Month: July 2017

For Americans who may not be familiar with the concept: not meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries is…

For Americans who may not be familiar with the concept: not meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries is code for not staging coups, not agitating for “regime change”, not bombing the hell out of cities, not engaging in illegal occupations, not funding terrorist insurgencies and generally doing things through internationally legal means.

I know it sounds unfamiliar and kind of whacky but there you go.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

It is hard to overstate the significance of this agreement between Trump and Putin. “Agreeing not to meddle in each other’s domestic affairs” is a code-phrase used by Russia and China for decades – one that every US president has told them to go to hell about.

For those unfamiliar with the term: that includes executing journalists, persecuting people for sexual orientation, race, and religion, and of course, invading other countries, if that land has “historically been a part of (Russia, China, etc).” Putin considers Crimea and eastern Ukraine to be Russian domestic affairs, in much the same way that Xi considers Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to be Chinese domestic affairs.

For decades, Russia and China have been building their own international alliances, both using this as a key selling point. The basic pitch is “Come do business with us; unlike the Americans, we’ll never interfere in your domestic affairs.” This doesn’t mean “domestic affairs” that might affect local markets, exports, or relations with the controlling country, of course; a country’s currency policy is clearly an international matter. It means “you can engage in all the repression and corruption you want; we will in fact bribe you handsomely.”

As a result, both countries have been building up “alliances” of dictatorships. Trump has just agreed to the #1 rule of being a member of the Russia Club.

And having joined that club, by implication, we are no longer running our own. Certainly anyone considering joining up with us will now know that we won’t really act to protect them from Russian interference – and given that this interference is a major threat for a lot of countries (Russia has been quite expansionist lately, and has no trouble making demands of its clients), this makes the value proposition of an American alliance a lot less compelling. Basically, we have just moved from being a clear leader of the largest alliance of nations in the world, to being a tier-2 member of the dictators’ club.

Let nobody say that Trump hasn’t achieved anything. I think he just ended the Cold War – with a surrender.