10 ms·

>> "now President Trump is retreating from the American chief executive’s traditional role as Leader of the Free World" Citation? He may not be some people's i

>> "now President Trump is retreating from the American chief executive’s traditional role as Leader of the Free World" Citation? He may not be some people's ideal of the leader of the free world but I wouldn't say he has retreated.

wyldfire 8y ago
He describes his nationalist policy as "America First" [1] and takes explicit action to disengage from global governance, foreign aid, etc. IMO this marks a retreat from many previous administrations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy)
- Covzire 8y ago
  I keep hearing about changes to US foreign policy dictated by our self-sufficient oil drilling. The US is now a net oil exporter and has fewer stakes in maintaining order in certain parts of the world since WW2.
  - mandelbrotwurst 8y ago
    In the short term. Historically the U.S. has avoided drilling much of its reserves preferring to use oil from foreign sources first, knowing that it would have its own remaining if those ever dried up, either literally or because they became untenable to access for whatever reason. If the U.S. uses up its reserves and doesn't drastically cut its consumption, it's no longer a net exporter. One potential solution: Use local reserves in the short term while redirecting military spending toward building sustainable / clean energy infrastructure domestically to avoid a scenario in which the country runs out of domestic reserves and is no longer able to obtain oil from foreign sources.
    - adventured 8y ago
      The US has at least a hundred years of oil remaining, and that's without properly exploring for oil off either massive coast using modern technology. That's also ignoring that gasoline is about to get demolished by electric cars, which will slash oil demand in a very dramatic manner. In likely terms, the US has enough oil for multiple centuries once it's no longer heavily used for transportation. And of course the US is neighbors with another huge oil producer up north that happens to have a small population. Mexico also likely has a lot of oil it's unaware of, near Texas, in the form of shale. Given it only has 500m people, North America is an energy reserves monster.
    - jerf 8y ago
      "Historically the U.S. has avoided drilling much of its reserves preferring to use oil from foreign sources first," Historically, shale oil was not economically viable. This has drastically changed the equations because suddenly available supply has shot up, rendering the old calculations moot. (Note I am not implying anything further other than what I said. There are good aspects to that, there are bad aspects to that, and there will be disagreement about which is which. I'm just saying the old strategy has been obsoleted by practical shale extraction.)
  - datavirtue 8y ago
    Right. This shift started with Obama though. While he still carried out imperialistic activity the message in his campaign was to stop. We see this in a deluge of violence that is breaking out for which we have no stake or involvement. It reminds me of pre-ww2 where all this shit went down and the US and others where like...meh.
  - XorNot 8y ago
    This is overstated though. Oil is fungible, and the US is not a vertically integrated supply chain even though it is (contrary to popular talking point) still the world's largest manufacturing exporter. Which means it needs to buy things from the outside, and trade something people want in return - that means oil. If you want to be stable on oil, it's either competing with international market or you're throwing up price controls and export restrictions to try and keep the price down. Do that, and your currency starts devaluing anyway making all those things you want more expensive.
- rrggrr 8y ago
  Global governance is not automatically positive, or equitable. The majority of Brits came to this conclusion in the Brexit vote. China arrived at this conclusion when the ICJ invalidated its Spratly Islands claim. Likely majorities in Greece, Italy and elsewhere are near to the same conclusion - particularly if/when German taxpayers become similarly disenchanted with supporting these countries deficits.
- lolsal 8y ago
  I can have a 'family first' policy about how I run my life, but that doesn't mean I might not be a good leader for other families to follow.
  - addicted 8y ago
    You’re describing a role model, not a leader. You’re not a leader for those other families. You may be a good role model. A more appropriate equivalent would be standing for mayor of your town and saying you will be a good leader, but you will be putting your family’s interests ahead of everyone else.
    - lolsal 8y ago
      That's a very fair point - often those words are interchanged but they are actually different. My analogy was accidentally describing a role model. The mayor analogy is better, but the US President is not actually a leader of any other country, so I'm not sure that one is totally analogous either. Maybe at best the president leads by example, or is a role model, but not actually a leader (from my very limited understanding of world politics :P).
- drak0n1c 8y ago
  Whether you think it's for better or worse, how is independence from global governance moving the world away from freedom? Is diluting your vote on your nation's policies to include the rest of the world a necessary cost for having a free world?
docker_up 8y ago
He has been very vocal about a "US-first", isolationist policy. You can't be the leader of the free world by saying "I only care about my country" and expect others to follow you.
- artificial 8y ago
  Indeed, and requesting that countries part of NATO fulfill their voluntarily agreed to commitments shouldn't be considered outrageous.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    If that was the only controversial thing he's done on the world stage, you might have a point
    - artificial 8y ago
      Why is it controversial?
- rrggrr 8y ago
  You simply cannot be leader of the free world if you are attempting to do such as a country in decline or ruin. The first order of business is to restore American economic strength. The world must wait.
- ArchTypical 8y ago
  > You can't be the leader of the free world by saying "I only care about my country" and expect others to follow you There's no evidence of that. The President is a citizen figurehead (with limited powers) which has to fight a monumentally massive bureaucracy made up of other branches and citizens. Trump is not a godhead or even going to be considered important in the long run (a generation+). Curb the sensationalism.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    True, many overstate the importance of the president. I think you understate his importance, though. His actions (and statements) have real-world consequences.
throwaway5752 8y ago
Scrapping TPP (ceding huge geopolitcal area to PRC / Silk Road), reducing NATO support, initiating trade conflicts, enthusiastic support of PRK/Kim... do those not all directly move us away from that role?
- virmundi 8y ago
  If you assume the status quo for all of those items mentioned are good, then perhaps, yes the US is leaving its role. If you assume that most of those are bad (except in the case of PRK), the the US is asserting its role. Take the PRK. Will it collapse any time soon? Probably not. The government disarmed the populace. They are internally too weak to oust Kim. Does bringing the PRK into the less violent world benefit people? Yes. The US would have to spend far less on Korea. So the US could save anywhere from 350 million to 1 billion by not having to be there. [1] TPP was terrible for rights of the individual. It was a promotion by the media companies, among others, to strip ownership rights. It also pushed a greater term for copyright, which at the current levels already stagnates the economy. Reducing NATO has the benefit that it's making EU members start to think about spending their money on defense. The US has funded the EU social systems for too long. The EU countries mock the US saying, "If you spent less on your worthless bombs, perhaps you could provide good medical systems to your population." I'm tired of this lie. They don't spend much on their defense. They don't spend what they should with Russia parked on their front lawn. Is it good leadership to have your crew, who appear to be of little worth, make you spend on every outing? Initiating trade conflicts is not necessarily wrong if the deals are bad. Are Americans better off under these new deals? I don't know; not enough details nor time. If they are, isn't pushing such negotiations ago thing? Could the same ends been achieved with different means? 1 - https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-the-US-spend-on-defending-South-Korea https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-the-US-spend-on-defendin... On the idea of free trade https://youtu.be/rw7PUrgU3N0 https://youtu.be/rw7PUrgU3N0
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - adventured 8y ago
    Spending less on the military also wouldn't dent the healthcare problem the US has. The US has a $3.8 trillion healthcare system. Just covering the ~8% of the population without health insurance, would cost 50% of what the US spends on the military. The only good targets for slashing the military budget by eg $200b, is infrastructure (we could build national high-speed rail with it) or deficit reduction. You can only broaden healthcare coverage through massive cost reductions (minimum 1/3 cost slashing), or epic tax increases on the top ~60% income bracket (which is how everyone else pays for universal coverage, but this would be a huge cost break to corporations who currently largely foot that bill). Imagine if Canada had to actually spend real money on defense to keep Russia from going after its northern most territory (Russia has begun getting aggressive there). They're spending 1.3% of GDP on their military, with no ability to actually secure their own territory if Russia decides to start claiming some of their land in the Arctic region. Who are they going to look to as Russia gets more aggressive? The US of course, nobody else can do anything about it.
josefresco 8y ago
I'll bite as you don't appear to be a troll. Trump and his regime has on many occasions talked about "America first" and also bashed international organizations like NATO/UN. But ... you knew this. While you won't find a citation of him saying "I'm no longer interested in being the leader of free world" you will find that he rejects the concept of "the free world" by decrying "globalists" as being the cause of a perceived decline in America's influence and power. Not to mention his bashing of allies on trade, security and a variety of other issues - making it clear he's not interested in "leading" but rather ... dominating(?) So to me, retracting from the global economy, bashing allies, and complimenting authoritarian monsters would seem to indicate he's cool with "retreating" from that role.
- mc32 8y ago
  For the longest time many on the left would complain about american hegemony, American interventionism, american-led globalism, etc. now that the US is retreating and China appears to be taking up some of the slack, now people are complaining of retreat, and focusing on america too much, etc.
  - empath75 8y ago
    People on the left usually weren't opposed to American interventionism in general or 'leading the free world', they were opposed to stuff like toppling governments to install friendly dictators.
  - thebooktocome 8y ago
    "The left" is a diverse group of competing interests and political philosophies, just as "the right" encompasses fiscal conservatives, multinational CEOs, Christians, and white supremacists.
  - UweSchmidt 8y ago
    Nice straw man: Retreating from Paris Agreement on Climate certainly is a kind of isolationism that is not welcome and viewed differently from military interventions around the world. Would you grant 'the left' to at least have a consistent view, or do you insist on your simplistic world view?
jngreenlee 8y ago
I don't think you getting downvoted is fair, as you asked a reasonable question. And some of the replies are helping answer said question. But also, this is an opinion piece, no need to take it too seriously in any measure. The responses you are getting are aligned opinions.

wyldfire 8y ago

He describes his nationalist policy as "America First" [1] and takes explicit action to disengage from global governance, foreign aid, etc. IMO this marks a retreat from many previous administrations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy)

Covzire 8y ago
I keep hearing about changes to US foreign policy dictated by our self-sufficient oil drilling. The US is now a net oil exporter and has fewer stakes in maintaining order in certain parts of the world since WW2.
- mandelbrotwurst 8y ago
  In the short term. Historically the U.S. has avoided drilling much of its reserves preferring to use oil from foreign sources first, knowing that it would have its own remaining if those ever dried up, either literally or because they became untenable to access for whatever reason. If the U.S. uses up its reserves and doesn't drastically cut its consumption, it's no longer a net exporter. One potential solution: Use local reserves in the short term while redirecting military spending toward building sustainable / clean energy infrastructure domestically to avoid a scenario in which the country runs out of domestic reserves and is no longer able to obtain oil from foreign sources.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The US has at least a hundred years of oil remaining, and that's without properly exploring for oil off either massive coast using modern technology. That's also ignoring that gasoline is about to get demolished by electric cars, which will slash oil demand in a very dramatic manner. In likely terms, the US has enough oil for multiple centuries once it's no longer heavily used for transportation. And of course the US is neighbors with another huge oil producer up north that happens to have a small population. Mexico also likely has a lot of oil it's unaware of, near Texas, in the form of shale. Given it only has 500m people, North America is an energy reserves monster.
  - jerf 8y ago
    "Historically the U.S. has avoided drilling much of its reserves preferring to use oil from foreign sources first," Historically, shale oil was not economically viable. This has drastically changed the equations because suddenly available supply has shot up, rendering the old calculations moot. (Note I am not implying anything further other than what I said. There are good aspects to that, there are bad aspects to that, and there will be disagreement about which is which. I'm just saying the old strategy has been obsoleted by practical shale extraction.)
- datavirtue 8y ago
  Right. This shift started with Obama though. While he still carried out imperialistic activity the message in his campaign was to stop. We see this in a deluge of violence that is breaking out for which we have no stake or involvement. It reminds me of pre-ww2 where all this shit went down and the US and others where like...meh.
- XorNot 8y ago
  This is overstated though. Oil is fungible, and the US is not a vertically integrated supply chain even though it is (contrary to popular talking point) still the world's largest manufacturing exporter. Which means it needs to buy things from the outside, and trade something people want in return - that means oil. If you want to be stable on oil, it's either competing with international market or you're throwing up price controls and export restrictions to try and keep the price down. Do that, and your currency starts devaluing anyway making all those things you want more expensive.
rrggrr 8y ago
Global governance is not automatically positive, or equitable. The majority of Brits came to this conclusion in the Brexit vote. China arrived at this conclusion when the ICJ invalidated its Spratly Islands claim. Likely majorities in Greece, Italy and elsewhere are near to the same conclusion - particularly if/when German taxpayers become similarly disenchanted with supporting these countries deficits.
lolsal 8y ago
I can have a 'family first' policy about how I run my life, but that doesn't mean I might not be a good leader for other families to follow.
- addicted 8y ago
  You’re describing a role model, not a leader. You’re not a leader for those other families. You may be a good role model. A more appropriate equivalent would be standing for mayor of your town and saying you will be a good leader, but you will be putting your family’s interests ahead of everyone else.
  - lolsal 8y ago
    That's a very fair point - often those words are interchanged but they are actually different. My analogy was accidentally describing a role model. The mayor analogy is better, but the US President is not actually a leader of any other country, so I'm not sure that one is totally analogous either. Maybe at best the president leads by example, or is a role model, but not actually a leader (from my very limited understanding of world politics :P).
drak0n1c 8y ago
Whether you think it's for better or worse, how is independence from global governance moving the world away from freedom? Is diluting your vote on your nation's policies to include the rest of the world a necessary cost for having a free world?

docker_up 8y ago

He has been very vocal about a "US-first", isolationist policy. You can't be the leader of the free world by saying "I only care about my country" and expect others to follow you.

artificial 8y ago
Indeed, and requesting that countries part of NATO fulfill their voluntarily agreed to commitments shouldn't be considered outrageous.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  If that was the only controversial thing he's done on the world stage, you might have a point
  - artificial 8y ago
    Why is it controversial?
rrggrr 8y ago
You simply cannot be leader of the free world if you are attempting to do such as a country in decline or ruin. The first order of business is to restore American economic strength. The world must wait.
ArchTypical 8y ago
> You can't be the leader of the free world by saying "I only care about my country" and expect others to follow you There's no evidence of that. The President is a citizen figurehead (with limited powers) which has to fight a monumentally massive bureaucracy made up of other branches and citizens. Trump is not a godhead or even going to be considered important in the long run (a generation+). Curb the sensationalism.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  True, many overstate the importance of the president. I think you understate his importance, though. His actions (and statements) have real-world consequences.

throwaway5752 8y ago

Scrapping TPP (ceding huge geopolitcal area to PRC / Silk Road), reducing NATO support, initiating trade conflicts, enthusiastic support of PRK/Kim... do those not all directly move us away from that role?

virmundi 8y ago
If you assume the status quo for all of those items mentioned are good, then perhaps, yes the US is leaving its role. If you assume that most of those are bad (except in the case of PRK), the the US is asserting its role. Take the PRK. Will it collapse any time soon? Probably not. The government disarmed the populace. They are internally too weak to oust Kim. Does bringing the PRK into the less violent world benefit people? Yes. The US would have to spend far less on Korea. So the US could save anywhere from 350 million to 1 billion by not having to be there. [1] TPP was terrible for rights of the individual. It was a promotion by the media companies, among others, to strip ownership rights. It also pushed a greater term for copyright, which at the current levels already stagnates the economy. Reducing NATO has the benefit that it's making EU members start to think about spending their money on defense. The US has funded the EU social systems for too long. The EU countries mock the US saying, "If you spent less on your worthless bombs, perhaps you could provide good medical systems to your population." I'm tired of this lie. They don't spend much on their defense. They don't spend what they should with Russia parked on their front lawn. Is it good leadership to have your crew, who appear to be of little worth, make you spend on every outing? Initiating trade conflicts is not necessarily wrong if the deals are bad. Are Americans better off under these new deals? I don't know; not enough details nor time. If they are, isn't pushing such negotiations ago thing? Could the same ends been achieved with different means? 1 - https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-the-US-spend-on-defending-South-Korea https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-the-US-spend-on-defendin... On the idea of free trade https://youtu.be/rw7PUrgU3N0 https://youtu.be/rw7PUrgU3N0
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- adventured 8y ago
  Spending less on the military also wouldn't dent the healthcare problem the US has. The US has a $3.8 trillion healthcare system. Just covering the ~8% of the population without health insurance, would cost 50% of what the US spends on the military. The only good targets for slashing the military budget by eg $200b, is infrastructure (we could build national high-speed rail with it) or deficit reduction. You can only broaden healthcare coverage through massive cost reductions (minimum 1/3 cost slashing), or epic tax increases on the top ~60% income bracket (which is how everyone else pays for universal coverage, but this would be a huge cost break to corporations who currently largely foot that bill). Imagine if Canada had to actually spend real money on defense to keep Russia from going after its northern most territory (Russia has begun getting aggressive there). They're spending 1.3% of GDP on their military, with no ability to actually secure their own territory if Russia decides to start claiming some of their land in the Arctic region. Who are they going to look to as Russia gets more aggressive? The US of course, nobody else can do anything about it.

josefresco 8y ago

I'll bite as you don't appear to be a troll. Trump and his regime has on many occasions talked about "America first" and also bashed international organizations like NATO/UN. But ... you knew this. While you won't find a citation of him saying "I'm no longer interested in being the leader of free world" you will find that he rejects the concept of "the free world" by decrying "globalists" as being the cause of a perceived decline in America's influence and power. Not to mention his bashing of allies on trade, security and a variety of other issues - making it clear he's not interested in "leading" but rather ... dominating(?) So to me, retracting from the global economy, bashing allies, and complimenting authoritarian monsters would seem to indicate he's cool with "retreating" from that role.

mc32 8y ago
For the longest time many on the left would complain about american hegemony, American interventionism, american-led globalism, etc. now that the US is retreating and China appears to be taking up some of the slack, now people are complaining of retreat, and focusing on america too much, etc.
- empath75 8y ago
  People on the left usually weren't opposed to American interventionism in general or 'leading the free world', they were opposed to stuff like toppling governments to install friendly dictators.
- thebooktocome 8y ago
  "The left" is a diverse group of competing interests and political philosophies, just as "the right" encompasses fiscal conservatives, multinational CEOs, Christians, and white supremacists.
- UweSchmidt 8y ago
  Nice straw man: Retreating from Paris Agreement on Climate certainly is a kind of isolationism that is not welcome and viewed differently from military interventions around the world. Would you grant 'the left' to at least have a consistent view, or do you insist on your simplistic world view?

jngreenlee 8y ago

I don't think you getting downvoted is fair, as you asked a reasonable question. And some of the replies are helping answer said question. But also, this is an opinion piece, no need to take it too seriously in any measure. The responses you are getting are aligned opinions.