US presidents don't have much influence over foreign policy at all. — Tzeentch

This is nonsense. Did you live in America during the Bush years? Do you think there would have been an Iraq war with a President Gore? Congress has been ceding war-making powers to the executive for the last 70 years. The presidency in the U.S. is becoming more and more like a dictatorship.

Think: How many wars has the U.S. been in since WW2? How many Declarations of War from Congress have there been since WW2?

This is nonsense. — RogueAI

About as much nonsense as using a hypothetical as evidence...

"I think things would have been different under Gore; that proves things would have been different under Gore"

Your argument is literally that it is "nonsense" to have an opinion that's different to yours.

There are plenty of scholars who make the argument, and I find it quite compelling.

Foreign policy and geopolitical strategy are things that may take years, even decades, to unfold. It makes no sense to leave such things to the political squabblings of camp red and blue. Moreover, US foreign policy over the decades does not give that impression, and tends to be cohesive over long periods of time.

The power of the various lobbies also is well-documented, and you can research that yourself.

Do you think there would have been an Iraq war with a President Gore?

In one way or another, probably so.

Are you an American?

No.

If foreign policy isn't affected by presidents, and Congress has shown over the decades to want less and less to do with it, who do you think is setting policy in the U.S.?

The foreign policy establishment. Do you live in America?

Do you think there would have been an Iraq war with a President Gore? — RogueAI

Do you think there would have been a President Gore?

No. He never stood a chance.

So in what way was the foreign policy set by the president?

Even if we ignore lobbying, the order of events is;

1. Presidential candidates declare what their foreign policy will be.
2. They get voted in and can then enact it.

It is not;

1. Presidential candidates start with a blank slate.
2. They get voted in and then decide what their foreign policy will be.

The foreign policy establishment. Do you live in America? — Tzeentch

Since 1975. What do you mean by "the foreign policy establishment"? Do you mean think tanks? People like Kissinger? McNamara? Cheney?

That's a huge topic, which I am not going to go into detail on because A) I don't believe you're genuinely interested in what I have to say (I'm not an American, after all), and B) it would derail the thread.

Go do your own research.

Here's a place you could start:

Why America's Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment

Grand strategy is not the same as foreign policy. Foreign policy is how a nation pursues it's strategic goals. For example, while Clinton and Bush no doubt both believed in America's place as a superpower, they disagreed on which policies would effectively keep America in the driver's seat- Clinton favored a containment strategy of Iraq, Bush favored invasion. Had Gore won, we would have continued the policy of containing Iraq.

If you're saying that all Presidents agree on certain strategic goals, that is true. But it's also trivial. The two parties very much disagree on the particulars. Obama didn't send Ukraine weapons. Trump did. Biden sided with Ukraine. Trump called Putin a genius. Our foreign policy toward Ukraine would be much different under Trump.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/who-influences-us-foreign-policy/BDBD39237BF2EA6F86836FEB2F87F8B7

The results of cross-sectional and time-lagged analyses suggest that U.S. foreign policy is most heavily and consistently influenced by internationally oriented business leaders, followed by experts (who, however, may themselves be influenced by business). Labor appears to have significant but smaller impacts. The general public seems to have considerably less effect, except under particular conditions. These results generally hold over several different analytical models (including two-observation time series) and different clusters of issues (economic, military, and diplomatic)

Just do a little research.

Despite USA's larger military budget, Toti opines:

Who is the sleeping giant now?
^{— William Toti · The Hill · Feb 7, 2023}

Something odd about the US... Medicine and some kinds of services are more expensive in the US than most others. Also came up in the 2016 election run. An effect of capitalism or something? Plain supply and demand?

Despite USA's larger military budget, Toti opines: — jorndoe

... as we risk another high-end war in the Pacific

So the concern is that as the US deliberately provokes another war, it is simultaneously under-prepared for one, and the solution is not "then don't provoke another fucking war", it is "best get prepared then"?

As to your question. A smaller number of high innovation products is more profitable for the arms companies. Same is true of medicine. The companies can profit from 'innovation' almost 100%, whereas, when it comes to sheer number of actual tangible items, they have to (begrudgingly) share at least some of that profit with the raw material suppliers and labourers who manufacture it.

So there's an incentive to promote the higher end 'innovative' solutions. Add to that the most powerful lobbying groups the world has ever seen, and unsurprisingly government and establishment procurement tends to also favour these high-innovation, low-material/labour solutions.

Of course, they don't always work because $20 million spent on R&D has a much lower rate of return than $5 million spent on R&D for some crappy product and $15 million spent on lobbying to get the government to buy it anyway.

United States controls Europe through NATO. That is to say, it controls Europe through (in this case) political means not dependent on coercion.

The nature of soft power is the lack of a coercive element. — Tzeentch

Then your terminology is misleading:
Hard power encompasses a wide range of coercive policies, such as coercive diplomacy, economic sanctions, military action, and the forming of military alliances for deterrence and mutual defense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_power
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/transatlantic-division-of-labor-nato-hard-power-and-eu-soft-power

And I still suspect that the rhetorically purpose of such misleading usage was to convey the impression that the actual motivation behind NATO expansion is not the fear from a threatening Russia, but the fun of being part of the Western club.

What’s your argument? A comparison of US military capacity and Russian military capacity is enough to make your point? — neomac

Essentially, yes. What would you like me to compare instead? GDP? Think it'll paint a different picture? — Tzeentch

There are many factors that shape threat perception in geopolitical agents "military capacity" being one of the most important, but not the only one (and notice that in the case of Russia things are complicated by the fact that Russia is not only the 3rd rank country by military capability but also the country with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, relevant to the defensive/offensive military capacity balance, and that it’s military/offensive capacity can sum up with the Chinese one in case of a anti-American alliance). Military capacity is important because it contributes to shape “security dilemmas” but in this respect, also aggressive intentions count (signalling strategies and ideological convergence may help in mitigating the issue), so geopolitical agents are prone to detect and anticipate potential threats based on other geopolitical agents’ past/current behavior and their dispositions/opportunities for alliance and conflict.
Reactions may be defensive or offensive (pre-emptive): especially, hegemonic powers may certainly not wait for threatening competitors to be strong enough to attack, before reacting against them. As I wrote elsewhere, geopolitical strategies can involve long-term goals covering decades and generations to come (so timing is important too). Any response implies risks, because of uncertainties induced by mistrust, complexity/timing of coordination and unpredictable events (like a pandemic).
Now let’s talk about “threat perception” for the post-ColdWar American hegemonic power (which, not surprisingly, is perfectly in line with “offensive realist” views [1]):
”Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
"There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” (source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html)
Pretty diabolical, isn’t it?! Yet in the last 30 years, Europe got richer and less committed (in terms of security/economy) toward the US, and at the same time Russia and China got much richer (also related avg standard of life improved), more militarised and assertive abroad, in the hope of extending their sphere of influence at the expense of the US. Europeans, Russia and China abundantly exploited the institutions and free-market (the soft-power!) supported by the Pax Americana after the end of Cold-War era. And anti-Americanism (along with American decline calls) grew stronger too. What could possibly go wrong given those “security” premises held by the hegemonic power?

While you (like many here) keep focusing on arguable failures of the American interventionism in middle-east (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.) and whine over the drawbacks of American imperialism (as if any avg dude on the internet could plausibly offer a better and realistic alternative), you close an eye over the part of the world that abundantly profited from the Pax Americana (or, if you prefer, the neoconservative liberal democratic capitalist Blob military-industrial-complex satanist American foreign policy). This intellectually dishonest attitude reminds me of a famous Napolitan maxim: “chiagne e fotte”, it roughly means “whine (over injustice of the system) and keep screwing them (the system) over”.


[1]
My own realist theory of international relations says that the structure of the international system forces countries concerned about their security to compete with each other for power. The ultimate goal of every major state is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the system. In practical terms, this means that the most powerful states seek to establish hegemony in their region of the world, while making sure that no rival great power dominates another region.
To be more specific, the international system has three defining characteristics. First, the main actors are states that operate in anarchy, which simply means that there is no higher authority above them. Second, all great powers have some offensive military capability, which means they have the wherewithal to hurt each other. Third, no state can know the intentions of other states with certainty, especially their future intentions. It is simply impossible, for example, to know what Germany’s or Japan’s intentions will be toward their neighbors in 2025.
In a world where other states might have malign intentions as well as significant offensive capabilities, states tend to fear each other. That fear is compounded by the fact that in an anarchic system there is no night watchman for states to call if trouble comes knocking at their door. Therefore, states recognize that the best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible relative to potential rivals. The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that another state will attack it. No Americans, for example, worry that Canada or Mexico will attack the United States, because neither of those countries is strong enough to contemplate a fight with Uncle Sam.

https://nationalinterest.org/article/say-goodbye-taiwan-9931

Then your terminology is misleading:
Hard power encompasses a wide range of coercive policies, such as coercive diplomacy, economic sanctions, military action, and the forming of military alliances for deterrence and mutual defense. — neomac

After the Cold War, NATO became something different from a military alliance that pursued deterrence and mutual defense, since there was no enemy to defend against.

What happened after the Cold War is that the Americans collected their prize.

It became a different name for the European part of the American sphere of influence, and a soft power tool to control Europe, even if it's original nature was a hard power deterrent towards Russia.

That change in character is well-documented and part of the reason why NATO went through several identity crises post-Cold War.

This isn't misleading language, this is simply understanding the purpose of NATO post-Cold War from the American perspective.

There are many factors that shape threat perception in geopolitical agents military capacity being one of the most important, but not the only one (and notice that in the case of Russia things are complicated by the fact that Russia is not only the 3rd rank country by military capability but also the country with the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, relevant to the defensive/offensive military capacity balance, and that it’s military/offensive capacity can sum up with the Chinese one in case of a anti-American alliance). Military capacity is important because it concurs to shape “security dilemmas” but for that also aggressive intentions count (signalling strategies and ideological convergence may help in mitigating the issue), so geopolitical agents are prone to detect and anticipate potential threats based on other geopolitical agents’ past/current behavior and their dispositions/opportunities for alliance and conflict.
Reactions may be defensive or offensive (pre-emptive): especially, hegemonic powers may certainly not wait for threatening competitors to be strong enough to attack, before reacting against them. As I wrote elsewhere, geopolitical strategies can involve long-term goals covering decades and generations to come (so timing is important too). Any response implies risks, because of uncertainties induced by mistrust, complexity/timing of coordination and unpredictable events (like a pandemic).
Now let’s talk about “threat perception” for the American hegemonic power (which, not surprisingly, is perfectly in line with “offensive realist” views [1]):
”Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
"There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” (source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html)
Pretty diabolical, isn’t it?! Yet in the last 30 years, Europe got richer and less committed (in terms of security/economy) toward the US, and at the same time Russia and China got much richer (also related avg standard of life improved), more militarised and assertive abroad, in the hope of extending their sphere of influence at the expense of the US. Europeans, Russia and China abundantly exploited the institutions and free-market (the soft-power!) supported by the Pax Americana after the end of Cold-War era. While anti-Americanism grew stronger. What could possibly go wrong given those “security” premises by the hegemonic power? — neomac

Right, so it was never about actual threat perception. It was about pre-emptively protecting U.S. hegemony. That's basically what I've been saying all along.

While you (like many here) keep focusing on arguable failures of the American interventionism in middle-east (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.) and whine over the drawbacks of American imperialism (as if any avg dude on the internet could plausibly offer a better and realistic alternative), you close an eye over the part of the world that abundantly profited from the Pax Americana (or, if you prefer, the neoconservative liberal democratic capitalist Blob military-industrial-complex satanist American foreign policy). This intellectually dishonest attitude reminds me of a famous Napolitan maxim: “chiagne e fotte”, it roughly means “whine (over injustice of the system) and keep screwing them (the system) over”. — neomac

Ask the people of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lybia, and all the other nations the United States invaded and cast into the fires (a long list it be) what they thought of that "Pax Americana". :vomit:

Seymour Hersh just posted a blow-by-blow account of How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline, going into details of secret meetings and CIA reports, communications between governments, and precise descriptions of military operations.

All of it "according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning."

(Sorry for posting on topic!)

how likely is it that it's actually true?

So...Nord Stream bombing, Biden...Flight MH17, Putin...they are telling each other's secrets...

Never mind...the White House is denying it. Who can you believe?

What would be most surprising here would be that Biden had the balls...

Well, I have no opinion on whether it's true or not but seems grounds for investigation by Germany and other EU members. With "allies" like that, we don't need enemies, so it's essential to either rule it out or to confirm it. I'm afraid though that even confirmation won't lead to a reevaluation of our intelligence and military relationship with the US.

Yes, this MH17 twist is interesting. We had an extensive report in November 2015 published that was performed by the Dutch government (Raad van Onderzoek). Putin wasn't mentioned. We convicted in absentia three Russians. Putin wasn't mentioned in court either. Now a little over 7 years later he's considered guilty of it because he likely decided to provide the separatists with air support. While this is most likely true, that doesn't result in him ordering shooting down a civilian plane. We hebde to wait for this new report but in the face of it, it looks politically convenient and tenuous at best.

The conclusion of the original report was that all parties involved underestimated the danger of flying over the region, which was regularly barred for commercial flights due to military action by the Ukrainian air force against the separatists.

Jewish so maybe a Jewish agenda. — Mark Nyquist

Seriously! What the fuck does 'maybe a Jewish agenda' mean in this context? In what sense could you possibly justify a 'Jewish' agenda toward bombing a gas pipeline?

Anyone know much about this Seymour Hersh beyond Wikipedia? — Mark Nyquist

He seems to have a solid record of uncovering U.S. atrocity, being noted for his investigations into the Mỹ Lai massacre, Watergate and Abu Ghraib, to name a few.

Supposedly he was put on the NSA watchlist for this.


The story does sound believable (the U.S. role in the bombing was already widely speculated) and for a journalist of Hersh's caliber I cannot imagine him implicating high-profile people by name if he was just making things up.


On a somewhat related topic, the West's role in the war in Ukraine seems very impopular in Israel. We've recently had Israeli former PM Naftali Bennett stating in an interview that a truce was on the table very early on in the conflict (with major concessions from both Russia and Ukraine), but this was sabotaged by the West.

Recently there was also a Turkish news agency that reported casualty figures of the Ukrainian war which it supposedly had based on a report by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. These figures were very different from what is commonly accepted in the West, but the veracity of this news article was also very questionable.


There's a chance people are just making things up. There's also a chance the "accidental" leaking of unwelcome information is an act of quiet disapproval.

how likely is it that it's actually true? — Benkei

Let's just say that Seymour Hersh's "investigation," based entirely on a single anonymous source, doesn't move my opinion one way or another. It might as well be some random conspiracy nut (which is what Seymour Hersh has become in his dotage). But it will be amusing to watch how all the anti-American "skeptics" will jump on this juicy piece.

What woudl be mist surprising here would be that Biden had the balls... — Banno

Yeah, basically that's why I rank the US-did-it theory low. It's not just Biden though: I don't see why anyone in his place would take such a huge risk for a minor (proportionally) financial gain. Only an actor as desperate and impoverished as North Korea might have done something like this just to earn a bit of extra cash.

Besides, it doesn't even make sense from the money angle. Russia had several pipelines to Europe, which were operating well below capacity. The pipeline through Belarus had been shut down earlier that year. Nord Stream 2 was never operated. Nord Stream 1 was being shut down intermittently throughout the year, and then Russia closed it off indefinitely, not long before the explosions. The explosions took out three out of four Nord Stream lines, leaving one intact (notably, it was one of the Nord Stream 2 lines). If both Russia and Europe were willing, gas could have been flowing at the same rate or higher. The explosions as such didn't change the calculus in US's favor.

Are we just going to ignore that this happened then?



In what world is the U.S. not the primary suspect after such a statement has been made?

Ha!

Here's you talking about a piece with uncorroborated sources supportive of the US...

(Given that most of her sources are anonymous and there is little independent confirmation for any of this, you can only trust her integrity. But she has written for respected media outlets before independent media was completely shut down in Russia.) — SophistiCat

Here's you talking about equally respected, award-winning journalists using uncorroborated sources critical of the US...

It might as well be some random conspiracy nut (which is what Seymour Hersh has become in his dotage). But it will be amusing to watch how all the anti-American "skeptics" will jump on this juicy piece. — SophistiCat

I'd struggle to find a clearer example of ideological bias.

Support the US with anonymous sources - you're a respected journalist.

Criticise the US with anonymous sources - You're a conspiracy theorist.