The American Politics Thread

Well, yes, it should.  But it's not necessarily in our control to stop it or mitigate it.

It is in our power to stay out of the elections of other nations, but I think we try to influence them as well, so it's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.  We can assert our own national sovereignty (which I think is good), but we need to honor the sovereignty of other nations, too.  We don't always do that.

Everybody's always trying to get leverage over each other.

Pl remember that these conventions were set up mostly by the USA itself and while you may find that conclusion unpalatable, from the outside we only see the USA having its way whenever it chooses to.  For example, if the UN really had any powers, the Iraq war wouldn't have happened.  When Trump supporters complain they would like to see the USA have its way, we on the outside have to ask when has the USA NOT had its way in the last several decades and particularly since 1989 as the unchallenged and undisputed superpower?  The domination has not just been military but economic and institutional as well.  Therefore, any globalist order that does emerge in future, if at all, would necessarily also be subservient to US needs.  Whether the US state needs are necessarily the same as that of the American people is a different question but I do not see that merely demolishing globalism would achieve that and if anything, it gives Trump an easy win, a low hanging fruit to show and collect votes without addressing the deeper problems that led to the deep resentment with the centre of politics in many democracies.  Our Prime Minister, Modi, too escaped critique over his economic policies by showing off air strikes against Pakistan to burnish his nationalist credentials.  But of what use is such nationalism that doesn't feed hungry mouths anyway.  I fully understand why the centrist order is being upended in politics but so far find the chosen remedies to be worse than the illness.

omphaloskepsis wrote: Trump want's every country to be sovereign.  Nationalists want local rule... not One World government.   Let everyone mind their own business and rule themselves.

'Nationalists', hmm.

But on China, it's more the fault of the earlier corporatist leadership that they handled China with kid gloves than Trump for doing what should have been done much before.  Yes, he is escalating it dangerously but this would not have been required had previous Presidents more realistic and less sunny about China.

In either event, I do not see the threat to USA's national sovereignty that he is supposed to be warding off.  It is almost laughable to hear that notion as an outsider.  Dear God, if the world's biggest power feels insecure and needs protection, then where does that leave other nations.  There is no military power today and not for the next ten-fifteen years in a position to dislodge USA.  If you invest in the very idea of a threat to national sovereignty of USA, you have been played by paranoid right wing media.

If I was from Poland, or Iran, or South Korea, or the United States, or the UK... I would still feel that my country had a right to look out for its own best interests, and work toward more peace, prosperity, and happiness for its people.