I'm not ridin with Biden, and I don't think people should vote for him. I've made no effort to hide the fact that I did vote for him, but that was for very particular reasons to due with my familial relationships, and I wouldn't waste a fucking second advocating anybody else do the same.
I made a callout thread because people were saying "Trump is better", which you'll recognize as support for Trump.
There is a serious case to be made for Trump being better as the "harm reduction" candidate for the world at large. I'm not voting for either because fuck 'em, but it's not an outlandish idea by any stretch of the imagination.
There kinda isn't. While I have previously made the point that Trump is the only president in my lifetime that hasn't started a war as far as I know, he has also stepped up bombing, and has only been stopped from causing more destruction by a combination of incompetence and his complete lack of an attention span.
But that's exactly the point! Trump's incompetence and complete lack of an attention span is the reason why he's better on foreign policy than somebody like Hillary or Biden, who would absolutely pursue those plots to their conclusions. I don't think Trump is like ideologically better, but if we're serious about Marxism it doesn't matter whether he's ideologically better, it's all about material outcomes. And the material outcomes of a bumbling idiot as the head of the American imperial apparatus are very good comparatively speaking.
If we're Marxists we should understand that the enormous blood machine of US imperialism will not be, and has not been, held back in any way by the figurehead's mental decline.
Agreed, this is only a stop gap measure. But if "harm reduction" is really the name of the game here, materially Trump causes less "harm" abroad than a standard President.
Yo, your argument makes some sense and I can’t say I really know which presidency might be marginally preferable to the other, but for the love of god, stop pretending that using the word “materially” transforms your argument into Marxist analysis.
You’re just doing a sort of rough cost/benefit analysis based on observation of the personalities involved, you’re not applying any sort of dialectical logic and you’re not grounding your analysis in the class forces at play or the material conditions in the Marxist sense of the term.
But are they? Have more or less bombs been dropped under Trump? I believe the answer is that Trump has stepped up bombing campaigns in multiple countries, and that happens regardless of his ability to focus.
Trump has definitely stepped up drone strikes, but a lot of that is because of the war in Yemen, which the Americans would have supported regardless of who was President. The drone strikes started by Bush and expanded by Obama will expand forever, unless we get an actual anti-imperialist President (lol). That said, Trump hasn't bombed a country back to the Stone Age like Obama did, nor has he entangled the United States in more wars and coup attempts.
I mean, the Bolivian coup was "successful" in that they took over the government and carried out massacres for around a year or so before getting smoked by MAS in the elections. Operation Gideon was a hilarious failure though, and perhaps the most emblematic event of Trump's foreign policy - he's not any more peaceful on the world stage, but he and his administration really suck at regime change.
"Number of bombs dropped" isn't the definitive way of measuring US Imperial power projection lol. Biden would've dropped all of those same bombs, but also wouldn't have flinched on major operations in Venezuela. Yes, Trump's goons went through with the coup in Bolivia, but the stakes were lower there. The left in Bolivia is mostly unarmed and the police/military are right wing. Yes, there were massacres in the bolivian coup, but nothing like a full scale civil war. In Venezuela, the military and police support Maduro and there are left wing paramilitaries all over the country. Trump going through with the less destructive coup but not the devastating one is likely a product of his disinterest in expanding US Empire abroad.
Under Trump US Empire has mainly pursued failed strategies like unarmed color revolutions, which haven't really been successful lately. It worked in Ukraine and other countries before it but the governments of the world have studied these cases and adjusted accordingly. Competent and dedicated Imperialists would realize that a more "muscular" approach is needed. I think Biden would put people in charge that would make those changes, while Trump gets annoyed by them for trying to push for war and fires them.
Biden would’ve dropped all of those same bombs, but also wouldn’t have flinched on major operations in Venezuela.
Obama didn't take military action against Venezuela; Trump tried a Bay of Pigs-style coup.
It's absurd to portray Obama's VP as someone who would absolutely put boots on the ground while arguing that Trump isn't really that bad. If this sort of logic came from a chud we'd have a dozen threads dunking on it in an hour.
Obama didn’t take military action against Venezuela; Trump tried a Bay of Pigs-style coup.
Trump allowed some fawning chud to attempt a right wing version of the Cuban Revolution that was immediately thwarted by fishermen with machetes. Biden isn't the same as Obama. Obama was coming in after years of widespread antiwar sentiment. That has died out and Democrats had gotten a lot more "muscular" on foreign policy by the end of Obama's presidency. Politicians respond to changing conditions, and I have no doubt Hillary would've been worse than Trump abroad. Biden apparently wants to focus on Latin America, btw.
It’s absurd to portray Obama’s VP as someone who would absolutely put boots on the ground while arguing that Trump isn’t really that bad. If this sort of logic came from a chud we’d have a dozen threads dunking on it in an hour.
I mean I'm pretty sure we would be divided on that post if it was made, just like we are on this one. If you think Biden has done sort of ideological commitment to keeping troops home idk what to tell you. The Biden administration isn't going to be Obama admin 2.0 because conditions are different and they're not idiots.
Idk what to tell you homie, you have a very naive understanding of how political power works if you think the Biden administration will look exactly like an Obama administration despite different conditions and demands from the Bourgeois faction the Democrats represent. Biden is very obviously nothing but an empty vessel for the interests of the Haute Bourgeoisie.
Different conditions like a Republican Party that will reflexively criticize everything Biden does, or different conditions like a growing anti-imperialist left that's far more organized now than from 2008-2016?
Do you think either of those things matter to US foreign policy? Also, what anti-imperialist left in America? The only major anti-imperialist demonstration I've seen lately was the occupation of the Venezuelan embassy which was a couple dozen hardcore activists.
The conditions I'm talking about are the political and economic conditions around the globe. Their strategy of unarmed color revolutions have been failing left and right and left wing/anti-imperialist sentiment is on the rise in many places in the global south, especially in LATAM.
It is clear that imperial projects need to be more bloody in order to succeed and the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie wants someone in power who is willing to do the dirty work. Trump is less beholden to this faction of Capital, as his nationalist diet isolationist movement is backed by the provincial/national bourgeoisie who mostly extracts their profits domestically and is more concerned with domestic issues.
Putting all our eggs in the basket of hoping that Trump keeps getting bored before his aides finishes setting up the nuclear football is not viable.
I'm not endorsing Biden for foreign policy here mind, but the idea that we can consistently rely on Trump going off to watch TV for 4 more years is optimistic to the point of nearly being delusional.
whereas in the biden admin, we're looking at either a jill biden or kamala harris controlled white house and neither will balk at managing the empire the way trump has.
Trump is the only president in my lifetime that hasn’t started a war
It's difficult to imagine what definition of"war" would make this true. It also glosses over the vast difference (in destruction and lives lost) between invading Iraq and something like bombing Libya, and seemingly assumes the U.S. is the only aggressor in any given situation.
The keyword here is started. He has continued prosecuting existing aggressions yes (and any President would), but to my knowledge he hasn't started anything new.
That's not accurate at all. We bombed Libya and imposed a no-fly zone, but we (officially) didn't put anyone on the ground. At most we might have put a few special forces teams in, but that's reasonable speculation without any real evidence to support it. We certainly didn't come anywhere close to a "full-scale invasion."
There is " a serious case" that can't stand up to scrutiny by someone with 5 brain cells. Just because the guy hasn't invaded Iran yet, doesn't mean he wasn't the one who tore up the nuclear deal or killed Solemani.
Most of his actions haven't generated an enhanced strategic position for the US rulers, though. If you're gonna 5D brain hoping Biden wins, it just makes more sense to say, hey, should the collapse of the global empire be regulated by cynical technocrats, or managed by a weak-willed babyman at the controls.
Check out this. And peep Trump on North Korea, not invading Iran when somebody like Hillary absolutely would've, not doing any crazy shit in Venezuela and shitting on Guaido, etc.
North Korea is the only thing I'll give you. But if you're going to give him credit for that, then you need to do the same for Obama with Cuba and Iran. Saying that Hillary would've invaded Iran is a counterfactual, and we have Trump carrying out by far the most direct escalation with Iran since the Jimmy Carter.
I'll absolutely give Obama credit for Cuba and Iran. Those were two great things he did. He also did shit like bombing Libya to the point where they now have literal slave markets, and helped create the power vacuum that led to ISIS in the Middle East. Trump hasn't started a war, and the blood on his hands is definitely less than Obama.
Trump hasn't started a war, but he has tried to start a war with Iran. And he has worsened every single war Obama inherited and started. More bombings, more drone strikes, more troops on the ground.
And then he backed down despite the advice of his generals. Trump is not beholden to the American imperial apparatus in the way that Obama et al were and will be, and that's partially why they hate him so much.
Whatever you think of the Iran deal, it sure as shit wasn't assassinating Iranians and nearly starting a war.
Watching so many otherwise sensible leftists bend over backwards to defend Trump is fucking embarrassing. Shit like this absolutely hurts the left because any ordinary person can see that going from peace to military exchanges is bad.
Casually brushing off an escalation this enormous (and similarly minimizing the de-escalstion inherent in the previous nuclear deal) is a defense of Trump. Going back and saying "but don't vote for him" doesn't change the fact that the substance of the argument here and in other threads on the topic is "Trump would actually be better than Biden." Making that argument requires defending Trump, because on its face almost starting a war with Iran after inheriting a diplomatic agreement with the country shows that Trump has been worse on a major foreign policy issue.
I get that you don't want to defend Trump on the whole, but you are in fact defending him on this. It's a terrible take. If you want to make the (reasonable) case that they're both dogshit, leave it at that. Trying to sell people on "no Trump would actually be better" just ain't it.
You can't just lump all this together under one big "America doing imperialism" umbrella. Some actions (the invasion of Iraq) cause exponentially more death and destruction than others (bombing Libya).
We killed a tenth of Iraq's pre-war population over the course of our invasion and occupation. That same ratio would mean about 8 million dead Iranians had the situation not cooled off. We killed maybe 8 million people in Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea combined. Even risking that (and the thing about brinksmanship is you don't always manage to stop short of the cliff) ranks just shy of actually invading and occupying a country, especially when you tear up a treaty and invent a crisis out of whole cloth to get there. It definitely doesn't fall into the category of "relatively normal" U.S. imperialism. A real chance of killing that many people is not just another fuckup on the pile.
A thing I wrote earlier about US relations with Iran under the Trump and Obama adminstrations:
It wasn’t a “diplomatic agreement” it was fucking extortion to get Iran to stop their nuclear program cos if they succeeded it would get a lot harder to coup them.
The USA broke their side of the “agreement” the month the deal was signed when they never halted sanctions like they’d agreed to.
Iran is in a bettter position now than at the end of Obama’s second term. Obama’s deal left Iran under moderate sanctions (a blatant violation of the deal as it was written) and under the threat that if UN inspectors weren’t satisfied their nuclear program wasn’t happening those sanctions would increase to cripping levels. The Trump administratoin increased US Sanctions on Iran but the loss of US soft power under his regime led to the UN declining to extend UN sanctions following the assasination despite the US pushing for those sanctions to be extended. As it stands the UN sactions on Iran are set to expire in October 2020, the US’ unilateral sanctions are increasingly inneffective as the US’ economic hegemony deteriorates and the Iranian nuclear program has more enriched fissible material stockpiled and is presumably closer to producing a nuclear deterrent than it ever has been.
The Trump regime has been a fucking gift to Ali Khamenei and the people of Iran.
I think this relies on the demonstrably false idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. That's imperial propaganda. The Obama Iran deal was definitely extortion, but I think there's a clear case that it gave Iran more room to operate than the previous relationship did; the intensive nuclear standards and inspections were restrictive and obviously unfair, but the deal as a whole was less restrictive than the previous status quo since Iran did not actually have any plans to make nukes.
Obviously, the collapse of US soft power has been a boon to the entire world, and I think you can partially attribute that to Trump. But I think the far, far more significant factors are the inevitable failure of every US institution due to late capitalist instability and, most importantly, the rise of China as the soon-to-be dominant economic power (military power is another story, unfortunately).
You do make some good points I'm definitely thinking about, though.
Yeah like I don't want Trump to win, but I also legitimately don't want Biden to win. I don't think there is a legitimate moral case that either one is harm reduction. I really do think that Trump and Biden are worse for different demographics. You don't have to support Trump to admit that he will be better for the global south. He will be worse for the domestic population, especially immigrants and leftists. I am a Communist in the US, my whole family lives here including some that are minorities. I obviously don't support Donald fucking Trump lol. Conflating acknowledging the potential outcomes of a Trump victory with support for Trump is pure lib shit.
i'm not voting for trump but i honestly think he'd be better in a global sense. i feel like he's more anti-war than biden would be. i mean trump had the entire situation room telling him to escalate things with iran over that drone that got shot down and he didn't do it. biden's senile and he's just going to do whatever his advisors tell him to do.
it's not though. trump is shutting down military bases and criticizing his generals because they're getting into wars for profit. trump is detached from that entire blood machine in a way that obama wasn't and biden won't be
You don't think assassinating the top general of a sovereign nation, a man who was a literal war hero and one of the staunchest and most effective enemies of imperialism, is escalation?
i think trump has ignored advisors pleas to escalate, it's documented, and was particularly shocking to some of them like bolton. killing soleimani was stupid and wrong, but my argument is that trump would do fewer of those dumb and wrong things than his predecssors
He did not ignore please to escalate. If he did he would not have assassinated Soleimani. Do we not understand that that is the most aggressive action taken by the US against Iran since, I dunno, the coup?
It was definitely an aggressive action, but it wasn't one rooted in a coherent imperialist plan of action. I'm Trump's mind it was dick swinging, and he didn't follow up with major aggression. He didn't build up troops in Iraq and ships in the strait of Hormuz to threaten Iran. He likes to flex but not follow through with a fight. The flexing is disrespectful and he's not trying to improve relations with Iran in any way, but he's not planning on invading either. No one is saying Trump is a peacenik, he just doesn't have the stomach for major conflict which is what the imperial project kinda needs right now since it's softer instruments are failing.
I would argue that no US president has the stomach for war with Iran because they know we would lose. Everything is posturing and flexing to an extent. Trump has increased ships in the Hormuz (or at least aggression from the ships already there), with the seizing of oil tankers and weapons shipments.
Trump's incoherent plan is just as dangerous as it is helpful.
I would argue that no US president has the stomach for war with Iran because they know we would lose.
I don't think this is true. the military, intelligence community, etc. clearly believes they'd prevail (against a mountain of evidence over the last 60 years) and the neolibs defer to the military on these matters. american military superiority is practically a religious belief at this point. the empire won't survive another war but I'm not sure the democratic party actually knows that.
they're trying to encircle and starve Iran before actually mounting a ground war. that was the reasoning behind the invasion of Iraq, the continued presence in Afghanistan, the fuckery in Syria, etc.. it's a question of when the MIC tries the ground war, not if.
Certainly, yes, if they want to do a ground war they need to secure power in all the bordering countries, and that's of course a huge reason why the US is in those countries. But if you're saying it's a matter of when, not if, then the idea that Trump would somehow stand against it strikes me as preposterous on its face.
And I still don't agree the US would ever follow through with that threat of war. The US is extremely cowardly when it comes to war, and avoids anything but the weakest possible nations unless forced, like in WWII. Iran is not the soft target it was in the 80s, and everyone in DC is constantly furious at themselves for not following through back then when they had the chance. Iran is not going to get any weaker, because China (and Russia to a lesser extent) will keep supporting it, and the US is too weak to do anything about it. The international sanctions have failed.
then the idea that Trump would somehow stand against it strikes me as preposterous on its face.
I don't think anyone is saying that he'd stand against it. they're saying that the power in the executive branch has, over the past 60 years, been incredibly focused on the president himself. a weak president who's incapable of making and holding to decisions will fail to marshal the empire into a ground war with Iran.
that said, I think everyone in this discussion is being staked to more extreme positions than they actually hold. Trump or Biden... we're splitting hairs here and speculating on very little actual information.
Trump's incoherent plan is absolutely not as dangerous and harmful as a competent and dedicated imperialist project would be. Like nobody is saying Trump is an anti-imperialist lol. Just that he isnt completely submissive to a broader imperialist power structure like Biden would be. When people make this observation they aren't dating Trump is "good" for the world, just that by comparison he isn't as bad as people who have an ideological commitment to the Imperial project
Trump involves them because they have a lot of power in the right wing power structure but he is skeptical of them and will go against them from time to time. Just look at the fallout with Bolton. Everything Trump said about him was true, he's a bloodthirsty monster that wants to wage any war he can. Bolton accused Trump of being bad for US interests abroad and eroding the imperial relationships they have built over the last several decades.
Again, he's not an anti-imperialist and he is going to continue imperialism. He's just not the same materially as Biden will be
He's not the same, agreed, but I'm not convinced he's not as bad. I stand by that he is clearly worse for Iran and China. LatAm is more arguable; Biden has some weird opinions about LatAm relative to a lot of standard Dems because he's spent so much more time there than other US politicians, though he's not at all an anti-imperialist there either.
Honestly, I think a lot of this will prove to be irrelevant. I don't think the US really can do imperialism like it used to.
Trump has a weird obsession with Iran and China, and is definitely worse for them. China wants the US to be predictable so they can adjust their policies in a rational way to respond, and Iran wants things to go back to how they were under Obama because their situation was improving. Both have reportedly said they want Biden to win.
Maduro on the other hand, has said he doesn't give a shit who wins because the Democrats are bloodthirsty Imperialists as well, and KJU has called Biden a rabid dog while relatively amicable to Trump. Different specific countries have different interests, but if we are being honest, the LATAM perspective is the most important currently. A full scale war with Iran is very unlikely and one with China is never going to happen, but coups, fascism and war in LATAM are very real threats. Also, rising anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism need to be protected, and South America is the epicenter for both. The situation is precarious there.
Overall, I can't really say which I prefer because it's like choosing between people I love and care about getting fucked more or people I don't know but still care about getting fucked more.
Take a look through and you will see plenty of "Hillary would've started a war with Iran." Which I'm sure she would've tried to, but she also would've failed, because Iran has the sense to do everything they can to avoid that.
Do what shit? I'm not buying the absolutely preposterous lie of Donald the Dove. Everyone here is ignoring Soleimani, ignoring the expansion of every single war and bombing campaign, ignoring the most anti-Palestinian administration in decades, ignoring the coup in Bolivia, ignoring the trade war with China, all so they can own the libs.
I'm not ridin with Biden, and I don't think people should vote for him. I've made no effort to hide the fact that I did vote for him, but that was for very particular reasons to due with my familial relationships, and I wouldn't waste a fucking second advocating anybody else do the same.
I made a callout thread because people were saying "Trump is better", which you'll recognize as support for Trump.
There is a serious case to be made for Trump being better as the "harm reduction" candidate for the world at large. I'm not voting for either because fuck 'em, but it's not an outlandish idea by any stretch of the imagination.
There kinda isn't. While I have previously made the point that Trump is the only president in my lifetime that hasn't started a war as far as I know, he has also stepped up bombing, and has only been stopped from causing more destruction by a combination of incompetence and his complete lack of an attention span.
But that's exactly the point! Trump's incompetence and complete lack of an attention span is the reason why he's better on foreign policy than somebody like Hillary or Biden, who would absolutely pursue those plots to their conclusions. I don't think Trump is like ideologically better, but if we're serious about Marxism it doesn't matter whether he's ideologically better, it's all about material outcomes. And the material outcomes of a bumbling idiot as the head of the American imperial apparatus are very good comparatively speaking.
If we're Marxists we should understand that the enormous blood machine of US imperialism will not be, and has not been, held back in any way by the figurehead's mental decline.
Agreed, this is only a stop gap measure. But if "harm reduction" is really the name of the game here, materially Trump causes less "harm" abroad than a standard President.
Yo, your argument makes some sense and I can’t say I really know which presidency might be marginally preferable to the other, but for the love of god, stop pretending that using the word “materially” transforms your argument into Marxist analysis.
You’re just doing a sort of rough cost/benefit analysis based on observation of the personalities involved, you’re not applying any sort of dialectical logic and you’re not grounding your analysis in the class forces at play or the material conditions in the Marxist sense of the term.
I'm not trying to do a Marxist analysis in the sense of dialectical analysis or anything like that, but Marx takes particular care to specify that we have to look at real world conditions, not ideology to analyze events. Marx states himself, "As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality." Ideology can be distracting, especially in this sense, for we can't look at what Trump or Biden say but what they do. The real interests of the Biden camp are different than the Trump camp, as they represent different wings of the bourgeoisie (something I have elaborated on previously). That's the point I'm trying to make here, and that's why I say "material" to clue folks in that this is indeed a materialist way to look at the world.
Amazing how it gives their game away. The other is "blame capitalism for everything."
But are they? Have more or less bombs been dropped under Trump? I believe the answer is that Trump has stepped up bombing campaigns in multiple countries, and that happens regardless of his ability to focus.
Trump has definitely stepped up drone strikes, but a lot of that is because of the war in Yemen, which the Americans would have supported regardless of who was President. The drone strikes started by Bush and expanded by Obama will expand forever, unless we get an actual anti-imperialist President (lol). That said, Trump hasn't bombed a country back to the Stone Age like Obama did, nor has he entangled the United States in more wars and coup attempts.
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I mean, the Bolivian coup was "successful" in that they took over the government and carried out massacres for around a year or so before getting smoked by MAS in the elections. Operation Gideon was a hilarious failure though, and perhaps the most emblematic event of Trump's foreign policy - he's not any more peaceful on the world stage, but he and his administration really suck at regime change.
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"Number of bombs dropped" isn't the definitive way of measuring US Imperial power projection lol. Biden would've dropped all of those same bombs, but also wouldn't have flinched on major operations in Venezuela. Yes, Trump's goons went through with the coup in Bolivia, but the stakes were lower there. The left in Bolivia is mostly unarmed and the police/military are right wing. Yes, there were massacres in the bolivian coup, but nothing like a full scale civil war. In Venezuela, the military and police support Maduro and there are left wing paramilitaries all over the country. Trump going through with the less destructive coup but not the devastating one is likely a product of his disinterest in expanding US Empire abroad.
Under Trump US Empire has mainly pursued failed strategies like unarmed color revolutions, which haven't really been successful lately. It worked in Ukraine and other countries before it but the governments of the world have studied these cases and adjusted accordingly. Competent and dedicated Imperialists would realize that a more "muscular" approach is needed. I think Biden would put people in charge that would make those changes, while Trump gets annoyed by them for trying to push for war and fires them.
Obama didn't take military action against Venezuela; Trump tried a Bay of Pigs-style coup.
It's absurd to portray Obama's VP as someone who would absolutely put boots on the ground while arguing that Trump isn't really that bad. If this sort of logic came from a chud we'd have a dozen threads dunking on it in an hour.
Trump allowed some fawning chud to attempt a right wing version of the Cuban Revolution that was immediately thwarted by fishermen with machetes. Biden isn't the same as Obama. Obama was coming in after years of widespread antiwar sentiment. That has died out and Democrats had gotten a lot more "muscular" on foreign policy by the end of Obama's presidency. Politicians respond to changing conditions, and I have no doubt Hillary would've been worse than Trump abroad. Biden apparently wants to focus on Latin America, btw.
I mean I'm pretty sure we would be divided on that post if it was made, just like we are on this one. If you think Biden has done sort of ideological commitment to keeping troops home idk what to tell you. The Biden administration isn't going to be Obama admin 2.0 because conditions are different and they're not idiots.
That's all he's ever ran on, and that's all Hillary ever ran on.
Do you think it really matters what politicians say they're going to do when campaigning for the votes of us rubes?
I think Biden is proud of what he did with Obama and wants to broadly continue it.
Idk what to tell you homie, you have a very naive understanding of how political power works if you think the Biden administration will look exactly like an Obama administration despite different conditions and demands from the Bourgeois faction the Democrats represent. Biden is very obviously nothing but an empty vessel for the interests of the Haute Bourgeoisie.
Different conditions like a Republican Party that will reflexively criticize everything Biden does, or different conditions like a growing anti-imperialist left that's far more organized now than from 2008-2016?
Do you think either of those things matter to US foreign policy? Also, what anti-imperialist left in America? The only major anti-imperialist demonstration I've seen lately was the occupation of the Venezuelan embassy which was a couple dozen hardcore activists.
The conditions I'm talking about are the political and economic conditions around the globe. Their strategy of unarmed color revolutions have been failing left and right and left wing/anti-imperialist sentiment is on the rise in many places in the global south, especially in LATAM.
It is clear that imperial projects need to be more bloody in order to succeed and the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie wants someone in power who is willing to do the dirty work. Trump is less beholden to this faction of Capital, as his nationalist diet isolationist movement is backed by the provincial/national bourgeoisie who mostly extracts their profits domestically and is more concerned with domestic issues.
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Putting all our eggs in the basket of hoping that Trump keeps getting bored before his aides finishes setting up the nuclear football is not viable. I'm not endorsing Biden for foreign policy here mind, but the idea that we can consistently rely on Trump going off to watch TV for 4 more years is optimistic to the point of nearly being delusional.
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But Trump ALSO signed off on such appointments. Elliot Abrams is officially "United States Special Representative for Venezuela" (And also for Iran)
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whereas in the biden admin, we're looking at either a jill biden or kamala harris controlled white house and neither will balk at managing the empire the way trump has.
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Taking Bolton at face value, idk about that one.
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Who is "relying" on that though? It's just an observation.
The people who would otherwise be invaded are reliant on Trump not getting his shit together.
It's difficult to imagine what definition of"war" would make this true. It also glosses over the vast difference (in destruction and lives lost) between invading Iraq and something like bombing Libya, and seemingly assumes the U.S. is the only aggressor in any given situation.
The keyword here is started. He has continued prosecuting existing aggressions yes (and any President would), but to my knowledge he hasn't started anything new.
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That's not accurate at all. We bombed Libya and imposed a no-fly zone, but we (officially) didn't put anyone on the ground. At most we might have put a few special forces teams in, but that's reasonable speculation without any real evidence to support it. We certainly didn't come anywhere close to a "full-scale invasion."
There is " a serious case" that can't stand up to scrutiny by someone with 5 brain cells. Just because the guy hasn't invaded Iran yet, doesn't mean he wasn't the one who tore up the nuclear deal or killed Solemani.
Most of his actions haven't generated an enhanced strategic position for the US rulers, though. If you're gonna 5D brain hoping Biden wins, it just makes more sense to say, hey, should the collapse of the global empire be regulated by cynical technocrats, or managed by a weak-willed babyman at the controls.
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:100-com:
No one has convincingly made that case at all.
Check out this. And peep Trump on North Korea, not invading Iran when somebody like Hillary absolutely would've, not doing any crazy shit in Venezuela and shitting on Guaido, etc.
North Korea is the only thing I'll give you. But if you're going to give him credit for that, then you need to do the same for Obama with Cuba and Iran. Saying that Hillary would've invaded Iran is a counterfactual, and we have Trump carrying out by far the most direct escalation with Iran since the Jimmy Carter.
I'll absolutely give Obama credit for Cuba and Iran. Those were two great things he did. He also did shit like bombing Libya to the point where they now have literal slave markets, and helped create the power vacuum that led to ISIS in the Middle East. Trump hasn't started a war, and the blood on his hands is definitely less than Obama.
Trump hasn't started a war, but he has tried to start a war with Iran. And he has worsened every single war Obama inherited and started. More bombings, more drone strikes, more troops on the ground.
And then he backed down despite the advice of his generals. Trump is not beholden to the American imperial apparatus in the way that Obama et al were and will be, and that's partially why they hate him so much.
How the fuck is killing Soleimani backing down? Why is everyone in this thread ignoring that?
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They wouldn't have tanked the Iran nuclear deal and then started a regional crisis on Twitter.
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Whatever you think of the Iran deal, it sure as shit wasn't assassinating Iranians and nearly starting a war.
Watching so many otherwise sensible leftists bend over backwards to defend Trump is fucking embarrassing. Shit like this absolutely hurts the left because any ordinary person can see that going from peace to military exchanges is bad.
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Casually brushing off an escalation this enormous (and similarly minimizing the de-escalstion inherent in the previous nuclear deal) is a defense of Trump. Going back and saying "but don't vote for him" doesn't change the fact that the substance of the argument here and in other threads on the topic is "Trump would actually be better than Biden." Making that argument requires defending Trump, because on its face almost starting a war with Iran after inheriting a diplomatic agreement with the country shows that Trump has been worse on a major foreign policy issue.
I get that you don't want to defend Trump on the whole, but you are in fact defending him on this. It's a terrible take. If you want to make the (reasonable) case that they're both dogshit, leave it at that. Trying to sell people on "no Trump would actually be better" just ain't it.
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You can't just lump all this together under one big "America doing imperialism" umbrella. Some actions (the invasion of Iraq) cause exponentially more death and destruction than others (bombing Libya).
We killed a tenth of Iraq's pre-war population over the course of our invasion and occupation. That same ratio would mean about 8 million dead Iranians had the situation not cooled off. We killed maybe 8 million people in Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea combined. Even risking that (and the thing about brinksmanship is you don't always manage to stop short of the cliff) ranks just shy of actually invading and occupying a country, especially when you tear up a treaty and invent a crisis out of whole cloth to get there. It definitely doesn't fall into the category of "relatively normal" U.S. imperialism. A real chance of killing that many people is not just another fuckup on the pile.
He did not "puss out". He is currently actively antagonizing Iran, stealing their oil tankers and weapon shipments. He did that this week.
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All we have to go on here is history. Obama de-escalated with Iran. Trump escalated more than any president since the coup.
Edit: can somebody please fucking refute this claim instead of just downvoting it?
A thing I wrote earlier about US relations with Iran under the Trump and Obama adminstrations:
I think this relies on the demonstrably false idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. That's imperial propaganda. The Obama Iran deal was definitely extortion, but I think there's a clear case that it gave Iran more room to operate than the previous relationship did; the intensive nuclear standards and inspections were restrictive and obviously unfair, but the deal as a whole was less restrictive than the previous status quo since Iran did not actually have any plans to make nukes.
Obviously, the collapse of US soft power has been a boon to the entire world, and I think you can partially attribute that to Trump. But I think the far, far more significant factors are the inevitable failure of every US institution due to late capitalist instability and, most importantly, the rise of China as the soon-to-be dominant economic power (military power is another story, unfortunately).
You do make some good points I'm definitely thinking about, though.
Did Iran say this? If so, why did they remain a party to the deal?
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McCain ran on "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" and 100 years in Iraq
IIRC, he was all but trying to start a war via Twitter, then did a few photo ops after Kim flattered him, and didn't lift sanctions whatsoever.
What am I missing here?
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I keep saying this, but he appointed Elliot Fucking Abrams, the butcher of Guatemala, to handle his LatAm relations. He supported the coup in Bolivia.
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Yeah like I don't want Trump to win, but I also legitimately don't want Biden to win. I don't think there is a legitimate moral case that either one is harm reduction. I really do think that Trump and Biden are worse for different demographics. You don't have to support Trump to admit that he will be better for the global south. He will be worse for the domestic population, especially immigrants and leftists. I am a Communist in the US, my whole family lives here including some that are minorities. I obviously don't support Donald fucking Trump lol. Conflating acknowledging the potential outcomes of a Trump victory with support for Trump is pure lib shit.
The Obama/Biden administration started 3 new wars.
The Trump administration hasn't started any.
i'm not voting for trump but i honestly think he'd be better in a global sense. i feel like he's more anti-war than biden would be. i mean trump had the entire situation room telling him to escalate things with iran over that drone that got shot down and he didn't do it. biden's senile and he's just going to do whatever his advisors tell him to do.
He killed Soleimani! How the fuck is that not escalation? It's way more than anything Obama did.
it's not though. trump is shutting down military bases and criticizing his generals because they're getting into wars for profit. trump is detached from that entire blood machine in a way that obama wasn't and biden won't be
You don't think assassinating the top general of a sovereign nation, a man who was a literal war hero and one of the staunchest and most effective enemies of imperialism, is escalation?
i think trump has ignored advisors pleas to escalate, it's documented, and was particularly shocking to some of them like bolton. killing soleimani was stupid and wrong, but my argument is that trump would do fewer of those dumb and wrong things than his predecssors
He did not ignore please to escalate. If he did he would not have assassinated Soleimani. Do we not understand that that is the most aggressive action taken by the US against Iran since, I dunno, the coup?
It was definitely an aggressive action, but it wasn't one rooted in a coherent imperialist plan of action. I'm Trump's mind it was dick swinging, and he didn't follow up with major aggression. He didn't build up troops in Iraq and ships in the strait of Hormuz to threaten Iran. He likes to flex but not follow through with a fight. The flexing is disrespectful and he's not trying to improve relations with Iran in any way, but he's not planning on invading either. No one is saying Trump is a peacenik, he just doesn't have the stomach for major conflict which is what the imperial project kinda needs right now since it's softer instruments are failing.
I would argue that no US president has the stomach for war with Iran because they know we would lose. Everything is posturing and flexing to an extent. Trump has increased ships in the Hormuz (or at least aggression from the ships already there), with the seizing of oil tankers and weapons shipments.
Trump's incoherent plan is just as dangerous as it is helpful.
I don't think this is true. the military, intelligence community, etc. clearly believes they'd prevail (against a mountain of evidence over the last 60 years) and the neolibs defer to the military on these matters. american military superiority is practically a religious belief at this point. the empire won't survive another war but I'm not sure the democratic party actually knows that.
But then why have they never done it?
they're trying to encircle and starve Iran before actually mounting a ground war. that was the reasoning behind the invasion of Iraq, the continued presence in Afghanistan, the fuckery in Syria, etc.. it's a question of when the MIC tries the ground war, not if.
Certainly, yes, if they want to do a ground war they need to secure power in all the bordering countries, and that's of course a huge reason why the US is in those countries. But if you're saying it's a matter of when, not if, then the idea that Trump would somehow stand against it strikes me as preposterous on its face.
And I still don't agree the US would ever follow through with that threat of war. The US is extremely cowardly when it comes to war, and avoids anything but the weakest possible nations unless forced, like in WWII. Iran is not the soft target it was in the 80s, and everyone in DC is constantly furious at themselves for not following through back then when they had the chance. Iran is not going to get any weaker, because China (and Russia to a lesser extent) will keep supporting it, and the US is too weak to do anything about it. The international sanctions have failed.
I don't think anyone is saying that he'd stand against it. they're saying that the power in the executive branch has, over the past 60 years, been incredibly focused on the president himself. a weak president who's incapable of making and holding to decisions will fail to marshal the empire into a ground war with Iran.
that said, I think everyone in this discussion is being staked to more extreme positions than they actually hold. Trump or Biden... we're splitting hairs here and speculating on very little actual information.
Trump's incoherent plan is absolutely not as dangerous and harmful as a competent and dedicated imperialist project would be. Like nobody is saying Trump is an anti-imperialist lol. Just that he isnt completely submissive to a broader imperialist power structure like Biden would be. When people make this observation they aren't dating Trump is "good" for the world, just that by comparison he isn't as bad as people who have an ideological commitment to the Imperial project
Trump has surrounded himself with people who have that ideological commitment and the history of carrying it out.
Trump involves them because they have a lot of power in the right wing power structure but he is skeptical of them and will go against them from time to time. Just look at the fallout with Bolton. Everything Trump said about him was true, he's a bloodthirsty monster that wants to wage any war he can. Bolton accused Trump of being bad for US interests abroad and eroding the imperial relationships they have built over the last several decades.
Again, he's not an anti-imperialist and he is going to continue imperialism. He's just not the same materially as Biden will be
He's not the same, agreed, but I'm not convinced he's not as bad. I stand by that he is clearly worse for Iran and China. LatAm is more arguable; Biden has some weird opinions about LatAm relative to a lot of standard Dems because he's spent so much more time there than other US politicians, though he's not at all an anti-imperialist there either.
Honestly, I think a lot of this will prove to be irrelevant. I don't think the US really can do imperialism like it used to.
Trump has a weird obsession with Iran and China, and is definitely worse for them. China wants the US to be predictable so they can adjust their policies in a rational way to respond, and Iran wants things to go back to how they were under Obama because their situation was improving. Both have reportedly said they want Biden to win.
Maduro on the other hand, has said he doesn't give a shit who wins because the Democrats are bloodthirsty Imperialists as well, and KJU has called Biden a rabid dog while relatively amicable to Trump. Different specific countries have different interests, but if we are being honest, the LATAM perspective is the most important currently. A full scale war with Iran is very unlikely and one with China is never going to happen, but coups, fascism and war in LATAM are very real threats. Also, rising anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism need to be protected, and South America is the epicenter for both. The situation is precarious there.
Overall, I can't really say which I prefer because it's like choosing between people I love and care about getting fucked more or people I don't know but still care about getting fucked more.
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The claim in this thread is that Hillary would've just marched the military into Iran, apparently unprovoked.
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Take a look through and you will see plenty of "Hillary would've started a war with Iran." Which I'm sure she would've tried to, but she also would've failed, because Iran has the sense to do everything they can to avoid that.
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Do what shit? I'm not buying the absolutely preposterous lie of Donald the Dove. Everyone here is ignoring Soleimani, ignoring the expansion of every single war and bombing campaign, ignoring the most anti-Palestinian administration in decades, ignoring the coup in Bolivia, ignoring the trade war with China, all so they can own the libs.
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Someone literally said he's not a war hawk. And yeah, I'm feeling pretty agitated by the responses in this thread.
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I'm referring specifically to Iran in that comment.
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Eating dirt is better than eating shit. I don't support either.