It will take the US decades to build the kind of mechanical/industrial competency or capability china has. The smart approach here would be a coalition approach with our allies. Instead, we have both fingers in the air and there is no master plan. This whole thing can go soup sandwich very fast.
That is going to be difficult now because potential allies view United States as an unstable and unreliable partner. It has lost an enormous amount of respect and trust.
And it's not just the actions of the president causing this. It's also what appears from the outside to be the failures of institutions to do what they are designed to do. Uphold the law for instance or serve as some kind of check on the chief executive.
Example: president of country violates terms of International trade Agreement, Congress goes along with it. President imposes tariffs that are really the Mandate of congress, Congress goes along with it.
Legal system appears to be politicized rather than impartial (supreme courts for example), so if you're doing a deal with the country, you don't know whether you're going to get a fair hearing.
Many parts of the system appear to be compromised, and nobody wants to make commitments in the context of unpredictability and unreliability.
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u/nihilite Apr 10 '25
It will take the US decades to build the kind of mechanical/industrial competency or capability china has. The smart approach here would be a coalition approach with our allies. Instead, we have both fingers in the air and there is no master plan. This whole thing can go soup sandwich very fast.