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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » What if Trump does prefer Putin over Juncker?
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » What if Trump does prefer Putin over Juncker?
A weary-sounding Jean-Claude Juncker told students in his home state of Luxembourg last week that “we will need to teach the president-elect [i.e. Donald Trump] what Europe is and how it works”. In doing so, he erred badly, not for the first time. You can hear the derision dripping from the words, as, no doubt can the chief occupant of Trump Tower; not someone known for brushing off condescension. If Juncker is looking to build a relationship, it’s an odd way of going about it. Perhaps he’s miffed that Trump’s favourite European is the one who’s done more to break up the EU than anyone since Greece was let into the Euro.
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For a few days after the election, I was bewildered and flabbergasted.
Then I became curious and bemused (curious about what a Trump presidency might be like, and bemused at the protests and riots by the crybaby Clintonistas who don't understand democracy and mostly didn't vote anyway).
Now, I am increasingly trying to think of reasons to be optimistic about President Trump - the idea that he might be more pro-UK and more anti-EU, that he might be good at delegating most decisions to other people instead of trying to do the silly things he was campaigning on, that he might be an inspiring re-invigorator (is that a word?) of American values of freedom and enterprise (a bit like Reagan), that he might collaborate with Putin in ending the civil war in Syria, that he might end up being good enough to be re-elected for a second term.
Then I think I'm being naive and I get glum and gloomy again.
Have they not heard of Romulan Ale? Although that is more of a spirit than a wine!
Last poll published before the legal ban - Ipsos for Le Monde
Fillon 30 (+8 since last Sunday)
Juppe 29 (-7)
Sarkozy 29 (=)
Le Maire 5 (-2) NKM 3.5 (+0.5) Poisson 2 (=) Cope 1.5 (+0.5)
The last poll is the first to have another leader than Juppe and he is not at all sure to qualify.
I am beginning to think he could get ousted in the first round which was totally unthinkable two weeks ago. It would be an enormous surprise, of the magnitude of Brexit. Juppe has basically the support of most media and of the top civil servants.
They would probably switch to Macron if Juppe is out.
Could Sarkozy sneak through the middle? And a bit of a tough question, but which is best for Brexit Britain?
Is he suggesting that Britain hint at the dissolution of NATO in order to get freedom of movement concessions?
But if you're Eastern European... Freedom of movement might be more important than ever if you're worried about Russian aggression....
Nigel Farage rules out peerage 'at the moment'
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38032421
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/11/donald-trump-and-the-end-of-history/?wpisrc=nl_wonk&wpmm=1#comments
Yes Sarkozy has a decent chance to top the first round. However I don t see how he could win the second round.
As for Brexit, Juppe is probably the closer to Barnier- personally and on the Brexit issue.
Fillon is the most eurosceptic of the three and Sarkozy would probably try to use the Brexit question to Re-establish his duopoly with Merkel.
"On the other hand, if the process stalls in acrimony and then falls off a cliff as the clock runs out, there’ll undoubtedly be questions about whether Britain shouldn’t follow the US out of any meaningful NATO commitment – and in such circumstances, rightly so."
Agreed. The EU project has taken a road that destabilises NATO and as we saw with the Ukraine, its inept Foreign policy assisted Putin's aims.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/juncker-threatens-to-quit-over-future-of-martin-schulz-1.2873542
The EU has lots of unemployed young people, and a need for fiscal transfers to the periphery, and the periphery is where the external borders are. Military spending is ideal for fiscal transfers and job creation. EU GDP is like 10 times Russian GDP, so there's no long-term reason why it should need the US to defend itself against Russia.
As far as NATO goes, it is time to wind it up as obselete to the modern world, particularly one in which the major military of NATO is allied to its supposed antagonist.
Certainly we should stear clear. We do not want to be involved with Trumps foreign policy, which seems to be rather incoherent. Trump feeds off anti-Iraq war sentiment, but is also pro military with very hawkish advisors, so despite his incoherence is likely to get even more involved in the Middle East.
The place where Putin and Trump are likely to fall out is Turkey, which shows every sign of a decline into a failed state. We should get out of NATO before that happens.
On purely party political grounds, the end of NATO removes a significant Tory firewall against Corbyn and the Labour left generally. It's what they have been advocating for years.
Less free trade, appeasement of Putin's Russia, less public spending, cosying up to a white supremacist crook. The Tory vision of Brexit is not the one we were sold during the referendum campaign. It will end in tears.
We are pulling out of Europe, and should pull out of NATO too. In the unlikely event of war in the Baltics we should steer clear. It would no longer be our business.
I think it a very unlikely scenario, but should it happen, we do not want to be there. If Trump sees Russia as an ally, perhaps we should too.
I think far more likely that Putin keeps up the venerable Russian tradition of messing with Turkey (another NATO member, and one with US bases). I can see Turkey easily splitting into a 3 way civil war between Islamist factions, Old school Ataturkists and Kurds. Once again steer clear.
His foreign policy team is presumably going to be full of old foreign policy hawks from the Cold War, and in practice Russia is the main military opposition to the US, even when the US isn't trying to promote democracy.
What they have in common is that they're both prickly narcissistic, nationalistic authoritarians. But that doesn't feel like the perfect recipe for a harmonious long-term relationship.
It is clear that some of the geo-political certainties of our lifetimes are starting to unwind. Arguably this still fallout from 1989, which shows how long changes take to work through the system. Trump, as an outsider uniquely untied by either personal, experiential or cultural links to the 'received wisdom' of past decades enables the US to look at everything afresh.
Why would modern America be worried about Russia? It doesn't really threaten its interests at all.
The biggest risk for us is that we are still in the mindset of the 1940s when we had a big role to play in world affairs. Post-Brexit Britain will be a hugely reduced country in terms of our global role. Yet in foreign affairs the question remains to what extent we will be able to (or even that is makes any sense to) detach our interests from those of our Western European neighbours.
And, whether we like it or not, in a world where the Americans aren't interested in Europe and are more focussed on the long-term threat from China and some of its neighbours, the arguments for military capability at EU level become a lot stronger.
Do we really want to have Trumps Troops in Britains green and pleasant land?
The US has an astonishing presence across the world, having 95% of the worlds extraterritorial bases:
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-united-states-probably-has-more-foreign-military-bases-than-any-other-people-nation-or-empire-in-history/
It is time for Yankee to go home.
Pray, how're we detaching our interests from Western Europe?
We're pretty entwined trade wise, military wise and diplomatically outside of the recent artificial construct of the EU
But if the US walks away and the rEU is actively antagonistic towards theUK, why would it be our business to put ourselves in extreme danger on behalf of countries opposed to acting in a friendly manner?
That's not appeasement as such, which is a deliberate policy of trying to assuage perceived grievances. It would be better called isolation.
By the way, it's not just the US and UK. Le Pen is anti-Nato too, isn't she?
Military expenditure by nation
1 United States $596.0 bn
2 China $215.0 bn
3 Saudi Arabia $87.2 bn
4 Russia $66.4 bn
5 United Kingdom $55.5 bn
What's the point of having Trident and spending that much on our military if we don't think we carry a deterrent in our own right?
- left wing when leadership has abandoned all hope of winning elections
- identity politics-centric when the common ground has finally rejected it
- unable to move past the cold war paradigm
And your point is caller...?
Russia is an economic basket case, so if it is to retain global significance it has to do so militarily. On a far less extreme level Britain followed the same path after the Second World War. If you disagree, ask yourself just what exactly we were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even so, Russia does not have the economic power to start a new Cold War in Europe, it is a commodity based economy, Upper Volta with rockets. The Syrian adventure and problems in the Donbass are too much for them financially already.
When it comes to appeasement, that is surely what the Brexiteers and kippers are up to with their desire to force Ukraine to handover large chunks of its territory to Putin. This time the appeasers are on the right - and in the White House.
Trumpism is the end of offence, or rather, the end of there being a problem in being offended. I'm not surprised we're seeing it in America; the last two years of European politics has demonstrated that the cozy liberal post-war cultural consensus is over.
If an alien anthropologist landed in early November he would have had every right to think that sexism was the most heinous of crimes with the amount of wailing apparent.
China spends just under 2% on theirs and spends almost what the UK and Russia do combined.
Russia is history.
What is enlightening is how right wingers who rightly called foul over Corbyn Labour's anti-Semitism are perfectly content to accommodate Trump's racism. It shows their objections to Corbyn were not based on principle, but on partisanship. No surprise there, of course.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp
The other thing the EU can do is speed up its move to renewable energy. Conveniently, this is another thing that you can do spending a lot of money in countries that need fiscal transfers.
The political institutions of the EU have a great deal in common with our own, not least because we substantially set them up and have been part of them for 40 years.
Brexit means Brexit means a turning away from continental Europe. In practice that probably means being Trumps poodle again. Get with the programme and cuddle up to uncle Vlad.
If Putin is Trumps new bestie, he should be our new bestie too.
Remarkable how 40 years of Europe nearly worked. It has convinced an awful lot of posters here of our own inadequacies. Thank god the vote was in 2016. We can staunch this rot now.
The lesser known of the franchise....
The welfare state has, somewhat ironically, destroyed the raison d'etre of the modern left.