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It’s sad but my father always told me that the good times we’ve had are unprecedented and they can end faster than we think. I never believed him growing up, i
by cglan 5y ago
It’s sad but my father always told me that the good times we’ve had are unprecedented and they can end faster than we think.
I never believed him growing up, institutions and America seemed infallible. It’s sad to say but I think with global warming, covid, and the general decline of American soft power we’ll see more and more global turmoil
My heart goes out to Ukraine and its people
- asdff 5y agoIs this any different than any other military intervention America watched idly over the past century? Not really. In the "infallible" 1970s-1990s you might be remembering, we were casually ignoring plenty of similar actions around the world that make this present intervention seem pretty benign and slow moving. American soft power was over when the failure of the Korean war made it clear that all that could be done against a major nuclear power is a stalemate.
- unityByFreedom 5y agoRussia advanced under Obama, Trump, and now Biden. This war is entirely on Putin's shoulders.
- wernercd 5y ago
- 99_00 5y agoElections have consequences.
- unityByFreedom 5y agoRight, just "separatists" who happened to start fighting to expand Putin's empire and give him the region that supplies Russia's military with raw materials. From 2014, > Nevertheless, following its actions in Crimea, there is justified concern that Russia could now aim to annex eastern Ukraine. Unlike on the Crimean peninsula, there is not a large majority here who feel like they belong to Russia - and only about a quarter of the population of the east overall are ethnic Russians. https://www.dw.com/en/the-significance-of-the-donbas/a-17567049 https://www.dw.com/en/the-significance-of-the-donbas/a-17567... Trump did not want to stand up to Putin, so the early work to annex eastern Ukraine didn't make the news very often. Trump had no response to it.
- Larrikin 5y agoThere's only been one president in recent times to complain openly about NATO and America's participation in it. Why start a conflict when that one president might give you exactly what you want without a single shot fired.
- jeswin 5y agoI'm not a Trump fan at all, but one of his major complaints was that Europe isn't allocating enough money to defence. Which is quite a reasonable thing to demand. Primary responsibility to defend Europe should lie with Europe. The ability to defend oneself is just as important as climate. One has wide public support, the other is taken for granted (thanks to Nato).
- swader999 5y agoA lot of this is tied to non proliferation. We'll carry the buck if you don't aquire nukes. So it's not as simple as who pays how much.
- HideousKojima 5y agoNATO members have always been supposed to spend at least 2% of GDP on military, other than the US and I think the UK literally no one was.
- unityByFreedom 5y agoI believe that was a goal for a future date that has not yet arrived. Trump complained about it, but it wasn't due yet and was going to happen anyway. So it can look like he made it happen. He's full of cons.
- HideousKojima 5y agoThe 2% commitment was originally agreed to in 2006. After member nations continued to fail to spend enough, in 2014 it was a set as a goal to increase towards that goal year over year until 2024: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm#:~:text=The%202%25%20defence%20investment%20guideline,ensure%20the%20Alliance's%20military%20readiness https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm#:~:text=.... Several countries hadn't made real any moves towards reaching that goal, and even now are still falling far short (see page 3): https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/10/pdf/pr-2020-104-en.pdf https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/10/p...
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- LoveGracePeace 5y ago
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- tandymodel100 5y agoWhat decline in soft power?
- agumonkey 5y agoGood times breed bad times. PS: I agree about the feeling of infaillible institution and international order..
- erikig 5y agoI don't know if it helpful during times like these but it sounds like the quote by G. Michael Hopf: Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times
- watwut 5y agoAnd, the quote is onjectively bs. Hard times create hardened people who create hard time for others. And suffering.Good times are created by people who care and have right values. The hard times in Ukraine now won't make anyone better. Men in west won't be inferior for not going through it.
- systemvoltage 5y ago> And, the quote is onjectively bs. Hard times create hardened people who create hard time for others. And suffering.Good times are created by people who care and have right values. And then you go on to express a not-so-objective viewpoint? OP is stating an idiom, a saying, a phrase. Let it be. There is nothing objective about it.
- watwut 5y agoOP is stating ideology and an worldview. The one that is seems more and more wrong, the more you read about history. Generations that grew in hard times have more issues and those go away only slowly. People regularly use this one as argument or to imply inferiority of those they look down at. Therefore, it is 100% alright to not that idiom stand.
- richardfey 5y ago
- yks 5y ago
- thjkgfgrrioppo 5y ago
- chii 5y agoputin is not entirely to be blamed for the decline, but the signs of covert manipulations is all there. The very election of trump, and his poor foreign policies, are all smoking guns.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoAmerican institutions have only themselves to blame for the decline. People like Putin are taking advantage of the weakness but American politicians could behave more reasonably anytime but instead they are consciously choosing to make it worse. It’s all home made by the “greatest country in the world”. No need to blame anybody else.
- yks 5y agoOf course not, I blame Rupert Murdoch. But this sudden allegiance of the modern Trump/GOP to Putin is a sign of things to come.
- watwut 5y agoMaybe the core was just always ideologically close.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoWhen I came to the US in 2000 I already saw how insane US politics was. Political ads had no connection to any kind of reality and were basically purely attack and distortion. And since then it got only worse.
- boardwaalk 5y ago
- csomar 5y ago> the general decline of American soft power we’ll see more and more global turmoil I have argued, tons, that America is making the world more peaceful. It was hard to sell especially to Arab/Muslim countries but without a unipolar power, it's lots of small powers fighting each other for territory. > institutions and America seemed infallible Couple that with recklessness. Fatca, CRS, Trade deals, etc... lots of countries got screwed bad and treatment from the masters was as bad and discriminatory as it can get. If people sympathies with Putin, you are doing something wrong.
- chakhs 5y agoI wonder how you can believe that knowing all the coups organized by CIA, wars waged by US military everywhere in the world, countries US split in two or more ...etc. it was only safe for USA and its allies. Only difference is war is getting close to western Europe so it's felt more
- csomar 5y agoSure. There was chaos perpetrated by the Americans. On the other hand, most countries remained peaceful as a result of the American hegemony. The country I live in and its neighbors will go to war immediately if there was no UN/USA. Now think about the rest of the world. Every country will want a piece of its neighbor and there you have it: Total world chaos.
- rowanajmarshall 5y agoWhen you compare it to the world before an engaged America (so early 20th century), it was worse. Quite a bit worse. Instead of the US causing regime change, you had European countries conquering and annexing most of the world.
- hunterb123 5y ago- Pax Romana - Pax Britannica - Pax Americana Of the three periods of peace, Americana is the most peaceful. That's not to say there aren't faults, but there are far fewer faults than previous eras.