No. of Recommendations: 18
Right now Europe’s defense structure is to defend the EU right down to the last American. Is that acceptable to you?
The various militaries of NATO other than the US contain about 2 million active-duty personnel. About 0.9 million in just the big five EU nations (France, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain). The entirety of the U.S. military is about 1.3 million active-duty personnel. So no, their defense structure is not to defend the EU down to the last American - which makes for a dig on the men and women who serve, but is absolutely false.
Are Canada and Mexico being good neighbors by enabling fentanyl to flow over the border?
No less so than we're being a good neighbor by enabling fentanyl to flow over the border. Drug interdiction is difficult, and all three nations are devoting a lot of resources to stop it. We're not bad neighbors to Mexico simply because so many illegal guns flow over the border into their country, either - we're also trying to stop it.
It's dumb. The Administration wants to impose tariffs on those countries, but we have binding treaty obligations with them (which Trump negotiated!) that prohibit those tariffs, so we have to blame it on something other than Trump's desire for tariffs.
This statement implies that you believe the US and China are on the same level morally and politically. Is that your view?
No, it doesn't. It implies that other nations will engage in their own calculus over whether it serves their interests to oppose China's sphere of influence, join China's sphere of influence, or be somewhere in between. The more that the U.S. acts as an unreliable partner, the more that we pressure weak countries to give up their resources (Ukraine) or assets (Panama) or territory (Denmark), the less compelling an alternative we are. We can still be better morally and politically, but if we treat other countries in ways that are contrary to their interests and/or alienate their citizenry, the further they drift from our sphere of influence. It's not smart to make it harder for the governments of other countries to enter into close cooperation with us, by attacking their economies or their national pride.
Sure, we can get away with it - it's not like Canada can do anything when Trump belittles them by calling them the 51st state or demeaning the office of their head of state. Or when we threaten to upend their economy by imposing massive tariffs by claiming that they're being "unfair" somehow. But then the voters in Canada start to hate the U.S. a little bit and boo our national anthem. Which makes it that much harder for whoever those voters elect to stand in close cooperation with the U.S. when it comes time, say, to present a unified front on international matters against Chinese influence. Which, again, is a dumb thing to do.
