Lexicus
Deity
To my mind that isn't a practical difference at all. I mean in terms of actual US policy, in terms of actual outcomes.
Clown Car VII: Or "Gulliver's Travels 2: The Witch Hunt Continues"
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To my mind that isn't a practical difference at all. I mean in terms of actual US policy, in terms of actual outcomes.
Not even close to being the same. Allowing someone to do something is just permission. Encouraging is all about pushing them into doing it. Letting/allowing means that there are no rules against it. Encouraging is an active effort to push a person into doing it. Membership at cfc lets one post here. By responding to your post, I am encouraging you to post. Not the same at all.
bernie14
Filter Manipulator
That all my be true but I think his comments were addressed to Europe, not Russia.... cuz "hey! russia is russia!"
Lexicus
Deity
I know the definitions of the words, I'm asking in this specific situation how the US policy differs based on whether we are "letting" or "encouraging" Russia to attack NATO members that fail to spend 2% of GDP on defense (or whatever). In this case when you are talking about a situation in which Russia, very large and strong, is deterred from attacking its much smaller and weaker neighbors by their alliance with the US, also large and strong, any suggesion that the US would not act to defend its allies has the effect of encouraging Russia to attack those neighbors. I don't think it really makes a difference whether Trump said "let" or "encourage" because in the end it all comes down to the same thing.
One point seemingly being overlooked in this discussion is what @Gori the Grey pointed out:
So the distinction between "let" and "encourage" (if any) is almost besides the point in this case. Trump said "encourage", right? So he is accountable for "encourage" and shifting the discussion to "let" is a red herring, at best.
So you hope Haley steps aside. Do you want Haley to step aside to help Trump? Or maybe... you just don't care about all this US nonsense that doesn't involve you?Hopefully this will be the last sighting of that comet Haley
... or something along those lines?In any case... Haley has vowed to stay in until at least Super Tuesday and I hope that she does. I hope she stays in all the way to the convention.
Farm Boy
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Sometimes I want to make a different point that needs to be made, near as I can tell. You really don't need to stay in the lane this hard. Right? I stipulated, as limited to that question, the answer was same. Then moving on is not an attempt to decieve. 'Let' is sometimes something that happens despite mens rea, despite desire. Failure to adequately perceive or plan, for one. Maybe it's faultless, like an "act of God." But the girl is still dead.
I mean, we could keep looping in the thread as it goes. Certainly there is an argument for why perceiving embryos as babies but still wanting to allow reproductive choices to be made at the individual level would be dirty-dog Nazi-ish prison camp experimentation. But the more likely explanation is an opinion regarding stances on the ongoing European war of conquest. You know, imperials.
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Well, if we're splitting hairs... allow me to retort... First, I didn't quote you, I quoted @Lexicus and @Gori the Grey . To put a finer point on it, I was pinging them, not you, that what they were debating was besides the real point. I get why you are making the "let" versus "encourage" distinction... both why you originally made it, as well as what your point has morphed/changed into now.
I don't object to that goalpost switch, because as you say, you've already conceded/"stipulated" that it was a distinction without a difference in this case. So no, its not deceptive or whatever... go ahead and make your point. Just because I don't find it persuasive doesn't mean I don't want to hear it.
Second... all that other stuff you are referencing... about acts of God and embryos and Nazi-dogs... doesn't seem relevant to the point of the discussion. The point is that Trump is signaling to Putin that if he is POTUS, that he is fine with Russia invading NATO allies and he will refuse to act to protect them. A larger point, is that Trump is publicly stating that his view of NATO is essentially what amounts to a protection racket, and he is willing to publicly extort NATO allies... using Russia as his threat/muscle to extract payment.
So I think the real issue here, relevant to this thread, is how we (USians/voters) feel about Trump's tactics/statements. I'm not a fan of Trump publicly threatening to extort NATO allies. Its a bad look and counterproductive, not least of all because among many problems, it telegraphs the US position in advance, encourages aggression against allies who are "delinquent in their bills" and potentially over-obligates the US by implying that if allies "pay their bills" they are entitled to unlimited US "protection".
Farm Boy
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Once you and I are obligating each other's sons, I think unlimited is a close enough word already. If they won't spend some butter on guns they've already agreed to spend, to keep the whole alliance safe, I don't want to send them our boys. If we even can perform what we claim.
The other part is a swipe at Kyr's take on our presidential politics.
The other part is a swipe at Kyr's take on our presidential politics.
Gori the Grey
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I've actually been giving Lex's post a lot of thought. I don't think I can get my thoughts together with less than devoting an afternoon to it. Sometimes I have the time for that (and I love that CFCOT forces me to do so). Right now I'm not sure that I do. I have an RL thing that requires at least equal verbal finesse. So you'll have to settle for the condensed version.
It's true that, with regard to someone who is already eager to do something, letting is tantamount to encouraging. So I think I get Lex's point. It nevertheless seems to me that it matters that Trump chose the more active of the two verbs. And maybe even matters profoundly. Think of the mental picture that is in Trump's mind that lets him say such a thing. He's not just saying "if Russia were to attack, I wouldn't feel obligated to defend anyone who hadn't kept up with NATO-stipulated levels of military expenditure." Rather, he knows how geopolitical circumstances are poised, and he'd be happy to use an invasion of one country by another as a means of shaking down that second country for a proper level of military expenditure. He's treating Russia's military inclination and all of the human suffering that could result from that inclination as a tool he himself could use for the relatively trivial end of getting a nation to spend some portion of its GDP on its military. Trump's depravity is so enormous that I think we sometimes can't bear to look at it directly.
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That's part of my problem with what he said. I don't want to state or imply unlimited protection in exchange for their butter, particularly when its our boys at stake. A corollary to "No butter, no protection" is "butter = protection". I don't want that broad of an obligation. The NATO alliance just mandates, that we "treat an attack on one as an attack on all" without specifically defining what that means, in practice. Defining it as "protection" is stupid, because among other things, it over commits to something the alliance charter doesn't even call for.
Trump is specifically calling it "protection" because he wants to sound like a mobster. Its reckless and irresponsible and he is doing it to sound tough, without any real introspection of the tertiary impact of the statement, outside of establishing his self-aggrandizing NATO-as-protection-racket scheme. The US should not be publicly representing itself to the world as an international organized crime family. Among other problems, it completely undermines our criticisms of Putin.
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Farm Boy
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Trump is an assclown. His voters are deplorable. We know.
He still gets some things right, even if by accident and wrong in tone. Not doing thier part? Not part of the little club. If they won't pay when it is 'easy' you better bet they won't pay when it is hard.
He still gets some things right, even if by accident and wrong in tone. Not doing thier part? Not part of the little club. If they won't pay when it is 'easy' you better bet they won't pay when it is hard.
Gori the Grey
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Let's take a country that is roughly the population of Ukraine (before the war) and a dead-beat at meeting this NATO spending benchmark: Spain (only Luxemburg is worse).
Over the two years preceding the invasion of Ukraine, Spain spent only 1% of GDP, rather than 2. Had they spent the requisite 2%, they could have purchased 10 raptors to add to their 130 fighters.
When you consider that Ukraine has lost 10,000 civilians, another 20,000 wounded, millions displaced, billions in property damage, you will probably understand why I labeled such spending relatively trivial.
I would think even a heartless robot could make that calculation.
But this:
is actually why the 2%/year is not something worth insisting on in the way Trump is. Countries keep paying it (or some portion of it) year after year after year when there isn't a war. The bombs build up. More of them won't significantly change the nature of any possible conflict.
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w/e... what does that have to do with anything??
And "Trump is an assclown" is an empty platitude anyway, particularly when "Trump is an assclown" is repeatedly followed by "but Trump is right" about this, that and the other thing.
But that's the problem. It's not about "paying"/"collecting", its about establishing an alliance that limits/contains the expansionist aims of Russia. What did Ukraine pay? What did Vietnam pay? What did Korea pay? The idea is getting enough nations into the alliance that it stays "easy" rather than "hard". The more allies that get abandoned, the larger and more powerful Russia potentially gets, until its Russia with the dominant "alliance" rather than NATO.
European countries are paying for Ukraine who isn't even in NATO. The point is we don't want Russia grabbing any more people, land, resources, strategic locations, etc.