4 ms·

US reputation hits 'depths not seen this century' – and 'may never recover'

77 points by doener 7mo ago

ggm 7mo ago
Admitting it can wain admits the concepts of waxing and waining, which admits the concept of waxing. It could rise again. it depends how bad the other choices become exploiting their new found international reputation. Also, it was built on useful largesse. I think the beginning of the end to me (I am sure it predates this, but this is when I became more conscious of it) was when the funding of the UN dried up because militant american christianity hates women's reproductive rights. That was a massive flip in posture towards a rational approach to improved health in Africa and for what? For a short term domestic agenda. The UN systematic corruption and money laundering was a huge issue but what motivated the change wasn't "cleaning up the UN" it was putting contraception back in the box. [edit: "this century" meaning "in the last 25 years" because during the Vietnam era, American reputation was pretty low worldwide. I keep forgetting we're in a new century. The war on sex was President-pro-tem Nancy Reagan era stuff.]
oldpersonintx2 7mo ago
[dead]
lo_fye 7mo ago
[flagged]
- anotheraccount9 7mo ago
  [flagged]
jmclnx 7mo ago
[flagged]
- slyall 7mo ago
  The problem is that even if the US elects some nice centrist democrats for the 14 years every country is going to be thinking "What if they elect Trump v2?" I mean the US already re-elected him after the first time so it wasn't a one off. US allies are already increasing defense spending and diversifying supply chains (especially for weapons) away from the US. Would you bet the safety of your country on the US being stable going forward?
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > problem is that even if the US elects some nice centrist democrats for the 14 years every country is going to be thinking "What if they elect Trump v2?" Nobody actually does this outside opinion pages. Like, Argentina has defaulted on its debt nine times. It still finds lenders. Similarly, an America that has stabilised its foreign policy still represents a military superpower and consumer dynamo that would be hard for any rational leader to pass up aligning with.
    - slyall 7mo ago
      There is a difference between "aligning with" and "trusting with your life"
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > There is a difference between "aligning with" and "trusting with your life" Practically? In a germane context? I don't think that delineation exists in geopolitics. Every U.S. ally under its nuclear umbrella trusts its life with D.C. Same with NATO and AUKUS and other defensive partnerships.
    - yongjik 7mo ago
      Counterpoint: Japan committed some war crimes back in the 40s, and almost a century later, a lot of East Asians still think maybe Japan shouldn't have a regular military that can project its power. And that includes a large portion of Japanese citizens themselves.
- burkaman 7mo ago
  Does the rest of the world really pay attention to internal political details like that? I can't imagine the average non-American thinking "well I know they have a legislative election this year that may impact Trump's ability to enact his agenda, I'll reserve judgement until then." I assume it's more like "America is dropping bombs for no reason and destroying the global economy, why are they doing that". Even as an insider it's hard to understand how a country could re-elect the worst person on earth and then two years later vote the opposition into power, so it's hard to believe that outsiders are taking such a nuanced view.
  - HeavyStorm 7mo ago
    Decision makers do pay attention to US internal affairs as it affects the rest of the world directly.
  - thefz 7mo ago
    Worse than that, friend. We have the flaring confirmation that in fact capitalism does and will always lead to the shittiest outcome for the vast majority bar a one percent of the population. And to be honest the fact that this president is not impeached over a sex abuse scandal and starting a war nobody wanted says a lot about how detached and uninterested the population of the US is from its government.
- rjrjrjrj 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- dragonwriter 7mo ago
  > I think if the GOP looses big in 2026 to the point Trump can be impeached and removed from office and his minions are convicted for corruption, I think it will recover. Assuming party-line voting on the issue with no defections from either party, that requires the Democrats to win 33 of the 35 Senate seats up for election (if they hold every one that they currently hold, it requires them to take 20 of the 22 Republican-held seats.) > I believe the world is waiting for Nov 2026 before making big changes. I don't think the world is waiting at all, it is just taking time to work out the shape of the big changes, whether its European defense integration to replace the historically-pivotal role of the US, or any of large number of other changes nations are actively and openly working on. Now, if the present direction of the US changes, some of those efforts may be abandoned or deprioritized, but "could potentially stop work" is not the same thing as "waiting to start".
  - jmclnx 7mo ago
    >Assuming party-line voting on the issue with no defections from either party, that requires the Democrats to win 33 I know, it is very unlikely this will happen. But I was just pointing out what I think needs to happen for the article to be wrong. And someone in another comment brought up the military. A failing/fascist US with its military is something I really worry about for the world. I think Nov 2026 is the last chance the US has to change path.
- dawnerd 7mo ago
  Other countries have had very dark times and are not pretty well respected nations. US shouldn't be any different, but we're definitely being set back a lot, even more so if midterms don't result in anything meaningful.
- Yizahi 7mo ago
  They may lose small or big, but I 100% guarantee no real impeachment, because both parties are deathly afraid of any real checks and balance tools which may be applied to their members later on. At least that's the current situation, historical status may have been different.
MarkusQ 7mo ago
So the story is... a publication that opposes the party currently in power, quoting a few people from the side that's presently out of power, saying that their being out of power is really bad, and we may never recover? How is this different than the whining we get when the roles are reversed? I realize you folks hate each other, but it would be nice if either of you could talk about something without turning it into a rant about how great, noble and good your side is and how awful the other side is.
- AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
  To someone neutral (yeah, humor me), the Trump administration has done far more to demolish the reputation of the US than any other administration in my lifetime (OK, maybe Nixon - I don't remember all that much about him firsthand). But I would also say that Biden, while not as bad as Trump, was worse than anybody since Nixon.
  - jjtwixman 7mo ago
    I love fake and nonsensical “neutrality”.
  - myvoiceismypass 7mo ago
    Which of Biden's policies and actions did you find worse than any since Nixon? And where do you rank the Iraq debacle that Bush started? How about selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua?
    - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
      Remember what we're talking about. It's not about their policies per se, it's about what they do to the US's international reputation. So what did Biden do? The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was the biggest thing. But his own frailty didn't help (speech fumbling and falling on stairs). Yeah, I know, his personal frailty shouldn't affect the US's reputation. But I think it did.
      - 7mo ago
dtagames 7mo ago
We've also lifted the veil on the myth that we were a unstoppable military power. We look silly saying, day after day, that the war is over, they're powerless, etc while the same channel shows that's not true. The folks least impressed right now are China and Russia, who must surely see a new system of regional powers operating in their own spheres, not a single global power which is apparently a historical fiction. The excellent book, Clash of Civilizations predicted this move to regional powers versus the 50's simple East/West divide, along with many other current events we see now. It was written 30 years ago.
- stvltvs 7mo ago
  The US is relatively weak without its allies. NATO was the real superpower in the west. The current regime got too big for their britches and tried to go it alone.
  - SanjayMehta 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - flowerthoughts 7mo ago
      Rheinmetall stock is up 1,439% and Saab is up 991% since February 2022. European defense materials companies are ramping up just fine.
      - SanjayMehta 7mo ago
        Stock prices are reflection of what speculators expect to happen. So the depleted munitions thanks to Ukraine and the drive to get some independence from an unreliable Trump regime makes this unsurprising.
    - bulbar 7mo ago
      > The only leverage NATO would be able to provide the US today would be political. Not sure what you are saying. NATO provides critical support for the Iran war by allowing the US having military bases in their countries.
tkel 7mo ago
People often prioritize "reputation" over other things, as if it is politically actionable or tangible. It's not, and it's a projection of peoples' personal feelings onto the actions of a nation-state. Honestly, it's odd behavior. To identify with a nation-state so strongly to care about it's "reputation" over actual material measures. It's parasocial and indicitave of people treating politics as a consumer form of entertainment, and not something they engage in in their daily lives. As if you were a foreign diplomat, might be the only time "reputation" mattered in the way that people talk about it.
- AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
  Internationally, reputation is, essentially, your country's track record projected forward in other nations' thinking. It's their expectation value for how you will behave in the future. People prioritize reputation because that's pretty much all there is to go on. Treaties? Sure, but how likely is the country to keep the terms of it? Agreements? Same question. Place for investments? How good is the rule of law there, and how likely is that to continue? Those are reputation questions; that is, they are questions about future behavior as predicted by past behavior.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tkel 7mo ago
    Exactly, things that only matter if you are a foreign diplomat.
f30e3dfed1c9 7mo ago
Lots of Americans don't get it yet but what we're living through is the end of what was sometimes called the "post-war international order" that began in 1945. America's allies in western Europe have been deliberately alienated and our electorate has shown itself to be too volatile, unpredictable, and frankly dumb to elect a trustworthy government. Intelligence-sharing from countries once, and still sort of nominally, our allies has been curtailed because no one can trust that information shared with us won't make its way to other countries that do not wish them well. That trust will take decades to rebuild if in fact it can be, and by that time, the world will be a very different place. The current administration is in the grip of religious fanatics with delusional, apocalyptic views of the world, as is much of the political party they come from. Nobody sensible trusts people like that, nor should they. It will take a generation to remove these people from political power, and it's far from clear that a majority of the electorate even wants to. Meanwhile, the US is gutting the science and education infrastructure that was rightly the envy of the world and making itself hostile to immigrants from nearly the entire world, when being a draw to the best and brightest served it so well for so long. Again, damage being done in a matter of years will take decades to recover from. It's not time to pack it in but it is time to recognize that America does not now and will in all likelihood never again hold the place in the world it did from 1945 to 2017. The America that most adults alive now grew up in is gone and the one their children and grandchildren will inhabit will likely be much diminished. Didn't have to happen but that's where we are and we brought it on ourselves.
- lunar-whitey 7mo ago
  The U.S. is currently in a similar position to the U.K. in the Suez in 1956 and is sprinting into the position the U.S.S.R. was in Afghanistan in 1979. Americans watching network TV news or reading the New York Times, however, would be hard pressed to distinguish it from Iraq in 2003.
- bulbar 7mo ago
  I fully agree, it's super obvious and even wanted by a huge share of the US population by voting for "America first". I hope that the EU manages to fill the power vacuum. They are already forming new economic bonds super fast and starting new defense initiatives. It will need a real EU military though. Also a new mode to operate is needed, the pure consensus based mode doesn't work that well.
SanjayMehta 7mo ago
The fact that the protagonist in this lament ever thought that the US was even once considered benevolent is risible. That's the problem with USAian politicians and bureaucrats. They have no education, no cultural knowledge, and lack the ability and the desire to understand the other side. They always act as if they don't have to OR project their own malicious intentions onto others. We should give credit to Trump for ripping off the thin mask of US "diplomacy."
incognito_robot 7mo ago
Why was the submission flagged (genuinely wondering)?
- Yizahi 7mo ago
  Politics. On the positive side, the blatant Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Qatar propaganda is flagged just as fast, so that's good enough on average.
Yizahi 7mo ago
Well, what did they expect, electing a demented person to rule them all, and then voluntarily surrendering legislative and judicial power to him too. A deliberate suicide for a country. Bet they showed those libturds who's da boss :) .

77 points by doener 7mo ago

ggm 7mo ago

Admitting it can wain admits the concepts of waxing and waining, which admits the concept of waxing. It could rise again. it depends how bad the other choices become exploiting their new found international reputation. Also, it was built on useful largesse. I think the beginning of the end to me (I am sure it predates this, but this is when I became more conscious of it) was when the funding of the UN dried up because militant american christianity hates women's reproductive rights. That was a massive flip in posture towards a rational approach to improved health in Africa and for what? For a short term domestic agenda. The UN systematic corruption and money laundering was a huge issue but what motivated the change wasn't "cleaning up the UN" it was putting contraception back in the box. [edit: "this century" meaning "in the last 25 years" because during the Vietnam era, American reputation was pretty low worldwide. I keep forgetting we're in a new century. The war on sex was President-pro-tem Nancy Reagan era stuff.]

oldpersonintx2 7mo ago

[dead]

lo_fye 7mo ago

[flagged]

anotheraccount9 7mo ago
[flagged]

jmclnx 7mo ago

[flagged]

slyall 7mo ago
The problem is that even if the US elects some nice centrist democrats for the 14 years every country is going to be thinking "What if they elect Trump v2?" I mean the US already re-elected him after the first time so it wasn't a one off. US allies are already increasing defense spending and diversifying supply chains (especially for weapons) away from the US. Would you bet the safety of your country on the US being stable going forward?
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > problem is that even if the US elects some nice centrist democrats for the 14 years every country is going to be thinking "What if they elect Trump v2?" Nobody actually does this outside opinion pages. Like, Argentina has defaulted on its debt nine times. It still finds lenders. Similarly, an America that has stabilised its foreign policy still represents a military superpower and consumer dynamo that would be hard for any rational leader to pass up aligning with.
  - slyall 7mo ago
    There is a difference between "aligning with" and "trusting with your life"
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > There is a difference between "aligning with" and "trusting with your life" Practically? In a germane context? I don't think that delineation exists in geopolitics. Every U.S. ally under its nuclear umbrella trusts its life with D.C. Same with NATO and AUKUS and other defensive partnerships.
  - yongjik 7mo ago
    Counterpoint: Japan committed some war crimes back in the 40s, and almost a century later, a lot of East Asians still think maybe Japan shouldn't have a regular military that can project its power. And that includes a large portion of Japanese citizens themselves.
burkaman 7mo ago
Does the rest of the world really pay attention to internal political details like that? I can't imagine the average non-American thinking "well I know they have a legislative election this year that may impact Trump's ability to enact his agenda, I'll reserve judgement until then." I assume it's more like "America is dropping bombs for no reason and destroying the global economy, why are they doing that". Even as an insider it's hard to understand how a country could re-elect the worst person on earth and then two years later vote the opposition into power, so it's hard to believe that outsiders are taking such a nuanced view.
- HeavyStorm 7mo ago
  Decision makers do pay attention to US internal affairs as it affects the rest of the world directly.
- thefz 7mo ago
  Worse than that, friend. We have the flaring confirmation that in fact capitalism does and will always lead to the shittiest outcome for the vast majority bar a one percent of the population. And to be honest the fact that this president is not impeached over a sex abuse scandal and starting a war nobody wanted says a lot about how detached and uninterested the population of the US is from its government.
rjrjrjrj 7mo ago
[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 7mo ago
> I think if the GOP looses big in 2026 to the point Trump can be impeached and removed from office and his minions are convicted for corruption, I think it will recover. Assuming party-line voting on the issue with no defections from either party, that requires the Democrats to win 33 of the 35 Senate seats up for election (if they hold every one that they currently hold, it requires them to take 20 of the 22 Republican-held seats.) > I believe the world is waiting for Nov 2026 before making big changes. I don't think the world is waiting at all, it is just taking time to work out the shape of the big changes, whether its European defense integration to replace the historically-pivotal role of the US, or any of large number of other changes nations are actively and openly working on. Now, if the present direction of the US changes, some of those efforts may be abandoned or deprioritized, but "could potentially stop work" is not the same thing as "waiting to start".
- jmclnx 7mo ago
  >Assuming party-line voting on the issue with no defections from either party, that requires the Democrats to win 33 I know, it is very unlikely this will happen. But I was just pointing out what I think needs to happen for the article to be wrong. And someone in another comment brought up the military. A failing/fascist US with its military is something I really worry about for the world. I think Nov 2026 is the last chance the US has to change path.
dawnerd 7mo ago
Other countries have had very dark times and are not pretty well respected nations. US shouldn't be any different, but we're definitely being set back a lot, even more so if midterms don't result in anything meaningful.
Yizahi 7mo ago
They may lose small or big, but I 100% guarantee no real impeachment, because both parties are deathly afraid of any real checks and balance tools which may be applied to their members later on. At least that's the current situation, historical status may have been different.

MarkusQ 7mo ago

So the story is... a publication that opposes the party currently in power, quoting a few people from the side that's presently out of power, saying that their being out of power is really bad, and we may never recover? How is this different than the whining we get when the roles are reversed? I realize you folks hate each other, but it would be nice if either of you could talk about something without turning it into a rant about how great, noble and good your side is and how awful the other side is.

AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
To someone neutral (yeah, humor me), the Trump administration has done far more to demolish the reputation of the US than any other administration in my lifetime (OK, maybe Nixon - I don't remember all that much about him firsthand). But I would also say that Biden, while not as bad as Trump, was worse than anybody since Nixon.
- jjtwixman 7mo ago
  I love fake and nonsensical “neutrality”.
- myvoiceismypass 7mo ago
  Which of Biden's policies and actions did you find worse than any since Nixon? And where do you rank the Iraq debacle that Bush started? How about selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua?
  - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
    Remember what we're talking about. It's not about their policies per se, it's about what they do to the US's international reputation. So what did Biden do? The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was the biggest thing. But his own frailty didn't help (speech fumbling and falling on stairs). Yeah, I know, his personal frailty shouldn't affect the US's reputation. But I think it did.
    - 7mo ago

dtagames 7mo ago

We've also lifted the veil on the myth that we were a unstoppable military power. We look silly saying, day after day, that the war is over, they're powerless, etc while the same channel shows that's not true. The folks least impressed right now are China and Russia, who must surely see a new system of regional powers operating in their own spheres, not a single global power which is apparently a historical fiction. The excellent book, Clash of Civilizations predicted this move to regional powers versus the 50's simple East/West divide, along with many other current events we see now. It was written 30 years ago.

stvltvs 7mo ago
The US is relatively weak without its allies. NATO was the real superpower in the west. The current regime got too big for their britches and tried to go it alone.
- SanjayMehta 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - flowerthoughts 7mo ago
    Rheinmetall stock is up 1,439% and Saab is up 991% since February 2022. European defense materials companies are ramping up just fine.
    - SanjayMehta 7mo ago
      Stock prices are reflection of what speculators expect to happen. So the depleted munitions thanks to Ukraine and the drive to get some independence from an unreliable Trump regime makes this unsurprising.
  - bulbar 7mo ago
    > The only leverage NATO would be able to provide the US today would be political. Not sure what you are saying. NATO provides critical support for the Iran war by allowing the US having military bases in their countries.

tkel 7mo ago

People often prioritize "reputation" over other things, as if it is politically actionable or tangible. It's not, and it's a projection of peoples' personal feelings onto the actions of a nation-state. Honestly, it's odd behavior. To identify with a nation-state so strongly to care about it's "reputation" over actual material measures. It's parasocial and indicitave of people treating politics as a consumer form of entertainment, and not something they engage in in their daily lives. As if you were a foreign diplomat, might be the only time "reputation" mattered in the way that people talk about it.

AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
Internationally, reputation is, essentially, your country's track record projected forward in other nations' thinking. It's their expectation value for how you will behave in the future. People prioritize reputation because that's pretty much all there is to go on. Treaties? Sure, but how likely is the country to keep the terms of it? Agreements? Same question. Place for investments? How good is the rule of law there, and how likely is that to continue? Those are reputation questions; that is, they are questions about future behavior as predicted by past behavior.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- tkel 7mo ago
  Exactly, things that only matter if you are a foreign diplomat.

f30e3dfed1c9 7mo ago

Lots of Americans don't get it yet but what we're living through is the end of what was sometimes called the "post-war international order" that began in 1945. America's allies in western Europe have been deliberately alienated and our electorate has shown itself to be too volatile, unpredictable, and frankly dumb to elect a trustworthy government. Intelligence-sharing from countries once, and still sort of nominally, our allies has been curtailed because no one can trust that information shared with us won't make its way to other countries that do not wish them well. That trust will take decades to rebuild if in fact it can be, and by that time, the world will be a very different place. The current administration is in the grip of religious fanatics with delusional, apocalyptic views of the world, as is much of the political party they come from. Nobody sensible trusts people like that, nor should they. It will take a generation to remove these people from political power, and it's far from clear that a majority of the electorate even wants to. Meanwhile, the US is gutting the science and education infrastructure that was rightly the envy of the world and making itself hostile to immigrants from nearly the entire world, when being a draw to the best and brightest served it so well for so long. Again, damage being done in a matter of years will take decades to recover from. It's not time to pack it in but it is time to recognize that America does not now and will in all likelihood never again hold the place in the world it did from 1945 to 2017. The America that most adults alive now grew up in is gone and the one their children and grandchildren will inhabit will likely be much diminished. Didn't have to happen but that's where we are and we brought it on ourselves.

lunar-whitey 7mo ago
The U.S. is currently in a similar position to the U.K. in the Suez in 1956 and is sprinting into the position the U.S.S.R. was in Afghanistan in 1979. Americans watching network TV news or reading the New York Times, however, would be hard pressed to distinguish it from Iraq in 2003.
bulbar 7mo ago
I fully agree, it's super obvious and even wanted by a huge share of the US population by voting for "America first". I hope that the EU manages to fill the power vacuum. They are already forming new economic bonds super fast and starting new defense initiatives. It will need a real EU military though. Also a new mode to operate is needed, the pure consensus based mode doesn't work that well.

SanjayMehta 7mo ago

The fact that the protagonist in this lament ever thought that the US was even once considered benevolent is risible. That's the problem with USAian politicians and bureaucrats. They have no education, no cultural knowledge, and lack the ability and the desire to understand the other side. They always act as if they don't have to OR project their own malicious intentions onto others. We should give credit to Trump for ripping off the thin mask of US "diplomacy."

incognito_robot 7mo ago

Why was the submission flagged (genuinely wondering)?

Yizahi 7mo ago
Politics. On the positive side, the blatant Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Qatar propaganda is flagged just as fast, so that's good enough on average.

Yizahi 7mo ago

Well, what did they expect, electing a demented person to rule them all, and then voluntarily surrendering legislative and judicial power to him too. A deliberate suicide for a country. Bet they showed those libturds who's da boss :) .