FIRST • PREVIOUS • NEXT • LAST
(permalink to this strip)
ALL STRIPS
SUPPORT WTFA ON PATREON

Bear: You may have Venezuela. Uncle Sam: We're trying to let you have Ukraine, but people aren't cooperating. Bear: You abduct Maduro. Seems like good model for us. Uncle Sam: No offense but I think that level of operation is beyond your capabilities. Bear: Polar bear friends say Greenland nice this time of year. Uncle Sam: Hands off my hemisphere, tovarishch.

NEW COMIC TWO OR THREE TIMES A WEEK, OR WHEN THE MOOD STRIKES

The Trumpian (and assininely named) "Donroe" Doctrine is clearly an attempt to divide up the planet into spheres of influence where raw power is the law. This is in direct contravention of the United Nations, which was born out of two extremely bloody and terrible world wars, by the hardened soldiers and survivors who knew from experience that industrial warfare is a horror which should never be repeated. Hippies and punks the world over are fond of noting that the so-called Pax Americana has been anything but, with terrible proxy wars and local conflagrations, not to mention genocides and regular old oppression, but I think we have to admit that we've seen nothing on the order of the fire bombing of Dresden or Tokyo, or the atomic bombs on Japan, or the Holocaust. The UN is nowhere near perfect but it's done a surprisingly good job of keeping Europe and North America fairly peaceful and stable, and that's no small thing.

There's an argument to be made that the peace and prosperity of the social democracies of Europe are made possible by the investments of the United States in armed forces, materiel, technology, and pharmaceuticals. So long as Americans bear the larger share of these expenses, Europe and Great Britain are freed to spend their budgets on things like universal healthcare and dominating the flat-pack furniture market. To the extent that that's true -- and I don't know how true it is -- there's a foundation to Trump's foreign policy and rejection of NATO. But even if Americans have been subsidizing Europe's democracies, it still seems like a pretty good deal.

I guess we'll see just how good over the next couple of years as the Republican party continues to take a wrecking ball to everything.