Stidmatt

Trump cannot get a majority in polls in Texas against Biden. Neither is losing bad enough to give a shot to a legitimate third party, but it does show that the current status quo of both parties is not enough to command a lead.

People don’t love Biden, and people don’t love Trump. They have small bases.

We must consider what type of candidate or campaign would win a large majority. Neither Biden nor Trump is that candidate.

The issue dominating the headlines is inflation because we had a spike last year. Here is the inflation graph since November 2018.

As you can see, inflation spiked to over 8% in 2022. This is the fault of spendthrift socialists like Biden, according to Faux News. We need to stop giving handouts to poor people and instead give tax cuts to hard-working billionaires.

But I lied slightly because that graph is not of the United States. This graph is of Canada. Here is what inflation looked like in the United States over the same period.

Notice how similar the graphs are? Our inflation episode is from a source bigger than the US or Canada. Inflation has been global and is bigger than what the President can control. I don’t blame Biden directly for the inflation, which started as soon as the invasion of Ukraine began.

If we look at the President’s approval rating, however, it doesn’t track inflation. Source: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/joe-biden/

President Biden had a positive approval rating until the Afghanistan withdrawal and has remained negative ever since. Being the second President to lose a war in history put him under, and there has been no major victory to bring him back to positive approval. The victories he has had since he failed in Afghanistan, after clearly stating that he did not believe the Taliban would take over, show a poor choice in foreign policy and military advisors on his part, and he has no one to blame but himself for selecting such unqualified individuals. Still, his attempts to broadcast the good things he has done have been too small to matter, and he has failed to remind Americans they even happened. Biden is a bad politician.

Having a negative approval in the first term is not unheard of either. Bill Clinton was unpopular in his first term, and then got more popular in his second term. Source: https://news.gallup.com/interactives/507569/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx

Biden can win if he sees a major victory, such as Ukraine regaining its territory or a treaty signed in Palestine recognizing their rights. Since he gets so horny over the two-state solution, the Biden administration needs to recognize the Palestinian Authority or seek other solutions. It is unlikely anything will pass through Congress, but he can still leverage power through diplomacy. Biden got into his situation through a foreign policy blunder. He can start to recover by leveraging a foreign policy victory.

Here are a few ideas on how Biden can win:

• Pass an aid package to give Ukraine the support they need to win the war by the Fall. This is half of the reason why Republicans refuse to pass a Ukraine aid bill.
• Pressure Israel to sanction Russia.
• Pressure Israel to resolve the situation in Gaza to protect civilian lives and stop sending them blank checks.
• If Israel continues to be a money laundromat for Russian oligarchs and continues their genocide in Gaza, we need to sanction them heavily.
• Negotiate an agreement with the European Union to reinstate mutual visa-free travel between our regions on the path to a customs-free zone encompassing all of the Arctic except Russia.
• Lower tensions with China and pressure them to sanction North Korea.
• If Putin loses the Ukraine War and there is a revolution in Russia, support the democratic activists so Russia can change.
• Campaign on a carbon tax and dividend. Such a policy would provide direct cash payments to families, offsetting inflation, which is now down to around 3%.
• Campaign on streamlining regulations to approve the construction of transit to save money.

There are a few pressing issues that are harder to deal with politically. The most obvious of these to me is the cost of housing. It is a simple supply and demand problem, but getting cities to build housing as fast as our population grows and people want to move to new places is a major challenge. There are a few ways the President can push cities to be more urbanist, namely giving lip service, but short of streamlining regulations so we can build transit more efficiently and ending Buy America requirements, there is little the President can do to impact housing costs and improve transit around the country.

Biden supports AMTRAK, but by not supporting the full nationalization of railroads, most of the improvements will be limited to the Northeast Corridor. This is not horrendous but falls far short of what we need.

Biden is seriously out of touch with reality on most foreign policy issues. I fear he always has been.

The most absurd thing about Biden’s entire campaign is that his website, joebiden.com, doesn’t even have an issues page. Come on, man, this is embarrassing!

The candidate I want is someone who does the following:

• Can do basic campaigning goddammit. Announce your victories loud and clear, make it clear where you stand, and stand by your values jesusfuckingchristthisissosimpleicantevenrightnow.
• Stands up to bullies domestically and abroad. This means treating Republicans, Netanyahu, and Putin equally with derision and all the respect they deserve, which is none.
• Campaign on a carbon fee and dividend to solve climate change.
• Opposes genocide in Gaza.
• Supports Ukraine.
• Is not a mercantilist.

The thing is, I like a lot of Biden’s domestic policies, from what I can remember because he doesn’t make his stances clear on his website jesusfuckingchristhowdidweelectthisguytothewhitehouseinthefirstplace. But if you don’t campaign on them, even if the majority of Americans agree with you, it does not matter.

But when it comes down to it, he is not Trump, even though Trump and Biden agree on most economic issues, immigration, and almost every foreign policy issue. Please prove me wrong, Joe. Send enough aid to Ukraine to drive the Russian horde out of Ukraine. Biden’s social values are fundamentally different from Trump’s. Trump opposes abortion rights. Biden supports abortion rights.

Biden is an institutionalist. Trump wants to upend our system.

Suppose you decide that the disasters in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Palestine are so egregious that you cannot vote for Biden. Honestly, I do not blame you. But there are many other races on the ballot this year that you do need to vote for. You need to vote in your House of Representatives election for the Democrat. Vote in the primary for the progressive who opposes Netanyahu and Putin. Ensure that if your state has a Senate election, you vote for the Democrat to prevent a Republican trifecta.

While we could do so much better than Biden, you should still vote for him despite his disastrous foreign policy. His foreign policy decisions are largely the same decisions Trump would make. But when it comes to preserving our imperfect yet functional system of government Biden offers a  path to the future. Trump repeatedly says that he won’t accept election results if he loses. His court appointments are responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. They are coming for other rights in time. CNN

There are far too many issues where Biden and Trump agree with each other while disagreeing with the American people. But there are many issues where they differ, and unfortunately, until we reform our election system and replace the Electoral College with a functional election system or elect a progressive as President, many of these issues will continue to be dominated by loud voices with lots of money contrary to what the majority of people and basic morality dictate.

Electing Trump will not get more progressives elected. If it could, Biden would not be President. The fact that Biden is President disproves accelerationism—it’s time to do what works. Vote Progressive in every primary and Democratic in the general. New Democrats are highly flawed, but they are equally better than Republicans. This is the path to electing more Progressives.

Get ranked voting everywhere. It doesn’t guarantee progressives will win, but it makes it more likely that progressive candidates can run against moderate Democrats. We need to run in every primary, everywhere, every time. We lose 100% of the races we don’t run in.

Get involved in local politics, electing people of strong moral fiber to your city, county, and state governments. If you want to have people with values in line with the majority of Americans elected who represent our values. The most common background of members of the House are previously serving in the state legislature and lobbying or activism. 44 Senators have previous experience as Representatives in the US House. 16 previously served in state Houses, 27 previously served in State Senates. 61 Senators have served in the US House or their state legislature. The other Senators are mostly former governors, state attorneys general, lieutenant governors, and mayors. The only non-appointed Democrats who did not have previous elected experience were Mark Kelly, Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, and Elizabeth Warren. All of whom are exceptional individuals.

Support policies like mandatory vacation as a right and true visa-free travel. The more people who travel abroad, the more people who have face-to-face interactions with people from other countries, and the more likely we are to have politicians and voters who understand issues beyond our borders. Interact with people from other countries and talk about politics. The United States is the most powerful country in the world. In our increasingly interconnected world, face-to-face interactions outside social media only become more important. As travel barriers continue to increase, the ability of radical extremists to push for policies like supporting genocidal regimes becomes more possible. Travel is the path to peace.

That is the only realistic path to getting people involved in politics with strong moral fiber and a good understanding of global politics. You can study international relations, I believe you should to an extent, but nothing can substitute the power of a good trip visiting places and people while interacting with locals. Learn about our world, and elect people with these qualities to your local and state governments.

Over the last 236 years, there has only been one time when a political party has won the popular vote for the Presidency 5 times in a row.

It occurred during the New Deal and World War II era under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

A party has won the popular vote for the Presidency 4 times in a row three times in history.

• The first time was during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. The Republican Party won the popular vote under the tickets of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Samuel Tilden from 1860 to 1872. Samuel Tilden lost the Electoral College but won the popular vote.
• The second time this occurred was when the Republicans won every election from 1896 through 1908 under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft.
• The Democrats have won the popular vote in the last four elections under Obama, Clinton, and Biden. If President Biden wins this year, and I hope he does, this will be the third time in American history that a party wins the popular vote five times in a row. This is the only streak in American history where a party has won the popular vote four times in a row while losing the Electoral College during their streak.

We will see if we make history in November and tie Roosevelt and Truman for the longest streak of a party winning the popular vote in American history.

So it starts with a video about Kaliningrad and how 79% of voters voted to leave Russia. It was a small turnout for the poll, but nonetheless, I believe this is important.

This leads me to look it up on wikipedia where it is called a semi-exclave.

I am a geography nerd, but this surprised me that it wouldn’t be seen simply as an exclave.

Quick definition roundup:

• Enclave: Completely surrounded by one other territory
• Exclave: Physically detached from the rest of its territory
• Semi-enclave: Would be fully contained by another except for a sea border to international waters.
• Pene-exclave: a piece of territory which borders another territory by land, and is connected to the rest of its territory by only water.
• Pene-enclave: The only way in or out except by ship is through one other country.

Then we run into an interesting definition on the Wikipedia page, List of enclaves and exclaves:

Therefore, Vinokurov applies a quantitative principle: the land boundary must be longer than the coastline.

This definition is interesting, and then we can go measure the land boundary of every exclave in the world. But the problem becomes when we measure the length of the coastline. Coastlines are fractals, and the length of any fractal is infinity. If we accept this definition, there cannot be any semi-exclaves in the world. The definition is completely non-nonsensical.

So we must disregard this, and come up with a more reasonable definition:

Semi-enclaves definition still works, a territory that borders only one other territory and international water. There are five obvious contenders at the national level:

• Brunei
• Gambia
• Monaco
• Portugal
• Ireland

Canada used to follow this definition until they drew a land border with Denmark on Hans Island.

I think we should however remove the idea of a semi-exclave. Every country counting as a semi-exclave is an exclave.

I propose a better definition: an exclave is any territory where one cannot draw a continuous line back to the capitol of the territory without leaving that territory. The capital cannot be an exclave. If they are connected via the national EEZ, then the territory in question is not an exclave.

There is such a thing as a practical exclave, such as Point Roberts, Washington, but one can travel between Point Roberts and Bellingham via a boat while staying in American territory, so it is not an exclave.

For this, we can rewrite the list using this more robust definition:

Exclaves which are not enclaves:

• Cabinda, Angola
• Kaliningrad, Russia
• Rio Muni, Equatorial Guinea
• French Guiana, France

Enclaves that are also exclaves: (fully surrounded by the territory of another country, even if part of it is a maritime border, you need to cross the sovereignty of another country before you reach international waters)

• Gibraltar

Semi-enclaves that are also exclaves: (no maritime connection to home country, only one land border with one other territory at the same level)

• Kokkina/Erenkoy, Cyprus/Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
• Oecusse, East Timor
• Musandam, Oman
• Melilla, Spain
• Alaska, USA

Semi-enclaves that are also pene-exclaves: (usually means you can get back to the capital while staying in domestic waters)

• Temburong District, Brunei
• Ras Doumera, Eritrea
• Ceuta, Spain
• Point Roberts, Washington
• St. Regis-Quebec
• Campobello Island, New Brunswick
• Magallanes Region, Chile
• Tornio, Finland

Pene-exclaves which are not enclaves:

• Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Croatia

Pene-enclaves which are also exclaves:

• Saint Pierre and Miquelon, France

These definitions make a lot more sense to me and are a lot more descriptive. Sovereignty of course does not end at the coast, and countries have every right to forbid the transit of specific goods across their maritime territory. For that reason, I believe Gibraltar is an enclave despite bordering the Strait of Gibraltar, given how it is completely surrounded by Spanish territory.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is an interesting case. It has no land connection to Canada, but there is a ferry. There is no direct flight back to France. While one could take a boat to France and never enter Canadian territory, there is no reason to do so. For all practical purposes, Saint Pierre and Miquelon is an enclave of Canada for travelers, so it deserves its own category. I believe Saint-Pierre and Miquelon is the only place in the world like this, where not only is every convenient way back to the capital city through one other country, but is also a true exclave.

Hope this makes sense.

I sent over 100 applications to jobs relevant to me yesterday. I have already received an email asking about an interview.

This shows that it is better to have one really good resume relevant to any relevant field position, which can be shot off to over 100 applications than to have ten mediocre resumes tailored and sent off to 10 identical jobs.

Job hunting comes down to two conversions… how many applications turn into interviews and how many interviews turn into offers.

If you have a 10% application-to-interview conversion rate and a 10% interview-to-offer conversion rate, you need at least 100 applications to get one offer. With EasyApply and a decent resume, I find that a 10% application-to-interview is what I get in reality.

The remaining factor is how long it takes you to do the hunt. If you don’t have a good resume, you should expect to spend up to 2 hours writing it out, reviewing it, and sending it to friends to review and give you feedback. If you already have a good resume, 10 minutes will be enough. This is a fixed cost of a job hunt.

If you go the old-fashioned Taleo path and write a new resume for every job, every job could take you 30 minutes to fill out the same form every day. If you spend 8 hours applying to jobs this way, you will submit 16 daily applications. This could lead to 1 interview and will likely end in 0 offers. It will take you almost two weeks to get to the 100 applications you need to get to the probability of getting one offer. That is a long time. That is time you didn’t spend improving your skills, time you didn’t spend making projects to share on LinkedIn. That is the ultimate price of the old fashioned model. Even if the Taleo method increases your probability of getting an interview to 20% per application due to fewer applicants, it will take you the better part of a week to get ten interviews, with only a 2% chance of having one offer. This is a bad proposition.

Instead, you have already spent between 10 minutes and 2 hours writing a good, versatile resume focused on your desired jobs. Your LinkedIn profile is strong, and if you are new, you have asked someone with more experience to read over your profile and give you recommendations. You then search for your desired job role in your desired application and only apply through EasyApply. You spend one day, and you send in over 100 applications. 10% of them call you back. You now have 10 interviews. With a 10% interview-to-offer conversion, it is the most likely way to get one true offer.

It’s just like picking stocks. You can try picking a few stocks and hoping some of them work out, but you will probably fail. It is better to buy the entire market, the equivalent of sending in over 100 EasyApply applications. As n approaches infinity, the probability you will find a good stock or get a good offer approaches 1.

That is how I hunt for jobs.

In response to this excellent video by Alan Fisher.

This is not annoying, this is utterly infuriating how Alstom is trying to prevent the expansion of rail in the United States. While I do believe that all railroads should be nationalized as a capitalist (natural monopolies cannot work as private companies, they will overcharge and under serve, and that is why we have some of the worst railroads in the developed world) hampering Brightline is not going to get us to the future I want where AMTRAK serves more communities with faster, more reliable, and frequent service (where needed) nationwide. The Mercantilist American economic system hampers our growth every step of the way, whether it is bailing out failing private monopolies when we repair private tracks, the most onerous regulations in the world which makes it impossible to build good quality rail in this country, import and export restrictions meaning we pay far more for far worse train sets than any capitalist country, and the ability of states to block AMTRAK expansion, we truly live in a less free economy than any country in the European Union.

America needs to restart all of our regulations regarding constructing rail from scratch. We need to model our system off of the rules the European Union uses.

We need to eliminate all Buy American requirements. Let the market work.

We need to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union which isn’t simply Disney trying to extend copyright laws in Europe. 70 years after the death of the author is too long anyways.

Let America build rail. Streamline excessive regulations which increase costs without protecting safety or the environment.

https://apple.news/AfoDPIElqS2mMuUQ6z3k0pQ

By refusing the establishment of an independent Palestinian State and refusing to grant Israeli citizenship to Palestinians Netanyahu makes his intentions clear.

He is not an ally of NATO. He is an ally of Russia. He does not support Ukraine. He is a far right politician.

There will never be a humane solution to the Israeli war until Likud loses power.

Yes, it’s a crazy title, but I promise it will make sense by the end of the post.

Please start by watching this video by RealLifeLore on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfjTUvzaZ7s

A major goal of the Biden administration is the CHIPS ACT, which he claims will “bring jobs back to America” and make us less dependent on other countries, namely our ally Taiwan.

The first problem with this argument is that unemployment is not a big problem. Unemployment is around 3%, historically the floor for unemployment in the United States. Our economy is very strong; we don’t need to pump money into “creating jobs” when unemployment is so low. The US government should be countercyclical at all times, and since we are in a period of declining inflation, economic growth, and low unemployment, we should not pump more money into the economy beyond the standard baseline of maintaining existing infrastructure and scientific research. Now is the time to pay off our debt. Corporate subsidies in a time with high economic growth and low unemployment will only push up inflation and worsen inequality. We need to be paying off our debt right now.

I do not believe the CHIPS ACT is about economics. I believe Biden’s economic performance is because he has surrounded himself with highly competent individuals, especially Janet Yellen.

Janet Yellen is a New Keynesian economist who backed the Inflation Reduction Act, which hopefully will set a baseline for infrastructure upkeep going into the future. But I don’t believe she supports the CHIPS ACT because, from a New Keynesian point of view, it really doesn’t make any sense beyond the investment baseload it jump-starts.

What the CHIPS ACT is really about is reducing American dependency on Taiwan so that when China invades Taiwan, the United States can sanction China without harming our ability to create computers without getting militarily involved. The CHIPS ACT is primarily a foreign policy law.

The foreign policy of the Biden administration can be summarized as so:

• Losing the War in Afghanistan, claiming he wants to focus at home and not fight the wars of other countries. Biden is only the second President in history to lose a war.
• After eight years of being a frozen conflict, Russia invaded Ukraine further. The United States failed to provide Ukraine with enough support to fully repel the much larger Russian army immediately, leading to a stalemate further into Ukrainian territory compared to the aftermath of 2014.
• China relishes America reducing trade with Taiwan through the CHIPS ACT because it will reduce the probability the United States will defend Taiwan.
• Azerbaijan has ethnically cleansed Nagorno-Karabakh.
• Over half of the deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have occurred since October, despite the war being ongoing since 1948. Israel is striking Lebanon. It is quickly turning into a regional conflict. There is very limited evidence the Biden administration will do anything except send Israel more weapons, which are blowing up entire city blocks.

Biden is a failure when it comes to foreign relations. The world has become more dangerous since he entered office. It’s mostly a continuation of Trump-era policies in terms of foreign relations, without the crass speeches.

I cannot find any plans to expand free trade agreements with other countries. We haven’t signed a new free trade agreement since 2007. We are in the process of negotiating a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom.

The main issue with the TTIP, the proposed US-EU trade agreement, is it would have mostly been trying to extend the onerous US. patent and copyright rules to the European Union without significantly improving trade for individuals. This is certainly the reason why the text was never properly released so the public could analyze the text fully.

Significant differences exist between the international trade policies of the United States, China, and the European Union. When the European Union extends free trade, it generally benefits all people in the countries involved. When the United States signs a free trade agreement, it benefits massive corporations. When China signs an agreement, it is generally the leasing of land in exchange for significant debt for the country on which they are building infrastructure.

The European Union free trade model is the best, not just because it is far more effective at being implemented but also because it is better for everyone.

This explains why the United States has free trade agreements with all countries on the Pacific coast of the Americas except Ecuador, plus the Dominican Republic, Morocco, Jordan, Israel, Oman, Bahrain, South Korea, Singapore, and China.

China has free trade agreements with ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Korea, Georgia, Singapore, Costa Rica, Peru, and Chile.

The European Union has signed treaties with Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, Kosovo, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, South Korea, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia since 2007. It already had agreements with the United Kingdom, Montenegro, Albania, Algeria, Chile, Lebanon, Egypt, North Macedonia, South Africa, Jordan, Mexico, Palestine, Faroe Islands, Morocco, Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, San Marino, Andorra, Switzerland, and Monaco. They are in the process of negotiating new free trade agreements with Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Cote d’Ivoire, Colombia, Peru, Cameroon, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Ghana, Ecuador, Canada, New Zealand, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Chile, China, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mexico, Australia, Andorra, Indonesia, Monaco, Philippines, Timor-Leste, Tonga, San Marino, and India.

The European Union’s strategy is more successful. They have more agreements today and pending free trade agreements than all of the free trade agreements of the United States and China COMBINED.

America has a lot to learn about how to build relationships successfully worldwide. If current trends continue, the 21st century is the century of the European Union.

While America dominated in the latter half of the 20th century due to large investments in education made in California, leading to Silicon Valley, we have mostly been coasting on this success for the last 30 years. We are investing more, which is a major strength of the United States, plus the fact that we have a common language. However, in the 2020s century, given how the United States looks weak militarily given the failures in Ukraine and Afghanistan, more European Union member states hit their NATO targets, according to SIPRI. If European Union member states increase their military expenditure to 3.2% of their GDP, they will collectively spend as much as the United States. They spent 1.6% collectively and could increase that to the 2% target with minimal changes to taxes or services. The country with the largest gap, Luxembourg, would need to spend approximately $1400 per person to cover its funding gap. But it’s Luxembourg; they can handle it. The second largest gap is Belgium, which has a gap of only $360 per person, which they can cover. There is no reason why European countries need to choose between meeting their NATO targets and maintaining their health and education systems.

The European Union has a GDP on par with the United States, making it an equal partner to us in terms of military capabilities. As time passes, the European Union will likely see its economic integration level out the inequalities across the union as Eastern Europe improves. This could bring them to American GDP per capita in the long term to be an equal partner in terms of per capita performance 40 years before China comes close to our level of prosperity. If The European Union succeeds in expanding free trade agreements, they will hopefully see their growth rate outpace the United States in the long term to make this possibility a reality.

The United States is sitting at a major crossroads. The European Union is getting to a point where it can act as a military force in its own right. Once their military expenditure increases to the point where it equals the United States, the need for NATO will significantly diminish. If their free trade agreements around the world succeed in boosting EU GDP growth over the next few decades, not only will they have strong relationships globally, but they will have more resources to counter Russia without being as dependent on the United States. It is obvious to me that the unwillingness of the United States to send Ukraine enough aid, especially when we send Israel everything they ask for to bomb refugee camps, all of this on top of our failure in Afghanistan and refusal to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for their actions supporting terrorism, makes America look weak on the global stage. The slowness in the movement of aid to Ukraine, which allowed Russia to attack so quickly, only further strengthens those who doubt whether America is a reliable ally. If American membership in NATO seems superfluous, military decisions might be made more through the European Union and less through NATO. If the Biden doctrine continues, the European Union might sign some agreements with Canada bypassing the United States and Turkey if we remain unreliable, making NATO irrelevant. I don’t want this to happen, but unless the United States regains its ability to be a reliable partner, this is the future we are looking at.

When it comes to the CHIPS ACT, this is a movement away from free trade. It is a movement towards a world where might makes right. It changes to a world order where America is less able to defend our allies, and our ability to muster international support for smaller democracies like Taiwan, South Korea, Georgia, and Ukraine will evaporate.

The only option for Europe with this foreign policy of the United States is to make the EU a military organization on par with the United States, significantly reducing the importance of NATO. It will isolate America globally, and if we are attacked, why should anyone defend us? China has twice the personnel of the United States. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the European Union has approximately 2.6 million military personnel, compared to 2 million in the United States. From a manpower standpoint, the European Union should be able to stand independently today. This doesn’t mean we should dissolve NATO, but it does mean that if the US was an unreliable partner, it is possible the European Union could stand on its own.

This is the road we are currently pointing towards, but it is not the world I want.

I want to live in a world where war is less common and authoritarian regimes become democracies. This was the policy of the United States and our allies for most of the 20th century, and it succeeded. Invading democracies unilaterally to create a democracy is not the best way to do this, but when there is a movement to overthrow a dictator from the people, it is right to support the democratic movement. When a government (e.g., the Taliban) is using its power to attack other countries, it is our responsibility to defend and overthrow the dictatorship if possible. It is a tricky line because democracy must start from within, but if a dictatorship is brazenly attacking its democratic neighbors (e.g., Russia), it is wrong to stay neutral. The difficulty of the Iraq war is that, yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who committed genocide against the Kurds. He was indefensible. But diverting resources from Afghanistan after we had to take out the Taliban because they were allowing al Qaeda to gain power and be a global threat was the wrong thing to do. Simply invading without nation-building will lead nowhere. In the case of Afghanistan, there was a constant flow of money from the Gulf States into the country to support terrorism, which made it nearly impossible to eliminate the Taliban. We needed to shut down all trade with the countries that sponsor terrorism or allow their citizens to send money to terrorism because it turned the Taliban into a Hydra. I believe that was our major error that made the Afghan war last far longer than needed, ending in a total victory for Wahabbism. Modern warfare is fought through trade just as much as through guns.

On top of that, we also need to make it as hard as possible for our allies to backslide after democratization. Europe and South America have the right idea: reducing travel and trade barriers while building institutions that make trade easier for everyone. This has clearly succeeded. The difficulty is that Ukraine is not at the point where it meets EU acquis but is (ignoring the invasion for a second) an extremely viable candidate for NATO membership. But for every other European democracy, the EU model has proven successful in increasing democratization and stability.

The United States has a vital role to play in this defense of our world. Is anyone so stupid as to believe that if the rest of NATO were to fall, the United States would be able to stand to a full land, sea, and air invasion from authoritarians? Al Qaeda terrorists weren’t even stopped by the State Department in 2001, which led to the 9/11 bombings. Nothing stopped the Boston bombings. Domestic terrorists, primarily white nationalists, are an even larger threat, yet very few resources are going in to counter their beliefs and arrest their leaders. The United States alone versus a unified Russian/Chinese invasion would be a stalemate. They have over twice the number of total troops as we do. All of NATO versus a Russian/Chinese invasion would be a resounding victory for democracy. The same goes for the European Union. The EU could have a stalemate by itself against an invasion, too, but unified with the United States would be a resounding victory. Especially if South Korea, Taiwan, and India came to our defense. We would defeat them not just in terms of pure manpower but also superior technology. A NATO-South Korean-Indian-Taiwanese alliance would be unstoppable. NATO goes both ways, and America is safer because of it.

If the United States values global peace, trade, and freedom, we need to strengthen NATO, defend Ukraine, shut down sponsors of terrorism, and expand NATO to include other global allies, including South Korea, India, Brazil, and Taiwan. We must also include more small democracies such as Costa Rica, Uruguay, Chile, Georgia, Armenia, etc. The two major authoritarian states today, Russia and China, would be completely unable to counteract such an alliance. There are only five states today with more than 10 million people, a GDP per capita over $5,000, and a democracy score under 4. These are Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

In contrast, there are 19 countries with a population of over 10 million, a GDP per capita of over $5000, and a democracy score of over 7. We have slightly fewer people than those five authoritarian regimes, but we crush them when it comes to GDP.

Could the United States stand on its own? Yes, but it is unfair to smaller democracies who want to survive. Not only that, but it is against the interest of the United States. We also are far stronger when we have large alliances and trade networks spanning the world, which moves us from being a poor target for authoritarians to being a suicidal target. We are less safe when authoritarian regimes can wipe out smaller democracies, whittling down our list of allies. This is a menace that needs to be stopped early.

Americans are safer when there are more democracies and when we maintain good, close relations with all democracies that respect the rights of all people within their borders.