I genuinely wish there was an understandable endgame for the USA. The USA seems to be throwing its weight around but I’m not entirely sure to what end. This headline/article is just one area where the US is behaving perplexingly.
I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees. Fine there’s at least a through line. However; by demonstrating that the US is willing to revoke access to this war material during an active shooting war over some ego thing they’re showing allies who’ve invested in the US military equipment that they’re vulnerable to suffer this same fate. Now Europe is turning hard away from US tech.
To some degree this is a good thing, I think, from USA’s POV. Trump has said it’s unfair USA spends the most on NATO and that member states should pay more (how many don’t hit the 2% target). However; the point was to spend their 2% GDP on American armaments. Now Europe is taking their demand and money and investing in domestic military equipment. Which will inevitably beg the question in the coming years if NATO, a US establishment, is to be made redundant?
This US administration can’t seem to have their cake and eat it too. They want money, demand for their goods, but every time they act out they drive away their business partners.
The clown in the oval office claimed we wouldn't help them. More Danish men died per capita in middle east because of article 5 than men from the US...
If that’s the case that “NATO as has existed is already over” then maybe it is wise for the USA to pull out. Maybe that’s the endgame for Europe? Europe defends Europe (or gets taken over by Russia I guess), and USA isn’t on the hook for its defense anymore.
Americans all have this attitude that theyre "on the hook" for everyone elses defence as if theyre the white knight defending the world against evil. Its more like the local mob tough guys who have been taking protection money for the last 40 years backed down when a rival gang finally decided to make a move
I'm American, and I don't have that view. So it's clearly not literally true.
So perhaps you mean that it's "mostly" true. Then I'd ask, what evidence do you have to support that? Is there some poll of public opinion you can refer to? That's something we could meaningfully discuss.
Actually, your view is true even if there exists even just one person with your view. In reality what matters is the distribution of views. Furthermore, what matters is the distribution of views by the decision makers because those will be divorced from public distribution and informed by other secret plans or information unknown to public. So in a sense, it doesn't matter whether he is right or you are.
NATO is there to make sure that the dollar is the dominant trading currency.
NATO is the reason why saudis are trading in dollars.
NATO is the reason that the US has credible nuclear deterrents
NATO is why america doesn't need to have a physical colonial empire in europe (otherwise it'd need to subjugate cyprus, and somewhere like saaremaa, and that costs a shit tonne of money)
NATO isn't about playing for defence of europe, its about keeping the USSR and russia far enough away to keep trading routes open.
If Russia wants the international version of suicide by cop. Invading US soil is the next tier up from invading Russia in winter in military blunders. No one has been stupid enough to try since 1812 when the British navy ruled. And they couldn't achieve any meaningful goals.
In 4 years another administration could come in but there's still damaged trust. If something happens in 5, 6 years from now and article 5 kicks in then even if the US comes to help what is there to say they won't suddenly pull out again 2 years into a war when Vance takes charge? The reliability is gone.
I guess you've got to be flexible depending on circumstances. I mean NATO only really got going after Europe elected Hitler and now we have another iffy electoral result to work with.
I think they might have been helped along a little by things like being occupied, becoming economically and militarily reliant on their occupiers and watching all of their leaders face judgement at the Nuremberg Trials.
Things haven't gotten quite so extreme in the US yet but it feels reductive to suggest that they can just have a flip flop election and that will show they "realised the error of their ways" like Germany did post WW2.
I think culturally most of the US is still pro NATO, it's just Trump and friends who are anti. I guess if Vance succeeds him things will be similar but if the dems win they won't.
I'm kind of interested if Russia could become normal if the current regime collapses.
The US has burned trust well past 4 years. This has shown how the US political system enables this. Every 4 years they elect someone who has the power to just toss out everything the previous administration did or committed to. Every 4 years... and the US is so politically divided that it only takes a few percent of opinion change at each election to swing to the other party with polar opposite views. As a result, why would any other country now trust the US in any agreement? (not to mention the large number of agreements they have signed then just abandoned later) Four years is nothing time wise.. barely enough time to get an agreement fully implimented before the US can just say "Nah..." There will be significantly less trust for the US even beyond the Trump era.
It would be delusional to think that this can be patched up with a new president, or that any of America's former allies will be willing to wait around twirling their thumbs, hoping that the next time America flips a coin, it turns out better.
The relationship is over. Maybe in 4 years America can start making some initial steps towards patching things up, but even that seems increasingly unlikely at this point.
Why would another Republican President act any differently than Trump after they see how well that works? A majority of the US either doesn’t care about international affairs or they are actively isolationist.
Does anyone think a country not already involved in a nuclear war would willingly expose itself to being annihilated? NATO works best when all member states are stable, ideologically aligned, and its Article 5 resolve is untested. Here the uncertainty works in its favor. But when NATO expands past deep ideological alignment towards a maximal expansionist strategy, and openly courts states its rival signals as core security interests, NATO becomes something else entirely. When it became a tool for maximally isolating Russia, it undermined its own credibility as a unified security entity. There is a genuine question whether the US would go "all in" to defend eastern european states. The fact that we can credibly ask this question about a NATO member just shows how far it's gone from its initial ideals.
We need to remember the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurance and not forget that Ukraine was coaxed to give up its nuclear weapons in 1993 by a guarantee of territorial integrity.
Why do we need to remember this agreement that provided zero security guarantees? At most it ensures denuclearization is dead, but frankly speaking, it already was.
Maybe instead we should remember the 2014 Wales Summit that was intended to deter Russian invasion?
Or maybe instead we should consider that right before Russia's invasion in February 2022, Europe collectively dropped their military spending as % of GDP? Possibly since Trump had left office in 2021? Its unfortunate deterrents don't function when you do this...
Actually, maybe what we need to remember is that most of Europes money has been going to Russia even after the invasion? What a strange thing for allies to do right?
It's weird how the United States justified its support in Ukraine as securing the region for its allies while its allies undermined this at every step of the way, do allies usually do that? When I listen to them on TV they seem to care a lot about Ukraine so it's strange...
> I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees.
I don't think there are any "security guarantees". What could they be?
The "endgame" as far as I understand it: The US wants access to the minerals as a compensation for the money already spent and, perhaps, to restore some of the support currently put on hold (satellite data access). Once the Ukranian resistance is broken, the US and Russia will jointly dictate a peace, gradually install a Russia-friendly regime and split the profit between them. They will happily invite the EU to finance some of the rebuilding of Ukraine that is then mainly performed by US and Russian companies. The US furthermore hopes that by spearheading the lifting of sanctions it will get priority access to some beneficial deals with and within Russia itself.
I think the implicit guarantee is if American business and workers are harvesting minerals then if Russia attacked the USA would have even more incentive to intervene militarily.
That said, I don’t know what more Ukraine would want given the Budapest Memorandum already ties the USA, UK, and Russia to Ukraine’s defense. That’s proven to be a mixed success, as both USA, UK, and other countries have indeed stepped up for Ukraine’s defense.
There is no such thing as implicit guarantees. The US has shown it is not a trusted country, and as such, we expect that it will also renege any written guarantees.
> if American business and workers are harvesting minerals then if Russia attacked the USA would have even more incentive to intervene militarily
Or Russia just invades while being careful not to damage their buddy's mines. Maybe the US even helps the Russians out once the Ukranian "dictator" is forced to begin fighting in too close proximity to the minerals.
The point is that Russia won't have to attack any more, because Ukraine will already be nothing more than a puppet state after having been forced to sign the kind of peace deal that Putin wants.
American businesses and workers operate all over the world. No-one thinks that this means that all these countries will receive military support from the US if they are invaded.
Another relevant detail here is that a lot of the resources included in the deal are in territory that's currently occupied by Russia – which Trump clearly envisions Russia keeping in any peace settlement.
> point was to spend their 2% GDP on American armaments
Do the NATO agreements specify American armaments? Europe could have spent on European armaments and armies too, just chose not too because they didn't see a reason to.
Europe not buying F35 or whatever hurts US arms industry, but probably not the general strategic position of the US. There's even a credible argument (dont know how credible?) that these arms programs actually undermine security by investing crazy money in outdated / ineffective technology. The dumb part would be not learning from the Ukrainians how to fight a modern war.
US participation in NATO may be made redundant, but Europe's need for a credible collective defense agreement is not going away.
I think it boils down to the fact that Trump does not understand soft power. Slashing the most powerful and influential aid programme in the world shows that very clearly. The US is as rich as it is because they created an environment of stability (at least on their own territory) and ensuring that there are markets American companies can sell into.
Maybe not so much that as he sees everything as a bargaining chip and any unused chips as a waste. After all, bribery and favors are more or less what soft power is.
The endgame isn't for the USA, it's for Trump. I don't really know what it is, but I'm pretty certain that to understand his actions, you have to rid yourself of the idea that he's doing it for anybody or anything else than for himself.
> I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees.
I don't think this is true at all, I think Trump wants Ukraine to be conquered and for Russia to win and for people to stop bothering him about any of it.
Trump blew up whatever nonsense minerals deal there was, and is actively sabotaging the Ukrainian defence efforts via this, and ending intelligence sharing, and apparently leaning on random American companies to stop them selling services to Ukraine, and by providing diplomatic cover and support to Russia.
people haven't seem to have caught on yet - the US has switched sides, it is now part of the Russia bloc.
What would you do if you were a team of US oligarchs with connections to the administration and wanted to increase your share of, and power over, the domestic cake?
Tell me it doesn't fit.
Edit: this story just dropped off the main page. Currently sitting at 85 points and 77 comments. It had position 2 or so, now it has position 79.
Laat I think I knew anything it took surprisingly few flags and I think people abuse it all the time to get rid of things they personally don't like. And don't like is a broad category.
But Zelensky came to the white house to sign the deal. If Trump wanted the deal to be signed, it would have been signed. But he chose to gang up on Zelensky.
I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees. Fine there’s at least a through line. However; by demonstrating that the US is willing to revoke access to this war material during an active shooting war over some ego thing they’re showing allies who’ve invested in the US military equipment that they’re vulnerable to suffer this same fate. Now Europe is turning hard away from US tech.
To some degree this is a good thing, I think, from USA’s POV. Trump has said it’s unfair USA spends the most on NATO and that member states should pay more (how many don’t hit the 2% target). However; the point was to spend their 2% GDP on American armaments. Now Europe is taking their demand and money and investing in domestic military equipment. Which will inevitably beg the question in the coming years if NATO, a US establishment, is to be made redundant?
This US administration can’t seem to have their cake and eat it too. They want money, demand for their goods, but every time they act out they drive away their business partners.