Comment on YSK: Europe Can Wreak HAVOC On America Without Firing a Bullet.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 17 hours agoDid they make this threat before? I never heard it if they did. Yeah, a threat is only good as long as the other party believes you’re going to act on it, so if they did threaten it before then they should. However, again, this isn’t going to prevent anything, except for making them believe your threats are good. What good will come out of them taking this action? (By this, I don’t mean collapsing the US economy, which will hurt a lot of people. I mean, does it prevent harm.)
I don’t believe I contradicted myself. Could you point out how? I’m not sure how abducting Moduro is related to this. However, I do believe he’s been saying we should remove him for a long time, though I think most people ignored it because it would have been seen as crazy, and gets mixed up with all his other insane ramblings. I don’t know the relevance of this question though.
MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 16 hours ago
Trump didn’t specify how we would remove Maduro in the same way its pointless for Europe to specify exactly how they could or would retaliate. Its more than enough for there to be multiple options to make them all valid when it comes time to say “we warned you”.
Please don’t confuse my enthusiasm for one option that’s been shown to be possible and devestating, for me saying this is the only option Europe should consider. On the contrary, I’m just wishing they would pick an option that matters and run with it already. All they’ve done is show their belly like a submissive dog.
They don’t even appear to care about plausible deniability any more. Arresting Gaza protestors is just such a good, strong-arm look for going against Trump. Fear of Europe must be why so many churches in my area are flying Israeli flags at the moment.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
That’s not a contradiction. If you have to follow through on your threat then it failed to achieve its goal. Usually it’s not a desired outcome. It doesn’t gain you a thing. It still needs to be done though or your threats will be ignored.
It depends on the context, but usually no. There needs to be clear boundaries where the threat becomes acted upon for it to be effective most of the time.
This is exactly my point. This threat was just made up. It can’t be used retroactively. That’s not how things work. They need to set boundaries, then execute it if the lines are crossed. If you set boundaries that have already been crossed then what are you trying to gain?
MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 11 minutes ago
You think the boundaries weren’t spelled out? I mean, we all know “international law” is a joke 1st world countries ignore versus their own actions and the rest of the world, but versus eachother? “Don’t fuck with us and we won’t fuck with you” is stupidly over-defined.
The same for the financial enmeshment that sees this threat well-inside the realm of potential reality. Europe never promised not to sell these debts. The fact the US can’t complain about it if they do is part of what makes it a good threat. Are you not familiar with “soft power”, like, at all?