You’re being too pessimistic. Alliances have always been about being strange bedfellows that’ll stab each other in the back should the proper conditions ever be met.
No matter how kissy-kissy politicians may be in front of a camera, backroom dealing is still the norm. Only the orange guy mistook the backroom with a toilet and so it stinks of shit for everyone to see.
Whatever the end result of this, whoever’s left afterwards will get back to tender intimacies without a hitch.
Yup. Politics are ugly. Always have been, hopefully won’t always be as well. We generally don’t see the ugliness, but right now it’s fully exposed. The recoil from seeing it happen might be hard to swallow, but that doesn’t make it any worse than it usually is when hidden. But we can also see the strength of having to go through that and still walk away.
Now I’m hoping the next period of time won’t prove me wrong and this moment will be an important impetus for change towards the better.
If I am proven wrong though, I’ll join your pessimism.
This isn’t just bad politics. We’ve publicly threatened invasion and annexation of our closest allies.
Trump irreparably compromised our national security by doing this. We rely heavily on our alliances and soft power for counterterrorism, military and counterintelligence operations. Before Trump, we were leading the most powerful network of defense alliances in the world. In one month Trump pissed that away, and made us a much weaker country.
What we’re seeing here is full on treason.
