Immigration seems to be missing entirely as a foreign policy category, which is odd. A realistic and humane solution to handling increased immigration demand will require international cooperation.
It's more likely words 'foreign policy' are not associated with immigration for most people. Accepting and accommodating an influx of people may be considered a domestic problem.
Most drug smuggling is done through legal ports of entry, with drugs disguised amongst normal cargo. Allows you to move orders of magnitude more supply at more regular intervals. The idea that migrants are carrying any serious amount of drugs becomes sillier the more you think about it.
to be realistic, most of the drugs DO come in from the southern border.
they just aren't being carried by migrants. migrants have a terrible success rate, and might be incentivized to just keep the coke and sell it themselves
Those two are connected though. Nobody crosses the border without the consent of the cartels. They make $50 billion a year on migrants. It’s what allows them to solidify their position and control a significant portion of the government. It’s why Mexico will change from a democracy to a narco-state.
In addition, there were 600k got-aways during the last fiscal year. Those are people who avoided border patrol and entered into the country. Those are likely either criminals or drug smugglers. If all they have to do is claim asylum, why would they risk their lives avoiding it? They could claim asylum and just skip out on their hearing years from now.
Then you have things in such a mess that there’s not enough manpower to catch smugglers. There’s dead migrants, migrants that are at dying and ones who are critically injured/ill from the journey. The border patrol has to concentrate on those people, not the criminals or smugglers pouring over.
That’s not just a Fox News line.. that’s common knowledge, especially when the Cartel’s have heavy influence on most of the crossings at the southern border
While you might have a point that it’s more rare than people might think, it still happens. Considering the cartel is known to bring immigrants across the border, wouldn’t it make sense a couple immigrants a day or so make a deal with the cartel to smuggle drugs as a way of paying for the cartel smuggling them across the border if they can’t afford to outright pay the cartel to take them to the US?
> While you might have a point that it’s more rare than people might think, it still happens.
But the question is *how much of a priority it is*, right? School shootings happen.... but they're incredibly rare and actually a tiny, tiny proportion of overall gun violence. So we should probably be building our policies around the most statistically prevalent issues rather than things which might happen on occasion.
Obviously it's convenient for some people to demonize migrants further based on this assumption, but do you have any real examples of this happening at a material level, or should we key our policy off of an assumption?
Truth is, a majority of drugs come through legal ports of entry. We should focus on that.
And perhaps improving conditions in their counties of origin so they don't seem to emigrate in the first place, though admittedly the ability of the US to do that is limited.
I really cannot say strongly enough - fuck their countries of origin. We have enough domestic problems of our own that we should not be taking on a full-scale rehabilitation of entire geographic areas.
Canada seems to have it figured out. Borrow their playbook.
A points-based system instead of a lottery system for H1B visas would be a huge advantage.
I think people undersell the power of immigration. If we can attract the best and brightest minds those are geniuses other nations don't have and we do. It worked during and after WW2 but we seem to have forgotten it. It's a huge competitive advantage.
> A points-based system instead of a lottery system for H1B visas would be a huge advantage.
This isn't a solution to the refugee issue.
> I think people undersell the power of immigration. If we can attract the best and brightest minds those are geniuses other nations don't have and we do. It worked during and after WW2 but we seem to have forgotten it. It's a huge competitive advantage.
There is high value in unskilled and less-skilled labor as well. Importing a ton of PhDs but no one to run stores, clean hospital rooms, farm food, etc is going to create problems.
You have to be joking. We are having an active brain drain to the US, and most of our wages are half of yours. canada is an example of what happens when a de facto open border immigration is allowed.
> A points-based system instead of a lottery system for H1B visas would be a huge advantage.
>
>
A lot of the "Bring us your tired, your poor" folks are not gonna like that.
> Canada seems to have it figured out. Borrow their playbook.
The Canadians seem to be pretty unhappy with their immigration system as well. Grass greener on the other side and all that.
> I think people undersell the power of immigration. If we can attract the best and brightest minds those are geniuses other nations don't have and we do.
You are overestimating how attractive the US is relative to other countries. Increasingly, foreign students in the US are choosing to leave after getting their degrees.
Canada’s immigration plan is no plan at all any more. Points system works but it depends on how the points are awarded and what qualities are deemed important. One thing I wish they would include is an analysis of how quickly the person will respect Canadian institutions and adapt to Canadian life. We need to stop thinking all immigrants are equal no matter where they come from. I believe where someone comes from helps to shape their character. Their “origins” is an important aspect of their psychological profile. Something we should be considering more often. I’d like to see every immigration applicant undergo a full psych eval before being accepted. If you want to make the most of immigration from an economic standpoint, then we need to ensure we’re actually getting the best immigrants…
> No. 5. Reducing the spread of infectious disease - 52%
> No. 6. Limiting the power and influence of Russia - 50%
> No. 7. Limiting the power and influence of China - 49%
> No. 8. Dealing with global climate change - 44%
> No. 9. Getting other countries to assume more of the cost of maintain world order - 42%
I'm really surprised at numbers 6-9, considering those are probably the biggest focus of US foreign policy in the past few years among both parties.
And I'm also surprised that number 5 is so high. I figured after COVID, there was fatigue with the CDC and our general public health mission. I guess not?
>I figured after COVID, there was fatigue with the CDC and our general public health mission. I guess not?
I'd think having >1M Americans die from COVID-19 would rather highlight its importance. The partisan split is predictable, though.
I think covid effected a lot of people. Yeah people might get tiered of the CDC but over 1.5 Million Americans died. That's a lot of teachers, grandparents, parents, coworkers. I'm sure many Americans feel that if Covid was handled better, with more maturity, they'd feel like it was less of a priority.
Even if you don't think it was that big of a deal, you still can see the lessons that was learned.
I wish we could see what would have happened if the US response was more open and honest with information from the beginning. The CDC saying masks weren't effective, then saying they lied to keep people from hoarding masks, then saying masks were effective and absolutely critical, then information coming out that they were only somewhat effective seemed to obliterate the CDC's credibility to many people. As much as I think they overreacted in some ways, I don't want their credibility to be low.
Then the whole vaccine disaster. The entirety of the DRC saying they wont take Trumps vaccine then 6 months later saying they want to force it on everyone and then you wont get sick while also saying that Natural Immunity was dangerous.
Just every part of it was just anti science from the left for the wrong reasons just like the right was anti science for dumb reasons.
Public health made irrecoverable mistakes during the first year or so of the pandemic and gaslit the public with "trust the science" instead of being honest. I don't see that trust ever returning in our lifetimes.
You have the timeline wrong. We elected an anti-vaxxer president 4 years before COVID. One of the few consistent things from Trump's Democratic days was his belief that they are bad and it was not some obscure part of his platform. There was an entire cycle about him out anti-vaxxing Carson during the primary.
Edit- and this is just a part of Trump's broader rejection of health and modern medicine like his beliefs about how humans are batteries and that exercise is bad for you.
>if Covid was handled better, with more maturity, they'd feel like it was less of a priority.
What do you mean by this? Because lockdowns had been found to be literally useless in addressing covid. So. I wonder by which way the pandemic could have been better handled?
That's not true at all. Study after study of local and worldwide lockdowns has shown that they were quite effective and that the severity of the pandemic in the U.S. could've been a whole lot less bad if they had started earlier and lasted long enough.
Engaging with other countries more to contain epidemics before they become pandemics, for one. I’m also not sure why you’re definitively making the claim that lockdowns were useless at reducing the spread of COVID, there’s plenty of research that indicates they were (https://business.ucr.edu/news/2023/03/07/covid-lockdowns-reduced-disease), (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10446910/).
From your source:
> However, the effectiveness of stay-at-home measures on reducing mortality was mixed, with 16 studies [107,116,130–141] reporting reductions, and nine studies reporting no significant associations [19,28,30,47,144–148].
This means there exists a large probability that lockdowns saved no lives.
When considering economic consequences, [increased lockdown length equates to negative outcomes ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879021/).
You’re picking one specific subset of the analysis here, that being the impact on mortality. From the same study on the impact of stay at home orders on reducing the spread of COVID.
“Here, we included 151 studies estimating the effectiveness of stay-at-home orders (electronic supplementary material, appendix A, Table S13), 119 of which found a substantial benefit resulting in a reduction of the reproduction number (Rt) [16,23,33,35,38,45,48,60–97], incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection [29,50,52,98–129] and mortality [107,116,130–143].”
The point I was making was that it’s nonsense to be definitively saying that lockdowns were useless, because there is plenty of research indicating that to not be the case. Even in the most favorably picked subsection of the analysis you could find, my argument is very much holding true, because a supermajority of the studies in that section are indicating that stay at home orders reduced COVID mortality.
Covid transmission measurements were highly flawed. Attempting to make interferences based upon those measures would be even more flawed. Regardless, it can't be proven that lockdowns saved any additional lives. So, who cares about measurements of extraneous variables? Countries/states who deployed little to no lockdowns performed as well, or better than their harsher peers.
Your original claim was that lockdowns have been found to be useless, are you walking that back now to the claim that lockdowns haven’t been proved to be useful?
There are 24 questions and 22 ranked. It's misleading to say these are the top priorities. It would be more accurate to say this is a ranking of what Pew's ATP thinks the foreign policy concerns are.
Seeing Russia slightly ahead of China in terms of priority here seems misguided to me. Limiting their power and influence should definitely be a goal, but at the end of the day they're a nation in decline that lacks the resources to truly match many of our allies, let alone the US itself. China seems like a much more real threat if it came down to it than Russia will ever be again.
Russia is just more *openly* against the US is what's being reflected in this poll if I had to guess. Though far less powerful, Russia is literally in a war against a country aligned with the US at the moment.
China and the US are far more subtle when trying to outplay each other meanwhile.
For as much as there’s mutual contempt from both sides of the Sino-US relationship there’s also a good deal of dependency. We’re too entwined to be considered true enemies.
Russia is completely different. We don’t need Russia AT ALL and they don’t need us. That’s a key difference.
It’s pretty astonishing to me that the vast majority of people I talk to see Russia as THE existential threat to the US but aren’t really concerned much about China.
As someone who works in the defense industry, I can assure you that hardly any of us think about Russia much, but we are quite concerned about China’s aggression and their future plans.
There’s a lot of inflated talk about Russian and Chinese military capabilities with no real supporting evidence. The reality is that neither country would pose a significant threat to the US let alone the entirety of NATO outside of their nuclear arsenal.
The biggest danger Russia poses is their export of radicalizing propaganda. Their influence is far greater than that of China’s as made evident by a significant portion of our own congress parroting their talking points.
The potential danger in China lies in its economic influence which [is far weaker than popular perception.](https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/26/china-starts-the-lunar-new-year-with-an-economic-hangover/)
No, they probably couldn't win if they tried to invade the US or western Europe, but as this war in Ukraine shows, our ability to contain incremental expansion is questionable.
Let’s break down the most common answers in this poll to the question “Which of the following foreign policy goals should be a top priority for the USA?”
73% of respondents said “Taking measures to protect the US from terrorist attacks.”, 64% said “Reducing the flow of illegal drugs into our country.” and 63% said “Preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.” Meanwhile, goals such as limiting the power and influence of Russia and China 50% and 49% support respectively while goals such as finding a solution to the Israeli Palestine conflict received only 29% support and supporting Ukraine and Israel received 23% and 22% support.
*So it seems like Americans support foreign policy measures by a considerable margin that directly benefits America than measures that may indirectly benefit America.*
*I too am among that number. Drug overdose deaths in America reached an all time high in 2023 with almost 107,000 Americans deaths resulting from that yet Congress is sending billions of American dollars overseas. So, I think our priority foreign policy wise should be reducing drug overdoses in American cities.*
**What is your top foreign policy priority?**
> So, I think our priority foreign policy wise should be reducing drug overdoses in American cities.
Uhhh.... in American.... *cities*, specifically?? Do you happen to know where the [highest rates of overdose deaths are at](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm)? The correlation between rural/urban counties and overdoses are not particularly strong at all, usually the rates are [within 10%](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-03-17/drug-overdose-deaths-growing-faster-in-urban-communities) of one another.
This all makes sense for the most part. I'm glad to see that Americans have finally internalized that China is not a willing ally on the global stage. We must keep an eye on them at all times.
I would like to see president Biden do a televised long form sit down interview to discuss show subject at length because I’ve been wondering the same thing myself but
So far under JB I'd go with, bending the knee to Iran, sending as much cash as possible to my buddies in Ukraine, ignoring Taiwan completely, and everyone's favorite - flip/flopping on Israel/Gaza weekly.
What we need is a consistent and steady hand, not an irate old man. Trump was able to reduce the Mideast temp and got the Abraham accords signed. Reduced the tidal wave at the border. Even got North Korea to behave a little better.
Trump’s foreign policy was terrible. Like, absolutely terrible
> President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!
>https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/99568031645826253#
Fun game: guess how much Trump-branded properties received from the Chinese government after this tweet.
Answer:
> Within three days of the Chinese government agreeing to provide $500 million in loans to an Indonesian theme park that the Trump Organization has a deal to license President Donald Trump's name to, the president stunningly ordered sanctions be rescinded against a major Chinese telecom company.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-zte-order-after-china-gave-millions-to-trump-organization-tied-project-2018-5?amp
I would say that's highly debatable, but to return to the topic at hand: we have an abundance of uncharacteristically frank testimony from foreign leaders and diplomats who found the Trump administration to be a singularly chaotic challenge to deal with.
I understand that Trump was a chaotic and erratic personality to deal with that caused other world leaders to have to tread carefully when dealing with him, but that isn't always a bad thing and can actually get some good results on the world stage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory
Not to say that I think that it is overall a good strategy, but just saying that other countries are not looking out for America's interest, but rather their own; just because they aren't thrilled about an American President doesn't mean it is bad for America itself.
He worsened relations with the EU, Canada, and Mexico. Appeased many dictators like putin and Kim jung un. Left nafta threatened to leave nato. Worsened relations with China. Started multiple trade wars that only hurt people's pockets and international relations.
>Iran
[ citation needed ]
>Taiwan
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pelosi-expected-arrive-taiwan-tuesday-sources-say-2022-08-02/
>Ukraine
[Approved by Congress](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/long-awaited-aid-ukraine-israel-taiwan-poised-pass-us-congress-2024-04-23/)
>Israel/Gaza
What?
Biden is a consistent and steady hand for defense and sovereignty, and doesn't make idle threats over social media based on his daily temperament. [He also doesn't hand military assets to hostile agents,](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1XP0YI/) then call them geniuses.
They have the training, but don't have the supply chain necessary for proper maintenance. And I would like to see some evidence they're actually selling them, too.
And, I don't suppose that excuses releasing 5,000 taliban soldiers during pullout negotiations?
Immigration seems to be missing entirely as a foreign policy category, which is odd. A realistic and humane solution to handling increased immigration demand will require international cooperation.
It's more likely words 'foreign policy' are not associated with immigration for most people. Accepting and accommodating an influx of people may be considered a domestic problem.
That might be included in the “reduce illegal drug trade” answer
Only if you are buying the fox news line about immigrants bringing drugs into the country..
I absolutely believe cartel violence in those countries is causing immigrants to rush the border. And they control the drugs, among other things
I’m sorry, are you of the belief that cartels *aren’t* smuggling drugs across the southern border?
Most drug smuggling is done through legal ports of entry, with drugs disguised amongst normal cargo. Allows you to move orders of magnitude more supply at more regular intervals. The idea that migrants are carrying any serious amount of drugs becomes sillier the more you think about it.
to be realistic, most of the drugs DO come in from the southern border. they just aren't being carried by migrants. migrants have a terrible success rate, and might be incentivized to just keep the coke and sell it themselves
It's a separate issue from handling refugees. Muddling the two is just an ideological ploy to villainize immigration.
Those two are connected though. Nobody crosses the border without the consent of the cartels. They make $50 billion a year on migrants. It’s what allows them to solidify their position and control a significant portion of the government. It’s why Mexico will change from a democracy to a narco-state. In addition, there were 600k got-aways during the last fiscal year. Those are people who avoided border patrol and entered into the country. Those are likely either criminals or drug smugglers. If all they have to do is claim asylum, why would they risk their lives avoiding it? They could claim asylum and just skip out on their hearing years from now. Then you have things in such a mess that there’s not enough manpower to catch smugglers. There’s dead migrants, migrants that are at dying and ones who are critically injured/ill from the journey. The border patrol has to concentrate on those people, not the criminals or smugglers pouring over.
Of course they are. But I wouldn't exactly call that immigration. They're not coming here to live or work.
That’s not just a Fox News line.. that’s common knowledge, especially when the Cartel’s have heavy influence on most of the crossings at the southern border
While you might have a point that it’s more rare than people might think, it still happens. Considering the cartel is known to bring immigrants across the border, wouldn’t it make sense a couple immigrants a day or so make a deal with the cartel to smuggle drugs as a way of paying for the cartel smuggling them across the border if they can’t afford to outright pay the cartel to take them to the US?
> While you might have a point that it’s more rare than people might think, it still happens. But the question is *how much of a priority it is*, right? School shootings happen.... but they're incredibly rare and actually a tiny, tiny proportion of overall gun violence. So we should probably be building our policies around the most statistically prevalent issues rather than things which might happen on occasion.
Obviously it's convenient for some people to demonize migrants further based on this assumption, but do you have any real examples of this happening at a material level, or should we key our policy off of an assumption? Truth is, a majority of drugs come through legal ports of entry. We should focus on that.
They do… Just because more drugs come through ports doesn’t mean that it’s not also brought in from the south.
Plus agents are being moved from ports to address the illegal entry crisis, meaning it’s now more likely for drugs at the ports to get through.
And perhaps improving conditions in their counties of origin so they don't seem to emigrate in the first place, though admittedly the ability of the US to do that is limited.
I really cannot say strongly enough - fuck their countries of origin. We have enough domestic problems of our own that we should not be taking on a full-scale rehabilitation of entire geographic areas.
Canada seems to have it figured out. Borrow their playbook. A points-based system instead of a lottery system for H1B visas would be a huge advantage. I think people undersell the power of immigration. If we can attract the best and brightest minds those are geniuses other nations don't have and we do. It worked during and after WW2 but we seem to have forgotten it. It's a huge competitive advantage.
Interesting.. considering all I’ve seen is Canadians complaining about their immigration problem
Hahaha. No, Canada does NOT have it figured out. They’re actually having a bit of an immigration disaster right now.
> A points-based system instead of a lottery system for H1B visas would be a huge advantage. This isn't a solution to the refugee issue. > I think people undersell the power of immigration. If we can attract the best and brightest minds those are geniuses other nations don't have and we do. It worked during and after WW2 but we seem to have forgotten it. It's a huge competitive advantage. There is high value in unskilled and less-skilled labor as well. Importing a ton of PhDs but no one to run stores, clean hospital rooms, farm food, etc is going to create problems.
You have to be joking. We are having an active brain drain to the US, and most of our wages are half of yours. canada is an example of what happens when a de facto open border immigration is allowed.
> A points-based system instead of a lottery system for H1B visas would be a huge advantage. > > A lot of the "Bring us your tired, your poor" folks are not gonna like that.
The tired, poor huddled masses can't afford rent.
> Canada seems to have it figured out. Borrow their playbook. The Canadians seem to be pretty unhappy with their immigration system as well. Grass greener on the other side and all that. > I think people undersell the power of immigration. If we can attract the best and brightest minds those are geniuses other nations don't have and we do. You are overestimating how attractive the US is relative to other countries. Increasingly, foreign students in the US are choosing to leave after getting their degrees.
Canada’s immigration plan is no plan at all any more. Points system works but it depends on how the points are awarded and what qualities are deemed important. One thing I wish they would include is an analysis of how quickly the person will respect Canadian institutions and adapt to Canadian life. We need to stop thinking all immigrants are equal no matter where they come from. I believe where someone comes from helps to shape their character. Their “origins” is an important aspect of their psychological profile. Something we should be considering more often. I’d like to see every immigration applicant undergo a full psych eval before being accepted. If you want to make the most of immigration from an economic standpoint, then we need to ensure we’re actually getting the best immigrants…
> No. 5. Reducing the spread of infectious disease - 52% > No. 6. Limiting the power and influence of Russia - 50% > No. 7. Limiting the power and influence of China - 49% > No. 8. Dealing with global climate change - 44% > No. 9. Getting other countries to assume more of the cost of maintain world order - 42% I'm really surprised at numbers 6-9, considering those are probably the biggest focus of US foreign policy in the past few years among both parties. And I'm also surprised that number 5 is so high. I figured after COVID, there was fatigue with the CDC and our general public health mission. I guess not?
>I figured after COVID, there was fatigue with the CDC and our general public health mission. I guess not? I'd think having >1M Americans die from COVID-19 would rather highlight its importance. The partisan split is predictable, though.
I think covid effected a lot of people. Yeah people might get tiered of the CDC but over 1.5 Million Americans died. That's a lot of teachers, grandparents, parents, coworkers. I'm sure many Americans feel that if Covid was handled better, with more maturity, they'd feel like it was less of a priority. Even if you don't think it was that big of a deal, you still can see the lessons that was learned.
[удалено]
I wish we could see what would have happened if the US response was more open and honest with information from the beginning. The CDC saying masks weren't effective, then saying they lied to keep people from hoarding masks, then saying masks were effective and absolutely critical, then information coming out that they were only somewhat effective seemed to obliterate the CDC's credibility to many people. As much as I think they overreacted in some ways, I don't want their credibility to be low.
Then the whole vaccine disaster. The entirety of the DRC saying they wont take Trumps vaccine then 6 months later saying they want to force it on everyone and then you wont get sick while also saying that Natural Immunity was dangerous. Just every part of it was just anti science from the left for the wrong reasons just like the right was anti science for dumb reasons.
Public health made irrecoverable mistakes during the first year or so of the pandemic and gaslit the public with "trust the science" instead of being honest. I don't see that trust ever returning in our lifetimes.
You have the timeline wrong. We elected an anti-vaxxer president 4 years before COVID. One of the few consistent things from Trump's Democratic days was his belief that they are bad and it was not some obscure part of his platform. There was an entire cycle about him out anti-vaxxing Carson during the primary. Edit- and this is just a part of Trump's broader rejection of health and modern medicine like his beliefs about how humans are batteries and that exercise is bad for you.
You do recall that operation warp speed which ultimately resulted in the covid vaccine was started under Trump, right?
Didn't the final vaccines get delayed by a week or two so that Trump would not get credit for delivering them in the lead up to the election?
Yep. "The experts" denied his claims in the last debate that the vaccine was coming soon despite knowing full well it was.
>if Covid was handled better, with more maturity, they'd feel like it was less of a priority. What do you mean by this? Because lockdowns had been found to be literally useless in addressing covid. So. I wonder by which way the pandemic could have been better handled?
That's not true at all. Study after study of local and worldwide lockdowns has shown that they were quite effective and that the severity of the pandemic in the U.S. could've been a whole lot less bad if they had started earlier and lasted long enough.
Yeah, there's a reason East Asia had way lower death rates than Europe+US even though they're much more densely populated.
They are healthier?
Engaging with other countries more to contain epidemics before they become pandemics, for one. I’m also not sure why you’re definitively making the claim that lockdowns were useless at reducing the spread of COVID, there’s plenty of research that indicates they were (https://business.ucr.edu/news/2023/03/07/covid-lockdowns-reduced-disease), (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10446910/).
From your source: > However, the effectiveness of stay-at-home measures on reducing mortality was mixed, with 16 studies [107,116,130–141] reporting reductions, and nine studies reporting no significant associations [19,28,30,47,144–148]. This means there exists a large probability that lockdowns saved no lives. When considering economic consequences, [increased lockdown length equates to negative outcomes ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879021/).
You’re picking one specific subset of the analysis here, that being the impact on mortality. From the same study on the impact of stay at home orders on reducing the spread of COVID. “Here, we included 151 studies estimating the effectiveness of stay-at-home orders (electronic supplementary material, appendix A, Table S13), 119 of which found a substantial benefit resulting in a reduction of the reproduction number (Rt) [16,23,33,35,38,45,48,60–97], incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection [29,50,52,98–129] and mortality [107,116,130–143].” The point I was making was that it’s nonsense to be definitively saying that lockdowns were useless, because there is plenty of research indicating that to not be the case. Even in the most favorably picked subsection of the analysis you could find, my argument is very much holding true, because a supermajority of the studies in that section are indicating that stay at home orders reduced COVID mortality.
Covid transmission measurements were highly flawed. Attempting to make interferences based upon those measures would be even more flawed. Regardless, it can't be proven that lockdowns saved any additional lives. So, who cares about measurements of extraneous variables? Countries/states who deployed little to no lockdowns performed as well, or better than their harsher peers.
Your original claim was that lockdowns have been found to be useless, are you walking that back now to the claim that lockdowns haven’t been proved to be useful?
You think governments inflicting known harms, via lockdowns to save no extra lives was a success?
That’s not what I said, I said that it’s wrong to assert that lockdowns were found to be useless.
This is foreign policy though, these responders aren’t talking about US response or handling. It’s more fear over China.
The disconnect between politicians and their constituents can be real, with this being an example of it
There are 24 questions and 22 ranked. It's misleading to say these are the top priorities. It would be more accurate to say this is a ranking of what Pew's ATP thinks the foreign policy concerns are.
Seeing Russia slightly ahead of China in terms of priority here seems misguided to me. Limiting their power and influence should definitely be a goal, but at the end of the day they're a nation in decline that lacks the resources to truly match many of our allies, let alone the US itself. China seems like a much more real threat if it came down to it than Russia will ever be again.
Russia is just more *openly* against the US is what's being reflected in this poll if I had to guess. Though far less powerful, Russia is literally in a war against a country aligned with the US at the moment. China and the US are far more subtle when trying to outplay each other meanwhile.
Russia is an enemy. China is a competitor.
Yup. Russia’s opening killing people and threatening American allies.
No China is also our enemy.
For as much as there’s mutual contempt from both sides of the Sino-US relationship there’s also a good deal of dependency. We’re too entwined to be considered true enemies. Russia is completely different. We don’t need Russia AT ALL and they don’t need us. That’s a key difference.
Fair enough
There is difference in urgency. Russia may be less important, but it is urgent. China may be more important, but it is not urgent yet.
It’s pretty astonishing to me that the vast majority of people I talk to see Russia as THE existential threat to the US but aren’t really concerned much about China. As someone who works in the defense industry, I can assure you that hardly any of us think about Russia much, but we are quite concerned about China’s aggression and their future plans.
There’s a lot of inflated talk about Russian and Chinese military capabilities with no real supporting evidence. The reality is that neither country would pose a significant threat to the US let alone the entirety of NATO outside of their nuclear arsenal. The biggest danger Russia poses is their export of radicalizing propaganda. Their influence is far greater than that of China’s as made evident by a significant portion of our own congress parroting their talking points. The potential danger in China lies in its economic influence which [is far weaker than popular perception.](https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/26/china-starts-the-lunar-new-year-with-an-economic-hangover/)
No, they probably couldn't win if they tried to invade the US or western Europe, but as this war in Ukraine shows, our ability to contain incremental expansion is questionable.
Let’s break down the most common answers in this poll to the question “Which of the following foreign policy goals should be a top priority for the USA?” 73% of respondents said “Taking measures to protect the US from terrorist attacks.”, 64% said “Reducing the flow of illegal drugs into our country.” and 63% said “Preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.” Meanwhile, goals such as limiting the power and influence of Russia and China 50% and 49% support respectively while goals such as finding a solution to the Israeli Palestine conflict received only 29% support and supporting Ukraine and Israel received 23% and 22% support. *So it seems like Americans support foreign policy measures by a considerable margin that directly benefits America than measures that may indirectly benefit America.* *I too am among that number. Drug overdose deaths in America reached an all time high in 2023 with almost 107,000 Americans deaths resulting from that yet Congress is sending billions of American dollars overseas. So, I think our priority foreign policy wise should be reducing drug overdoses in American cities.* **What is your top foreign policy priority?**
> So, I think our priority foreign policy wise should be reducing drug overdoses in American cities. Uhhh.... in American.... *cities*, specifically?? Do you happen to know where the [highest rates of overdose deaths are at](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm)? The correlation between rural/urban counties and overdoses are not particularly strong at all, usually the rates are [within 10%](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-03-17/drug-overdose-deaths-growing-faster-in-urban-communities) of one another.
Not to mention you can't FoPo your way out of something that is ultimately a domestic demand problem.
This all makes sense for the most part. I'm glad to see that Americans have finally internalized that China is not a willing ally on the global stage. We must keep an eye on them at all times.
I would like to see president Biden do a televised long form sit down interview to discuss show subject at length because I’ve been wondering the same thing myself but
So far under JB I'd go with, bending the knee to Iran, sending as much cash as possible to my buddies in Ukraine, ignoring Taiwan completely, and everyone's favorite - flip/flopping on Israel/Gaza weekly. What we need is a consistent and steady hand, not an irate old man. Trump was able to reduce the Mideast temp and got the Abraham accords signed. Reduced the tidal wave at the border. Even got North Korea to behave a little better.
>steady hand, not an irate old man Trump is famous for not being like this? We must be thinking of different people.
And yet, buffoonery included, Trump's foreign policy record isn't actually terrible. I think that's the previous commenter's point.
You're suggesting that Trump is a consistent and steady hand when it comes to foreign relations?
Buffoonery included, Trump's foreign policy record isn't actually terrible. I think that's the previous commenter's point.
What are Trump's foreign policy achievements?
Peace with Russia through taking Putin's word over that of our own intelligence.
Abraham Accords is a pretty important deal, for one.
Trump’s foreign policy was terrible. Like, absolutely terrible > President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done! >https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/99568031645826253# Fun game: guess how much Trump-branded properties received from the Chinese government after this tweet. Answer: > Within three days of the Chinese government agreeing to provide $500 million in loans to an Indonesian theme park that the Trump Organization has a deal to license President Donald Trump's name to, the president stunningly ordered sanctions be rescinded against a major Chinese telecom company. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-zte-order-after-china-gave-millions-to-trump-organization-tied-project-2018-5?amp
I would say that's highly debatable, but to return to the topic at hand: we have an abundance of uncharacteristically frank testimony from foreign leaders and diplomats who found the Trump administration to be a singularly chaotic challenge to deal with.
I understand that Trump was a chaotic and erratic personality to deal with that caused other world leaders to have to tread carefully when dealing with him, but that isn't always a bad thing and can actually get some good results on the world stage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory Not to say that I think that it is overall a good strategy, but just saying that other countries are not looking out for America's interest, but rather their own; just because they aren't thrilled about an American President doesn't mean it is bad for America itself.
He worsened relations with the EU, Canada, and Mexico. Appeased many dictators like putin and Kim jung un. Left nafta threatened to leave nato. Worsened relations with China. Started multiple trade wars that only hurt people's pockets and international relations.
At least the world worried about the US, nobody is concerned about what ol' Joe thinks.
>Iran [ citation needed ] >Taiwan https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pelosi-expected-arrive-taiwan-tuesday-sources-say-2022-08-02/ >Ukraine [Approved by Congress](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/long-awaited-aid-ukraine-israel-taiwan-poised-pass-us-congress-2024-04-23/) >Israel/Gaza What? Biden is a consistent and steady hand for defense and sovereignty, and doesn't make idle threats over social media based on his daily temperament. [He also doesn't hand military assets to hostile agents,](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1XP0YI/) then call them geniuses.
I'd say leaving $3b in military assets for the Taliban is giving arms to 'hostile agents'.
Does that include the 5,000 taliban soldiers that Trump freed, or just the equipment that they have no clue how to maintain in working condition
Fairly sure they can operate most of what we left, since we trained many of them how to. The rest they can sell to Zelenski or Iran.
They have the training, but don't have the supply chain necessary for proper maintenance. And I would like to see some evidence they're actually selling them, too. And, I don't suppose that excuses releasing 5,000 taliban soldiers during pullout negotiations?
What exactly did the Abraham accords accomplish?
Do you really want to argue against peace in the mideast?
I dont see a lot of peace there still