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Are we heading for another world war – or has it already started? (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm not going to say the story backs the hed. Nonetheless, this isn't what you want to read happening. Selecting the correct excerpt is usually an easy task.

Here, it isn't.

The full story should be read, but the best I can do is this:

For the former US secretary of state Antony Blinken, Donald Trump’s indifference to alienating allies is an act of vandalism. He said diplomats around the world were asking: “What the fuck is going on?”

Blinken said America had spent 80 years building up trust, strong economic partnerships and military and political alliances, and if that was then taken down in a matter of 100 days it would be incredibly hard to rebuild.

“It means countries look for ways to work around us, to work together but without the US,” he said. “The possibility that what will be said today will be reversed tomorrow, and will be reversed again, means they simply cannot count on us. Joe Biden used to say it is never a good idea to bet against America. The problem we now have is people are no longer betting on America.”

I don't think anyone is arguing that there's any remaining U.S. hegemony, but this is stark. Get ready for everything you've known about the postwar era to go away. What comes next? Likely not anything good.

Seriously: Read the full piece. This is a five-alarm shitshow, and we're worrying about Barbie imports.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

...but there is now a clarity across Europe, and not just in Paris, that regardless of Vance’s reassurance, Europe has to have the capability to operate autonomously of the US. Trump is self-evidently not reliable, and his benign assessment of Putin’s intentions is not shared.

Planning for a European reassurance force in Ukraine is under way, as is planning for a potential Russian attack on Europe. Since February, France and the UK, through a combined joint expeditionary force, have formed the nucleus of that planning, but this has broadened, with new political leadership increasingly coming from four members of the Weimar+ group: Poland, France, Germany and the UK.

Honestly, I think Europe's disillusionment with us will be better for them in the long run. The fact that they were waiting on Biden to take the lead in Ukraine, whose fecklessness over lending credence to Russia's prima facie bogus claim of the war being US vs Russia made him hold back many strategic options from Ukraine, meant that they were also not thinking about what Russia's aggression meant for them, and reacting accordingly.

I think the original purpose of Article 5 (in terms of US intervening vs Russia) has probably been dead for a couple decades now, and it's good that Europe won't be finding that out when Russian troops are rolling in, and the US backs off.