So I'm going to assume that there is _some_ kind of code.

What Trump currently is doing fits perfectly this goal. Russia is natural, local ally of USA against China, that's what Trump means when he voices hopes for future cooperation between "our great countries". It is further reinforced by plans to sell F35 to India, another natural ally, which means those planes will be copied by Russia as soon as possible.

In all this Europe is just abandoned. USA knows that in conflict against China, Europe is useless as it has no business in making enemy out of China.

What he might be not appreciating sufficiently (because he percieves Europe as weak and restricted by its morals) is that Europe can be motivated to align themselves with China against Russia. While Europe can't (and doesn't want to) threaten China in any way they can offer China a lot. For starters they could start delivering most advanced litography machines, which only they know how to make to China, instead of Taiwan. And they could also internationally recognize China taking into their zone of influnece eastern parts of Russia if China agrees to provide military assistance and suplemental nuclear deterrence in the war of Europe against Russia that's almost inevitably coming.

I think at some point sobering realization will come that evading your responsibility of global hegemon (even if at this point it's only nominal role) and leaving Europe hanging might have severe consequences for Trump's imperial project.

(Also, Trump did not run on these policies -- he's implementing policies he explicitly repudiated when he lied about not being affiliated with the Project 2025 manifesto.)

I don't want to let the voters off the hook, but continuous, ongoing responsibility for this unfolding economic and political disaster lies with the people who hold institutional authority, and are refusing to use it to comply with the law as it stands.

90% of the voting public pays little attention to policy (not saying this is a good thing).

A good portion of people that voted for Trump voted for him because he promised to hurt Those People. And just like Trump 1.0, it's going to end up hurting them as well (per /r/LeopardsAteMyFace):

> “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/flo...

I'm arguing against the premise that Trump publicly denouncing Project 2025 really means no one who voted for him saw any of this coming.

If my guesses are correct, it’ll work just long enough for another administration to take over to deal with the fallout.

Happens to business too. People don’t realise how long these entities can circle the drain.

We in the US are about to take a 50 to 90% drop in our standard of living as a result. 8(

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2148945/

When it gets mentioned online it mostly seems to be racists suggesting Africans are inferior, partly based on the Chinese engineer's frustration with local customs and graft and labour market.

But I found it quite humanising of both the African and Chinese people featured. The director is Belgian, which controlled the region up until independence 50 years before filming.

https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/where-does-all-the-m...

If you got rid of every department that DOGE is targeting completely, you still only save 8%

These are not normal times and I believe USA also hired foreign nationals to top secret programs during and after WWII.

The UK has US-derived (?) nuclear weapons, and so it would perhaps make sense for them to hire the Americans that maintained them:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_...

Given the 'waffling' of Trump on NATO support, Poland may want to develop their own.

Also South Korea and Japan may want to ramp up their own native infrastructure given the waffling of US Pacific support.

Good thing the US hasn't .. oh.

(the oil price is actually OK as is the trade balance, so far, but social cohesion is fraying and people are always complaining about productivity)

The country could have continued like this for years, if not decades, were it not for a few men and coincidental events.

Did the USSR have an entire administration rapidly and deliberately tearing down their government, or was it more of the cracks in the foundation finally giving out?

Just because the former took a decade doesn't mean that this will require the same amount of time.

As I mentioned above, the fear of vaporization goes away if you can continue to keep striking after being striked. If you've reached the point where you are launching nuclear strikes, you accept the massive toll that you will have to pay with a launch, and wish to enact as severe a toll as possible. To do that you need second strike and nuclear triad capabilities.

Every single one of the countries you mentioned has second strike capabilities and either has Nuclear Triad capabilities (China, US, Israel) or is working to implement them (France, North Korea).

A country like Poland or Germany is too late in the game to build second strike or nuclear triad capabilities, and even starting a nuclear weapons program would be causus belli enough in the short-to-medium term for a war while being unable to prevent a strike.

If the USA gets a repeat of the USSR collapse, you're looking at an independent Texas and California (and perhaps Hawaii?) within a few years, 50% GDP loss, proper hyperinflation, infighting over the nuclear arsenal being under federal authority or the authority of whichever state it happened to be physically in at the time, and a 6-7 year reduction in life expectancy.

Even if Moscow or St Petersburg are completely wiped off the map, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Omsk, etc will remain while much of Poland is irradiated.

> Russia is not the USSR

It's not the USSR, but it's still a large country, and much of the defense industry has remained in Siberia since WW2.

There is no being 'late', either. It's about the threats.

I have never implied that Poland should develop nuclear weapons. I wrote that they are/were in the very situation in which nuclear weapons may be desirable (similar to France, Israel, North Korea). Relatively small countries have nukes simply to make any attempt at invasion not worth it even if everyone knows they can't "win" against the USSR/Russia/the US, anyway.

It has enabled a very stable and predictable world. This has benefited USA immensely. It it not clear to me, that rewinding and dismantling this system will have net positive effects in the next 50 years for USA.

I agree. It is doable for individual European states to rebuild their conventional fighting capabilities.

France has been a proponent of this kind of "strategic autonomy" for decades, and so has the UK to a certain extent.

Most of the angst is coming from Germany, who let the Bundeswehr degrade from being one of the most capable Armed Forces in Europe in 1990 to what it is today.

(Although USA has threatened to occupy EU territory in the last weeks.)

It does not have to be a threat, but if Europe should take more responsibility for their own defense, it would make sense build up their nuclear capacity.

(And I am well aware of the differences between EU, Europe and individual countries. But it seems to me tha France is the country to build upon.)

Ukraine had nuclear weapons that they gave away. Maybe they shouldn't have?

Also - universal healthcare is not about 1-2 percent lower military spendings (much of which goes back to the country itself). USA is a rich country, you could also afford it.

>I believe showing Russia, China, and the world, that USA stands behinds it commitments and allies, defends the rule based world order and is true leader of the democratic society would deter leaders such as Putin and Xi from trying anything

Half of the European countries now are anti-democratic, and actively work against the will of their own people. As for "rules-based order" I think we are just the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry. Don't kid yourself. Our governments have been up to a lot of nefarious things around the world. We don't have a clear moral high ground as the propagandists would have you think. But we're stuck in our own countries for better or worse. We have to do what we can to straighten things out.

No, because it's not symmetric.

Party A may be an existential threat to party B, party B can prevent that existential threat just by being sufficiently painful. B doesn't even have to be close to an existential threat to A for it to be painful enough to reconsider.

That's how bees keep humans away from hives. Also how the Irish kicked my great-grandparents generation out of controlling Ireland, even at the height of the British empire.

> Nuclear programs are expensive, and instead of spending the amount you would need to build a nuclear program, it's much better for Poland and Germany to double down and concentrate on conventional war capabilities such as rocket systems, drones, artillery, and heavy weapons. The fact that a country with an ossified MIC like Ukraine is able to bog down a military like Russia's with conventional capabilities is proof enough that doubling down on building conventional war-fighting capabilities is enough to cause severe pain on an aggressor while not turning a conflict into an existential one which justifies nuclear warfare.

Yes, they are expensive. Also, I expect a multi-polar nuclear arms race to go hot much more easily, to normalise their use, to generally be bad for everyone.

So I hope you are correct (or, more importantly, that your opinion is shared by decision makers). On the other, there's clearly a constant undercurrent of "let's not give too much more aid to Ukraine just in case the Russian nukes actually work", so I don't think it's seen that way.

> German military leadership

Given the local attitudes towards even nuclear reactors, I think it's just a political non-starter around here. (I'll have to wait and see if @TeMPOraL sees this and responds regarding Poland's politics?)

And this is the crux of the issue. It's hubris to assume Europe is our natural ally and should always be our top priority.

In the US, our Pacific allies (Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) are a higher priority than our European ones.

As can be seen in US Military Deployments (the majority of US Armed Forces personnel is deployed in the Pacific) along with economic relations (APAC trade is larger than EU trade)

For the US, China is the primary adversary to worry about, not Russia. Why should European states assume the US has an obligation to always support Europe? At least France and UK have historically tried to maintain some strategic autonomy, and Eastern NATO states like Poland, Romania, and Turkiye have continued to build domestic defense capacity.

And unlike most European countries, our Asian allies (SK, JP, TW) have continued to build fairly competitive domestic defense industries. Japan and South Korea can manufacture their own ballistic missiles, tanks, submarines, airframes, heavy artillery, etc. Only France has a similar diversity of domestic defense R&D and manufacturing capacity in Europe.

> more benefits than gearing up for war (aka the Peace Dividend).

It's Europe that gets the peace dividend. Not the US. We still need to the capacity to fight a two continent war. That's a bum deal.

> I would think that Europe has knowledge and skillset.

Europe as a continent, sure. But in reality, it's a number of individuals states working on their own domestic production, procurement, and supporting their domestic champions.

France will continue to protect Thales Group, Arianne Group, Dassault Group, etc, just like how Germany continues to back Rheinmetall, ThysennKrupp, Eurofighter, etc.

There is no ability to unify production and procurement without also undermining domestic industries and jobs.

France's Ariane Group will never transfer their Medium Range Ballistic Missiles technology to a German company - they don't want to help a potential competitor.

This same thing happened with the Eurofighter project, with France deciding to back Dassault instead.