Great as always. One small point that, as a fellow Canadian has no doubt occurred to you but does not seem to have dawned on anyone else; Canada is among the Nato delinquents and, even by our own government's estimates, will remain so for some years. So Mr. Trump has invited Russia to mass troops along the longest undefended border in the world. Perhaps it has escaped the notice of his supporters that the world is round not spherical.
Yep. It is an indisputable fact that the former-and-possibly-future president of the United States threatened to allow Russia to park its tanks in Toronto. And Republicans cheered.
I was just reading Dan's post of Roosevelt and noticed he'd commented on my comment. I also noticed I wrote "the world is round not spherical". It is, of course, spherical. I meant tubular, like a toilet paper roll.
As a longtime admirer of the much-underrated William McKinley, i could not have stated his views on world trade cooperation any more succinctly than he did in his final speech— or as you have so ably recapped here—after being pulled by Congress into a war he did not want or approve of, but which he managed shrewdly and quickly. Becoming a world power meant, as he knew instinctively, that with it came real, imaginative responsibility for helping lead that world to a better state of affairs. Whether his viewpoint might have prevailed— some early prototype of the League of Nations, peaceful but flexible and proactive at heading off future wars through global prosperity— is probably unlikely, but at least he was willing to push for it. I think he would shudder to see what ridiculous nonsense his party seems so willing to embrace a century later, led by an unpredictable charlatan who could not think his way out of a wet paper bag— but talks loudly and laughably about his misunderstandings of where we have been and still need to go s a world power. Many thanks for this posting.
I completely agree with your points about isolationism and the responsibility every NATO country has to maintain its own defensive forces. However, as a fellow Canadian I believe that Canada does freeload off the US military and that this should change. Tampons in men’s washrooms is a misuse of defence spending. An article on ways in which Canada could focus on mindful military spending would be more relevant than an article focusing on a US Presidential candidate’s views on NATO and how it affects his country.
I agree that Canada is freeloading unconscionably. It's shameful, as I've written countless times. As to this newsletter, its remit is what I'm interested in, and what I'm interested in is considerably broader than Canada. (In fact, I would argue that Canadians have an unfortunate tendency to gaze deeply into the beaver's navel, which is one of the reasons, ironically, that we underfund our military. A broader perspective would do us a world of good.)
The points being made here rhyme with a paper just published by the Naval Association of Canada — it’s a thought-piece built around the notion that Canada is the northern half of a continental island, surrounded by oceans that are not protective moats but rather highways for potential aggressors, and Canada cannot afford to freeload in our defence-sharing responsibilities with the US. (It can be found on their home page. Full disclosure — I had a small hand in the background to it.)
So all the countries in NATO agreed to pay 2%, and almost nobody was. Trump complained to them, threatened that they can't free ride, and they raised their spending. As opposed to the previous six administrations that didn't complain about the free riders. Trump explains this using everyday language that is not technically accurate, and you're bitching about his sloppy verbiage, rather than that he's the only president who complained about the free riding, and did something about it. Successfully. Yes, spending when up when Vlad waited for a US president he wasn't afraid of and invaded Ukraine under Biden. But Euro military spending rose before that, especially in Germany, while Trump was president, because Trump threatened the system of free-riding without consequence.
This article is deliberately deceptive. Childishly so.
I will respond to you substantively if you a) sign your name and b) drop the last paragraph, which is an empty insult (second clause) and a baseless lie (first.) I believe in civil disagreement and will respect and respond to it; but I reserve the right to ask others to meet a basic level of reciprocal civility or go away.
When you disagree with someone you say they are "prattling" and spraying "gibberish." Then you prance and preen about how you "believe in civil disagreement." Get bent, hypocrite. Take your demands and kick rocks.
When I disagree with "someone"? The "someone" in question is the former and possibly future president of the United States. To portray a couple of cutting words in a substantive piece about a figure as public as that as "incivility" -- particularly when the public figure seemingly cannot open his yap without firing off gratuitous insults -- is absolutely asinine.
So to sum up: You hide behind a pseudonym. You make baseless accusations. Then when called on it, you sputter a nonsensical criticism and run away.
With all his ranting about NATO (and other matters), it' easy to forget that Trump is a sociopath. His rants have nothing to do with anything else other than himself. So we follow him down the rabbit hole when we attempt to refute the garbage he spews. On a side note, I am of the opinion that the discussion of whether or not Canada is pulling its weight, militarily, is a distraction; it plays into Trump's distorted view of the world.
Wow. Thank you for this important history lesson. I always thought of his stupid anti nato rant as I do for all of those arguments against “socialism” where their grievances are that they are “paying” for someone else’s welfare. It’s a friggin disgrace and I’m sick of hearing it. Thanks for piecing it out for us.
The two world wars that followed McKinley's speech were scarcely different in terms of their use of combat troops than wars for the past 10,000 years, or 300,000 years - or indeed, chimpanzee battles. True, the ground battles expanded to the air and the sea because of technology, but the dogfights in the air and the cat-and-mouse wargames with the U-boats were essentially the same as tank movements on land.
Or consider the major wars of our time: Afghanistan, Ukraine, Palestine: Would you not agree that these have still been fought primarily with ground troops? If you want to conquer an enemy rather than simply annihilate them, conventional warfare is still needed - albeit supplemented with drone and satellite technology, trade sanctions, etc., to be sure. You still have to go street-by-street, tunnel by tunnel, hospital by hospital, and house-by-house to route out the enemy.
Now imagine trying to do that on American soil. How many troops would you need to land and provision from your base thousands of miles away to conquer America? How would you propose to do that? It's ridiculous, and that was Trump's point.
Long distance weapons of mass destruction are a deterrent. Two bombs dropped on Japan made them give up, but only because they had no mans of retaliating. You wouldn't do that to Russia, or China, or Pakistan today (or Iran tomorrow): they would hit back with equal force and you would end the war with mutual annihilation rather than conquest. Nobody wants that. The notion that "technology has annihilated time and space" where warfare is concerned is at least as silly as anything Trump has said on the topic. In fact, Trump is quite correct: a land invasion of the USA will not happen because of the two big beautiful oceans he speaks of. America's enemies might possibly be able to annihilate them, they can certainly annihilate some major cities before America retaliates and annihilates them completely first; but America will not be conquered for precisely the reason Trump gave.
I understand that it is fashionable to attack literally every sentence Trump utters - such as warning Germany not to rely on Russian oil and gas - but he isn't always wrong. Very often he is right. He was right yesterday, for example, to warn that America will not be conquered with warfare; they will be conquered with lawfare. The weaponization of the intelligence agencies and the legal system against political opponents has been a far bigger threat to American democracy than any foreign military force ever likely will be. People need to wake up.
Let me start with the end then go to the main point.
No, Trump isn't always wrong. But even when he's not, he's usually makes the point stupidly, or he pretends that he alone has made the point (a pretence the likes of Fox News and his toadies in the GOP maintain and promote). Warning Germany about relying on Russian oil and gas is a good example. NATO freeloading is another.
Now to the main point: It seems I need to be clearer in my writing because your comment suggests you have missed the point entirely.
The point: In an interconnected, interdependent world, national security concerns -- please note "national security" is absolutely not a synonym for "military," as you seem to be implicitly saying -- must extend far beyond literal and direct invasion. Let me illustrate with the WWII years before the US was still neutral.
In those years, American isolationists routinely made the argument about oceans and invasions that you lay out here. Basically, "it's inconceivable that America could be invaded so who cares what happens on the other side of the oceans?" What that missed is that in an interconnected, interdependent world, you don't need to be invaded for war and conquest to imperil your nation. As the counterfactual shows: If the Nazis had conquered Europe and Africa, and the Japanese had swept Asia, the United States would have lost foreign markets, foreign influence, and the ability to influence global events. In sum, it would have had to accept Axis terms of engagement or live in hemispheric isolation. Either way, American standing in the world, American economic power, American military power, American cultural power, and American domestic prosperity -- all would have been radically reduced. And American ideals of liberty and democracy? Dead as dodos in most of the world. The American experiment would have ended in failure.
So, yeah, oceans do make invasions harder. But in an interconnected, interdependent world, that counts for little. William McKinley understood that in 1901. Every American president since FDR has understood that. And yet, in 2024, when the world is vastly more interconnected and interdependent, Trump doesn't get it.
You said, "What I want to HIGHLIGHT is what next emerged from Trump’s stream of consciousness." Then quoting Trump, "It was the most unfair thing, and don't forget, it's more important to them than it is to us. We have an ocean in between some problems. Okay. We have a nice, big, beautiful ocean."
Well, Dan, I have news for you: the defense of Europe IS more important to Europe than it is to the USA. Russia is an existential threat to parts of Europe. To America, Russia poses an economic and cultural disturbance, as you say in your response. Not the same thing at all. America does have interests around the world; but that is on an entirely different scale to the interests of the countries that have land borders with aggressive military powers.
So, Trump was ENTIRELY correct in saying the past 75 years have not been fair to the USA: wealthy European countries (and Canada) have let America carry the ball militarily against the Soviet Union and Russia, and now China and Iran and all the usual badies. Germany and Japan were rebuilt with American protection and trade. That benefitted Germany and Japan (and nearby countries) way more than it benefitted America - although it did benefit America, too. Why on Earth should America allow that imbalance to continue indefinitely? Trump's words were perfect.
The thing is, Europe wouldn't listen to Trump when he asked them to expand their military spending and stop buying oil from Russia. Nobody listened; they built Nordstream2 instead... It took an all-out invasion to wake them up. So who is being stupid and slow about this, Dan: Trump or NATO? If Europe had been smart and listened to Trump in 2016, would Putin have dared to invade Ukraine? I doubt it.
OK, now you may write another column where you change the subject to something else Trump didn't say, imply, or even hint.
Just checking based on this idea every us deployment outside the US is a mistake right? Totally a waste as the US is safe behind its oceans?
Is that what you and trump and trump are saying?
Because if not sometimes it is not a waste and sometimes it is and the oceans have nothing to do with it and all your words are a waste of your time and everyones that reads them.
Stan was replying to me, and I was replying to him. I was asking him to read what I said again, because nothing in his reply was a response to anything I said. (Your response was not much better.)
Great as always. One small point that, as a fellow Canadian has no doubt occurred to you but does not seem to have dawned on anyone else; Canada is among the Nato delinquents and, even by our own government's estimates, will remain so for some years. So Mr. Trump has invited Russia to mass troops along the longest undefended border in the world. Perhaps it has escaped the notice of his supporters that the world is round not spherical.
Yep. It is an indisputable fact that the former-and-possibly-future president of the United States threatened to allow Russia to park its tanks in Toronto. And Republicans cheered.
I was just reading Dan's post of Roosevelt and noticed he'd commented on my comment. I also noticed I wrote "the world is round not spherical". It is, of course, spherical. I meant tubular, like a toilet paper roll.
As a longtime admirer of the much-underrated William McKinley, i could not have stated his views on world trade cooperation any more succinctly than he did in his final speech— or as you have so ably recapped here—after being pulled by Congress into a war he did not want or approve of, but which he managed shrewdly and quickly. Becoming a world power meant, as he knew instinctively, that with it came real, imaginative responsibility for helping lead that world to a better state of affairs. Whether his viewpoint might have prevailed— some early prototype of the League of Nations, peaceful but flexible and proactive at heading off future wars through global prosperity— is probably unlikely, but at least he was willing to push for it. I think he would shudder to see what ridiculous nonsense his party seems so willing to embrace a century later, led by an unpredictable charlatan who could not think his way out of a wet paper bag— but talks loudly and laughably about his misunderstandings of where we have been and still need to go s a world power. Many thanks for this posting.
I completely agree with your points about isolationism and the responsibility every NATO country has to maintain its own defensive forces. However, as a fellow Canadian I believe that Canada does freeload off the US military and that this should change. Tampons in men’s washrooms is a misuse of defence spending. An article on ways in which Canada could focus on mindful military spending would be more relevant than an article focusing on a US Presidential candidate’s views on NATO and how it affects his country.
I agree that Canada is freeloading unconscionably. It's shameful, as I've written countless times. As to this newsletter, its remit is what I'm interested in, and what I'm interested in is considerably broader than Canada. (In fact, I would argue that Canadians have an unfortunate tendency to gaze deeply into the beaver's navel, which is one of the reasons, ironically, that we underfund our military. A broader perspective would do us a world of good.)
The points being made here rhyme with a paper just published by the Naval Association of Canada — it’s a thought-piece built around the notion that Canada is the northern half of a continental island, surrounded by oceans that are not protective moats but rather highways for potential aggressors, and Canada cannot afford to freeload in our defence-sharing responsibilities with the US. (It can be found on their home page. Full disclosure — I had a small hand in the background to it.)
So all the countries in NATO agreed to pay 2%, and almost nobody was. Trump complained to them, threatened that they can't free ride, and they raised their spending. As opposed to the previous six administrations that didn't complain about the free riders. Trump explains this using everyday language that is not technically accurate, and you're bitching about his sloppy verbiage, rather than that he's the only president who complained about the free riding, and did something about it. Successfully. Yes, spending when up when Vlad waited for a US president he wasn't afraid of and invaded Ukraine under Biden. But Euro military spending rose before that, especially in Germany, while Trump was president, because Trump threatened the system of free-riding without consequence.
This article is deliberately deceptive. Childishly so.
I will respond to you substantively if you a) sign your name and b) drop the last paragraph, which is an empty insult (second clause) and a baseless lie (first.) I believe in civil disagreement and will respect and respond to it; but I reserve the right to ask others to meet a basic level of reciprocal civility or go away.
When you disagree with someone you say they are "prattling" and spraying "gibberish." Then you prance and preen about how you "believe in civil disagreement." Get bent, hypocrite. Take your demands and kick rocks.
When I disagree with "someone"? The "someone" in question is the former and possibly future president of the United States. To portray a couple of cutting words in a substantive piece about a figure as public as that as "incivility" -- particularly when the public figure seemingly cannot open his yap without firing off gratuitous insults -- is absolutely asinine.
So to sum up: You hide behind a pseudonym. You make baseless accusations. Then when called on it, you sputter a nonsensical criticism and run away.
You're as honest and courageous as your hero.
Yes, Trump insults people. So do you. Then you whine when you are insulted. That makes you a hypocrite and a weakling.
Run away? What are you talking about.
And the appropriate words for you are "pompous self-regarding blowhard." Sorry I made your pussy hurt.
With all his ranting about NATO (and other matters), it' easy to forget that Trump is a sociopath. His rants have nothing to do with anything else other than himself. So we follow him down the rabbit hole when we attempt to refute the garbage he spews. On a side note, I am of the opinion that the discussion of whether or not Canada is pulling its weight, militarily, is a distraction; it plays into Trump's distorted view of the world.
Wow. Thank you for this important history lesson. I always thought of his stupid anti nato rant as I do for all of those arguments against “socialism” where their grievances are that they are “paying” for someone else’s welfare. It’s a friggin disgrace and I’m sick of hearing it. Thanks for piecing it out for us.
The two world wars that followed McKinley's speech were scarcely different in terms of their use of combat troops than wars for the past 10,000 years, or 300,000 years - or indeed, chimpanzee battles. True, the ground battles expanded to the air and the sea because of technology, but the dogfights in the air and the cat-and-mouse wargames with the U-boats were essentially the same as tank movements on land.
Or consider the major wars of our time: Afghanistan, Ukraine, Palestine: Would you not agree that these have still been fought primarily with ground troops? If you want to conquer an enemy rather than simply annihilate them, conventional warfare is still needed - albeit supplemented with drone and satellite technology, trade sanctions, etc., to be sure. You still have to go street-by-street, tunnel by tunnel, hospital by hospital, and house-by-house to route out the enemy.
Now imagine trying to do that on American soil. How many troops would you need to land and provision from your base thousands of miles away to conquer America? How would you propose to do that? It's ridiculous, and that was Trump's point.
Long distance weapons of mass destruction are a deterrent. Two bombs dropped on Japan made them give up, but only because they had no mans of retaliating. You wouldn't do that to Russia, or China, or Pakistan today (or Iran tomorrow): they would hit back with equal force and you would end the war with mutual annihilation rather than conquest. Nobody wants that. The notion that "technology has annihilated time and space" where warfare is concerned is at least as silly as anything Trump has said on the topic. In fact, Trump is quite correct: a land invasion of the USA will not happen because of the two big beautiful oceans he speaks of. America's enemies might possibly be able to annihilate them, they can certainly annihilate some major cities before America retaliates and annihilates them completely first; but America will not be conquered for precisely the reason Trump gave.
I understand that it is fashionable to attack literally every sentence Trump utters - such as warning Germany not to rely on Russian oil and gas - but he isn't always wrong. Very often he is right. He was right yesterday, for example, to warn that America will not be conquered with warfare; they will be conquered with lawfare. The weaponization of the intelligence agencies and the legal system against political opponents has been a far bigger threat to American democracy than any foreign military force ever likely will be. People need to wake up.
Let me start with the end then go to the main point.
No, Trump isn't always wrong. But even when he's not, he's usually makes the point stupidly, or he pretends that he alone has made the point (a pretence the likes of Fox News and his toadies in the GOP maintain and promote). Warning Germany about relying on Russian oil and gas is a good example. NATO freeloading is another.
Now to the main point: It seems I need to be clearer in my writing because your comment suggests you have missed the point entirely.
The point: In an interconnected, interdependent world, national security concerns -- please note "national security" is absolutely not a synonym for "military," as you seem to be implicitly saying -- must extend far beyond literal and direct invasion. Let me illustrate with the WWII years before the US was still neutral.
In those years, American isolationists routinely made the argument about oceans and invasions that you lay out here. Basically, "it's inconceivable that America could be invaded so who cares what happens on the other side of the oceans?" What that missed is that in an interconnected, interdependent world, you don't need to be invaded for war and conquest to imperil your nation. As the counterfactual shows: If the Nazis had conquered Europe and Africa, and the Japanese had swept Asia, the United States would have lost foreign markets, foreign influence, and the ability to influence global events. In sum, it would have had to accept Axis terms of engagement or live in hemispheric isolation. Either way, American standing in the world, American economic power, American military power, American cultural power, and American domestic prosperity -- all would have been radically reduced. And American ideals of liberty and democracy? Dead as dodos in most of the world. The American experiment would have ended in failure.
So, yeah, oceans do make invasions harder. But in an interconnected, interdependent world, that counts for little. William McKinley understood that in 1901. Every American president since FDR has understood that. And yet, in 2024, when the world is vastly more interconnected and interdependent, Trump doesn't get it.
You said, "What I want to HIGHLIGHT is what next emerged from Trump’s stream of consciousness." Then quoting Trump, "It was the most unfair thing, and don't forget, it's more important to them than it is to us. We have an ocean in between some problems. Okay. We have a nice, big, beautiful ocean."
Well, Dan, I have news for you: the defense of Europe IS more important to Europe than it is to the USA. Russia is an existential threat to parts of Europe. To America, Russia poses an economic and cultural disturbance, as you say in your response. Not the same thing at all. America does have interests around the world; but that is on an entirely different scale to the interests of the countries that have land borders with aggressive military powers.
So, Trump was ENTIRELY correct in saying the past 75 years have not been fair to the USA: wealthy European countries (and Canada) have let America carry the ball militarily against the Soviet Union and Russia, and now China and Iran and all the usual badies. Germany and Japan were rebuilt with American protection and trade. That benefitted Germany and Japan (and nearby countries) way more than it benefitted America - although it did benefit America, too. Why on Earth should America allow that imbalance to continue indefinitely? Trump's words were perfect.
The thing is, Europe wouldn't listen to Trump when he asked them to expand their military spending and stop buying oil from Russia. Nobody listened; they built Nordstream2 instead... It took an all-out invasion to wake them up. So who is being stupid and slow about this, Dan: Trump or NATO? If Europe had been smart and listened to Trump in 2016, would Putin have dared to invade Ukraine? I doubt it.
OK, now you may write another column where you change the subject to something else Trump didn't say, imply, or even hint.
Just checking based on this idea every us deployment outside the US is a mistake right? Totally a waste as the US is safe behind its oceans?
Is that what you and trump and trump are saying?
Because if not sometimes it is not a waste and sometimes it is and the oceans have nothing to do with it and all your words are a waste of your time and everyones that reads them.
You had better read it again, this time applying logic, because none of your inferences are implied.
What “it” are you referring to?
Stan was replying to me, and I was replying to him. I was asking him to read what I said again, because nothing in his reply was a response to anything I said. (Your response was not much better.)
Ah, sorry, the back and forth on threads often confuses me.