Oil Vey

 Oil markets are experiencing real pain right now. Krugman tries to contextualize them, but when he makes a video on Thursday, the situation changes by Saturday.

Gas prices - as distinct from oil prices - have already exploded. Before the war, local gas was about $2.85, not it's $3.99. I've already felt that there is a fair amount of skullduggery in oil markets, but this all seems to make sense. Markets are beginning to realize that Trump can't simply TACO his way out of this mess, as critical facilities are simply gone and will take years to replace. Farmers may not be able to fertilize their fields.

The appalling decision by Trump to open the spigots to Russian and Iranian oil is because he's legitimately and properly concerned by the spike in oil prices, but with so many other critical commodities passing through the Straits of Hormuz, all he's really doing is putting money in Iran and Russian coffers.

Fucking lunacy.

Back Home

 Anyone volunteer to help Donny Small Fingers out of his jam in the Straits of Hormuz?

The Board of Peace?

His friend Putin?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Maybe shitting on all our allies and then launching a war of choice was a bad idea, actually.

Surprised By The Unsurprising

 Anyone with the sense Dog gave a Labrador retriever would have known that Iran would strangle the Straits of Hormuz. Anyone with the sense that Dog gave a guinea pig would have known that there are thousands of Americans and other nationals in the Gulf and they might want to be evacuated.

When people say that we "rushed" to war with Iran, we do know mean that this was a last minute decision. it certainly seems like this was weeks in the planning. It is precisely the incoherence and incompetence of this "plan" that has sober people concerned. Iran has likely been planning for this since last June, but really for decades. It is not clear that Trump and his crew of podcasters and Fox News personalities have done anything but dust off some old Pentagon contingency plans.

This has led to Trump apparently brow beating oil executives to bring down prices of a global commodity that he has just imperiled. "I've cocked things up, but I'm relying on you guys to fix it." Apparently, he didn't even bother to refill the strategic oil reserve before launching this war.

If anything, our latest foray into the chaos of the Middle East should remind us that renewable energy is not just environmentally sound, but it makes sense in terms of economics and national security.

The Politics Of Trump's War

 It is inevitable that any discussion of the conflict in Iran turn to the impact on Trump and his political fortunes. Especially given the fact that a Democratic Wave in the November elections might be the difference between America surviving as a democracy or not.

Trump's inherent incoherence is going to work against him here. As he tosses out contradictory war aims and negotiating positions, it becomes clear he doesn't have a framework for "winning the war." What's more, Trump made no effort to "sell" the war to the American public. He did not use the State of the Union address to make the case; he only tossed out a few videos on his social media site. He did not engage Congress or the American people in this conflict. It seems that he assumed he would get a quick and clean Venezuelan outcome - neglecting the fact that Venezuela is still a mess.

Americans don't seem pleased with this. YouGov threw out a snap poll (take with a grain of salt) and only 34% of Americans supported the war. In March 2003, 71% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq, largely because the Bush Administration made a relentless (and flawed and mendacious) case to the American public. Republicans naturally support Trump far more than Democrats, but while 10% of Democrats express any support for the war, only 20% of independents do. Democrats oppose the strikes at 70%, but independents oppose it at 52%. 

Trump never made the case for war, and now he's throwing off bangers like "there will likely be more (casualties) before it ends. That's the way it is." He routinely references Venezuela, "What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario." He thinks he can waltz in and out of a Middle Eastern war, the way he did in the Caribbean, which betrays an unsurprising but woeful level of ignorance.

Meanwhile, Iran's closing the Straits of Hormuz is unlikely to make people think that Trump is laser focused on affordability. It might not crater the economy the way the 1979 Iranian Revolution did, but supply chain disruptions have a way of making themselves felt. One driver of the "Biden" Inflation was the supply chain disruption to world oil and gas markets by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is no reason to believe that we won't see another oil shock, even if it doesn't tip us into stagflation.

Trump is an idiot. Most of the people around him are idiots. They believe in performing on social media over doing the hard work of crafting policy and long term strategy. "The Venezuelan raid went great, let's do that again. It will make great TV." Except the American people are really not at all ready for this, and they made no effort to prepare them for it.

Trump has no reservoir of good will or public trust to draw on, beyond his diminishing base. He is absolutely incapable of filling the role of selfless war time president. I would be shocked if he met the caskets of fallen soldiers at Dover. What's more, it is precisely his rural voter base that is sick and tired of these wars, because they disproportionately fight them. 

Iran is playing the long game, because it must. It can launch swarms of cheap drones until America's supply of anti-missile weapons is gone. If it resorts to tactics that have served it in the past, one would have to expect terrorist attacks at some point. They merely have to hunker down and endure. 

Trump is talking about a four week war. Venezuela might be instructive here, in that we really haven't changed much about the government of Venezuela, except who sits atop it. But we declared victory and moved on. Maybe we see a bunch more dead people - American, Iranian, Israeli, Qatari, Kuwaiti - we degrade the Iranian military...and then the war just ends. It's pretty clear that Trump has no real plan to make "regime change" happen. 

I would be shocked if Trump benefits from a "rally 'round the flag" effect. 

Special Military Operation

 The seemingly inevitable attacks on Iran began a few hours ago. The two ideas need to be held together in everyone's mind. The first is that the Iranian regime is incredibly malevolent. The second is that air strikes are not going to topple the regime. 

Is there a realistic endgame for these strikes? Almost certainly not. 

Are we at war with Iran? Not technically, because Congress has been excluded from this decision. Only Congress can declare war.

Why are we doing this? This feels like the Trump Administration's incessant efforts to "create content" and "project strength" rather than any overarching strategic goal.

Would it improve the world if the Iran had a new government? Absolutely. There is no evidence that this will topple the regime. Air power can't do that.

Can't a global military power enforce it's will militarily on a weaker power? History suggests not. 

Are the adults in charge? Absolutely not. Epic Fury? We are governed by middle schoolers.

Is this a distraction from the Epstein Files? Maybe, but more likely it's a distraction from the various setbacks that Trump has been dealt recently. Military action is usually a way to restore presidential authority. This seems unlikely to do that.

Corruption

 When the Whigs - both American and English - talked about corruption, what they meant was not necessarily outright bribery or quid pro quo relationships, but rather the overall rot at the heart of monarchical politics. I think that's why "corruption" in this archaic sense is really so apt to describe Trump's maladministration. 

When you look at something as facially absurd as actively blocking green energy, you have to balance the supreme idiocy of Cleek's Law (oppose whatever Democrats support) but also the naked financial relationship between hydrocarbon extraction industries and the Republican Party. There is absolutely zero reason to support coal, except to enrich coal mine owners. Solar, wind and battery technology are cheaper and more sustainable, and the lies Trump tells about it are just another example of the rot of corruption in our government.

To be clear, it's not just Trump. If you look at the fall of Marco Rubio or JD Vance from bog standard asshole Republicans to Trumpist creatures actively destroying America's place in the world, you can trace this to Josh Marshall's Authoritarian International. Whether it's the techno-libertarian/post-liberalism of a Peter Thiel or the petrostate autocrats of the Persian Gulf or the cultural revanchists of the post-Soviet world, you are talking about a fundamental corruption and rot at the heart of everything. All of this, by the way, was made possible by the corruption of the Supreme Court and decisions like Rufo and Citizen's United.

Trump is flamboyantly corrupt in so many ways, but when you look at the naked enrichment and entitlement of people like Kristi Noem, it's pretty apparent that Trump is not just the largest practitioner of corruption, but the vessel through which others enrich themselves. 

When a culture becomes corrupt enough, it seems foolish to be honest. 

One of the largest problems Democrats have is trying to focus on one outrage, because Trump commits so many. You can't message against the farrago of horseshit coming from the GOP. As we enter the celebration of our 250 years of independence, we should look to revivify the old Whiggish language of corruption.

It fits to a tee. 

Well, That Was Fucking Stupid

 TACO returns. 

Trump chickened out on his plans to annex Greenland (Iceland? Greenland? Iceland?) by coercive means. On some level, this is just the obvious psychology of a bully who had his bluff called. Perhaps someone showed him the polling numbers that have "Annexing Greenland" lower than "Trump's handling of the Epstein Files." More likely the cratering bond markets in the face of a potentially ruinous rupture between the US and Europe got his attention.

The relationship between the US and Europe since 1945 and 1989 has been one of incredible benefits to both sides of the Atlantic. Trump is congenitally unable to conceive of a mutually beneficial relationship. In his warped, blinkered world view, there are only winners and losers, conquerors and victims. When Europe stood up to him - I can just imagine Hegseth and Miller repeating the fiction that Europeans are just cheese-eating surrender monkeys - he must have been shocked. Called on his bullshit, he did what he always does in such situations: he declared "victory" and retreated. 

Still, the damage is done. When Mark Carney, of all people, is declaring that the old order of a US-led community of democracies is dead, I think he means it. I think he's wise to say it. I do think a future, not-insane US president can undo some of this damage, but let's be clear: if you are Europe or Canada or Japan-South Korea, can you really rely on the US? Are you going to put yourself at the mercy of a bunch of misogynist swing voters in the Upper Midwest every four years?

And this was all SO FUCKING DUMB. Greenland? Seriously? The plan, I think, was that this would be the pretext to break up NATO. Trump's insane, rambling screed at Davos sounds like a guy trying to get his third wife to divorce him by abusing her verbally and making her initiate the divorce proceedings. I don't think even Trump wants his fingerprints all over the demise of NATO. He's an expert at creating crises and then getting someone else to hold the bag for them. He's a coward, as we know all bullies are.

Your obligatory reminder that at any moment, the Republican Party could remove this manifestly unwell man from his position of power. Yes, Trump is uniquely awful, among the worst people this nation has ever produced. But he is not doing this alone; the silence of the GOP is as damning as his inchoate whining speeches. 

Europe's Leverage

 Trump is throwing another tantrum. He's pissed that a sovereign country won't bend the knee and cede him Greenland, so he's throwing up tariffs against the entire EU. Krugman points out why this is unlikely to be as effective as he thinks. He makes the point that Trump is completely irrational, and while I largely agree with that, I think there is a rational reason why he's pursuing this: He wants to blow up NATO.

Kelly and others from his first term said that, if reelected, Trump would pull the US out of NATO in his second term. Doing this frontally would engender backlash; if he just pulled us out for no reason, people would question his purpose, even with the craven confines of the GOP caucus. Instead, he picks a stupid fight that itself becomes a loyalty test and then uses that pretext to blow up the Transatlantic Alliance.

Yesterday, stocks dove and bonds rates got very pessimistic about the future. The ultimate weapon the world holds against us is the immense amount of US Treasury bonds that they hold. If they liquidate them, it will hurt, but it will also crater that value of US debt and make it much harder to finance the reckless tax cuts that Trump has passed. 

Trump's bluster has backed everyone into their corners, including himself. That's a dangerous place to be. Trump's social media output reeked of flopsweat and desperation, throwing unhinged rants in every direction. His approval ratings continue to tank, even on immigration. The generic ballot is 51-43 among registered voters, but 55-42 among committed voters. That latter number is worth watching, as some MAGA will likely just sit out the midterms in the wake of his continuing shitshow of an administration.

Europe will hopefully show more resolve than they typically do, even if it tips the world and them into an economic slowdown. The alternative might be an unthinkable war.

Dignity Wraiths

 In Trump's first term, Josh Marshall coined the term "dignity wraiths" to describe those creatures who debased themselves to get into Trump's good graces, only to be further humbled and laid low by Trump's essential depravity and cruelty. Lindsay Graham was a good example. I think Bill Cassidy, who was the deciding vote to put that charlatan RFK, Jr. in charge of America's health, is another example. For his trouble, he has earned a primary challenger, boosted by Trump. 

Krugman makes a similar point with regards to the business leaders who have flattered and bribed Trump in order to avoid his wrath and cultivate his support. History has shown that this rarely works out well. Take Maria Corina Machado, who gave away her Nobel Prize, thinking it would move Trump into actually taking over Venezuela. He took it, she looked the fool and Trump is content to commit more piracy in seizing Venezuelan oil tankers.

On this MLK Day, Richardson reminds us that heroes are not perfect people. King himself was a serial philanderer. Heroism is not the same as saintliness. Heroism is meeting a challenge with courage and resolve. America needs more heroes right now. We need people who are in comfortable positions and enjoy great privilege to show half the resolve and courage as the Minnesotans protesting the military occupation of their cities. We need people like Lisa Murkowski to leave the Republican Party instead of knitting her brow and expressing her concern. 

You cannot placate this man. I have a hunch that NATO sending tripwire troops to Greenland will have the needed effect and Trump will not invade that country. They will negotiate some watered down, bullshit deal for minerals or basing rights, Trump will slink away, and his cultists will extol the Art of the Deal.

You cannot negotiate with the howling void at the center of this man's soul, and doing so will only lead to your own living damnation.

Europe's Next Steps

 The EU and NATO leadership is aghast at Trump's latest fetish for annexing Greenland. They should be. It's appalling. 

What should they do? They've sent tripwire forces to Greenland with the clear message that any military action would risk war with European countries. While Rep. Don Bacon has said that this would lead to impeachment, does anyone believe that Republicans would advance articles of impeachment? Or that enough Republicans in the Senate would vote to remove? "These men are coward, Donny."

If Europe cannot rely on Republicans to have a backbone, what should they do? I would say exactly what they are doing and more. Send NATO warships to Nuuk. Be crystal clear what would happen if Trump thinks he can send in some Rangers and Marines and seize Greenland. There are two reasons why this should work and one reason it won't.

The first is that Trump tends to bluster and bully, but then back down in the face of real opposition. TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out was about tariffs, but it's true across different events. He's a bully and bullies tend to back down from a show of strength. I'm sure the sycophants around him and his own preconceptions are telling him that Europe is weak and decadent, effeminate. Demonstrating that you won't be pushed around would garner Trump's respect, not a lethal response.

The second is that Trump is so damned thirsty to get peace prizes and sell himself as a peacemaker, that it seems you could leverage that. He's not going to start a shooting war and credibly claim to be the Peace President. Even he can't tolerate that much cognitive dissonance. Look at Venezuela; he okayed a lightning raid, verbally asserted control of the country, but does not seem to be eager for boots on the ground. This is where the bluster and threats break down. He has competing agendas in being Mr. Peace Prize and Mr. Imperialist and it seems unlikely he would do anything that might lead to American soldiers coming home dead.

The reason why it might not work is that Trump is fucking insane. As in detached from reality. He is surrounded by repellant sociopaths like Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth who are capable of any manner of atrocities. Do you want to wager lives on the predictability of Trump's response?

You see the same dynamic, I think, in Minnesota. Walz has called the National Guard on standby to keep the peace. Trump, I think would back down, but Miller is salivating over an opportunity to escalate things in Minneapolis, and Walz calling out the Guard could be the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.

It is chaos. It is dangerous. The person most responsible for this is chaotic and dangerous - a doddering old maniac with delusions of grandeur. He is quite unpopular. 

But Kamala Harris had a weird laugh so what are you gonna do?

Greenland, Red Light

 Trump's obsession with Greenland is just so monumentally stupid, even depraved, that it's a struggle to make sense of it. Of course, it's a struggle to make sense of gutting moneys to research cancer, but here we are. It seems the push to annex Greenland might be a product of some of the following factors:

- Trump sees both the size of Greenland on a Mercator projection and heard that it has a bunch of rare earths, so his smooth brain thinks it will make him a great president.

- Trump is actively trying to blow up NATO, and this is an easy way to do so.

- Trump doesn't care about NATO one way or another, he just wants to bully another country and express his contempt for Europe as a whole. This would be part of his Donroe Doctrine.

We also have to consider that the various creatures around Trump have varying agendas and that they can easily manipulate him, using some combination of the above. That seems to be sort of what happened with Venezuela, where Miller's rabid racism, Rubio's anti-socialism and Hegseth's bloodthirstiness all allow for different levers to be pulls in pursuit of the same end. Whether it's "Kill Brown People", "Topple a Dictator" or "Thing Go Boom" they could all agree to push this mission. There is considerably less consensus among Republicans about actively taking over Venezuela.

With Greenland, we are once again at the fickle mercies of Republicans finding their spine and principles. There are quite a few Republicans that still believe in NATO and might oppose this, but it's essential that they be on the record NOW, before Mango Mussolini commits another war crime.

There is just TOO MUCH NEWS right now, but this is a big one.

The Policy Incoherence Of Morons

 I'm teaching Progressivism this week, and we are looking at how there are two aspects of Progressivism that were in direct tension with each other: the desire to have experts direct policy and the desire to have more democracy to represent the "people" and not the "interests." Both were and are laudable goals, but they can work at cross purposes.

Under Trump we have the dual incompatibility of the attack on experts and the destruction of democratic norms. Part of me thinks that someone read something about Progressivism, and then decided to undo anything that smacked of it. This would certainly be consistent, for instance, with Trump's war on Jerome Powell. In fact, the new year has brought such a torrent of terrible news that it seems to have slipped the banks of a coherent narrative. But the attacks on Powell, on Minnesota, on science, and the literal attacks on Venezuela, Syria and maybe Iran or freaking Greenland are all part of the "logic" of authoritarianism.

The reason why authoritarianism is historically unpopular is because authoritarianism - with some exceptions, like maybe Singapore - typically has to business for technocrats. This gives us the darkly comical moment of Trump waging a war for oil in Venezuela and the oil companies saying, "Nah, we're good, dude."

Trump promised an economic utopia when he ran in 2024, and gullible people conflated the circumstances of 2019 with Trump's alleged business acumen. In fact, he's given is a noticeably weak and sluggish economy that Krugman argues is sluggish because of the incoherence and chaotic nature of an autocrat making shit up on the fly. It's all very noisy, but the combination of chaotic tariffs, the prospects of AI taking white collar jobs and general overall problems like firing 300,000 government workers has all led to a period of instability.

Simon Rosenberg notes that Republicans are beginning to break with Trump over issues of clear policy malfeasance. Hopefully, this becomes contagious, and they pass veto proof resolutions denying Trump the ability to invade Greenland or to protect Jerome Powell and the independence of the Federal Reserve. If Trump gets his tiny little paws on the Fed, we are well and truly cooked, and I think even most Republicans know this to be true.

Of course, on one level, the policies pursued by Trump are not incoherent. They are completely coherent with his curdled worldview. They are coherent to his own ignorance and impulses.

Famously some Bush 43 lackey said of Iraq: "We are an empire. We make our own reality." 

How did THAT work out?

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. 

Stupid Imperialism

 As Trump's imperial project stalls at home, with the National Guard removed from American cities and Republicans beginning to buck him in the House, Trump looks afield to sate his imperial pretensions. As with everything he does, it's stupid - a sort of "Didn't Do The Reading" attempt to mimic the late Gilded Age of McKinley: tariffs and wars of empire.

Richardson notes his rambling, incoherent speech yesterday, and how it ties to his renewed threats against Greenland. This is a great example of Stupid Imperialism. (All imperialism is pretty stupid, but this stuff is...woof.) Trump wants Greenland because it looks huge on a Mercator projection and because he heard they have rare earths. Rare earths are not "rare" but are simply hard to refine. China - who doesn't give a shit about polluting its own air and water - have moved into a monopolistic position on rare earths because they have built infrastructure, not because they own the dirt.

Even with Venezuela, Krugman notes that much of Venezuelan oil wealth is hypothetical to the point of being fictional. It's heavy, bitter crude rather than the light, sweet crude that refines most easily into usable petroleum. 

Let's leave aside the stupidity of Trump saying we "run" Venezuela, when we obviously do not. Let's leave aside the stupidity of tearing apart the NATO alliance to annex Greenland for no meaningful advantage. Yes, the process is stupid and thuggish.

The thing is, the GOAL is stupid, too. The original mercantilism arose from Malthus' insight into the economics of scarcity. If there was a limited amount of a good or resource, it made sense to have a national monopoly on that. Adam Smith and the industrial revolution ended that basic idea - even if it took a century to learn that it was dead. There is no advantage to an empire, which is why - leftist caterwauling to the contrary - America largely did not pursue a true empire. When we did, it largely ended poorly.

The dumbification of America has happened, because one of our two major parties has lobotomized itself to reflect the imbecility of their Orange God. 

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.

No War But The Culture War

 Krugman has a long conversation with Adam Tooze about the challenges and strengths that Europe has, especially relative to the United States. One thing that struck me - there's a LOT there - is the idea of the NSS that basically divides the world into Great Power spheres of influence. That's how I read it, with Trumpist nostalgia for the 19th century reducing the world to this old idea of regional hegemons: the US in the Americas, Russia in Europe and China in Asia.

What was striking to many was the racist and antagonistic language that the NSS used to describe Europe. Tooze points out that this is really just an extension of MAGA's culture war ethos. We know how moony-eyed Trumpists get when talking about Hungary and Orban; that sort of competitive authoritarianism is their goal for America. Orban also fits into that Culture Warrior model, as much of his appeal is his anti-immigrant - really anti-Islamic - focus in European politics.

For the MAGAts, Europe is just Woke America with funny accents. I would argue that this is part of the overall lack of curiosity about the world that typifies a certain type of arrogant ignorance. What's fascinating about the Europe v US debate is how both sides of the Atlantic have such different priorities, yet they are fundamentally wealthy and successful societies. If you're from Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia or Latin America, you would want to live in the US or Europe, but if you're from the US or Europe, you'd probably only want to live in either of those places. This isn't to say either place doesn't face significant problems, rather that they are very much First World Problems.

To denigrate Europe - as the MAGAts do - is exactly the same as denigrating New York, Chicago or San Francisco. The same as hating Berkeley, Cambridge or Austin. 

Mark Twain said "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." MAGA is service to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness. 

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.

Department of War Crimes

 Since the first strikes on Venezuelan boats, there has been more than "concern" that these strikes are illegal. They seem pretty clearly to be outside international law. Recently, we have reporting that Pete Hegseth gave a "no quarters" order to kill the survivors of the initial strike. This is a black-and-white war crime. Simultaneously, we have Trump threatening to launch airstrikes on Venezuela without Congressional approval. 

The bloodthirsty drive to kill brown people is Trumpian enough, but the real cherry on top of the Sundae Bloody Sundae is that Trump is going to pardon a guy who was definitely in bed with cartels. The Times, being The Times, writes that this seems to be a contradiction in Trump's "strategy." 

The "strategy" in Venezuela is not about drugs. Venezuela is not a major source of drugs in this country. The pardon of Hernandez demonstrates that Trump doesn't give a fuck about drugs. Hell, his indifference to cocaine trafficking might be the first sign that he really loves Don, Jr. 

Venezuela has oil. Maduro is an admittedly bad guy, and it would be better if he were not in charge of that country. However, forcing him to leave under threat of imminent violence is pretty sketchy. Pressuring him to abdicate by killing Venezuelans on the high seas and then machine gunning the survivors is criminal. Still, if your desire is to return the ancien regime to Venezuela - the sort of corrupt oligarchs that used to keep the oil flowing while the people starved - then this isn't an illogical way to go about it. 

It's just illegal. 

And again, Trump being Trump, there is a very good chance that Venezuelan exiles and other forces are paying for Trump's services either upfront or with future deals once they are returned to power. The stupid part is that Trump might force Maduro from power and then a true democratic president might assume power and shut out those oligarchs, so Trump and Hegseth will have to put boots on the ground in order to get the outcome they are hoping for. The idea is simply to kill a few dozen people, threaten Maduro with military action, have him leave and then profit. I doubt it will be that linear. 

Will Congress rise from the floor and stop these criminal acts? There is quote that Richardson highlights is from a "senior Republican":

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all—appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.

“More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

Of course, this quote is anonymous, because they are pissed but still scared. 

Hegseth is a criminal. (OK, alleged criminal.) Trump will undoubtedly pardon him. A future Democratic president will have to expedite him to face justice overseas where the corrupted pardon power holds no sway. Pete Hegseth needs to become Pete Hague-seth.

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.

Personalist Foreign Policy

 Trump is an 80 year old man who spent his whole life running a closely held company where he made personal relationships the key to his branding exercises that made him his money. As President, he has basically extended that worldview to his foreign policy. "Are you my 'friend' and can we work together in a way that will ultimately benefit me?" He is not capable of learning a new trick.

This led him to negotiate the temporary cease fire in Gaza that has - unsurprisingly - already broken down. His relationship with the Gulf States allowed him to pressure Hamas to give up the hostages, but Hamas is not ready to cede Israel's right to exist or certainly to rule Gaza and Israel still wants to kill every last member of Hamas. Since Trump has no personalist relationship with Hamas, there is no way to keep them in line and Israel won't let Hamas sneeze without bombing a refugee camp. 

The credulity with which the news media treated this "peace deal" was disgusting.

Now, we have Martin Longman laying out the same dynamic in the Caribbean. As he notes, Trump seems to be inching us towards war with Venezuela based on trumped up (ahem) charges that Maduro is in league with Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan narco-gang. At the same time, it seems pretty clear that Trump is fine with the actual close relationship that his friend Bukele has with the Salvadoran narco-gang MS13. 

It doesn't matter which gang is more deadly or more responsible for drug trafficking. All of that is noise. What matters is that Bukele has cultivated Trump and Maduro hasn't (or more likely can't). You can also see this dynamic with the bailout for Javier Milei. 

Put another way: The United States no longer conducts foreign policy on the basis of principles or long term strategic needs; it conducts foreign policy based on how well a foreign head of state kisses Trump's diapered ass. This presents real problems for global stability. We have seen this for quite some time with Trump's treatment of Ukraine. Zelensky has finally learned to kiss Trump's ass, and that has led to Trump softening his hardline towards Kyiv, but we should be supporting Ukraine because it is a fledgling democracy under assault by an imperial autocratic regime.

Principles matter, because they are fixed and predictable. Trump has no principles beyond personal aggrandizement, so America has no principles beyond what he requires from any given moment or circumstance.

The protests yesterday were great. There was a lot of sentiment about how it was only about 9 months of this shit. The list of degradations by Trump is very, very long. We are already seeing some of his policies create real problems - killing renewable and higher electricity prices; tariffs and deportations leading to inflation; trade wars leading to a collapse in American agricultural exports; personal vindictiveness weaponizing the Justice department against his critics; rampant corruption - both within his family and his administration; forcing media and other conglomerates to kiss the ring or suffer the consequences. The list seems endless.

The reason 7,000,000 Americans took to the streets yesterday (and judging by the reaction of passing cars, many millions more supported them) is that we are seeing the real time effects of having a fucking moron make economic policy. We are seeing what happens when a petty little tyrant has unconstrained access to power.

We haven't yet seen how this personalist foreign policy will play out. There's always a lag with these things as old systems slowly change.

I'm willing to bet that before long, we will blunder into a shooting war.