President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.
As an American, that idea makes me very uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I hate the fact that we have as many nukes as we do, and I hope to never live to see them used. But many of our national alliances exist only because we have as many nukes as we do; either to protect the ally, or to ensure they stay an ally. When you remove the threat of a military retaliation, the US doesn’t really have a whole lot of true friends in this world. Should China or Russia fail to uphold their end of such a bargain, I doubt many would come to our aid if things went bad, and I’m just not built to live in a post-nuclear wasteland.
Now that you put it like that this whole thing is sounding a lot better. More isolated US? Sign me the fuck up, though unfortunately I don’t think it’s that simple.
I appreciate your honesty. The fact you got many upvotes confirmed my previous guess that this type of insecurity, the fear of not being loved is quite popular among Americans. Been to many global south countries and Europe, I think that sentiment was very far from facts, so many people around the world just love the American culture, at least in Obama years, and even first year of Trump I.
Now with Trump, who himself apparently has this insecurity personally and remaking America in his own image, this insecurity is being established nationally and internalized and getting reinforced.
As an American, that idea makes me very uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I hate the fact that we have as many nukes as we do, and I hope to never live to see them used. But many of our national alliances exist only because we have as many nukes as we do; either to protect the ally, or to ensure they stay an ally. When you remove the threat of a military retaliation, the US doesn’t really have a whole lot of true friends in this world. Should China or Russia fail to uphold their end of such a bargain, I doubt many would come to our aid if things went bad, and I’m just not built to live in a post-nuclear wasteland.
And they will, have no doubt about it.
Now that you put it like that this whole thing is sounding a lot better. More isolated US? Sign me the fuck up, though unfortunately I don’t think it’s that simple.
I appreciate your honesty. The fact you got many upvotes confirmed my previous guess that this type of insecurity, the fear of not being loved is quite popular among Americans. Been to many global south countries and Europe, I think that sentiment was very far from facts, so many people around the world just love the American culture, at least in Obama years, and even first year of Trump I.
Now with Trump, who himself apparently has this insecurity personally and remaking America in his own image, this insecurity is being established nationally and internalized and getting reinforced.