The AfD wants Germany to distance relations with Europe and the United States while getting closer to Russia and China. This is weird for a party that claims to want Germany first and to focus on distinct German culture and values. Shouldn’t authoritarian Asiatic empires be the opposite of German values and culture? And don’t other European countries and the US have much closer values and culture? Long-term, and worst case scenarios, China and Russia are empires that would force the world under their authoritarian heel if they could. Despite America’s many flaws and self-interests, its goals are freedom, trade, and defense. True imperialism is antithetical to its ethos. When the AfD says German values, it seems to mean no immigrants and: imperial, anti-enlightenment, anti-Western, and fundamentally unChristian values.
The Jews accepted the UN partition, although some did hope to adjust the borders. The Palestinians rejected it and chose war instead. The surrounding Arab states were preparing for war the whole time, intending to take land for their countries.
The United States indirectly helped the Arabs by suspending the importation of arms into the region The UK helped by selling arms to Arab militias and blocking additional Jewish migration. Although, the US was the first to recognize Israel when they declared independence.
The different countries and groups against the Jews had different interests and different levels of commitment.
Many of the villages that the Jews forced to evacuate, were supporting Arab militias attacking Jews, so having them evacuate was a defensive strategy to not leave a population of enemy combatants scattered around the area. The combatants blended back into their villages, so it’s not like just the combatants could be arrested. Some of these combatants didn’t just fight Jewish armed forces, but attacked civilians.
Overtime, ideas of expelling all Arabs had been advocated for, but the actual expulsions were defensive military operations. Such ideas were often driven by the determination of the Arabs to expel and kill the Jews, so, the thinking was: if you can’t be peaceful and accept us here, then we will kick you out. Nevertheless, the actual expulsions were focused on villages supporting violent militias in the midst of war.
We really don’t know how many expulsions were completely unjustified and how many were battlefield necessities.
Jewish refugees, many from the holocaust, moved into the abandoned settlements.
Many Arabs fled on their own, encouraged to do so by some Arab leaders.
There was two steps to the war. First, the civil war between the Jews and local Arab militias, then, the Jews against the invading Arab states.
Some economists think tariffs never make sense. Others, think that with strategy, thinking carefully about where to apply them, to which countries, on which items, what the different impacts will be, and informing and working with your allies…then tariffs could be a net good despite the costs. That’s not what we got from Trump.
With Trump, we got hectic tariffs that require a daily chart to manage them all. It doesn’t make sense to build a factory based on a short-term tariff that could change at any moment due to a variety of reasons.
Putting tariffs on every country cuts your leverage over any particular one country.
If the goal is to get specific industries back in the US, then you want highly targeted tariffs.
Liberation day tariffs were based on a simple formula and they were absurd on their face. The administration just didn’t do their homework when coming up with tariffs.
Trump ignored free trade agreements that the US had made with countries.
Trump enacts tariffs for a variety of personal reasons that don’t make sense, like tariffing Canada for fentanyl, even though US fentanyl mostly comes through Mexico. If I’m another country watching erratic tariffs, I don’t really know what to do to avoid tariffs, and I’m going to start planning with other countries how to counter this erratic country called the Untied States of America.
Argentina raising their emphasis on the Falkland islands is caused primarily by two things: domestic politics where Melei wants to look tough compared to his political opponents, and Trump indicating that he may more support Argentina’s claim compared to America’s previous position. Trump makes such statements, seemingly not realizing the real world consequences they may have.
Egypt is allowing China to test their planes against Western fighters. This makes China better able to defeat Western countries in war. Egypt is not a good friend to the United States even though the US gives $1.4 to $2 billion in foreign assistance to Egypt each year.
Before becoming president, Trump regularly said the US should have taken Iraq’s oil, ignoring the sovereignty of Iraq and proposing that the US just take other countries’ national resources by force.
It would have been wrong to dismiss comments like this by taking Trump seriously not literally. Trump literally meant that, and as president he has implemented similar policies by using military force to remove Venezuela’s former leader and actively trying to take a percentage of Venezuela’s oil for the US.
Getting Venezuela’s oil production up and running will take a tremendous amount of investment, and its unlikely that right-minded investors will invest in such a thing because it is too much money and risk if political winds change in the US or Venezuela. This means, it will likely require taxpayer money or the president strong-arming US companies.
The US strategy in Iran is one of economic warfare through sanctions and blockade forcing: Iran to give in or a revolution in Iran. There doesn’t appear to be the forces necessary in Iran to create a successful revolution, but it’s not impossible.
The war isn’t the US economy VS Iran’s economy, it’s Iran’s economy and a regime willing to let its people take extreme suffering VS something breaking in the international economy that forces the US to give up.