- The US has almost everything it needs in North America to be self-sufficient. Food, energy, natural resources, manufacturing, trade.
- The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East.
- The US is tired of protecting the oceans and trade for everyone else.
- The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US companies, meddling in US trade, etc.
- The US is tired of NATO not stepping up to the plate. It won't back out, of course, but would love for Europe to care more about its own security.
There are so many reasons the US is pulling back. Both the Trump and Biden presidencies are completely on board with it. It's fully bipartisan, and it's going to accelerate.
The US is going to near-shore, friend-shore, and to every extent possible, onshore what it needs.
Globalization does not necessitate middle east involvement.
> - The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US companies, meddling in US trade, etc.
WTO already has the mechanisms to deal with this, the CHIPS act is hurting out standing with our allies because of its blatantly protectionist provisions.
> - The US is tired of NATO not stepping up to the plate. It won't back out, of course, but would love for Europe to care more about its own security.
Again, not contra globalization.
Do we really need to be stuck on a treadmill of always having to make our lives better? People don't know the word "enough," that's a real problem.
There's obvious issues with how current quality of life is distributed, but I'd propose that we don't need to increase QoL with new inventions simply to make sure that we don't ignore those worst off.
Never mind that the world is not constant - we need innovation on the climate front if we want to stay in a stable environment that doesn’t require more sophisticated adaptation.
Making those worst off better without making everyone else poorer would be much faster with globalized trade.
I am sorry you have become so skeptical of progress, but I and others will continue working so that a rising tide lifts everyone, including you.
Its an unfortunate fact of life that we can't build a utopia with no illness or suffering. We have developed many solutions for different medical conditions over my lifetime and I'm truly happy for those helped. Over the same time, though, we've discovered and named even more. We continue to develop new medications for diseases that didn't exist in text books not long ago, and there's good reason to believe that pharmaceutical companies invent new disease classifications to get fresh funding for a medication they already have on the shelves.
I'm not saying we shouldn't help those in need, only that we can't run down that path forever with a hope that if we can just solve one more condition we'll have it all licked.
> Making those worst off better without making everyone else poorer would be much faster with globalized trade.
I'm not actually sure if this is the worst answer. We frequently hear about the widening wealth gap, fixing that certainly would mean making some poorer.
> Never mind that the world is not constant - we need innovation on the climate front if we want to stay in a stable environment that doesn’t require more sophisticated adaptation.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment behind this, I just start from a different point. I think our best chance of helping reverse the problems we cause to the environment is to first remove the worst offenders of what we do today rather than start from innovating and replacing them. I think a big mistake in the green energy movement had been assuming that it would be untenable to reduce total energy use and that we must instead replace all current use and match the current rate of growth in energy consumption.
> I am sorry you have become so skeptical of progress, but I and others will continue working so that a rising tide lifts everyone, including you.
I'm actually not skeptical of progress, I may need to rephrase things if it comes across that way. I just view progress differently than I think many do today. Progress is often talked about as starting with what we have today and adding to it to make tomorrow better, i.e. always intervening more and never questioning how we got here. Put another way, I view progress worth having as progressing towards specific goals whether that means innovating our way out of it or backtracking to find another path. I don't view progress as an incremental approach that must always push ahead without giving time and consideration to removing when we realize pur current path is fundamentally wrong.
That is not a fact.
Progress is accelerating, and we need to keep pushing. It's the quintessential virtue.
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...
https://ourworldindata.org/cancer
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decli...
https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1bjaog6/fil...
If you have links or explanation of how we could possibly get to a world with no illness or suffering I'd be very interested. I'm also not expecting anything as that first depends on somehow already knowing what we don't yet know, like what will kill people once we cure cancer.
Who is responsible for that ? The short sighted, profit driven US policies and actions. They thought that by dumping tons of money there and profiting extremely on the way, in some magic fashion the divine powers of capitalism will abolish the local culture of dynasties and China will turn automatically in a "free" state that will have no further ambitions. In a single generation. Which of course did not happen.
> - The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East.
It kind of makes sense to be tired after spending decades destabilizing the region in order to loot oil.
> - The US is tired of NATO not stepping up to the plate.
US led NATO expansion lead to the war in Ukraine, and Europeans are paying the price.
The empire is crumbling, this is its death rattle. And this will be a catastrophe for all of us. If things continue like that, we will experience terrible wars, famines, and worst case nuclear shenanigans.
Now not to only talk shit about the US, it has provided us with amazing things and achievements, and beautiful people. But the bread and butter of the US foreign policy is exploitation and disruption.
As an Eastern European, I cannot thank the US enough for pushing NATO. It makes me feel safe. I'm just sad that they could not get Ukraine into NATO before all this madness started.
Multiple political analysts, US ones included, say that this would not have been the case.
Wars are only good for those in power, in both sides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations...
Membership in NATO prevents regional wars, because it increases the risk for Russia. Standing alone, a country like Finland or Poland can respond only with conventional weapons, which they don't have too many considering the scale of Russian war against Ukraine. By attacking a NATO member, Russia risks with a nuclear response from other alliance members up to a global nuclear war.
Russians understand and react to power, and NATO represents that. When a Russian fighter jet intruded Turkish airspace while flying sorties in support of Assad's regime in Syria and got shot down by Turkish air defense, Russian officials came to apologize instead of ramping up the usual "we'll nuke everything!" rhetoric. Demonstrate credible force and they'll backtrack.
> Do you think that if Ukraine was not being courted by US that it would've been invaded like that ?
The premise of your question is upside down. Ukraine was courting the US to get security guarantees such as NATO membership, not vice versa. The notion that Eastern Europe had to be somehow tricked into EU and NATO is deeply misguided. Instead, these have been the main foreign policy goals for most countries in the region, the holy grail.
The alternative for Ukraine was to become an oppressive dictatorship like Belarus has become under Russian influence. That would've meant that Russia would've moved in their armed forces, installed nuclear weapons and prepared to use Ukraine as a staging ground for further invasions westwards - everything they've done in Belarus so far.
Instead of seeing Kyiv under missile attacks, we'd be seeing the same happening 1000 km westwards in Warsaw. How far towards Paris and London do you prefer to let this thing creep before tackling the problem? Until Picadilly Circus?
Invaded? Probably not. Becoming a second Belarus? Yes. Overall it would have meant a Russia - NATO border closer to me. I prefer an Ukrainian - Russian NATO border far, far more.
NATO only does things when it benefits the US.
What are you talking about? Turkey's 'occupation' is not of a member state.
Why 'occupation' and not occupation ?
I also think that Western international institutions are systemically biased in favor of Greece and other more western nations, which is pretty obvious by the disparate response to Greek invasion of Cyprus vs Turkish.
This is the Russian propaganda of 2 years ago, and we know it is a lie because Putin went on camera and told us so himself. When asked by Tucker Carlson why he invaded Ukraine he gave a half hour history lecture telling us about its history of Russian occupation. Putin justifies his murderous invasion by pointing to former borders of historical Russian entities -- which by the way would not just include Ukraine but Latvia, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Germany, Finland, Japan, Mongolia, Romania, and Poland.
Every child in Eastern Europe knows this to be the real case, and only Americans who have no serious understanding of Russian and have generally never even visited believe this hogwash about NATO.
Putin even said in 2002 that Ukrainian NATO membership was a matter between Ukraine and NATO only: "At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners."
I am not an American with no serious understanding, I live in an area that used to be Soviet Union.
Everybody knows you should not corner a wild beast.
Yet this contradicts his statements in 2002 that it was not a big deal and not his business. He only changed positions when he viewed the Russian economy as big enough to wage war and take territory.
There was also no such promise, this is a complete myth.
Russia is doing what it has always done: try to steal more clay. They have been doing this for a thousand years, far before NATO. Russia was neither cornered nor threatened.
However, blame is never black or white. It cannot be all Russia's fault.
Most crimes are a single party's fault. One is the criminal, and one is the victim. Saying it is impossible for it to be all Russia's fault is logically fallacious. Russia chose to invade and commit mass murder. Russia needs to be held to account for that.
I wish you the best.
This is pure ad hominem. My statements are not emotional at all. Ukraine committed no offense against Russia. Georgia committed no crime against Russia before they aided Abkhazian and South Ossetian rebels. Putin committed these offenses unilaterally against these. Russia chose to steal territory and murder hundreds of thousands of people. These are not emotional statements, they are factual ones.
It is in fact your claims which are clouded by emotionality -- obvious sympathies for Russian propaganda.
If provided without evidence? Yes, you can. What's presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
> Everybody knows you should not corner a wild beast.
Nobody cornered Russia, Russia decided that it wants its old colonies back. Most of them were wise enough to long before ask NATO to protect them this time, Ukraine unfortunately had trusted Russia when it said it will honor Ukraines independence and now pays a heavy price for it.
Gorbachev called that a myth in 2014 when Putin used it as an excuse to invade Crimea. USSR's minister of foreign affairs Shevardnadze and minister of defence Yazov have said the same thing. Source, excerpt from an interview to ZDF: https://twitter.com/Jesuitchild/status/1749887239226617873
This talking point is a shining example of propaganda. Gorbachev and Shevardnadze have gone as far as explaining why even in theory, such promise couldn't have been made. It's a complete fabrication.
Personally I am embarrassed that we were ever involved in the middle east, am willing to see our resources spent protecting natural resources if we can afford it, want a stronger NATO and only see that happening by us leaning further in, and think the only thing bipartisan about our two presidential candidates is that there is no way they are our two best candidates for the job.