As has been widely remarked, the National Security Strategy recently issued by the Trump administration is a radical and historically unprecedented document.
"But, the real difference is that MAGA does not preside over a consolidated hegemony at home any more than abroad."
Seems to me the real difference is MAGA doesn't sit on 80% of the world's gold and 70% of it's industrial infrastructure as it did in 1950, and what military it has now is evidently obsolete for tasks outside murdering civilians.
Absolutely. Pulling back from conflict with Russia and China is not a new Trump policy. It has been forced on US because of the rubbish MIC it is contracted to. You can't fight China with Carriers when they have hypersonics. You can't fight Russian's with Ukrainan conscripts dragged off the street.
You know that Adam will ignore Busification or any of Ukraine's many other documented atrocities, instead choosing to praise the heroic western-trained Ukrainian military as it doubtless strides from righteous triumph to morally justified triumph.
He's a public figure, I'm not - in fact I don't even use my real name - nor do you I suspect.
So i do understand - on Russia and Israel.
I'm greatful though that he gives us space on his comments pages.
With any luck he might look at a dozen or so clips - I'm pretty sure they are precisely the cure for the Ukraine is wonderful disease or the I sympathise with Ukrainian children of heroes bollocks.
Nobody holds a gun to Adam's head and makes him sing the praises of the Kiev regime, just as his blind spot concerning Israel has also been discussed at length.
Anyway, cats don't have "names" the way humans do, in the sense that they call themselves by their name, or that this is part of their identity. I might call one cat "big dopey calico!" and another cat might call the same cat "female with a funny looking tail!". We don't even consistently use the same words for the same individual.
Mr. Tooze and Chartbook remain consistently excellent and informative; regrettably, the comment section is just as consistently the inverse—inundated with the same two (one?) pro-Russian losers trading conspiracy theories and mutual affirmation.
The opening section skips past the actual target of Trump's ire which is the EU, not Europe, the EU being an institution that can and has punched back in normal circumstances. Whether individual European states are aligned to MAGA or not is beside the point given the Trrumpian vision is of many smaller states that the US can dictate trade deals to. The question then becomes are Far Right parties in Hungary or Slovakia, with Brexit as an example, dumb enough to break up the EU which sends them billions every year.
I guess that with the EU and member states' political elites simply annulling elections that 'went the wrong way' it has become convenient if not necessary to just declare any political grouping which, based on their povs would have merely been called conservative let's say 15, 20 years ago, 'far right'...
But perhaps the previous conservatives have moved left? US ceo's tended to vote right, these days they vote centrist.
Anyway, this week independent analyst and commentator Jacques Baud was sanctioned by the EU (signed off by who else than Kaja Kallas) since he apparently destabilizes the EU.
A former Swiss army colonel, NATO liaison and OSCE observer in eastern UA, Baud bases his articles, books and talks on open source material, western docs. etc. Yet the EU now calls him a conspiracy theorist.
I guess a broad accusation like destabilizing the EU requires a catch all description.
Welcome to the EUSSR...
One of the core items in the accusation against him is him stating that UA deliberately sought conflict with RU. That was Baud quoting former Zelensky advisor and ally Aleksy Arestovych, who is now opposing Zelensky, resulting in UA no longer being safe for him. (While Petro Poroshenko was targeted by Zelensky as soon as he made clear to want to run in the next presidential election). Arestovych has also said some years ago in a video that the new UA identity - obviously sans the easterners but WITH their lands - would be forged in blood. A common sentiment amongst UA's far right, as i saw expressed in a pre war interview with employees of an NGO tasked with defusing tensions - good luck with that).
But, it seems at least one loop is closed now: Arestovych can safely be called far right.
Forget Taiwan. Forget NATO. Let them defend themselves. Belatedly trying to play catch-up for failure to obtain and protect strategic resources. MAGA's interest ends at US border. Spheres of influence and personal mercantilism- until we modestly revert again.
I think this is one of the weakest analyses of Mr. Tooze. I tend to agree with Prof Michael Hudson that posits that Americans are in for taking Europe to the cleaners in an effort to re-industrialize itself on the back of Europe.
"Europe is not foreign relations at all" echoes another statement, from the interview with Krugman, europe and US being the same political space. Would a simpler way of putting it be: US owns Europe (in some ways) and feels entitled to dictates its politics? Because I think this actually could explain a lot of american but also european behavior (for me). For the latter, they know how much they depends on the US and have intgerated it as a fact. And it could help formulate a way out, which the French have always supported and tried to act upon by debeloping its independence. The cost is of course high because it would require a lot of investment (military but also tech), but it could be the basic strategy moving forward. It is better than to pray for better days.
No amount of investment is going to turn europeans into soldiers. There is a reason that military recruiters do no prowl old folks homes looking to sign up geriatric metrosexuals.
"Back in 2017, the Trump administration was effectively declaring the new Cold War. That was shocking compared to what went before."
Well the new Cold war began long before that. We had the US backed Ukraine coup in 2014 and plenty before that. Putin was making this point at the 2007 Munich conference.
So what we really get with NSS/Trump statements are truths. Under Trump US is truly horrendous. Under Biden or Obama it is dishonestly horrendous (Biden for example was far worse for Palestine than Trump). Trump made the decision to pull out of Afghanistan, Biden just had to wear it.
I know it is hard for many to accept this - but the real thing about Trump is he gets core truths and his supporters care much more about that than trivial lies.
MAG Again - he recognised back in 2016 that US was already no longer Great. 2025 and No one in the Dems or even half the Republicans dare admit that. But everyone knew it.
"Coal mining jobs for decent Americans" struck a truth aimed directly at the "Quad". Decent working class jobs was the crucial problem and posing about Climate Change was the real lie.
Well I certainly believe that Climate Change is an issue, but the big 2016 election issue was jobs - and everyone else pretended it wasn't.
So yes if the NSS says so, the new Cold war is over and serious pretence at protecting Taiwan is gone too. ($11 billions of arms to Taiwan sounds aggressive - but Taiwan is paying for them so very Trumpian). In the meantime USA has to sound very tough to cover up for backing down aginst the 2 big boys. What does "Ministry of War" and killing men in cigarette boats sound like?
When did America stop being great? Hold your breath until you finish typing the date, please.
Even more symptomatic is the claim that Biden was far worse for Palestine than Trump. It is now an official war aim that the US, or at least Trump personally, cleanses and expropriates about half of the Gaza strip. The continued slow motion genocide of Palestinians by siege is now US policy in words as well as deeds. Biden was horrible and Trump is even worse. Yours is not a trivial lie, no matter how charming you find Trump's trivial lies.
if you don't understand the Core crime (starvation through the banning of UNWRA by Israel and the defunding by US and major western states that permitted that) they how can you compare Biden/Trump?
Who do you think you are kidding if you don't think Team Biden (whoever they were) wasn't just as strongly behind the removal of Gazans by siege as Trump is, with even less care about how badly IDF behaved (albeit worried about making their support anonymous).
Frankly you are lieing to yourself. (Dems do that a lot - and I am certainly not a Trump supporter).
America stop being great? Ecomically 2015 when China overtook it in GDP at PPP (real economic power favours China much more than PPP adjustments).
Militarily - about 2018 with Russian weapons outstripping US weapons - though in effect the corruption in MIC made this inevitable some 10 years earlier - name a successful MIC product since 2008. US has pulled out of conflict with both China and Russia for good reasons.
Soft Power has been falling for a long time. In 2022 a majority of countries voted with US to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine but this was only a minority of countries weighted by population. But Gaza killed off US soft power entirely. On most issues US is isolated by all but Five Eyes, Israel, some tiny bribed islands and sometimes Europe.
Seriously in what way can anyone treat USA as great today?
I'm not so aggrieved by US military power over the whole planet as you are. It was Trump's watch in 2018, of course. As to the date 2015, the Great Financial Crisis had something to do with that and that was, oh, wait, the doing of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. And by the way, Trump had a full term to solve that problem.
Since you believe Gazan will welcome their new overlord on the Board of Peace, I suggest you carry the gospel of salvation to Gaza right now, to uplift their spirits as they recover from the worst days of Biden, as opposed to the better days of Trump.
Well I am a lot less aggrieved in 2025 than I would have been in 2000 had I understood it.
But of course reading between the lines was as difficult then as now.
"Trump's watch in 2018"??? So US fell behind Russia on weapons because of 12 months of Trump, and not 8 years of Obama and 8 of Bush. Interesting idea...
And China overtool US economically in 2015 only because of a small blip that year, good - so no doubt US has regained that lead since.
... I lost the will to answer anything else by you.
Given that Trump claims to have saved the nation from destruction and has ushered in the Best Golden Age, claiming that this is unrealistic is a complaint you should address to Trump supporters/yourself. If I were to play the MAGA game, I would say the Seventies, when most real wages started to lag productivity, might be when America stopped being great. (Except of course an answer like that doesn't support Trump.)
I think this is essentially correct. "Atlanticism" is not seen by all elements of America as in its interest, favoring as it does coastal elites with their preference for "globalism" and the usual pieties of international liberalism. To the extent that this "American aristocracy" cease to be in alignment with the rather more provincial "American gentry" the NSS' attitudes to Europe read as a sort of declaration that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The interests of the empire are not always those of the nation ...
"But, the real difference is that MAGA does not preside over a consolidated hegemony at home any more than abroad."
Seems to me the real difference is MAGA doesn't sit on 80% of the world's gold and 70% of it's industrial infrastructure as it did in 1950, and what military it has now is evidently obsolete for tasks outside murdering civilians.
Absolutely. Pulling back from conflict with Russia and China is not a new Trump policy. It has been forced on US because of the rubbish MIC it is contracted to. You can't fight China with Carriers when they have hypersonics. You can't fight Russian's with Ukrainan conscripts dragged off the street.
Busification.org
You know that Adam will ignore Busification or any of Ukraine's many other documented atrocities, instead choosing to praise the heroic western-trained Ukrainian military as it doubtless strides from righteous triumph to morally justified triumph.
He's a public figure, I'm not - in fact I don't even use my real name - nor do you I suspect.
So i do understand - on Russia and Israel.
I'm greatful though that he gives us space on his comments pages.
With any luck he might look at a dozen or so clips - I'm pretty sure they are precisely the cure for the Ukraine is wonderful disease or the I sympathise with Ukrainian children of heroes bollocks.
Nobody holds a gun to Adam's head and makes him sing the praises of the Kiev regime, just as his blind spot concerning Israel has also been discussed at length.
Anyway, cats don't have "names" the way humans do, in the sense that they call themselves by their name, or that this is part of their identity. I might call one cat "big dopey calico!" and another cat might call the same cat "female with a funny looking tail!". We don't even consistently use the same words for the same individual.
Sure but no one holds a camera to someone's head if they do.
I guess that's Adam's price.
Ignore what they say. Watch what they do.
Watch the cash flow, so to speak. It is money and action that matter when the day is done.
Of course Trump is an Russian asset. I live in western Europe and of course we see that Trump supports fully Russia.
TDS. An Israeli asset true - but so is 90% or more of Washington.
Europe is far more deluded on this that the Dems who are still mostly covering up for HRC's corruption (Uranium One)
What, that he hasn't pushed The Button already?
Mr. Tooze and Chartbook remain consistently excellent and informative; regrettably, the comment section is just as consistently the inverse—inundated with the same two (one?) pro-Russian losers trading conspiracy theories and mutual affirmation.
The opening section skips past the actual target of Trump's ire which is the EU, not Europe, the EU being an institution that can and has punched back in normal circumstances. Whether individual European states are aligned to MAGA or not is beside the point given the Trrumpian vision is of many smaller states that the US can dictate trade deals to. The question then becomes are Far Right parties in Hungary or Slovakia, with Brexit as an example, dumb enough to break up the EU which sends them billions every year.
I guess that with the EU and member states' political elites simply annulling elections that 'went the wrong way' it has become convenient if not necessary to just declare any political grouping which, based on their povs would have merely been called conservative let's say 15, 20 years ago, 'far right'...
But perhaps the previous conservatives have moved left? US ceo's tended to vote right, these days they vote centrist.
Anyway, this week independent analyst and commentator Jacques Baud was sanctioned by the EU (signed off by who else than Kaja Kallas) since he apparently destabilizes the EU.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32025D2572
A former Swiss army colonel, NATO liaison and OSCE observer in eastern UA, Baud bases his articles, books and talks on open source material, western docs. etc. Yet the EU now calls him a conspiracy theorist.
I guess a broad accusation like destabilizing the EU requires a catch all description.
Welcome to the EUSSR...
One of the core items in the accusation against him is him stating that UA deliberately sought conflict with RU. That was Baud quoting former Zelensky advisor and ally Aleksy Arestovych, who is now opposing Zelensky, resulting in UA no longer being safe for him. (While Petro Poroshenko was targeted by Zelensky as soon as he made clear to want to run in the next presidential election). Arestovych has also said some years ago in a video that the new UA identity - obviously sans the easterners but WITH their lands - would be forged in blood. A common sentiment amongst UA's far right, as i saw expressed in a pre war interview with employees of an NGO tasked with defusing tensions - good luck with that).
But, it seems at least one loop is closed now: Arestovych can safely be called far right.
Forget Taiwan. Forget NATO. Let them defend themselves. Belatedly trying to play catch-up for failure to obtain and protect strategic resources. MAGA's interest ends at US border. Spheres of influence and personal mercantilism- until we modestly revert again.
Sounds awfully like Oceania, Eurasia & Eastasia from Orwell's 1984. And MAGA = Ingsoc & George Soros = Emmanuel Goldstein.
I'm just curious why Adam can't say that the issue the American winguts are identifying with the European version is white supremacy.
I think this is one of the weakest analyses of Mr. Tooze. I tend to agree with Prof Michael Hudson that posits that Americans are in for taking Europe to the cleaners in an effort to re-industrialize itself on the back of Europe.
"Europe is not foreign relations at all" echoes another statement, from the interview with Krugman, europe and US being the same political space. Would a simpler way of putting it be: US owns Europe (in some ways) and feels entitled to dictates its politics? Because I think this actually could explain a lot of american but also european behavior (for me). For the latter, they know how much they depends on the US and have intgerated it as a fact. And it could help formulate a way out, which the French have always supported and tried to act upon by debeloping its independence. The cost is of course high because it would require a lot of investment (military but also tech), but it could be the basic strategy moving forward. It is better than to pray for better days.
No amount of investment is going to turn europeans into soldiers. There is a reason that military recruiters do no prowl old folks homes looking to sign up geriatric metrosexuals.
"Back in 2017, the Trump administration was effectively declaring the new Cold War. That was shocking compared to what went before."
Well the new Cold war began long before that. We had the US backed Ukraine coup in 2014 and plenty before that. Putin was making this point at the 2007 Munich conference.
So what we really get with NSS/Trump statements are truths. Under Trump US is truly horrendous. Under Biden or Obama it is dishonestly horrendous (Biden for example was far worse for Palestine than Trump). Trump made the decision to pull out of Afghanistan, Biden just had to wear it.
I know it is hard for many to accept this - but the real thing about Trump is he gets core truths and his supporters care much more about that than trivial lies.
MAG Again - he recognised back in 2016 that US was already no longer Great. 2025 and No one in the Dems or even half the Republicans dare admit that. But everyone knew it.
"Coal mining jobs for decent Americans" struck a truth aimed directly at the "Quad". Decent working class jobs was the crucial problem and posing about Climate Change was the real lie.
Well I certainly believe that Climate Change is an issue, but the big 2016 election issue was jobs - and everyone else pretended it wasn't.
So yes if the NSS says so, the new Cold war is over and serious pretence at protecting Taiwan is gone too. ($11 billions of arms to Taiwan sounds aggressive - but Taiwan is paying for them so very Trumpian). In the meantime USA has to sound very tough to cover up for backing down aginst the 2 big boys. What does "Ministry of War" and killing men in cigarette boats sound like?
When did America stop being great? Hold your breath until you finish typing the date, please.
Even more symptomatic is the claim that Biden was far worse for Palestine than Trump. It is now an official war aim that the US, or at least Trump personally, cleanses and expropriates about half of the Gaza strip. The continued slow motion genocide of Palestinians by siege is now US policy in words as well as deeds. Biden was horrible and Trump is even worse. Yours is not a trivial lie, no matter how charming you find Trump's trivial lies.
Ask Gazans what they think about Biden.
if you don't understand the Core crime (starvation through the banning of UNWRA by Israel and the defunding by US and major western states that permitted that) they how can you compare Biden/Trump?
Who do you think you are kidding if you don't think Team Biden (whoever they were) wasn't just as strongly behind the removal of Gazans by siege as Trump is, with even less care about how badly IDF behaved (albeit worried about making their support anonymous).
Frankly you are lieing to yourself. (Dems do that a lot - and I am certainly not a Trump supporter).
America stop being great? Ecomically 2015 when China overtook it in GDP at PPP (real economic power favours China much more than PPP adjustments).
Militarily - about 2018 with Russian weapons outstripping US weapons - though in effect the corruption in MIC made this inevitable some 10 years earlier - name a successful MIC product since 2008. US has pulled out of conflict with both China and Russia for good reasons.
Soft Power has been falling for a long time. In 2022 a majority of countries voted with US to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine but this was only a minority of countries weighted by population. But Gaza killed off US soft power entirely. On most issues US is isolated by all but Five Eyes, Israel, some tiny bribed islands and sometimes Europe.
Seriously in what way can anyone treat USA as great today?
I suspect Gazans see Biden and Trump for the criminals and sociopaths that they are.
yes AND is the right way to look at this
I'm not so aggrieved by US military power over the whole planet as you are. It was Trump's watch in 2018, of course. As to the date 2015, the Great Financial Crisis had something to do with that and that was, oh, wait, the doing of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. And by the way, Trump had a full term to solve that problem.
Since you believe Gazan will welcome their new overlord on the Board of Peace, I suggest you carry the gospel of salvation to Gaza right now, to uplift their spirits as they recover from the worst days of Biden, as opposed to the better days of Trump.
Well I am a lot less aggrieved in 2025 than I would have been in 2000 had I understood it.
But of course reading between the lines was as difficult then as now.
"Trump's watch in 2018"??? So US fell behind Russia on weapons because of 12 months of Trump, and not 8 years of Obama and 8 of Bush. Interesting idea...
And China overtool US economically in 2015 only because of a small blip that year, good - so no doubt US has regained that lead since.
... I lost the will to answer anything else by you.
Given that Trump claims to have saved the nation from destruction and has ushered in the Best Golden Age, claiming that this is unrealistic is a complaint you should address to Trump supporters/yourself. If I were to play the MAGA game, I would say the Seventies, when most real wages started to lag productivity, might be when America stopped being great. (Except of course an answer like that doesn't support Trump.)
Why is your defence of Trump's critics always based on attacking Trump and not at honestly judging the critics.
Covering up for yourself?
I think this is essentially correct. "Atlanticism" is not seen by all elements of America as in its interest, favoring as it does coastal elites with their preference for "globalism" and the usual pieties of international liberalism. To the extent that this "American aristocracy" cease to be in alignment with the rather more provincial "American gentry" the NSS' attitudes to Europe read as a sort of declaration that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The interests of the empire are not always those of the nation ...
An Accidental Empire
• An Accidental Empire is a civic lament: America did not design its empire,
• it stumbled into it—through choices, crises, and silences that hardened into dominance.
"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame." ~Arthur Schopenhauer
The Market As A Mirror
What do we see?
We see belief racing ahead of reality.
Investor sentiment soaring, PMI lagging.
The bulls chanting louder, the altar crowded, the incense thick.
We see psychology refusing rupture:
• Loss aversion holding portfolios intact.
• Confirmation bias echoing optimism.
• Narrative momentum overriding data.
• Structural inertia binding systems in place.
• Fear of irrelevance keeping hands clenched.
We see governance in the same mirror:
• Policies clung to past their prime.
• Leaders doubling down on myths.
• Citizens unwilling to let go of identity.
The market carries on until it crashes.
The government carries on until it collapses.
The market is a civic lament.
The market refuses to sell; the government refuses to yield. Both cling until collapse.
It is high-time for America to turn around
and look in the mirror. It outta scare the hell
out of you!
An Accidental Empire
• An Accidental Empire is a civic lament: America did not design its empire,
• it stumbled into it—through choices, crises, and silences that hardened into dominance.
"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame." ~Arthur Schopenhauer
The Market As A Mirror
What do we see?
We see belief racing ahead of reality.
Investor sentiment soaring, PMI lagging.
The bulls chanting louder, the altar crowded, the incense thick.
We see psychology refusing rupture:
• Loss aversion holding portfolios intact.
• Confirmation bias echoing optimism.
• Narrative momentum overriding data.
• Structural inertia binding systems in place.
• Fear of irrelevance keeping hands clenched.
We see governance in the same mirror:
• Policies clung to past their prime.
• Leaders doubling down on myths.
• Citizens unwilling to let go of identity.
The market carries on until it crashes.
The government carries on until it collapses.
The market is a civic lament.
The market refuses to sell; the government refuses to yield. Both cling until collapse.
It is high-time for America to turn around
and look in the mirror. It outta scare the hell
out of you!
An Accidental Empire
• An Accidental Empire is a civic lament: America did not design its empire,
• it stumbled into it—through choices, crises, and silences that hardened into dominance.
"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame." ~Arthur Schopenhauer
The Market As A Mirror
What do we see?
We see belief racing ahead of reality.
Investor sentiment soaring, PMI lagging.
The bulls chanting louder, the altar crowded, the incense thick.
We see psychology refusing rupture:
• Loss aversion holding portfolios intact.
• Confirmation bias echoing optimism.
• Narrative momentum overriding data.
• Structural inertia binding systems in place.
• Fear of irrelevance keeping hands clenched.
We see governance in the same mirror:
• Policies clung to past their prime.
• Leaders doubling down on myths.
• Citizens unwilling to let go of identity.
The market carries on until it crashes.
The government carries on until it collapses.
The market is a civic lament.
The market refuses to sell; the government refuses to yield. Both cling until collapse.
It is high-time for America to turn around
and look in the mirror. It outta scare the hell
out of you!