u/limonfiesta — limonfiesta

...and how will that be disseminated? That's what organizations like VOA and USAID were for.

Trump has the capacity to destroy organizations, but I find it doubtful he could recreate them out of whole cloth.

That's my point.

America cannot dominate the world militarily, nor could that even serve the goals of its contemporary brand of neoimperialism.

Soft power i.e. culture, propaganda, and diplomatic/idealogical relationships, are the foundation upon which it's built.

Yes, military hard power plays a critical role, but it cannot replace soft power.

This isn't empire for the sake of raw nationalism, and nothing would accelerate the American collapse faster than dismantling the state's soft power tools. The end result will be attempts to maintain power by spending its military resources on peer, or near peer conflicts.

That's an incredibly myopic take that confuses correlation with causation.

These moves may benefit Putin, but Russia isn't the only county to benefit. Infact, Russia is in a historically weak position to fill gaps left by a receding American empire.

I'd wager that China is likely to see much more geopolitical gains because they have the resources and capacity to take advantage of the situation.

I'm not saying Putin won't benefit, just pointing out how limiting it is to view Trump through a singular lens.

I don't understand the naysayers here.

This is hilarious. Trump wants to simultaneously expand the American empire, while he dismantles the tools of it that he's too stupid to understand the importance of.

No matter their mission statement, or any tangible benefits they might have provided, both USAID and VOA, were tools of empire. These aren't mutually exclusive concepts.