China Rises and Almost No Nations Trust the US Anymore

 

China Rises and Almost No Nations Trust the US Anymore

Biden, Biden, Biden, Antifa, Antifa, Antifa

“[The United States uses] economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will

and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.”

From a recent official report compiled by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS)

“I know ’em [European leaders] really well. Um, some are friends. Some are OK. I know the good leaders. I know the bad leaders. I know the smart ones. I know the stupid ones. You get some real stupid ones, too. But, uh, they’re not doing a good job. Europe is not doing a good job in many ways. They’re not doing a good job… I think they’re weak, but I also think that they want to be so politically correct. They don’t ... I think they don’t know what to do. Europe doesn’t know what to do. They don’t know what to do on trade either. I mean, I look at a lot of the trade, you know, situation that’s going on over there. It’s a little bit dangerous. But ... but Europe uh, they want to be politically correct, and it makes them weak. That’s what makes them weak.” 

Trump from the December 9th Politico Interview with Dasha Burns

"I really hope that the United States, although they consider themselves entitled to conduct such operations, will somehow explain, out of respect for other members of the world community, what facts led them to take such actions." 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov demanding that Trump provide justification for the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker. December 11th.

"I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes. If you're doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, there is a consequence for that. That's why the military said it won't follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There's a standard, there's an ethos, there's a belief that we are above so many things that our enemies or others would do." 

From a 2016 video of Pete Hegseth, before Trump 1.0, and while he was a Fox News Host

"The video and classified briefings from the Pentagon were sufficient to convince Chairman Rogers that this was a legal action." 

Spokesperson for Alabama Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which is dropping the bipartisan probe into the military's Sept. 2 double-strike that killed two survivors in the Caribbean

Given Donald Trump’s clear message to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that KYIV has to cede territory to Russia, reflects Trump’s seeming acceptance of Putin’s unchanged demands to settle the Ukraine war. European leaders, listening to direct threats from Putin and his senior ministers against Europe itself, fear that concession to Russia will only ignite Putin’s ambitions for the rest of Europe. “President Donald Trump said Wednesday [12/10] that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ‘has to be realistic’ about the war with Russia and questioned when Ukraine would next hold elections. Trump’s remarks at the White House followed calls with the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, whom he said discussed the conflict ‘in pretty strong terms.’” Germany is leading the charge of rebuilding Europe’s military strength, saying Europe can no longer trust the United States. Ripples of “the US has switched sides” and the “US is becoming a security risk for Europe” have been lifted to European headlines.

Yet Europeans on the right have noticed how effective Trump’s vituperative-laced, extreme rhetoric has worked in the United States. So, as some Europeans fear Russia and increasingly despise the United States, there is a new rising rightwing in Europe who are opting for new culture war in Europe, mimicking Trump’s style… and his deflection/distraction tactics…. “For the respectable men running western Europe’s three biggest countries, misery is heaped upon misery. All are presiding over stagnant living standards and declining global influence. In Britain and France their rivals from the populist right are itching to take power (even the Alternative for Germany, or the AfD, may win a couple of state elections next year). And America, their key ally, has just accused them of hastening Europe towards what it calls ‘civilisational erasure’. …

“As we [The Economist] report, support for the Alternative for Germany, National Rally and Reform UK is surging. In response, the very respectable leaders of Britain, France and Germany have warned of the catastrophe facing Europe. Just last week, Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, told Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, that Reform UK was a challenge to ‘the very essence of who we are as a nation.’…

“The doctrines of the populist right do indeed contain much to condemn. Yet talking about them in apocalyptic terms is destined to fail. The doom-mongering of mainstream politicians smacks of an attempt to draw attention away from their own failures in office. Given the strikingly normal way Giorgia Meloni is running Italy, their apocalyptic predictions are not credible. For their own sake, and for the good of their countries, mainstream politicians and their supporters urgently need a different approach.” The Economist, December 11th. The tea leaves of our own decline are everywhere.

You may ask yourself, for example, if there is a hidden agenda in our military’s rescuing a few survivors of one of the initial boat strikes in the Caribbean… and repatriating them to their home countries… and shortly thereafter making sure there were no remaining witnesses…er… survivors for the September 2nd second Naval strike on a “narco-terrorist” boat. If the Navy and the administration really felt that they were not violating any domestic or international law, we would have seen the full footage a month ago. But as noted above, the House investigation is done.

But if there were survivors, and instead of killing them, the Navy could have rescued those survivors and turned them over through a US federal criminal court or a military court. But with no declared war, no judicial approval and a very mysterious government legal memo attempting to “justify” the attack, there was a risk. And if that court were applying any US or international law to those killings of non-combatant individuals, the rulings would almost certainly have found a war crime, an extreme violation of the rules of war or even out-and-out murder. The ruling might apply not just to that attack but the very legitimacy of the program of attacks themselves.

Much of the world is disgusted by our actions. The UK is no longer sharing intelligence with us over the Caribbean region. If you want to see a summary of Europe’s disenfranchisement with the United States, here’s a piece (reproduced in the December 11th Newsbreak.com) by Sean O’Grady: “What does Donald Trump want from Europeans? It’s a question we didn’t use to have to ask ourselves about American presidents. That was because Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and even George W Bush, whom we used to think a little extreme, were very clear.

“They wanted a unified Europe to be a free and strong ally of the United States in Nato, and to stand for ‘Western values’; to defuse or to win the Cold War, and, in the long term, to liberate Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation, albeit while trying to coexist with the Russians… We did not insult one another, and no US leader ever bothered themselves about who was running London, still less called a mild-mannered [London] mayor ‘vicious and disgusting’. The very name ‘Khan’ is something that Trump can barely tolerate in his mouth. Imagine, if you possibly can, Ronald Reagan spewing bile about Ken Livingstone back in the day. Try to visualise Jimmy Carter saying that Germany faced ‘civilisational erasure’, or ‘Dubya’ whingeing about free speech in Sweden.

“That world has gone. We need to face up to the full extent of what is happening to us – and what Trump’s America wants and expects in return for even the semblance of military alliance and protection… Most immediately, Trump wants us to abandon Ukraine and make friends with Vladimir Putin, as if the invasion and the war crimes had never happened – or, as the new US National Security Strategy puts it, ‘re-establishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia’. We are a continent of ‘decaying countries’ suffering ‘weak leaders’ who ‘talk too much’. Maybe, but it’s up to us Europeans to vote them in or out. We neither want nor need interference from Washington or Moscow.” Israel seems to have written off a future US Gen Z relationship, and that “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas is hardly holding.

Worse, Europe trusts China over the United States these days, as European leaders, seeking to avoid Trump’s erratic and autocratic economic bullying policies, are racing to Beijing for new economic treaties. As Trump is forced to use taxpayer money ($12B, a small fraction of what US soybean farmers really lost) to compensate farmers for Trump’s dramatically failed tariff policies, China may not have fixed its own economic turmoil, but they have restored their global export machine to the level it was before Trump tripped all over himself with his tariff wars.

As Al Qaeda and ISIS return to parts of the Middle East as well as expanding significantly in Africa with no real US opposition, Europe is slowly separating itself from the United States… and China is loving it. Trump blames anything he has screwed up on Biden, Biden, Biden and only sees Antifa, Antifa, Antifa, as our only domestic terrorism threat. When asked to define who and what “Antifa” was in House testimony on December 11th, FBI Counter-Terrorism Director Michael Glasheen could only stammer. Apparently, no one told him “Antifa” per se does not even exist. China must have been giddy with laughter.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with Trump sinking the US into deeper and more unpopular failing isolationism in a globally-linked economic system, Americans and Europeans are learning to deal with the new, xenophobic/racist kleptocracy that Trump has inflicted on the rapidly declining power and influence of the United States of America.