Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago.
The great irony with the current political climate is that America has truly been first for many decades, leading the world order to tremendous financial, military and material success. But nothing lasts forever.
We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire, but the message from our closest allies is very clear: world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
EU vs US Comparison
Life expectancy EU: 82 yrs US: 78 yrs
Infant mortality (per 1,000) EU: 3.3 US: 5.6
Poverty rate (below 50% of median income) EU: 15% US: 18%
Public debt EU: 81% of GDP US: 120% of GDP
Top 1% wealth share EU: ~25% US: 40%
Student debt EU: ~€0 US: $40k
Homicides (per 100k) EU: 2 US: 5
Prison population (per 100k) EU: 111 US: 531
Women in workforce EU: 71% US: 57%
Workplace deaths (per 100k) EU: 1.63 US: 3.5
Source: OECD, Eurostat, CDC
I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it. The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people and The jobs market being brutal to graduates.
Things are not so great at the moment.
You mean if the decline wasn't focused on poor people in unfashionable areas, and it hit the elites, too?
Parts of the US have actually seen real decline, and that's why we have Trump. This wouldn't have happened if we hadn't had policy set by technocrats chasing easily-quantified statistics, and lecturing everyone about how they really ought to feel better because the GDP number go up.
If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Exploding inequality simultaneous with DEI obsession was a perfect storm of radicalization. The only thing that's really surprising is that "smart" people didn't see it coming.
America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work. Not perfectly. (China annexed Tibet. America invaded Iraq.) But there were many times sacrifices in self interest were made for the sake of alliances and international law.
Today, that is gone. None of the great or regional powers are playing by those rules. Outside Europe, nobody even pays them lip service.
We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions. You could adjudicate differences through them instead of calling for new systems of military alliances.
Now count the centuries those cultures existed and exercised hegemony.
The dark thought is this: we may be at the crossroads for containing an imperial America. Because if America commits to global empire it will take WWIII to contain it.
If Trump goes ahead with his Greenland obsession, we'll likely know before the end of 2027.
I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
This is merely Carney calling a spade, a spade.
I'm mad about the election and what it seems to say about us, but I still haven't completely lost faith in the American people.
Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant.
What really happened was a lot of people were unhappy with a lot of different things, and enough of them rolled the dice on Trump again, because he was the only other choice (and the Democrats decided to rely on his negatives as their complete electoral strategy, which was stupid).
That's how you read it. But the Trump election was americans sending other americans a clear an unambiguous message.
- Kamala Harris, a terribly unqualified candidate who was appointed by the Democratic Party without a primary vote, who couldn’t clearly communicate basic policy positions, and who served as “the border czar” while the Biden administration dismantled the border protection agency and ushered in almost four years of a de facto open Southern border, which was very unpopular with most voters.
- Donald Trump, who was a known quantity, who riled people up and said things that were offensive, but didn’t actually do anything catastrophic in his first term and was mostly harmless by virtue of being ineffective.
These were far and away the worst two candidates of my lifetime. But among the Americans who voted for Trump, I doubt many expected the administration to simultaneously be this much more unhinged and impactful a second time around.
Let's be honest, Europeans haven't valued their "friendship" with America since the end of the cold war.
The last was Amsterdam.
Just in case anyone thought the genie could be stuffed back into the bottle once Trump is gone, Carney goes on to state that the rules-based world order we've been living under since WWII is somewhat of a sham. The rules have not been applied equally. Some nations, the powerful ones, have been given much more latitude to do what they want. Middle nations have gone along with this to avoid trouble.
The reward for avoiding trouble for so long is... big trouble (e.g. invasion threats for an ally of a big power and economic terrorism applied to its allies). So, why pretend the old system works to avoid trouble if the trouble lands on your doorstep anyways?
The answer seems obvious. Middle powers of the old rules-based order need to band together and put bigger powers in their place. It's not impossible. Just very, very difficult. France and Germany may be sticking up for Greenland, but where's Hungary (another EU member)? For this to work, you need everyone. Also, looking ahead, how would you prevent such an alliance of smaller powers, were it successful, from behaving like a bigger power?
Trump is currently showing off AI photos where he's meeting with world leaders in front of a map where both Greenland and Canada are a part of the U.S.[1]. As a Canadian, I think Carney gave a stirring speech here, but I suppose I'm biased given that he's our PM and his vision is one of the few things between us as being swallowed up by Trump's MAGA empire while the other big powers fall upon the respective apples of their eyes.
[1]https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/trump-shares-altered-m...
We have kinds of political problems, and it’s not clear they’re going away post Trump.
This isn't going to be solved in a decade, probably not even a couple of decades.
This is so true and I think economic sanctions should be recognized as the weapons they actually are.
Just a taste: No Amazon, No Gmail: Trump Sanctions Upend the Lives of I.C.C. Judges President Trump’s retaliation against top officials at the International Criminal Court has shut them out of American services and made even routine daily tasks a challenge. https://archive.is/KflDP
Now consider the US has been doing this to entire countries for decades. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran. Forget Amazon, the inability to use the SWIFT banking system has all sorts of nasty consequences that get elided by a clinical sounding term.
From the Lancet:
Our findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
You don’t need a study to conclude the mortality of actual weapons.
Sanctions are bad. But war is horrible.
When asked, “Do sanctions actually work (on Iran)?”, Bessent replied:
If you look at a speech I gave at the economic club of New York last March, I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranain citizen, I would take my money out.
President Trump ordered treasury and our OFAC division, (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed, we saw a major bank go under, the central bank has started to print money, there is a dollar shortage, they are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
He added, “This is economic statecraft, no shots fired, and things are moving in a very positive way here.” https://the307.substack.com/p/at-the-wef-scott-bessent-says-...
Really it isn't just a different order. Imo it is a reversion to imperialism with us eyeing Latin America, Russia Ukraine, China Taiwan.
The only thing that may stop it is imperial darwinism, when "freedom" societies can outcompet raw authoritarianism.
We somewhat have it in US vs China, but the USA may go authoritarian at any moment under this regime and its Nazi posturing
Sounds like an economic NATO (without the USA). It's good that other counties are waking up at last. Taking the hit now (and blaming it on Trump) will make them stronger on the long run.
This is how American imperialism works. The American led western liberal order was an unprecedented alliance and America was the house. The house doesn’t win all the time, but everything is rigged in its favour.
The issue is that there is no 4d chess at play here. Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder combined with dementia and has surrounded himself by yes-men.
At this point I'm suspicious of any viewpoint that posits Trump as a president/person with an agenda. I'm pretty baffled by the serious policy "experts" analyzing his actions and trying to determine cause and effect.
It's pretty clear to me he's a demented old man reading off the teleprompter. I'm sure he finds all these duties of presidency pretty hard and tiring on his body and mind. I feel that all he really thinks about is golfing, his estate business, increasing his wealth through other means like crypto scams and the like, and always getting more attention which he desperately craves.
The White House administration, intelligence services and the Pentagon collectively decide what to do, be that invading Greenland, Venezuela or the like. Trump has occasional stupid demands as well, like the FIFA Peace Prize which I'm sure the admin staff find very hilarious but comply regardless to make his little boy wishes happen to preserve the status quo.
Even more spicy takes: The only reason the societal divide exists in the US today is Meta. Facebook and Instagram. When people are exposed to entirely separate spheres of content for hours a day every day their opinion changes slowly but surely and there's pretty much no escaping it.
I don't use any social media besides HN (which no doubt also does this covert influencing). I can spot a person's social media app of choice is in 5 minutes. They literally change a person's character and the way they speak.
I find this sadly hilarious. What are the current tells you see? I'm similar in that I read a lot of HN and don't have other social media accounts. But I couldn't even guess at what a person's preferred social media is.
They surely needed some decades to underestand this. Much quicker than the Europeans, though.
Mar - Wins Liberal leadership and thus prime ministership. Calls election.
Apr - Liberals easily win election, Carney keeps prime ministership.
Nov - PM's budget passes. A Conservative crosses floor to Liberals.
Dec - Second Conservative crosses floor to Liberals.
The budget being being rejected would've meant another election; the opposition would've rejected it if they were confident they'd win. The two defections means that the liberals are now one member away from a majority. In fact, there was rumoured to be a third defector from the opposition, but he decided to quit politics entirely, presumably after being whipped by the whip.
> We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
> This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
An interesting observation I came across today:
> The genius of American foreign policy since 1941 was that it found a way to be both the single strongest state and the leader of the strongest coalition of states: power and legitimacy, together. That's the achievement Trump has jeopardized - and possibly permanently wrecked.
* https://x.com/davidfrum/status/2013735844721349115#m
* https://xcancel.com/davidfrum/status/2013735844721349115#m
Invoking Thucydides's "and the weak suffer what they must" at a time when weak-on-strong warfare has fundamentally changed, in a fluid still-small world where for example:
-Some russian goons can poison someone on a bench in England.
-Some north korean hireling lady can poison someone in any airport.
-Some radicalized youths will go on rampages using easily-accessible assault weapons.
-So many systems that "strong" societies depend on are so so fragile and running close to many edges.
-Lethal FPVs are cheap cheap.
...is I think falling into the trap of adopting the mindset of the loudest man in the room (initials DJT) who's thinking in early 20th century terms, instead of looking at the world and conflict the way they really are.
https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart
They would have gone right-wing in Carney's election if not for Trump meddling. He needs to get those cost of living issues fixed ASAP, probably starting with housing.
I’m seeing the Sino-Soviet split.
Europe might have a unique opportunity to ally with China to pry it from Russia. America gets the Western Hemisphere. Eurasia contains itself.
Sounds like it could be promising, but how in that world do you get containers back and forth between Europe and China, given that USEUCOM could mine Gibraltar; USCENTCOM, Suez and Aden; and USINDOPACOM, Malacca?
(My personal optimistic view atm is an independent free-trading armed-neutral european block which is sufficiently valuable that any move by one of the three major powers to bring it under their bloc will naturally be countered by the other two)
"Optimists practise speaking Cantonese, pessimists— speaking Russian, realists— stripping and reassembling rifles"?
I haven't seen Trump allying himself with China. Any references?
https://www.belfercenter.org/programs/thucydidess-trap/repre...
Germany only became a national project in the 19th century. It was a collection of principalities before that. Unlike its neighbours, who were actual Great Powers at the time, it lacked colonial interests to exploit and get rich from. And then when oil became important in the early 20th century, Germany didn't have access to oil.
So Germany felt like it would get swallowed up by its neighbours at some point and sought to assert its dominance, throwing away the Bismarck order. When scores were settled, Germany was punished with devastating reparations that laid the groundwork for WW2 and, on the side, countries like Britain secured their oil interests in the Middle East.
Post-WWI brought the Spanish flu (pandemic anyone?), hyperinflation to Germany, a badly attempted coup (the Beer Hall Putsch; sound familiar?) and the rise of a populist fascist who blamed all of Germany's problems on undesirables, Jews and Communists (any modern parallels, at all?).
Europe had entered an era of appeasement, desperately seeking to not repeat the "Great War". Reunification of German peoples was used as an excuse to seize all sorts of land.
Now Stalin tried to warn Britain and France of the dangers of Hitler and form an alliance in 1939, which failed [1]. So instead Stalin formed what you'd have to call an uneasy alliance with Hitler.
WW2 breaks out, yada yada yada, Hitler betrays Stalin and Stalin basically defeated Hitler at a terrible cost. The US had 400k casulaties in the European theater of WW2. The estimates for Soviet military and civilian losses in the same period are between 26 and 29 million.
Where FDR had sought to rebalance the inequalities in the Depression and created lasting legacies we depend on today such as Social Security, Truman decided Communism was the enemy and, as such, the USSR was the Great Enemy, a decision that led directly to the Korean and Vietnam Wars and other smaller conflicts.
And who would be good at killing Communists? Nazis of course. Operation Paperclip is well known. Less well known is how hudnreds if not thousands of former Nazis were forgiven their "moral lapses" and joined the ranks of the CIA, the FBI and NATO as well as the new West German military command [2].
Hitler and Stalin were fundamentally different beasts. I'm not saying Stalin was a good guy. He commited his share of atrocities. So did every American president if we're keeping score. But one thing Stalin was really good at was killing Nazis.
So began almost 50 years of Cold War that saw the Red Scare and the near complete destruction of any form of organized labor in the US. All to fight Communism.
I say "fascism won" because the Nazis weren't wiped out and we're seeing fascism reborn in the US and Europe while people who survived the Holocaust are still alive. That's how little time it took.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_alliance_negotiations
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na...
He killed more of his own people then he did Germans, probably by ratio of 5:1
They built very similar totalitarian regimes. The only difference were the criteria they used to kill the millions of people.
The EU aligned countries would be crazy to let the US set these rules for some temporary maintenance of income. They've all tended to social Democrats and socialist governments and have a better lifestyle than the US at half or 1/4 the GDP. That goes away if they let the US set pure power based rules, then 1/2 the GDP really is being half an American and if being a whole American was so great no one would have voted for Trump.
But I can't help notice the inconsistency in this imagery. First, he says it himself a few minutes later. He doesn't "take the sign off" for NATO. We can understand why it's important to keep this facade.
But another one that bothers me is "energy, both clean and traditional". Oh, you didn't go for "clean and dirty"? Categories are clearer thus. Oh, not ready to take the sign off on the climate front? Too bad.
Turkey? Hungary? Slovakia?
As an Indian listening to this, this comes across as absurd. Trudeau constantly invoked this phrase when dealing with India about the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won. In due course, the murderers turned out to be their own terrorists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar#Diplomati...
Canada's case was well corroborated by US and UK intelligence. India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
>But nothing in the evidence India presented, the people say, met the standard for criminal charges in Canada, let alone for extradition. To press their case, officials in New Delhi frequently sent clippings from Indian media, which was rife with lurid stories about Nijjar’s alleged involvement in violence, instead of providing what the process required: hard evidence, obtained without coercion, that would stand up in a Western courtroom. When that didn’t work, the people say, the Indians suggested that Canadian police find a way to concoct the necessary evidence.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-india-sikh-separatis...
But I'm not talking about this claim. I'm talking about the fact that Trudeau accused the Indian government being responsible for his murder. The onus was always on the Canadian government to prove it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-indian-government-n...
Absurd. These are YOUR 'ethno nationalist wars' because your country has given them a safe haven. This problem does not exist in India. Not one Sikh I know sympathizes with these separatists, and I have plenty of Sikh friends, been to their homes, been to their hometowns.
That speech reminds me of the conclusion the main character in the movie Antz settled on. Being forced to be a cog in the machine is awful and no one should accept it. Instead we should be happy to volunteer ourselves to be cogs in the machine.
Mark Carney is born and raised Canadian. Just because he has had an illustrious career internationally does not make him any less Canadian than someone who has lived here their entire lives.
He won because:
- the NDP and the CPC were both led by deeply unpopular leaders: Jagmeet Singh the silk clad, Rolex-wearing self styled "man of the people" and Pierre Poilievre who is so dislikeable he routinely polls double digits below his party
- Trump threatening to collapse the Canadian economy and/or annex us by force
- Flat economic growth
- Carney's credentials on the economy being unparalleled in Canadian politics (see previous point)
- Voters tired of the far-left big government nanny state philosophy that was the hallmark of the Trudeau governments and Carney successfully presented himself as a centrist
Interestingly, Carney was appointed to the Bank of Canada by a Conservative PM and I'd argue he's got a similar appeal that Trump initially had, but for different reasons: Trump positioned himself as an outsider, and Carney is similarly not a career politician. By contrast his only real challenger (Poilievre) hasn't had a real job in his life and has been living on the taxpayer's dime his entire career.
I think voters in both the US and Canada are sick of slimy politicians.
(Edit: can't reply because rate limited, better go back to pointless discussions about JavaScript. My usage of "far left" should be understood as being relative to the Canadian political spectrum. Justin Trudeau was definitely a very left-leaning PM by any rational measure)
