It's Trump's hands against the world
by digby
The Australians can easily decide to ally with China. It actually might make more sense for the economically and for their own national security. Obviously the US has gone insane. They won't be the only ones:
President Trump’s combative phone call with Australia’s prime minister over a refugee agreement has set off a political storm in that country, one that threatens to weaken support for a seven-decade alliance with the United States just as many Australians say they want closer ties with China.
Enthusiasm for the alliance in Australia, one of America’s closest partners, which hosts American spy facilities and rotations of American Marines, had already been under pressure from China, with which Australia conducts the most trade. Reports that Mr. Trump had scolded Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday, before abruptly ending the call, are likely to further undermine confidence in the United States, Australian analysts said.
“Trump is needlessly damaging the deep trust that binds one of America’s closest alliances,” said Professor Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University in Canberra. “China and those wishing to weaken the strongest alliance in the Pacific will see opportunity in this moment.”
In less than two weeks in office, Mr. Trump’s actions have strained alliances and alienated potential partners of the United States, and his phone call with Mr. Turnbull seemed to be one more example, this time with a country that has fought on America’s side since World War I.
His administration’s confrontational stance on Iran has undermined liberal voices in that country; his restrictions on immigration from somepredominantly Muslim countries have been widely criticized by allies; and his rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal threatens to push countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, closer to China.
He doesn't need no stinkin' allies. He's going to make the military so yuge and so strong that nobody will ever mess with us. We run this planet and the rest of these little wannabe countries had better understand it right quick.
That's what Trump was selling folks, not isolationism. Sure, he doesn't want to spend a dime to help anyone but the US --- just like his followers he's a selfish, bastard who doesn't understand that there's such a thing as win-win. The owrld is zero sum to these people --- America, white people, Trump voters are on top. Everyone else can crawl for scraps. But they have nothing to say about it.
Trump is obviously mentally ill. I'm not sure where all these white Real Americans got these ideas.
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