...?
No, this is the consequence of having an actual stupid person in the Oval Office and the majority party being half coerced and half committed in cultlike devotion to POTUS.
Obviously the US has economic weapons. It's the largest economy in the world.
If anything this signals that POTUS himself cannot wield those weapons though, and the American public, political, and business apparatuses have little appetite for this use of those weapons.
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Okay: the previous administration elected and elder-abused a clearly mentally handicapped one and lied about it in the press for nearly 4 years.
Happy?
Can we get back to the topic at hand now that I scratched that little itch for ya?
2016?
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Okay, I'll entertain it. How would you distinguish between the brilliant move of using illegal tariffs to disclose limited power and appetite for tariffs, versus someone displaying a 3rd grader level of economic understanding and saying "well of course we should charge people to sell stuff in 'my store' and I am now the manager of 'the store', so I get to set the rate"?
What specific pieces of evidence do you believe makes the former more likely than the latter?
+1 on nukes, though MAD has worked for decades so far. I agree people think this risk is far more remote than it actually is. Especially the risk of a catastrophic accident as nukes proliferate and forces get put on higher readiness.
Why would China immediately retaliate with a Rare Earth threat to tariffs? Why would we threaten Greenland, another rare earth hotbed? We , the general public , similar to the Cuban Missile crisis, are not being told shit.
There is a global cold/hot war where real pieces have moved. NATO is basically at war and we can’t know. There’s millions dying in Ukraine, and it’s basically Eurasia to us (virtualized, reported , broadcasted ).
Warships are being torpedoed. Nuclear subs from either side can’t be tracked, it is always a leveraged threat that one has to negotiate around.
Few are ready to live under 24 hour nuclear watch, but it’s possible that’s what many cities have been under and can never be told. Maybe I should just go ahead and write my great American novel?
> Few are ready to live under 24 hour nuclear watch, but it’s possible that’s what many cities have been under and can never be told.
Effectively every city on the planet is perpetually on 24 hour nuclear watch and has been for decades now. This is completely "known" to anyone who cares to know and has taken the time to understand modern nuclear doctrine.
You should read The Doomsday Machine! It'll help amp up your anxiety ;)