The worst part to me feels like US has lost trust and such soft power loss is irrecoverable no matter what happens now :/
A common statement I hear from people, or maybe its just what I think, but its like "How can we trust US after this" and hey mind you, Trump still has 3 years in office, but even if political parties change, how can we trust the whole system for not having another Trump moment.
So this loss of soft power is quite a permanent loss. US has to now condition itself to live with it accordingly and live with some shame (which is something that I am observing too of people not being proud of being american anymore seeing the devastation caused by it)
Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on and treat its financial markets in the same way as well.
The worst part out of all of this is that it hurts the average day american the most not the people at the top who are doing all of this and the average person has no say in all of this seeing their country being destroyed by wreckless actions.
The sad part is that people did have many wake up calls to be honest, greenland was first joked about and then became so serious that denmark was preparing only to then move to iran now impacting the normal people's everyday life with oil price increases all across the world..
I do think that the people of US tried to stand up against the oppression by protests but some were shot (rest in peace) and others were detained.
The sad part is that the people tried their best but it still wasn't enough to stop all of this from happening. It was maybe too late after the election.
I am equally dismayed at recent US behavior; but this is a short sighted view.
1. Geopolitics is always unpredictable. Maybe the US has been unreliable lately, but the idea that there are states out there which have been bastions of reliability is not historically accurate. All great powers have screwed people over or made disastrous decisions. It’s mostly just the US’s turn now.
2. This all happened 20 years ago with Iraq. All it really took was a charismatic president (Obama) to undo the 8+ years of bad international relations. All it will probably take again is a charismatic reliable president to set things back on track.
3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.
I do agree with some of your points and I believe some aspects of it might be right but there is a big difference between the past and present because this time, its America attacking EU sovereignity/other countries and so many things all at once literally within less than a year.
Just count all the things that america did in the last year and try to imagine as a foreigner or foreign nation once as an exercise. All of the things that America has done in the past year is just quite so much to list here even.
No amount of charm within a president might fix or make the people of denmark/EU/even the world, forget the greenland crisis and many others.
This is fundamentally different, in my opinion.
> 3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.
Yea, we do but we can only tolerate so much at a certain point too. This goes to my point again but we are forgetting that US is still voted by its people. Yes the two party system corners the people and we are sympathetic of that, but the world/foreigners (atleast me) sympathesize with the american citizens but at the same time, can't trust them.
This isn't something even foreigner related issue but the people of America themselves don't trust their fellow neighbours now as I read the comments of this post and many others.
We sympathize with the people of America but sadly, the world doesn't trust America anymore, Trust is quite brittle and delicate thing so its quite an miracle we still saw trust bounce so many times but right now the glass of trust has shattered (as evident by Denmark preparing for almost war against America)
I can be wrong, I usually am but that's just my understanding.
I mean I definitely agree that a lot of trust has been lost, and that a lot of work will be needed to patch things up.
Where I don't agree is that 1) this is somehow irreversible 2) that it really affects American citizens on the personal level – from personal experience, as an American living in Europe for the last decade, I've had basically zero negative interactions with people or hostile accusations. Most people do understand that the American government is a bit out of control, and American culture is in a tumultuous period. If anything I'd say it tends more toward sympathy than anger.
So while this is definitely a big, huge, giant problem, it's also a problem that I think the Europeans and Japanese want America to solve, and would basically rather America solve it than do anything else. Especially when there aren't really other geopolitical options at the table, the EU can't have a coherent singular opinion on Russia or Ukraine, etc.
> from personal experience, as an American living in Europe for the last decade, I've had basically zero negative interactions with people or hostile accusations. Most people do understand that the American government is a bit out of control, and American culture is in a tumultuous period. If anything I'd say it tends more toward sympathy than anger
Imagining that America attacked Greenland Thus Denmark/EU and the fact that Denmark was genuinely preparing for this, Just imaginging America attack Greenland and I do feel like that the sentiments might change. (This is what had happened to Muslim people not even people of specific country but negative interactions against whole religions after 9/11)
I would agree with you if this was the last day of Trump administration, but far from it. We have to handle so much more of this current administration. It's literally only been a year to see so much shift. I hope you realize it that for the most part, America is busy with the Iran war but any assurances about the sovereignity of EU or any country in the world for that matter isn't made by America and everything is off the table and anything might happen. I am sure that both of us wasn't predicting an Iran war or a greenland invastion but here we are.
It just feels natural to me that if a single year can have this much impact and you have four years for something like this and the most important fact which I want to highlight again, people technically voted for this and can still technically vote for it again , there are no safeguards and the most important part was a belief that if shit hits the fan, then American Judiciary or checks and balances or congress would stop something like this from happening but we all saw how nothing really happened.
My point is, 3 more years, let that sink in, into this level of turbulent times when an war is currently active and gas prices are rising all across the world solely because America and Israel started the Iran war :/
I can only have so much patience but if gas prices are double the price because of America/this war, Sadly I might lose my patience.
I lost my patience somedays ago when I heard that the local fast food shop was talking about the gas price increases and how it hurted them. I had true resentment to this war and America/Israel for starting it and having this poor guy suffer so much from the gas prices. I know that America and American people are different but till how long/how much especially if some people are still supportive of such war. It sort of left me speechless when he was talking about how hard it is to stay in this business.
To think that the world will forgive America so easily might not be accurate, that's all I am saying.
My point is, Even if party changes next time from red to blue, It's just really really hard to undo all this harm that it has done to its soft power.
On a more fundamental level, I think something is wrong with the American education system and results in so many low information voters who believe any words from their "hero". And fixing education takes decades to even see the result.
They definitely can vote for another Trump-like guy and they have proven it by voting Trump back the second time. Honestly this is crazy to me this can even happen after Jan 6. The Brazilian Trump-like President went to jail, yet Trump returns to the White House. My take is this trust issue takes at least 10 years to recover, most likely more.
I think your argument falls apart here. The US built a coalition of on side allies before invading Iraq. They went to the UN too. There was significant opposition to the war, and I was a student at the time in the UK so was surrounded and involved in that. However, European countries were not politically blindsided. Some were going in with the US, including Denmark I believe.
I don't think so. Colin Powell sold it and he had a stellar reputation. A lot of people found it very hard to believe that he would stake his reputation on this if it wasn't true. It wasn't, and he rightly never recovered from that. His UNSC presentation will go into the history books as the thing he is remembered for.
> Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on
Anyone who has studied American history knows the US has been unreliable. Just look at how they made and then broke treaties with Native Americans. It's part of the foundation of the country.
Within Geopolitical commentaries that I used to watch, A famous quote by Henry Kissinger is often repeated.
"to be an enemy of america can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal"
So yeah, America has never been trustworthy in a way but it still had its upsides and it still had some laws and checks and people still believed in some aspects of the American dream somewhat, Not anymore.
But now?,it has never been this less trustworthy either in a way to the whole world.
The worst part to me feels like US has lost trust and such soft power loss is irrecoverable no matter what happens now :/
A common statement I hear from people, or maybe its just what I think, but its like "How can we trust US after this" and hey mind you, Trump still has 3 years in office, but even if political parties change, how can we trust the whole system for not having another Trump moment.
So this loss of soft power is quite a permanent loss. US has to now condition itself to live with it accordingly and live with some shame (which is something that I am observing too of people not being proud of being american anymore seeing the devastation caused by it)
Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on and treat its financial markets in the same way as well.
The worst part out of all of this is that it hurts the average day american the most not the people at the top who are doing all of this and the average person has no say in all of this seeing their country being destroyed by wreckless actions.
The sad part is that people did have many wake up calls to be honest, greenland was first joked about and then became so serious that denmark was preparing only to then move to iran now impacting the normal people's everyday life with oil price increases all across the world..
I do think that the people of US tried to stand up against the oppression by protests but some were shot (rest in peace) and others were detained.
The sad part is that the people tried their best but it still wasn't enough to stop all of this from happening. It was maybe too late after the election.