The Winds of Change?

[The Dharma Bum]

it's more like borg assimulation

[The Comrade]

[Kane]

You guys are acting like petulant children. What does it take for us to see ourselves as strong? Why do we have to counter military aggression with military aggression every damn time? Especially after a ten year war in Afghanistan and enough in Iraq? Military power doesn't equate to overall power - especially when we're projecting to maintain stability (to counter chaos).

Things to consider:

The US military sources its power from the country, not from it's ability to hit abroad with impunity. Just in case somebody hadn't noticed, internally our nation has some problems. We have to correct these imbalances at home in order to maintain or increase our ability to project into medium and long term periods. If our economy gets sclerotic then our military will spend less which will diminish its power to project. If the growth of our economy remains stagnant our military won't continue to upgrade and will instead gradually opt to merely maintain existing military hardware. And from there a spiral begins to form.

Obama has been pursuing the more important policies of promoting trade with friendly nations while attaching geopolitical strategic goals to them. This is smart. Why is this smart? Because we don't actually need to deploy more military assets to a region in an immediate fashion, it fosters economic growth and development, and it limits the cost to ourselves in the short run. Everything is beneficial on the back end and the up front costs are minimal. Let's look at his continuing pursuit of the Trans Pacific Partnership. It's a free trade deal with nations in the Pacific being negotiated by us and the member states. States like Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Mexico, Singapore, etc would like to form a free trade bloc. Why would this be awesome? Because it seeks to counter the rising power of China throughout the region. What works to our benefit in this situation? Military aggression. Vietnam is clearly on board as is Japan. Sure, negotiations are continuing but this would be a HUGE step in the right direction in terms of both consolidating power in a region to counter any possible military aggression by China as well as foster economic development with our partners. Mutually beneficial in multiple manners.

The same can be said for the EU and Ukraine. Ukraine just signed an economic pact with the EU to gain access to their markets and to assist them in their endeavor for self sustainability outside of Russian assistance/dependence. That Putin has decided to invade Ukraine and take a small piece of it just shows his desperation, not his aptitude when it comes to determining the proper time for military action. His country potentially faces sanctions by the whole of the EU this Monday. Outside of that, his attention to reclaiming power and asserting unilateral control has fostered an economy in Russia of corruption and entire reliance on petrodollars. Gazprom and other state owned corporations continually exert political pressure to both freeze and then claim ownership of what once were private enterprises in Russia. That FDI continues to stream out of the nation is no surprise. That they lack the means to get to their own source of shale oil is no surprise given a lack of desire to invest in equipment and resources that will likely be reclaimed by the government before a profit can be made. Russian economic dynamism isn't there. Unfortunately, they can rely on this because their resource dependent economy actually lifts the standard of living of an average Russian even as their productivity goes down. By comparison, our standard of living has gone down and is still recovering even as productivity has shot up. But as we unleash our own shale oil onto the market and ensure that we'll have easy access to our own sources of oil as well as LNG (That we might export to Europe at some point) should come as a concern to Russia. Lest we forget, Russia just accepted investment by Chinese owned assets to develop pipelines from Russian into China but at an undisclosed price relative to what Europe currently enjoys (Let's just say the Chinese probably benefited from a discount so that Russia could trumpet about something). Russia is poorly situated for a world with changing interests as well as the growing concerns surrounding climate change.

So what the detractors of Obama neglect is that it's far easier to claim victory as you assert bravado on the international stage and even easier to make your opponents look meek in the face of it as you do nothing on what many perceive to be equal terms. But I need to highlight just one thing for everybody here on this board:

We eleced a man in 2001 to POTUS. He turned out to be undeniably one of the worst Presidents in US history. He used US military power to an extreme degree, wantonly even. His focused went entirely foreign, all enemies were from without and not within. We looked powerful, persistent, and determined as we faced lies and/or deceit all in the name of military expansion. And it accomplished nothing. It net us trillions in expenditures, an Iraq unable to fend for itself outside of sectarian lines, and an Afghanistan that needs development for another 100 years. Obama has reeled all of that back, focused on international missions that seek to better us at home while projecting the economic power we know we all harness more effectively than any other nation, and sought to control our debt/deficit by attacking the single largest source (Medical care). All of it will take time. All of it might need to be tweaked. But he started this shit and it will and should continue on.

There's a difference between looking f**k strong and simply walking around the room in a puffed up shirt. Knowing when to use your strength is far more important than its use merely to impress upon your enemies how strong you might've been...

[Eternal]

[John Galt]

harding johnson tyler taylor pierce harrison nixon grant arthur hoover buchanan garfield... to name some. bush was mediocre

as for obama's pursuit of trade policies, go tell his own party that he's doing that, they're the ones standing against him.

remember that time that obama got the nobel peace prize for literally no reason

[Philly]

We did not elect any presidents in 2001

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[eynon81]