• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Donald Trump is undermining the rules-based international order

Lafayette

Lafayette

Banned
DP Veteran
Joined
Dec 13, 2015
Messages
9,594
Reaction score
2,072
Location
France
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Centrist
From The Economist, here: Donald Trump is undermining the rules-based international order

Excerpt:
There are three perspectives from which to look at this. The most prevalent in the foreign-policy establishment and the chancelleries of Europe is despair. The rules-based order ushered in after the second world war, which provided both the greatest-ever increase in human wealth and global trade and a whole human lifetime without worldwide armed conflict, is being dismantled. No good will come of it.

The second perspective could be called “Yes, but”. Yes-but-ism doesn’t exactly reject despair, but tempers it with various caveats: that Mr Trump’s outrages may not be as profound, unprecedented and permanent as they might seem; and that the old rules-based order was already failing in a number of respects.

The third perspective is openness to surprising success. This holds that Mr Trump’s one-off mixture of ambitions and style means he might be able to achieve things that people working in old ways within the old system simply could not.

These are perspectives, not camps. Those who despair, or think “Yes, but”, may also be open to surprise—indeed most of them are, to some extent. That said, few of them suspect the successes, if any, to be other than short-lived.

To look at Mr Trump from any of these perspectives requires first assessing who he is and how he operates. Mr Trump is incurious and profoundly narcissistic, which means he is also thin-skinned. He is often impetuous, with no taste for long-term strategy or the consideration of consequences. He lies as only someone can do who does not care about the truth.

The lack of humility

Mr Trump appears to see the world as he saw the New York property market, a place of screw or be screwed. A deal where the other guy walks away happy is one where you could have got more. He sees international relations as he saw reality television: unpredictability and absurdity raise the ratings, turnover in the characters keeps things fresh and you should never let anyone forget who is the star of the show.

“He’s entirely unpredictable day to day, to his own staff,” complains Nicholas Burns, a former American ambassador to NATO who is now at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “That’s a big problem.” This is largely true and renders joined-up policymaking and sustained effort more or less impossible. But the unpredictability is not total. The nature of Mr Trump’s goals hardly changes: you can expect him to try to press ahead with things mentioned on the campaign trail, to undo anything achieved by Barack Obama, and not to think hard, if at all, about consequences. You can expect angry and fatuous tweeting and weird personal touches, as in the remarkable, cloying letter to Mr Kim of May 24th. You can expect everything to be transactional. At every point Mr Trump wants to get something for himself—something which will look good.

The four major policy moves of the past three months—scrapping the Iran deal, offering a summit to Mr Kim, setting the scene for a trade war with China and slapping steel tariffs on his allies—all reflect who Mr Trump is and how he works. No other recent president would have undertaken one of these, let alone all four at the same time. To his undoubted pleasure, they have scandalised much of the foreign-policy establishment.
​
Click to expand...
We wanted a New York City realtor for PotUS? We got him ...
 
In fact he lost the popular-vote election, and by a handsome margin. And now he's childishly playing "King of the Hill".

Heaven help America ...
 
When you elect a clown, expect a circus.
 
I swear, Trump's got to be high.

The markets Monday morning will give Trump a lesson, and the GOP will be crying about the economy he's needlessly throwing away going into the midterms.

Oh well ...
 
Kobie said:
When you elect a clown, expect a circus.
Click to expand...

Trump is clown, ring master, and elephant poop all in one.

ever seen those elephant poops at the circus? they are big as bowling balls.

I think Trump's head is actually a bowling ball ...........
 
cuban smokes said:
Trump is clown, ring master, and elephant poop all in one.

ever seen those elephant poops at the circus? they are big as bowling balls.

I think Trump's head is actually a bowling ball ...........
Click to expand...

what is inside his head is actually the elephant poop.
 
Kobie said:
When you elect a clown, expect a circus.
Click to expand...


As usual, got your dates wrong, bro, the Circus was already in town.

All the identity politicos under a smaller and smaller rainbow colored “big tent” had pissed on their own parade upon arrival and continued the entire run. Soggy and soiled the Crowds were increasingly unimpressed by the unprofessional amateurishness of the actors and acts, their awful magicians prestidigitating so poorly, hell, we could see them picking our pockets when they tried to get us to look in the other direction.

Pushed the three (wedding) rings circus, one man, one woman and other on a crowd not so interested in such half baked creations. Wanted their special cake and eat it too.

Problem was the Lion tamers couldn't tame their lying, the big ol fat lady couldn't sing, only sing sing, and slenderman on stilts way above all us common folk, looked down his nose at us shaking his head, thinks now he got to town just too soon, a clown ahead of his time...and not seriously funny, either.

We traded a decent, hard working clown




And got this one instead...



First one got a lifetime ban for his petty "injustices", can we have some equal justice under the law for the latter?
 
Gaugingcatenate said:
As usual, got your dates wrong, bro, the Circus was already in town.

All the identity politicos under a smaller and smaller rainbow colored “big tent” had pissed on their own parade upon arrival and continued the entire run. Soggy and soiled the Crowds were increasingly unimpressed by the unprofessional amateurishness of the actors and acts, their awful magicians prestidigitating so poorly, hell, we could see them picking our pockets when they tried to get us to look in the other direction.

Pushed the three (wedding) rings circus, one man, one woman and other on a crowd not so interested in such half baked creations. Wanted their special cake and eat it too.

Problem was the Lion tamers couldn't tame their lying, the big ol fat lady couldn't sing, only sing sing, and slenderman on stilts way above all us common folk, looked down his nose at us shaking his head, thinks now he got to town just too soon, a clown ahead of his time...and not seriously funny, either.

We traded a decent, hard working clown




And got this one instead...



First one got a lifetime ban for his petty "injustices", can we have some equal justice under the law for the latter?
Click to expand...


So eloquent, yet stupid at the same time.

Congratulations!
 
Chomsky said:
I swear, Trump's got to be high.

The markets Monday morning will give Trump a lesson, and the GOP will be crying about the economy he's needlessly throwing away going into the midterms.

Oh well ...
Click to expand...

Maybe he doesn't want to win. No he thinks he's putting America First. He has no understanding of history or why this economy was built the way it was. I really wouldn't be surprised if we get into wars because of this.
 
NeverTrumpGOP said:
Maybe he doesn't want to win. No he thinks he's putting America First. He has no understanding of history or why this economy was built the way it was. I really wouldn't be surprised if we get into wars because of this.
Click to expand...

He is putting Trump first. His supporters have just not figured out that Trump First and America First are not the same thing.
 
DONALD DORK DOES IT AGAIN!

Chomsky said:
I swear, Trump's got to be high.
Click to expand...

He is very simply a narcissist. Narcissism defined:
noun

  • Excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance.
    • PSYCHOLOGY
      extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.
    • PSYCHOANALYSIS
      self-centredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder.
Click to expand...
Chomsky said:
The markets Monday morning will give Trump a lesson, and the GOP will be crying about the economy he's needlessly throwing away going into the midterms.
Click to expand...

Let's hope, but what happened in the Canadian G7-summit has not yet dawned upon the American public. Six leaders of the the world's most developed nations tried to tell Donald Dork that his intention to change World Trade Agreement conditions - that had been negotiated a great many years ago - could not be abrogated overnight by just one nation.

That was the foundation-stone rule of the trade agreements because at the time (post-WW2) the dollar was incontrovertibly the only currency apt for world-trade exchange-payment!

It seems that this has not dawned on the American people. He's ripping up a treaty agreement that has been the bedrock of International Trade in the post-WW2 era. But why?

Because we Yanks do not have a very wide interest in the world beyond the 3-mile limit. And what was being discussed in Canada was in the context of the dollar as the world's currency:
*The Euro is not yet ready to give the dollar any competition - despite the fact that the economic-potential of Europe is greater than that of the US. Its population is more than the double of the US, but the GDP per person of the EU is 64% of that of the US.
*From Eurostat (here): "[FONT=open_sansregular]In 2016, a majority (55.4 %) of the goods originating from non-member countries that were imported into the EU-28[FONT=open_sansregular] were invoiced in US dollars, while just over one third (34.4%) were invoiced in euros."[/FONT]

So, the potential of EU/Dollar trade equivalency is there but not for the immediate future.

Moreover, the reason Donald Dork is not the right person for the presidency is obvious from his illness. He is unable to think beyond his own thick-skin.

And we were warned! From Psychology Today (Sept. 2017): "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" - excerpt:
“We, the undersigned mental health professionals, believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States. And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’” ...
Click to expand...
[/FONT]
 
Last edited:
NeverTrumpGOP said:
Maybe he doesn't want to win. No he thinks he's putting America First. He has no understanding of history or why this economy was built the way it was. I really wouldn't be surprised if we get into wars because of this.
Click to expand...
Well, trade "wars" at the least!
 
what nation - such and President!
 
Much if not almost all of what Trump does is to make the rich richer. His first action as president was a good indicator of how his presidency would go, the very first thing he did was sign the Keystone and Dakota Pipelines. His rhetoric about a trade war with China caused much turbulence in the commodity markets, (usually fairly predictable) I'm sure there were quite a bit of money made by the wealthy. Shortly before Amazon announced a record profit he talked Amazon shares down... of course now everything is fine with Amazon lol. His taxes benefit the rich, dismantling Obamacare benefit the wealthy, even his foreigh policy in the Middle East tilts towards Israel has money in play in one form or another. Not signing the Iran nuclear agreement caused the oil price to soar, soon he will be acknowleding the oil rich Golan Heigts as Israeli territory with his good friend Rupert Murdoch and other welathy Americans sitting on the board of Genie oil, the company that holds the drilling rights.

It may appear as if his actions make no sense and yes I agree he is a clown, however, there is one area where he has been rock solid an that is looking after the wealthy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom