Let’s not pretend that the allies liked the US before either. The US has been side-eyed by all of the developed world since at least the W. Bush era. It’s been more of a “that dude is a bully, but smile and nod and he’ll hopefully steal someone else’s lunch money instead of ours, and maybe Russia will think we’re friends and not steal our lunch money either”. Now he’s teaming up with Russia and going after everyone’s lunch money.
As a Canadian, the US was like a brother; maybe a bit rough around the edges bit still a close family bond. Now, it’s like the brother has a meth addiction and stole a bunch of your stuff. There’s a deep sense of betrayal that will last decades, assuming he goes into rehab and attones and doesn’t completely ruin things forever.
I’m not saying the US can’t recover from this, Germany came back from worse after all, but it would take a long time. And I imagine the US turnaround would be more like Japan (pretend everything was very legal and very cool) than the full reckoning Germany had.
Although the US does love flip-flopping between extremes, so who knows? Just like they went from assaulting soldiers returning from Vietnam to compulsively thanking everyone for their service, maybe they’ll be all woke and friendly next? Too bad it takes so little for them to flip-flop back again, so you can’t really trust it.
My armchair prediction is that even if Democrats manage to gain back control of power in the US, many countries will now be skeptical of entering any arrangements with them for longer than 2-4 years. US voters have now shown a propensity for electing and re-electing a leader that is able to come in and comprehensively dismantle decades of intense diplomacy and geopolitical navigation in a short period of time. As such, wise leaders of other nations won’t be willing to enter long-term arrangements that last beyond a given administration anymore.
Let’s not pretend that the allies liked the US before either. The US has been side-eyed by all of the developed world since at least the W. Bush era. It’s been more of a “that dude is a bully, but smile and nod and he’ll hopefully steal someone else’s lunch money instead of ours, and maybe Russia will think we’re friends and not steal our lunch money either”. Now he’s teaming up with Russia and going after everyone’s lunch money.
As a Canadian, the US was like a brother; maybe a bit rough around the edges bit still a close family bond. Now, it’s like the brother has a meth addiction and stole a bunch of your stuff. There’s a deep sense of betrayal that will last decades, assuming he goes into rehab and attones and doesn’t completely ruin things forever.
I’m not saying the US can’t recover from this, Germany came back from worse after all, but it would take a long time. And I imagine the US turnaround would be more like Japan (pretend everything was very legal and very cool) than the full reckoning Germany had.
Although the US does love flip-flopping between extremes, so who knows? Just like they went from assaulting soldiers returning from Vietnam to compulsively thanking everyone for their service, maybe they’ll be all woke and friendly next? Too bad it takes so little for them to flip-flop back again, so you can’t really trust it.
My armchair prediction is that even if Democrats manage to gain back control of power in the US, many countries will now be skeptical of entering any arrangements with them for longer than 2-4 years. US voters have now shown a propensity for electing and re-electing a leader that is able to come in and comprehensively dismantle decades of intense diplomacy and geopolitical navigation in a short period of time. As such, wise leaders of other nations won’t be willing to enter long-term arrangements that last beyond a given administration anymore.
I made this exact argument on another forum 20 years ago. It was true then. Now I think you need to severely escalate your analogy.