| | | Tenchu's Thoughts - Trump's Foreign Policy Is Already A Massive Failure
Europe and NATO
The only "success" that Trump can claim with regard to his foreign policy is getting member NATO nations to start spending more of their own money on defense. But that obviously wasn't because they listened to Trump out of respect. Instead, it's a realization that the U.S. is no longer a reliable leader when it comes to global defensive alliances. Even after Trump is gone, the American voters have already proven how little they value NATO.
We're even getting to the point where some of our European allies won't even accept F-35 jets anymore fearing that Trump will remotely disable them on a whim. To be sure, U.S. military aid has ALWAYS been attached to strings, such as when Brandon was trying to use U.S. aid to restrain Israel in their war against Hamas. But most of our allies understood why those strings existed, and they trusted that we would only pull them for extraordinary circumstances. As long as we have shared values, the possibility of the U.S. backstabbing our allies is remote.
Unfortunately Trump proved that the threat of backstab is real. Ukraine experienced this when the U.S. stopped intelligence-sharing for a week (without warning, mind you), leading to the loss of Kursk. Other nations have definitely taken notice.
Ukraine and RuZZia
This is painfully obvious. Trump promised to end the war in 24 hours with one phone call. He promised to do this before he entered office. He obviously fell far short of that goal.
But hey, better late than never? Maybe Trump just needs more time to convince PooTin to come to the negotiating table? Yeah right, only a MAGA cuck could believe that.
The truth is that Trump gave PooTin the best way out of the war as possible. Some say that PooTin should have accepted Trump's ceasefire proposal because, even from the point-of-view of an imperialist, he could have benefitted from it. But nope. PooTin just keeps his three-day war of choice going because he believes he is winning. "Why should I stop?" he asks himself.
And despite Trump bragging about the wonderful relationship he has with PooTin, the truth is that PooTin treats Trump like a used whore. PooTin doesn't respect Trump at all. PooTin only uses Trump to facilitate the decline of the Western world.
In any case, Trump has failed in Ukraine. If peace is to come during Trump's second term, it WON'T be because of Trump himself, who is now about to ragequit out of the peace process. And the whole world will know it, even when Trump inevitably takes credit for good things that happen under his watch but he had absolutely nothing to do with.
Israel and Gaza
Trump started his second term with a Gaza ceasefire in place. That ceasefire collapsed two months later. Both sides, of course, accuse the other of violating the terms of the ceasefire.
The point here is that Trump once again did nothing to stop the resumption of the war in Gaza. All he did was propose to relocate the Palestinians living in Gaza, maybe to Libya, then transform the Gaza strip into the next Atlantic City, complete with casinos and hotels that Trump can later bankrupt. Of course, no one took Trump seriously.
Meanwhile it's been reported that when Net-N-Yahoo visited Trump in the White House, the meeting was a complete disaster. (Said disaster was only overshadowed by the disaster when Zelensky came, as well as the disaster when the president of South Africa came.) Trump is sick of the endless war in Gaza, but then again, who isn't?
But Trump also insisted on imposing tariffs upon Israel, which Israel can't understand because they aren't imposing as many tariffs on U.S. goods as Trump thinks. And although Trump bragged about a potential trade deal with Israel, I don't think anything has been finalized yet. Instead, relations between Trump and Net-N-Yahoo are in an awkward state.
Bottom line: Trump can't do shit about Gaza.
Iran and the Houthi Camel-fukkers
Trump bragged about bombing the Houthi camel-fukkers into submission, but in reality, he didn't do anything that previous administration haven't tried already. Moreover, Trump's "special military operation" against the Houthis was marked by unforced errors on our part, including expensive Reaper drones getting shot down as well as the embarrassing loss of two F-18 fighter jets.
And the Houthis are still around. And the Houthis are just waiting for their masters, the Iranians, to give them the orders to shoot again.
Meanwhile, there are talks about a new nuclear agreement with Iran. Guess what? That agreement is looking more and more like the deal that Obama made but Trump later tore up. The biggest beef that right-wingers have with the upcoming deal is the report that Trump will allow Iran to do some limited uranium enrichment. That concession was something that Trump excoriated Obama over, but as we all know, if it weren't for double standards, MAGA would have no standards.
Again, Trump is proving to be a weakling in dealing with Iran.
India vs. Pakistan
This was an interesting conflict. After Pakistani terrorists murdered Indian civilians in cold blood, India was pissed. So they did what Americans would have done in the same situation. They started bombing the shit out of Pakistan's military infrastructure.
Only problem was that the Indians aren't that good at waging war. They lost at least two fourth-generation fighters to Pakistani air defenses (maybe surface-based, maybe air-to-air) and proved to the whole world that Pakistan using Chinese-made fighter jets can hold their own against a much larger power. While Indian PM Modi tried to highlight the damage that the IAF caused to Pakistan, it didn't matter. Pakistan won the informational war, which is what matters the most to the rest of the world.
So what does Trump do to help bring about a satisfactory end to this conflict? He leans on India and pressures them to stop attacking Pakistan. Modi sees this as an out, as so does the Pakistani leadership, so they take the opportunity to stop the war.
But Indians are PISSED at Trump, especially the Indian nationalists who were enamored by Trump and MAGA values. They feel absolutely betrayed. They state that America would not have stopped if they were attacked on their own soil by a militant neighbor. And they're right.
The truth is that Trump didn't want yet another war breaking out on his watch, so he forced both sides into a peace deal that did nothing but leave tensions simmering on both sides. Indians now hate Trump for what he did.
Meanwhile Pakistanis no longer give a shit about America because they now have China to give them modern weapons of war. Pakistan can now wage war against India as a near-peer conflict instead of what they used to do, which is asymmetrical warfare. You don't want a nation that supports terrorism (or at least looks the other way when terrorists on their soil do terrorist things) achieving near-peer status with a large democratic neighbor.
Bottom line: Trump forced peace upon India and Pakistan, which in itself is a good thing, but he left relations between America and India in tatters. Meanwhile he does nothing as Pakistan starts aligning more and more with China. What a weak-ass president we have.
North Korea
The last time Trump tried to make nice with Kim Jong-Un, absolutely nothing came out of it.
Now North Korea is helping RuZZia fight PooTin's three-day war of choice in Ukraine. And North Korea is facing absolutely no negative consequences as a result.
Why? Because once again, Trump has no strategy when it comes to North Korea. If Trump really wanted to convince PooTin to come to the negotiating table, he would be wise to put pressure upon North Korea, who is now supplying half of all the artillery shells that RuZZia needs, and who is now sending thousands of troops so that PooTin can continue his illusion of inevitability.
As usual, Trump doesn't give a shit. In fact, there's talk about Trump reducing America's presence in South Korea and getting South Korea to take more responsibility for their own defense. That might actually be a good thing, but I don't see Trump doing anything to convince North Korea or South Korea to bend to his will.
China and Taiwan
Finally we get to the centerpiece of Trump's foreign policy, namely China. Everything Trump is doing seems to be pivoting toward making China Public Enemy Number One.
Again, what has Trump accomplished thus far? He has imposed huge tariffs upon China, which essentially turned into a trade embargo, before chickening out because, you know, TACO.
Moreover, Trump has already destroyed America's soft power diplomacy by gutting USAID. "But but it's too woke," MAGA claims, but I guarantee everyone that wherever America retreats, China will advance. And right now, America is retreating from its soft power dominance.
Even the Panama Canal, which the MAGA chickenhawks promised to "take back," was starting to come under China's sphere of influence thanks to China's soft power. In other words, China was making advances without firing a shot, while MAGA wants to make advances by firing shots, RuZZia-style.
As for Taiwan, Trump wants to impose tariffs on Taiwan as well. What a dumbass; Taiwan isn't going to greatly ramp up their imports of U.S. goods just because Trump said so. They aren't even that populous of a nation, so how much could they contribute to the precious U.S. GDP?
But the most important question is whether China will actually invade Taiwan. Here, I argue that Trump is actively encouraging China to do just that. This is because the primary deterrence against China invading Taiwan was economic. China would then suffer economic sanctions that would cripple its economy and lead to a societal collapse.
But after Trump's dumbass trade wars of choice, the economic deterrent is no longer a thing. If Trump is going to try and trash the Chinese economy anyway, why shouldn't Xi Jinping just do the nationalist thingy and go invade Taiwan?
To be sure, it's too soon to declare Trump's China policy as a failure, given the scope of the problem and the indications that China is Trump's ultimate goal in the first place. But thus far, I don't see Trump making much progress in defeating China, either politically, economically, or God-forbid militarily.
Conclusion
Far from the whole world respecting America again, Trump has turned America into a global laughing stock. Some countries like Ukraine still has to kiss up to the Orange Dicktator, but America has lost the respect of the rest of the world.
And to all you MAGA cultists who want to bring up Brandon's failed foreign policy on autopilot, I'll just say this. If THAT'S how low you want to set the bar, then why is Trump failing to even clear it?
Tenchusatsu |
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