Europe tends to focus on things like life expectancy and quality of life. You can't go to Europe and not be impressed with just how...nice it is.

So Europe is not as "rich" as America, but it's still a very wealthy society. However, the very open question is whether Europe is willing to take the steps to replace American global leadership. This would require two big things.

First, they are going to have to integrate more. Krugman touches on this, in that America has innovation ecosystems in places as diverse as Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston and Pittsburgh. Europe doesn't really have centers of innovation - like a biotech hub that serves all of Europe. 

Second, they are going to have to assume some burdens that the US had traditionally borne and that could impact that quality of life balance. Namely, the EU has benefitted from robust (even excessive) US defense spending. The situation in Ukraine and Estonia is a stark reminder that they need to be step it up when it comes to defense spending. Taking nukes off the table, Europe as a whole could crush Russia in a shooting war, but they need to be so strong that Russia won't even risk it, and I think that's an open question.

Especially in the international arena, we are fucked up and broken. Everything that "made America great" has been tarnished, trashed or totaled. It's going to be up to the EU to lead, at least for the rest of the decade. 

This Is Terrible

 I know. It requires context.

Russia has made a major encroachment into Polish airspace. This has happened in small ways before, but this is clearly a major event. It might have been caused by drones getting "disoriented" by Ukrainian electronic warfare efforts, or it might have been just a stupid mistake. However, it's Putin, so maybe he's probing the resolve of a NATO that cannot rely on the United States under Donald Trump. 

The Poles, it must be noted, are not shy about thinking the worst about Russia, and they only do so because of centuries of history.  The only time Poland and Russia got along was when Russia dominated Poland and denied them self-government.

What happens now? Poland has invoked Article IV, which requires NATO to take up the issue. What will Putin's Bitch in the Oval Office do?

More to the point, where is Putin's head right now? Presuming that this was NOT a deliberate provocation, the problematic logic of dictatorship is that he cannot admit a problem. We see this all the time in Trump, but it's a consistent thread throughout dictatorial rule: The Leader Is Never Wrong. Maybe he sacks some people as scapegoats; I don't know if he can blame it on Ukrainian electronic warfare, because that might require him to acknowledge that the Ukrainian defenses are improving. What he absolutely cannot do is say, "Hey, wow, our bad. We're really sorry."

I think we've all been disgusted by the saccharine sycophancy of Trump's Cabinet meetings and the lapdog nature of the Republican Congress. It's appalling. 

It's also dangerous. 

Leaders have to be able to receive contradictory input. They can't just get there and suck up the praise. This is the fundamental advantage of democracies. Trump's brittle ego and vindictive nature has ended the ability of those around him to give him bad news. Putin is in the same boat.

There is a school of pundits who praise dictatorships for their ease of action. "Look at what China has done in high speed rail." The problem for dictatorships is not whether they can make hay while the sun shines. The problem is that they will refuse to acknowledge that it's raining.

What Happened In Alaska?

 Richardson updates the lay of the land surrounding the summit between Trump and Putin. The consensus from reporters was that members of Trump's team looked shaken after the meeting, which ended prematurely. One suggestion Richardson makes is that Trump's declining cognitive abilities might have come to the fore, necessitating getting him out of there. That's certainly plausible. Then there's this passage:

At the press conference following the summit, NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander reported that what struck him was “the looks on the faces of a lot of the American delegation here. Karoline Leavitt…, Steve Witkoff, who came into the room, then left quickly, then came back in. Leavitt appeared to be a bit stressed out, anxious. Their eyes were wide, almost ashen at times.”

This has been followed up by Zelensky and the bulk of NATO heads of government flying to Washington to meet with Trump. That's...unusual. Perhaps in the meeting, Trump suggested leaving NATO, which might have shaken his advisors. We know he floated leaving NATO last time he was in office, but was stopped by the "adults in the room" who are conspicuously absent from this administration.

Another possibility could be that Putin let Trump know that he has dirt on him that perhaps overlaps with the Epstein stuff. There has always been rumors of kompromat on Trump, though I've always thought it was about shady business dealings with Russian oligarchs, the basic contours of the pee tape was that there was damaging sexual material.

Trump likes to caterwaul about the "Russia Hoax" but Putin clearly seems to act like he has Trump's ball in his pockets. If you took all of Trump's actions and assessed them as a whole, I'm not sure what he would do differently, if he were trying to end America's global leadership. 

The Pantomime Presidency

 Donald Trump is a stupid person. I've said this before, and I stick by it. I saw a video (can't find it) that was Edward Teller talking about John Von Neumann, who might have been the smartest person to ever live. Teller said that what made Von Neumann so smart was that he loved to think because he was good at it, but he became even better at it, precisely because he loved to do it. 

Trump doesn't like to think.

What's more, his feeble brain has been cooked by 70 years of mainlining bad television like a junkie shooting up heroin in 1970s Times Square, a period that Trump himself seems stuck in.

We have seen two instances of his TV presidency, his Pretendency, this week. The farcical, but still dangerous, military takeover of DC and his flop of a summit with Vladimir Putin. 

The DC thing is pure fascist theater. It's ridiculous and most of the law enforcement and military folks know that. It's not actually venturing into high crime areas, but rather patrolling the wealthier streets. It's part ridiculous theater and part authoritarian cowing of the DC class. They aren't patrolling Anacostia Flats, they're patrolling K Street.

Similarly, the summit was bullshit, because it was always going to be bullshit, because Trump can't be bothered with learning what he needs to learn to manage a guy like Putin. Instead, it creates optics - most of which favor Putin - as Trump vainly and in vain seeks the Nobel Peace Prize.

In other words, the main news stories of the week are Trump pretending to be strong and capable on TV, when anyone paying attention knows it's a colossal joke - just not a funny one.

We Might Be An Open Book To Russia

 This summary by Cheryl Rofer is from a whistleblower who worked cybersecurity at the National Labor Relations Board and tangled with DOGE. There's a lot, but this is Rofer's summary:

Highlights (or lowlights):

• DOGE were given “tenant owner” privileges, which allowed them full control over NLRB’s cloud.
• They disabled logging tools so that their actions wouldn’t be logged.
• 10+ GB spike in outbound data.
• Within 15 minutes of DOGE accounts being created, attackers in Russia tried logging in using those new creds. Correct usernames and passwords.

The DOGE teams seem to use their “official” status to gain access to computers, but disabling logging tools suggests that they are not working for the federal government. If they were, logging would be part of the job. It’s been clear for some time that DOGE is taking a lot of sensitive data (our formerly private and personal data) for themselves. The Russian attack is a bit of a surprise; they also disabled some of the safeguards like two-factor login, so it could have been part of the continuing Russian attacks to hack government data. I will leave you to imagine other possibilities.

It's entirely possible that either DOGE is so disabling governmental security measures that Russia is able to hack into our personal information or that they are selling that information to Russia. Honestly, which is worse?

Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth continues to be an active security threat while serving as SecDef. Remember that this is just the shit that's come to light in the first 100 days of Trump 2.0. 

The Worm Turns Slowly, But It Does Turn

 Trump has been president for six weeks. That's it.  Six weeks. He was, as he said, a Dictator on Day One. People of my persuasion have been disheartened by his victory in November, and by the breakneck speed with which he has trampled constitutional governance. One reason that the election was so much worse this time was because he actually won a plurality of the vote, unlike last time.

However, we are seeing broad pushback, especially on Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the executive branch.

Friday's Oval Office disaster will, I think, begin the process of turning heads about just how far Trump has aligned himself with Russia. Europe has gotten the message, and I think Americans will, too.

People don't usually vote foreign policy, but Trump is actively taking Russia's side on any number of issues, and that will cause opinions to shift. Most Americans are some form of patriotic; most Americans side with Ukraine. There is a non-trivial number of Republicans in Congress for whom this might be the bridge too far. That, or when Musk breaks Social Security.

Ideally they would break with Trump on their own, but if Democrats were to win the special House elections coming up that would send a stark message. Right now, many Republicans are doubtless horrified by the increasing mountains of evidence that the President of the United States is actively collaborating with our enemies. However, because they are craven little sacks of shit, they are more fearful of a primary challenge. If it looks like R+10 districts are in play, that calculus changes.

UPDATE: And let's not forget his dementia and overall stupidity. 

America As A Rogue State

 Yesterday's embarrassment performance in the Oval Office, where a petulant Trump parroted Putin's talking points and went off on Zelensky for not being a lapdog, raises the question - along with everything else Trump has done - as to whether the US is a rogue state.

The US has always played by its own rules when it suited us. We take and leave compliance with international agreements as we see fit. In most cases, we try and abide by rules we helped write, but every once in a while, an administration comes along that flouts those rules. Dubya flouted them both with the invasion of Iraq and the torture of Al Qaeda operatives.

Trump has done more than flout or ignore those rules; he has lit them on fire and pissed on the ashes. He is nakedly aligned the country with other rogue states like Russia and - one could make a case - Israel. Trump is a career criminal, and international law is terribly weak. There is effectively no coercive power to enforce those laws. That's why we take and leave them as we need to. International laws both protect and bind weaker countries. Trump - again a career criminal - has realized that there is very little that truly binds America, so he is going to do whatever he thinks is best within the requirements of the moment for him.

L'etat c'est moi. Patrimonialism.

Of course the reason America has largely abided by these agreements is that there are all sorts of advantages of having allies and setting a good example. It has been in our interest, most of the time, to live by our word.

Trump, a man who cannot help by lie, has no honor, no sense of obligation to anyone but himself.

And so, America, the world's most powerful country, is now behaving as a rogue state, unbound by the rules she helped write. 

What will follow, most likely, is the sort of international instability we haven't seen since World War II.

All because some voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin didn't like the price of eggs and were weirded out by the idea of a female president.

Surrender

 Richardson lays out - in her usual concise and clear way - the ways in which Donald Trump is surrendering America's ideal to the Kremlin. As I've said here before, the firing of Black people and women, the corruption, the degradation of public service and public services: all of these are fixable with time. We've had a Gilded Age government before, and we changed it. The damage done to America's standing in the world is largely irreversible. The repercussions of "but muh eggs" will echo for decades through global affairs. The world is less safe, because American bypassed a strong woman for a Strong Man.

All of this gibes with Rauch's description of Trump as a patrimonialist. He hates Ukraine, because Zelensky won't bend the knee, because his first impeachment was over his shakedown of Ukraine in defiance of Congress. He loves Putin, because Putin is a fellow patrimonial leader. Game recognizes game.

What is fascinating is that almost every single measure that Trump is taking makes us weaker as a country. Abandoning or alienating alliances; embracing fraud as a governing practice; selling out our government to the Musk Melon. This is the great irony of Strongman politics: it makes a country weaker. 

I have high hopes that Democrats win the House in 2026. Hell, I have slim hopes they win a few special elections and win control before then. It would be the beginning of checking Trump's depredations in domestic policy. However, even if Democrats win control of both houses in 2026, there are far fewer ways to influence foreign policy from Capitol Hill.

I will never forgive the cruel, the callous and the indifferent who foisted the very worst American on us. Twice. 

"The Arrogance Is Staggering"

 HCR takes on JD Vance's bomb throwing speech in Munich, where the US basically walked away from 80 years of support for global liberal institutions. She provided the following quote:

Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas posted: “There is now total clarity, no matter how unimaginable things might seem. And they amount to this: The U.S. government has been taken over by a clique of extremists who have embarked on a process of regime change in the world’s oldest democracy…. The arrogance on display is staggering. They think their actions will increase U.S. power, but they are in fact wrecking their own country and, in the process everyone else.”

He continued: “The only hope lies in the sheer enormity of the threat: it might awake us out of our slumber before it is too late.”

This is the conundrum faced by our putative allies. Trump is constitutionally barred from re-election, and he's old and will die one day. The movement that has emerged around him has embraced a truly awful set of policies both domestically and internationally. I was texting with friends last night about whether this was Nazi Germany in 1933. I thought it wasn't. I think MAGA wants to drag us back to 1900. They want a tiny government that serves only the wealthy; they want Jim Crow and the suppression of minority rights; they want an America that bullies its neighbors.

A lot of that can be undone by subsequent governments - with the obvious caveat that the most extreme elements around Trump have no intention of letting democracy thwart their plans. Will we have elections of real consequence? I think so, but I cannot say for certain.

The damage done to America's international standing, however, might never be undone. Europe and our allies in Asia should rightly call into question the sanity of American electoral politics. Trump 1.0 was a fluke; Trump 2.0 was not. A plurality of Americans elected a felon, a gibbering moron, a man incapable of growing into the importance of the office. 

I don't think, despite his sweaty neediness, that JD Vance can harness that same cultish following that Trump has. I don't know if anyone can.

But if I'm Europe, I can't take that chance. Not with the Russian bear being aggressive as it has turned out to be. 

Blowing Up NATO

 JD Vance, sycophant to the unholy union of Opus Dei and the Broligarchy, went to Europe and shit all over the concept of the NATO alliance. Especially rich is lecturing Europe on a retreat from liberal values, as his party destroys the fabric of liberal governance at home and abroad.

The destruction or even weakening of NATO was always one of the real perils of returning Trump to the White House. He has contempt for the very concept of partnership. The idea of mutually beneficial arrangements are simply foreign to his tiny little lizard brain.

NATO is a treaty obligation. That gives it the full force and power of the Constitution. However, I think we have seen how much the current GOP values the Constitution.

The Status Quo And What's To Come

 Joe Biden and thus Kamala Harris were hurt by the unfair perception that they were in charge during much of Covid and therefore responsible for things like school closings and inflation. The American economy is the envy of the world and it sure looks like Trump is going to fuck that up. So, it's important for people to feel good about the economy now, so they feel the brunt of Trump's economic shocks appropriately. The worst thing that could happen politically for Dems is if Trump doesn't do what he says he will.

In international relations, we have something similar, but less obvious. Many poorly informed people feel the world is falling apart. Again, I think the post-Covid societal dynamics have created an effect similar to sloshing a bowl of water around. Some of it is spilling over the edge and this has created some odd disruptions. 

The pre-eminent stories are Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, and the former looks bleak. It doesn't look like Ukraine will regain its lost territories and will be forced to sue for peace.

In the Middle East, things are moving very fast and very chaotically. Hamas is beaten to shit; Hezbollah has been decapitated; Assad has fled; the Iranian regime can't keep the lights on. I'm not certain Israel has completely won that conflict, because they have taken a very real hit in terms of public perception of the very legitimacy of the existence of Israel (not that they give a shit). There is no question that Iran's Axis of Resistance has gotten the living shit beaten out of them. 

Enter (re-enter) Donald Trump, who understands on one level that his rural voters are not interested in fighting wars, but a man whose imperial vanity presumes some desire to conquer. If we were about to hand off to President-elect Harris, I think we might be optimistic that the people of Syria and Iran might see not just regime change but positive regime change. As it is, I feel it's inevitable that Trump will engage in some act of belligerent militarism. Let's take some of his words at face value:

- Re-taking the Panama Canal. If he does this, Sheinbaum opens the gate for migrants to move through Mexico to the US. An area - central America - that has beginning to see a little more stability gets thrown into more chaos. The revulsion around the world and the hemisphere would be complete. This is Putin-level shit.

- Greenland. WTF? His obsession with Greenland is really, really weird. 

- Annexing Canada. You know what? Go for it! Canadians are more liberal than Americans on a lot of issues. A Canadian/US merger would insure Democratic majorities for the next 40 years. Not going to happen, but please proceed.

- Attacking Mexico. I'm worried this is going to happen. Could it help reduce the cartels? Anything's possible. Shooting it out with gangsters rarely works, but the US military is a categorical difference. Again, the impact on world and Western hemisphere opinion would be catastrophic.

- Attack Iran. If there are sane heads in the Pentagon, and they need to attack somewhere to placate this gibbering moron, a series of strikes in Iran would appeal to a faction of military leaders (as long as there are no boots on the ground). Would the strikes extend the life of the religious regime or hasten its demise? Most likely the former. Letting Iran (or Russia) collapse under the weight of sanctions would be the best outcome. 

The thing is, there's no way to predict what's coming. The world is beginning to regain its post-Covid equilibrium, and this chimp is going to start flinging pooh everywhere.