American Foreign Policy; Be a complete bullying a******

[MSC]

Did I seriously just watch Vance trying to make claims about being more diplomatic, to then watch a master class on how not to do diplomacy? 

I don't know exactly the process by which Trump and Vance receive their paycheck from Putin, but pretty sure Putin will feel like they earned it 100%. This was like watching a pair of mangy scrawny dogs trying to pick a fight with a wounded bear. 

I've honestly never felt such sympathy for a politician but Zelensky shows such self restraint here, I'd have smacked the eyeliner right off JDs face. "Propaganda tour" seriously? Those are real buildings destroyed by Russia, real dead bodies, real stories. Where is the propaganda? This war has been so extensively documented and watched for so long and he has the gall to suggest it's just propaganda? 

This is a new low, are Americans really going to keep standing for this? Is there going to be no public pushback against this administration?

[CharonY]

Folks voted someone in who is known to behave like a wannabe gangster who worships Putin. For a significant proportion of the electorate seeing him behave like a gangster is probably not much of a surprise. Even worse, some would think that this was a show of strength and masculinity. Probably the same who are happy that the US government facilitated the release of sex-traffickers from Romania to the US.

Shocking as this is, it is more of a confirmation of what folks suspected rather than a surprise.

[Trurl]

I don’t think the exchange matters much. How many times in your life were you in a disagreement and changed your mind or approach?

Trump is right Zelensky has no cards to play. There needs to be a strategy. I have stated on previous posts that I do not like this war. I feel for Ukraine, but we give them weapons when there is no chance for them to win. A military operation will not solve this war. It will start a war.

Zelensky will have to concede. I don’t know what Russia wants. But diplomacy is more powerful than war.

[Alex_Krycek]

Europe has been planning for this since 2020, since Trump finished his first term. 

They knew this day would come.  

 

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Alex_Krycek

[J.C.MacSwell]

 

2 hours ago, Trurl said:

I don’t think the exchange matters much. How many times in your life were you in a disagreement and changed your mind or approach?

Trump is right Zelensky has no cards to play. There needs to be a strategy. I have stated on previous posts that I do not like this war. I feel for Ukraine, but we give them weapons when there is no chance for them to win. A military operation will not solve this war. It will start a war.

Zelensky will have to concede. I don’t know what Russia wants. But diplomacy is more powerful than war.

Right. Big mistake giving up their nuclear weapons. What a message for the World.

Europe better start building more of them before Ukraine's well trained army is conscripted against them.

And let's stop being hypocritical about North Korea and Iran.

Only might is right.

Edited 5 hours ago by J.C.MacSwell

[Sensei]

5 hours ago, CharonY said:

Folks voted someone in who is known to behave like a wannabe gangster who worships Putin. For a significant proportion of the electorate seeing him behave like a gangster is probably not much of a surprise. Even worse, some would think that this was a show of strength and masculinity. Probably the same who are happy that the US government facilitated the release of sex-traffickers from Romania to the US.

Shocking as this is, it is more of a confirmation of what folks suspected rather than a surprise.

You make the erroneous assumption that all his voters are as aware as you are.. It's just that most of them don't have a clue where the various states of the US are.. You can't be that stupid to vote for a rapist.. They haven't even seen the film in 2016..

His constituents live in their information bank, to which information from your information bank (and vice versa) is not allowed to enter.

From what I've seen on, my locals who live in the US, and voted for this Russian sockpuppet, the only thing they care about is that it will reduce their taxes. Foreign policy? These losers don't give a damn about it! Climate policy? These losers don't give a damn about it!

 

That's how to know losers that the only thing that turns them on is more money in their pockets..

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Sensei

[exchemist]

6 hours ago, Trurl said:

I don’t think the exchange matters much. How many times in your life were you in a disagreement and changed your mind or approach?

Trump is right Zelensky has no cards to play. There needs to be a strategy. I have stated on previous posts that I do not like this war. I feel for Ukraine, but we give them weapons when there is no chance for them to win. A military operation will not solve this war. It will start a war.

Zelensky will have to concede. I don’t know what Russia wants. But diplomacy is more powerful than war.

If Zelensky has no, or few, cards to play that is solely because Trump has chosen to betray him and side with the aggressor in this war. So it is pretty rich for Trump to tell Zelensky he has no cards, when it is Trump who has taken them away! 

I actually think this dust-up in the Oval Orifice was a manufactured publicity stunt by Vance and Trump to try to weaken Zelensky personally, in the hope he will stand aside and allow a more Russia-friendly leader to replace him. That has always been Putin's desire. Putin wants Ukraine to hold an election (preposterously, in the middle of a war with parts of the country under enemy occupation) which he can interfere with and cast doubt on. This can provide a pretext for a further invasion later on if the new leader is insufficiently subservient to Russia. The row was televised and no doubt carefully selected clips will now be circulated to depict Zelensky as ungrateful and unreasonable, when he has been fighting for the life of his country for the last three years, against a massively powerful foe. 

Trump has furthermore overturned the entire military posture of the USA since WW2  in the European theatre. He has wrecked the deterrent value of NATO, which has been the centrepiece of military strategy ever since WW2. This leaves Europe exposed to military conquest by Putin's revanchist Russia.  

It is absolutely plain now that Trump and Vance are Russian stooges, wanting to carve the world up into spheres of influence without regard to borders or law. It is also plain that they hate the EU deeply and want it to fail. What better way of achieving that than to neuter NATO and thereby encourage Russia to nibble off bits its eastern frontier, sapping its energy and resources? Meanwhile Vance and Musk try to destabilise it on the political front by encouraging far-right authoritarian movements.

The USA is now, suddenly,  the adversary of Europe, not its ally.

"The West" is now dead. What we have now is the free democracies vs. the rest. Those comprise the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and a few others.

The USA is not a member of this group.