I find you to be a very honest actor when it comes to economic policy but you have an obvious blindspot for Israel. You are 100% correct that Israel wants to fight their own wars. But they do this with the threat of US intervention looming and seemingly unlimited US support. Political, economic and military. Our military has gone to war due in part to fight wars Israel pushed (Iraq 2 - see Bibi testimony to Congress as an “expert”). There is a clear line from likudniks to US neocons. MAGA does not support this pre-emptive war. Americans don’t support US intervention or putting service members at risk.
“There is an internal coherence here, to be sure. From within this worldview, anything less than an all-out defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression is a dereliction of duty that risks untold (and, admittedly, unspecified) calamities.”
Another error. We must defend Ukraine because we said we would in exchange for them giving up the nuclear weapons they got when the Soviet Union collapsed. We made a commitment. You do understand commitment, right?
Its astonishing that this guy actually thought typing the words "unspecified calamities" when describing Russian atrocities to Ukraine was something that would strengthen his argument. They are anything but "unspecified." Its women and children being bombed in their apartment complexes in Kiev. Its Ukrainian children being kidnapped and brought into Russia. Its death and destruction at the hands of an aggressor who illegally invaded a neighboring country.
“ Other countries, believing they could not rely upon the U.S., would begin rebuilding their own capabilities.”
I think that this is different in the case of China and the nations around the South China Sea. The risk isn’t that they will build their own capabilities. Rather, what their leaders are going to do are to weigh the costs and benefits of rebuilding their own capabilities so as to be able to maintain some level of independence from China, and the costs and benefits of becoming clients of China. The danger is that too many countries choose to become clients of China, and then the US becomes the pariah state, as opposed to the other way around.
The non-nuclear countries of Asia are already in a position where they cannot defend themselves against China on their own, and it is questionable that they could win against China even with the US’ full support. The US has a very compelling interest in keeping together a US led alliance in South and East Asia, because the demise of such a system will either result in Chinese hegemony or the proliferation of nuclear weapons and substantially increased risk that someone attempts a nuclear strike on the US.
Totally agree with this - drawing parallels between Israel/Iran and China in east Asia is a bit too much in my view. There's a clear forward-looking interest in the US keeping a large stake in the latter and balancing strongly against Chinese attempts to dominate the region. And Japan is a much stronger and more committed military partner than Germany is (having let its military degrade massively in almost all respects since the end of the cold war) so it doesn't make much sense to put them in the same basket.
Israel - a country roughly the size of New Hampshire - has received the most cumulative military aid from the U.S since 1948. Yet somehow Oren thinks this makes Israel the textbook example of an "America First" foreign policy. NATO allies, like Germany on the other hand, which have received less cumulative aid over the same post-war period, are not "America First."
Oren never bothers to tackle the question of what it would actually look like to "scale out" the "America First" policy we've apparently adopted with Israel to other allies. The U.S funds about 20-25% of Israel's annual military spending. Shouldn't other countries, with far larger land-masses than Israel, benefit from the same largesse? If its "America First" for Israel, then why not extend this to other countries?
I would point out that Israel did target and kill individual leaders including the lead in negotiations with the US. I get the generals and the scientists, but Israel did just undermine our efforts to reach a peaceful end to nuclear issue. Pretty clearly a F*** You to DJT. The claim that Israel defends itself is specious, it uses a lot of US supplied weapons. We also engaged actively in their defense by shooting down incoming missles. At what point does the anti-blob just become another elite blob?
A rational, and realist (in the political sense) piece on foreign policy. However, I would remind Oren that there was a nuclear deal in place before the Trump administration tore it up in 2018. This unilateral withdrawal out of a multilateral agreement has, amongst other things, lead us to today’s full blown war.
Poor poor Oren. How desperately he wants a real policy making job like Jason and Larry:). After Bibi, like Vlad and Xi before him, cucks Don again, Oren is quick with the excuses. Meanwhile Don, the founder of Oren's "new" right and the leader of the modern political establishment, deploys Marines and masked thugs on American streets. Oh yeah, he's also staging a military parade in honor of himself:). All while pocketing hundreds of millions in corrupt loot from his meme coin scam. And let's recall, Oren's leader staged an armed insurrection and perpetuates the big lie, the worst acts ever committed by a US president. I'd feel sorry for Oren if he wasn't yet another obsequious right fringe elite that's brought us to this point. Shame on him. He's just another Mitch McConnell, an establishment elite afraid to tell the truth. It's time for a new "new" right. The current one, ten years on, is merely a cult of Don.
Cass creating a carve out for Israel while lumping other recipients of U.S military aid - namely Germany and Japan - into the "foreign policy blob" is about as elitist as it gets. No country in my lifetime comes anywhere close to Israel in terms of influence over U.S foreign policy and military spending. The Pro-Israel lobby has had a stranglehold on U.S politics for 80 years.
I strongly suspect, though I do not know, that much of the ordinance used to attack Iran was paid for by the U.S. Even if we don’t put boots on the ground, we provide enormous sums of money and support for Israel’s military. This morning we read that U.S. fighters and missiles are being used to thwart Iran’s counterattack. If Iran decides to target U.S. military assets, it will be tragic but it is understandable. I’m with you that the U.S. needs to stay out of foreign wars. I differ from you on believing we are doing so under Trump. The U.S. response would have been no different under Biden, and that is my concern.
“This is when I called my gracious host a racist for suggesting that Germans could not help but behave like Nazis, and he tried to explain “this is not me saying Germans will do it… I didn’t say they’ll become that,” which is of course exactly what he had just said. A good time was had by all.”
Yeah. No. You got that one wrong, Orin, Stewart was quoting a book. You should know better.
Well, this didn't age well at all. 4 days into this war - which supposedly is "America First" because the U.S isn't participating - Trump has now put an ultimatum on the table which by necessity would mean the U.S gets involved. He's stated that Iran has to either negotiate a deal or be forced to abandon their nuclear program entirely. The only way the latter happens is if the U.S starts flying B-2 bombers with bunker busting munitions. Trump then made an additional threat by saying "everybody should immediately evacuate Tehran." These are not the words of a president who is delegating the execution of this conflict entirely to Israel.
The problem with Oren and his ilk are they try to reverse engineer Trump's incoherent, unpredictable, unprincipled actions into a consistent ideology. "America First" means nothing to Trump - or, perhaps more accurately, it means whatever he needs or wants it to mean at any given time. So people like Oren try to intellectualize Trump's insanity and then watch as he saws the branch off behind them. Every. Single. Time.
I think, the idea is that Israel is an American ally is an absurd. Israel is a parasite, which knows exploit America very well. ISrael does nto help America in any way, not is in any kind of binding alliance, nothing. It just receive military and diplomatic aid from US giving nothing in return.
Shared values? Israel national narrative is medieval messianic Jewish suprematism. Just for a moment. The country prohibit Jews from working on Saturdays, does not allow import of non-kosher meat, does not recognize non-jewish marriages and so on. 80% of Israel legal code will be denied by american courts. What shared valued are we talking about?
The American Compass critique of the private equity is timely and well directed. But supporting that critique by reference to the underperformance of the sector relative to the public market does not help the argument. The public market performance in the last 5 years was driven by 7 companies, maybe 15. The rest too underperformed it as would any investment outside the tech sector elite enterprises, which itself is a combination of real technological
progress, monopolistic power and narrative flywheel. The public market is hardly a benchmark also because it has become unmoored from fundamentals and largely operates as a universe of speculative tokens in its own right. PE, VC and SPX are all responsible for today's capitalism's flaws, and the former two are impossible without the latter one, which is the final destination of the private capital placements.
Suppose Israel cannot destroy Iran's underground nuclear weapons program with the conventional 2000 pound bombs in her possession, which we have supplied her with. Assuming our 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs might do the trick (I have no idea on this point), in Oren's opinion would it be better to: (a) supply Israel with these particular munitions along with the means to deliver them (ie, heavy bombers; (b) do the job ourselves; or (c) force Israel to resort to very small tactical nuclear weapons as the only practical means at her disposal to solve the problem? This is an honest question. I don't know the answer.
So shouldn't we keep it flowing for Ukraine?First, Ukraine fights for itself.Second,any investment is a lot cheaper than putting us or NATO ( u know Oren that alliance for shared defense). Lastly,do u think these threats can go ignored?We bought this influence so now let the kids grow up and they can pay off their loans later ! But at least give them a fighting chance.
I find you to be a very honest actor when it comes to economic policy but you have an obvious blindspot for Israel. You are 100% correct that Israel wants to fight their own wars. But they do this with the threat of US intervention looming and seemingly unlimited US support. Political, economic and military. Our military has gone to war due in part to fight wars Israel pushed (Iraq 2 - see Bibi testimony to Congress as an “expert”). There is a clear line from likudniks to US neocons. MAGA does not support this pre-emptive war. Americans don’t support US intervention or putting service members at risk.
“There is an internal coherence here, to be sure. From within this worldview, anything less than an all-out defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression is a dereliction of duty that risks untold (and, admittedly, unspecified) calamities.”
Another error. We must defend Ukraine because we said we would in exchange for them giving up the nuclear weapons they got when the Soviet Union collapsed. We made a commitment. You do understand commitment, right?
Its astonishing that this guy actually thought typing the words "unspecified calamities" when describing Russian atrocities to Ukraine was something that would strengthen his argument. They are anything but "unspecified." Its women and children being bombed in their apartment complexes in Kiev. Its Ukrainian children being kidnapped and brought into Russia. Its death and destruction at the hands of an aggressor who illegally invaded a neighboring country.
“ Other countries, believing they could not rely upon the U.S., would begin rebuilding their own capabilities.”
I think that this is different in the case of China and the nations around the South China Sea. The risk isn’t that they will build their own capabilities. Rather, what their leaders are going to do are to weigh the costs and benefits of rebuilding their own capabilities so as to be able to maintain some level of independence from China, and the costs and benefits of becoming clients of China. The danger is that too many countries choose to become clients of China, and then the US becomes the pariah state, as opposed to the other way around.
The non-nuclear countries of Asia are already in a position where they cannot defend themselves against China on their own, and it is questionable that they could win against China even with the US’ full support. The US has a very compelling interest in keeping together a US led alliance in South and East Asia, because the demise of such a system will either result in Chinese hegemony or the proliferation of nuclear weapons and substantially increased risk that someone attempts a nuclear strike on the US.
Totally agree with this - drawing parallels between Israel/Iran and China in east Asia is a bit too much in my view. There's a clear forward-looking interest in the US keeping a large stake in the latter and balancing strongly against Chinese attempts to dominate the region. And Japan is a much stronger and more committed military partner than Germany is (having let its military degrade massively in almost all respects since the end of the cold war) so it doesn't make much sense to put them in the same basket.
Israel - a country roughly the size of New Hampshire - has received the most cumulative military aid from the U.S since 1948. Yet somehow Oren thinks this makes Israel the textbook example of an "America First" foreign policy. NATO allies, like Germany on the other hand, which have received less cumulative aid over the same post-war period, are not "America First."
Oren never bothers to tackle the question of what it would actually look like to "scale out" the "America First" policy we've apparently adopted with Israel to other allies. The U.S funds about 20-25% of Israel's annual military spending. Shouldn't other countries, with far larger land-masses than Israel, benefit from the same largesse? If its "America First" for Israel, then why not extend this to other countries?
Jews think they’re the chosen ones to whom the rules don’t apply.
I would point out that Israel did target and kill individual leaders including the lead in negotiations with the US. I get the generals and the scientists, but Israel did just undermine our efforts to reach a peaceful end to nuclear issue. Pretty clearly a F*** You to DJT. The claim that Israel defends itself is specious, it uses a lot of US supplied weapons. We also engaged actively in their defense by shooting down incoming missles. At what point does the anti-blob just become another elite blob?
A rational, and realist (in the political sense) piece on foreign policy. However, I would remind Oren that there was a nuclear deal in place before the Trump administration tore it up in 2018. This unilateral withdrawal out of a multilateral agreement has, amongst other things, lead us to today’s full blown war.
Poor poor Oren. How desperately he wants a real policy making job like Jason and Larry:). After Bibi, like Vlad and Xi before him, cucks Don again, Oren is quick with the excuses. Meanwhile Don, the founder of Oren's "new" right and the leader of the modern political establishment, deploys Marines and masked thugs on American streets. Oh yeah, he's also staging a military parade in honor of himself:). All while pocketing hundreds of millions in corrupt loot from his meme coin scam. And let's recall, Oren's leader staged an armed insurrection and perpetuates the big lie, the worst acts ever committed by a US president. I'd feel sorry for Oren if he wasn't yet another obsequious right fringe elite that's brought us to this point. Shame on him. He's just another Mitch McConnell, an establishment elite afraid to tell the truth. It's time for a new "new" right. The current one, ten years on, is merely a cult of Don.
Cass creating a carve out for Israel while lumping other recipients of U.S military aid - namely Germany and Japan - into the "foreign policy blob" is about as elitist as it gets. No country in my lifetime comes anywhere close to Israel in terms of influence over U.S foreign policy and military spending. The Pro-Israel lobby has had a stranglehold on U.S politics for 80 years.
Jewish narcissism at work.
The US is an ally of Israel. Israel is not an ally of the US.
Really really fine line your walking there. It smells more and more of a neocon foreign policy. Only with more lies
I strongly suspect, though I do not know, that much of the ordinance used to attack Iran was paid for by the U.S. Even if we don’t put boots on the ground, we provide enormous sums of money and support for Israel’s military. This morning we read that U.S. fighters and missiles are being used to thwart Iran’s counterattack. If Iran decides to target U.S. military assets, it will be tragic but it is understandable. I’m with you that the U.S. needs to stay out of foreign wars. I differ from you on believing we are doing so under Trump. The U.S. response would have been no different under Biden, and that is my concern.
Don’t bother the little Zionist with facts.
“This is when I called my gracious host a racist for suggesting that Germans could not help but behave like Nazis, and he tried to explain “this is not me saying Germans will do it… I didn’t say they’ll become that,” which is of course exactly what he had just said. A good time was had by all.”
Yeah. No. You got that one wrong, Orin, Stewart was quoting a book. You should know better.
Well, this didn't age well at all. 4 days into this war - which supposedly is "America First" because the U.S isn't participating - Trump has now put an ultimatum on the table which by necessity would mean the U.S gets involved. He's stated that Iran has to either negotiate a deal or be forced to abandon their nuclear program entirely. The only way the latter happens is if the U.S starts flying B-2 bombers with bunker busting munitions. Trump then made an additional threat by saying "everybody should immediately evacuate Tehran." These are not the words of a president who is delegating the execution of this conflict entirely to Israel.
The problem with Oren and his ilk are they try to reverse engineer Trump's incoherent, unpredictable, unprincipled actions into a consistent ideology. "America First" means nothing to Trump - or, perhaps more accurately, it means whatever he needs or wants it to mean at any given time. So people like Oren try to intellectualize Trump's insanity and then watch as he saws the branch off behind them. Every. Single. Time.
I think, the idea is that Israel is an American ally is an absurd. Israel is a parasite, which knows exploit America very well. ISrael does nto help America in any way, not is in any kind of binding alliance, nothing. It just receive military and diplomatic aid from US giving nothing in return.
Shared values? Israel national narrative is medieval messianic Jewish suprematism. Just for a moment. The country prohibit Jews from working on Saturdays, does not allow import of non-kosher meat, does not recognize non-jewish marriages and so on. 80% of Israel legal code will be denied by american courts. What shared valued are we talking about?
The American Compass critique of the private equity is timely and well directed. But supporting that critique by reference to the underperformance of the sector relative to the public market does not help the argument. The public market performance in the last 5 years was driven by 7 companies, maybe 15. The rest too underperformed it as would any investment outside the tech sector elite enterprises, which itself is a combination of real technological
progress, monopolistic power and narrative flywheel. The public market is hardly a benchmark also because it has become unmoored from fundamentals and largely operates as a universe of speculative tokens in its own right. PE, VC and SPX are all responsible for today's capitalism's flaws, and the former two are impossible without the latter one, which is the final destination of the private capital placements.
Suppose Israel cannot destroy Iran's underground nuclear weapons program with the conventional 2000 pound bombs in her possession, which we have supplied her with. Assuming our 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs might do the trick (I have no idea on this point), in Oren's opinion would it be better to: (a) supply Israel with these particular munitions along with the means to deliver them (ie, heavy bombers; (b) do the job ourselves; or (c) force Israel to resort to very small tactical nuclear weapons as the only practical means at her disposal to solve the problem? This is an honest question. I don't know the answer.
Spam.
So shouldn't we keep it flowing for Ukraine?First, Ukraine fights for itself.Second,any investment is a lot cheaper than putting us or NATO ( u know Oren that alliance for shared defense). Lastly,do u think these threats can go ignored?We bought this influence so now let the kids grow up and they can pay off their loans later ! But at least give them a fighting chance.