yeah honest at least from the people i’ve spoken to in my country (australia, so take the opinion of the voting populace with a grain of salt - we’re entirely dependant on the US for defence against china, and even more so now that we’re buying US nuclear subs which we have no capacity to maintain ourselves since we literally have to even make laws to deal with nuclear to deal with them)

… sorry rambletangent

… last time people were like “okay well we know that the 4 years are up soon and stability will return”… this round, the world really can’t trust the stability of the US: from now on, who the fuck knows what’s going to happen? we just have to make backup plans, and that severely curtails US influence because there are suddenly alternatives - and nobody wanted alternatives - we all wanted to give the US power (well, kinda)… but you just can’t rely on US politics any more when it’s existentially important

[–] captainlezbian 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah as an American that’s one of the frustrating parts of all this. Like, a lot of our wealth came from dependability. “We give you good deals on military technology that would’ve cost you more to make, you give us good deals elsewhere. Meanwhile this means we dominate the military technology market and we always have the best equipment and produce a stable environment in which those who are on good terms with us are more economically and militarily stable. And anyone who goes against us now can’t maintain their equipment.” Then these fucks ruin a pretty good deal we had not out of ideals against our hegemony but because they think we don’t have it good enough