Do you think this could mean that Trump wouldn’t intervene in a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan? He’ll be in office during the years where the invasion seems likely.
<<While I don’t take much of the rhetoric surrounding invading Panama or doing a Special Military Operation in Mexico all that seriously as actual policy proposals ...>>
Honest question - why not? Your footnote that these ideas are stupid is obviously correct on the merits. But that's not relevant here. Trump clearly likes these ideas, which we can tell because he's repeated them quite a lot - they weren't just one-off musings. People have often said "Trump would never go through with [X] - it's too insane!" and this prediction has been wrong for many different values of X, particularly when Trump is serious about it. And sure, Trump does a lot of tactical bullshitting to appear moderate and hide the unpopular parts of the GOP agenda, but this isn't that. A good heuristic is that if Trump says something that sounds moderate, it's probably a lie, but if he promises some insane right-wing/authoritarian idea, he's probably serious.
I think military operations in Mexico are particularly plausible. Not just Trump himself but many other conservatives have been beating this drum for a while. And I think they see it as good politics because it pushes all the right hot buttons - bombing the cartels scans as tough on crime AND tough on the border. Excellent America First vibes. So we have to hope Trump shows humility and forbearance here ... and his first term gives us little reason to expect this.
I mean I don't take it terribly seriously because I don't take 95% of what Trump floats aimlessly on social media seriously until it actually moves to the policy implementation stage. He's just so erratic and all over the place that it's functionally impossible to tie down what ideas he's going to go with.
It's also hard not to feel like IPC doesn’t know where to put the focus. Not a week goes by when I don't ask WTF they're doing out there with chaotic manning and odd exercises.
Any serious Intervention against China was always built on the foundation that a significant portion of American resources, planning, and budget would be assigned specifically to build up a force to fight a high intensity peer war against the PLA.
Intervention only made any kind of strategic sense if the US had enough military overmatch to massively reduce the PLA and strike capacity to cripple China's economic growth for the next ten years. At least then the intervention would be strategically justified in maintaining American hegemony.
The US has failed to build that force, and the Sept 3rd parade shows us that China has and is still doing so. Therefore, the idea of intervention is dead in the water.
Do you think this could mean that Trump wouldn’t intervene in a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan? He’ll be in office during the years where the invasion seems likely.
It’s a pretty open question on if he’d actually pull the trigger on that tbh
<<While I don’t take much of the rhetoric surrounding invading Panama or doing a Special Military Operation in Mexico all that seriously as actual policy proposals ...>>
Honest question - why not? Your footnote that these ideas are stupid is obviously correct on the merits. But that's not relevant here. Trump clearly likes these ideas, which we can tell because he's repeated them quite a lot - they weren't just one-off musings. People have often said "Trump would never go through with [X] - it's too insane!" and this prediction has been wrong for many different values of X, particularly when Trump is serious about it. And sure, Trump does a lot of tactical bullshitting to appear moderate and hide the unpopular parts of the GOP agenda, but this isn't that. A good heuristic is that if Trump says something that sounds moderate, it's probably a lie, but if he promises some insane right-wing/authoritarian idea, he's probably serious.
I think military operations in Mexico are particularly plausible. Not just Trump himself but many other conservatives have been beating this drum for a while. And I think they see it as good politics because it pushes all the right hot buttons - bombing the cartels scans as tough on crime AND tough on the border. Excellent America First vibes. So we have to hope Trump shows humility and forbearance here ... and his first term gives us little reason to expect this.
I mean I don't take it terribly seriously because I don't take 95% of what Trump floats aimlessly on social media seriously until it actually moves to the policy implementation stage. He's just so erratic and all over the place that it's functionally impossible to tie down what ideas he's going to go with.
It's also hard not to feel like IPC doesn’t know where to put the focus. Not a week goes by when I don't ask WTF they're doing out there with chaotic manning and odd exercises.
Any serious Intervention against China was always built on the foundation that a significant portion of American resources, planning, and budget would be assigned specifically to build up a force to fight a high intensity peer war against the PLA.
Intervention only made any kind of strategic sense if the US had enough military overmatch to massively reduce the PLA and strike capacity to cripple China's economic growth for the next ten years. At least then the intervention would be strategically justified in maintaining American hegemony.
The US has failed to build that force, and the Sept 3rd parade shows us that China has and is still doing so. Therefore, the idea of intervention is dead in the water.