Comment by kmeisthax
> We're forcing our allies to become more independent, because they got too soft and we need them hardened up. That only makes the US stronger, because strong allies are better for all of us. It makes us a better deterrent against war happening in the first place.
Translation: we are getting rid of our allies.
It does not make sense for a country to pay another country their "fair share" for military protection. That is literally why the American Revolution happened. Americans fought a war on behalf of the British and were thanked for their service with enough taxes to destroy the local economy. The push to make the colonies pay for "their war" drove the colonists to turn their guns inward and start shooting British regulars.
To be clear, it's one thing for NATO to tell countries to actually meet their 2% targets. But that is not what the current administration is doing. What it's actually doing is disrespecting them and foisting costs upon them. That is not how you run a military alliance.
> We are energy independent and are advancing even more ways to expand the dimensions of that. You can't destroy our government, because we'll just recreate it.
So our government is advancing the cause of energy independence by... what, exactly? Trying to shut down as many solar and wind projects as possible? Renewables (and, to a lesser extent, nuclear) are the best path towards energy independence, if not abundance, that we have. The current administration is bankrolled by Saudi oilmen whose only plan for energy independence is to shout "drill baby drill".
Meanwhile China is churning out solar panels like it's no tomorrow. This has some interesting effects. Like, there's parts of Africa that are just now getting reliable access to electricity because they can buy cheap Chinese solar panels and batteries. Renewables can be provided at basically any scale and can work without infrastructure. Which is making the current American governing coalition shit their pants because they're all oilmen. The American military is built to run on oil. And oil is going away.
> Meanwhile China is surrounded by countries that dislike it and don't trust it. Giving Canada and Mexico tough love is no comparison to the fundamental failures in the relationships China has with its neighbors in their region.
I'll give you that China is bad at making friends. However, for their hegemonic goals, they don't necessarily need big American style alliances. They just need America's allies to look the other way while they steal Taiwan.
We're not getting rid of our allies, but it's long past time that they invested more in the common defense and it's important that they do, because it could be a valuable contribution to deterring war. Focus less on the soundbites. Yes there's messy dealmaking happening, but there's what's said and then there's what actually ends up happening.
Solar and wind are only okay, but they aren't reliable and subsidizing them mostly benefits China since they are by far the major supplies. Yes, it creates American jobs, but those people could be doing more important jobs without creating a foreign energy infrastructure dependency. I don't think we actually care that Africa has solar panels from China, except that it makes them energy dependent on them and increases foreign trade in Yuan. It's more of a way to create Chinese jobs, which is a huge priority so they end up with an oversupply.
Traditional nuclear has potential, but the costs, extreme complexity and lengthy lead times hurt the scalability. The newer fusion projects are interesting and I'm hopeful, but even if they work they take forever and are hard to replace quickly once they're up. It's more likely that we'll have a variety of all of these things.
There have been advancements in geothermal that are amazing, cheap, quick, less encumbered by supply chain risks and require way less land so we should see that scale out over the coming decades.
We do also have abundant oil which helps to reduce inflation and exporting it can offset some oil instability in the market. Yes, oil is eventually going away and that is why a renewable energy push was important, but a lot of oil remains untouched. The US military could also operate for years on just oil reserves and can get priority access to it. It would make plenty of sense for major countries to set aside oil for strategic and military purposes long after it stops being used for general transportation.
As for Taiwan, it is fair that dependency on exports from China can cause countries to tow the line, but it would mostly be optics with nothing preventing other forms of support. Also, the pain of losing Chinese exports in many ways would be less than the pain of an expanding China that goes unchecked, so I think those influences are only strong up to a threshold.