The American Politics Thread

Don't you think it might be worth mentioning why Belarus is under sanctions? Namely, the fraudulent 2020 elections which sparked massive protests across the country, which were subsequently violently suppressed, with live rounds fired into crowds, people being tortured and sexually abused in detention, forced disappearances and all opposition figures fleeing abroad, where one of them ended up being murdered in Kyiv while another was arrested after the Belarusian air force forcibly diverted the passenger plane he was on to Minsk? Do you think the EU passively tolerating a murderous dictator on its border wouldn't embolden authoritarians the world over? Do you also think that the EU should just accept Lukashenko's weaponizing of Iraqi refugees, sending them across its western border in a hybrid warfare tactic to destabilize EU societies?

omphaloskepsis wrote: Well Biden just snubbed Hungary.  Now Hungary fears that America will interfere in it's elections.

More baloney. Again, there's a very good reason to snub Hungary at a "summit for democracy", considering the current Hungarian administration's near-complete stifling of independent press outlets, packing of the judiciary and executive with cronies and shameless gerrymandering which gave the ruling party a two-thirds majority in parliament despite winning less than 50% of votes in 2014 and 2018. Inviting Hungary to this summit would have emboldened Orbán's reelection campaign next year; not inviting Hungary weakens said campaign. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't in this case, and I personally think Biden did the Hungarian people a great service by not handing Orbán an award to flaunt at home. Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn't receive an invitation for the same reason. Polls are uncertain about whether or not Orbán will hold on to his majority in 2022, and I wouldn't be surprised if this announcement turns out to be the first step in a Trumpian strategy of undermining the legitimacy of the election in case he loses.

Do not get me wrong; the Afghanistan debacle, the lack of coordination with the EU on AUKUS, the waffling on US/NATO support for Taiwan and Ukraine, and the waiving of sanctions on Nord Stream 2 have already convinced me that Biden is doing a poor job on the international stage, but the decisions I highlighted above are absolutely the right thing to do in my eyes.

omphaloskepsis wrote: Refugees?  I do find the flooding of Refugees into Europe as a war tactic meant to destabilize sovereign nations. I don't blame Poland for not wanting the Refugees.  That said, the very same Iraqi refugees sailing into the UK or Western EU would be welcomed by the EU media.  I find it interesting that most the refugees are military age men.

If the European Commission hadn't supported Poland and Lithuania in this one specific case they would be playing into Lukashenko's game, so this is the one scenario where I cannot reasonably object to governments using repressive measures to bar refugees from their territory. I do wish to emphasize however that this wouldn't have gotten as much out of hand if the EU had a fair, comprehensive policy for the distribution of immigrants across the different member states, which is something Poland and Hungary have always vetoed within the European Council (they also vetoed a proposal that would have had them reimburse countries for taking in immigrants in their stead). The point of an alliance like the EU to me seems to be the betterment of all members and a cooperative, solidary tackling of international challenges, but this stalemate means that it's mostly been Greece and Italy who have had to bear the brunt, merely as a consequence of their unfortunate geographical location. They've been pushed to the limit; refugee camps around the Mediterranean Sea quite frankly make the detention camps on the US-Mexico border look hospitable by comparison. I fail to see the relevance of many refugees being "military age men"; it seems reasonable to me for families in countries where economies have collapsed due to warfare to send their able-bodied sons abroad to find work and hopefully be able to send money back. I don't think it's fair at all to expect those people to go fight in an extremely complicated and sectarian conflict with no real "good guys".

omphaloskepsis wrote: Biden promised America- student Loan forgiveness, Medicare for All, and a Living $15 minimum wage. That all evaporated the moment Biden was elected.

I might be looking in the wrong places but I can't find a source that confirms Biden supported Medicare for all during his campaign (although he should have and I do see his lack of support for such a principle as a failing), and as for those other things: they only evaporated when they failed to pass through Congress. I keep hearing people say that Biden should have prodded Democratic senators more, but I don't really see what concrete action he could have taken to secure these measures. He has very little leverage over someone like Joe Manchin, who has far more to fear from a Republican challenger in his very conservative state than from any Democratic primary challengers who could "out-left" him.

omphaloskepsis wrote: Hungry and Poland would like to keep their local government rules and laws. Many Hungarians and Polish citizens don't want the EU laws to usurp their own laws. This is why I believe there is a 50/50 chance- that within the next 12 years-  Hungary or Poland may attempt to Exit the EU.

Poland and Hungary biting back at the EU is mostly posturing on their part. They both rake in billions of Euros every year for infrastructure, social development and so on (although in the case of Hungary most of it instead gets embezzled or spent on vanity projects by the prime minister and his kleptocratic clique at whose mercy the country has fallen) so it goes very directly against their financial interest to actually follow through on their threats and leave the EU. It's not for no reason that the population of Poland for example is overwhelmingly pro-European. The problem is that the governments of these countries want to have their cake and eat it too: you can't agree to receive financial support from the EU only to then refuse to conform to the union's shared values and principles on democracy and rule of law. Their anti-immigration stance is not relevant in this case; it's their actions to undermine their own checks and balances that are the main cause for their conflict with the European Commission, and why the European Parliament voted that they be sanctioned.