What Just Happened?
Learning to love uncertainty
Welcome. Common Sense and Whiskey a short, sharp, once a week look at the world out there.
My wife and I have been away for a week to celebrate a birthday and inflict my incomprehensible French on a few hapless Caribbean towns, so this week’s edition is a little abbreviated. Today we look at alliances in peril, consider the trade wars and I complain about the internet.
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Let’s go:
RESHAPING ALLIANCES IN REAL TIME: As a critic of the ongoing Trump upheaval I’d like to believe the pendulum will swing back, that a future president will be able to restore governance by steady, incremental decision making. But for the purposes of living in the world as it is right now, whether a more measured leader will be elected next time around is sort of academic.
No matter what they say now, the Trump people invested a lot in trying to secure a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia in their first hundred days, doing what Joe Biden couldn’t, and it just didn’t happen.
That’s not so surprising.
In grade school kids pass furtive notes to their love interests during class, “Do you like me?” with little boxes for yes and no, check one. Steve Witkoff, Manhattan real estate investor, is that note to the Kremlin. Whatever. I expect the footsie will play on.
More to what matters, notwithstanding the institutional soldiering-on that will continue across the Atlantic for months or years to come, in only half a hundred days, trust in the transatlantic relationship has been lost.
What’s before our eyes is both revolutionary and tragic. Since we don’t live in the world of two, three or five years from now, we can’t be sure what’s next. There is some chance that the world of 2030 will reorder, and even improve on the one that’s fast receding into history. You can’t rule it out but I doubt it.
For now we look set only for more turmoil.
To lose in 100 days the sheer, painstakingly accreted, years-long efforts at trust-building between American allies, of accumulated good will, of trial and error and partnership — seen from here, that is what’s so criminal, so wasteful, so pointless.
TRUST IN THE ALLIANCE: It’s gone. The day after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was sworn in, in March, he asked his Defense Minister “to determine if the F-35 contract, as it stands, is the best investment for Canada, and if there are other options that could better meet Canada’s needs.”
Carney meant to show he meant business in Trump’s tariff wars. But he meant more than that. Canada had agreed to buy 88 F-35 fighter airplanes. Which would make perfect sense for two allies operating in close proximity in the same part of the world.
Trouble was, suddenly no one was sure the Americans were their allies anymore. 88 F-35s were expected to cost Canada some $70 billion Canadian dollars. But countries on both sides of the Atlantic now worried, once they bought from America, what if, oh, suppose they stopped providing munitions for the jets? Software updates?
Then this:
“In an interview with Portuguese media outlet Público published on Mar. 13, 2025, Portuguese Defense Minister Nuno Melo dismissed the possibility of ordering the fifth-generation fighter, aligning with other European nations reconsidering their defense procurement strategies. The Minister, pointed directly at the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration as a key factor in the decision. Trump’s controversial remarks about NATO, questioning member contributions and even suggesting the U.S. might not uphold its defense commitments, as well as the decision to halt the deliveries of weapons as well as the sharing of intelligence with Ukraine following the meeting with Zelensky at the White House, have raised alarms across Europe.”
And this:
“Notably, Portugal is also reconsidering the procurement due to potential U.S. limitations on foreign-operated F-35s, including the withholding of software upgrades—managed by the U.S.—that are essential for optimal performance and security. As we explained in detail in a previous article about the “kill switch” myth, according to which the U.S. government has the ability to remotely disable or limit the operational capabilities of foreign-operated F-35 fighter jets, international F-35 operators “are not allowed to conduct independent test operations outside of the Continental United States (CONUS) based on U.S. policy. United States Government (USG) security rules and National Defense Policy (NDP) require that U.S. citizens perform specific functions in order to protect critical U.S. technology.”
It’s all obviously damaging to US defense exports, and to the American industrial base, which, naturally, is the very sector the president means to revive.
Says The Telegraph:
“Donald Trump has inflicted enormous long-term damage on America’s defence export industry, a lucrative earner worth $320bn (£250bn) a year in all its forms. Foreign defence sales are 10 times greater than US exports of liquefied natural gas.”
And on we go.
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JUST TO ROUND OUT THE WEEK: After he inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg in that not-so-secret chat on the SIgnal app a couple of weeks back, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has been demoted to the United Nations job that was dangled to and pulled back from New York Representative Elise Stefanik.
The Trump team steadfastly rode out the Signal scandal and then waited to the end of the administration’s first one hundred days. Then the prsident fired Waltz on the administration’s 101st day.
As a man of the people, Donald Trump is keenly aware of precisely how to connect with real Americans. Thus, in announcing Waltz’s demotion Thursday on X, the president bonded with voters by using the familiar phrase, “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Which probably aligns with many DOGE notices of termination.
“Your belongings will be delivered to you within thirty days by courier. You are required to surrender your parking pass to the attendant on your final exit. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
In the Hall of Fame list of most loved bureaucratic phrases, “Thank you for your attention to this matter” ranks a solid number three, topped only by "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused,” (which surely must have been communicated in person to former Representative Waltz), and the timeless, unassailable "Your call is very important to us."
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SNAPSHOT OF A SQUEEZE FORETOLD: Remember the Covid era photos of cargo ships backed up at the port of Long Beach? They were caused by a virus. Any shortages to come will have been caused by a presidential decision.
Everything you need to know in one chart:
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THE U.S. AND CHINA AT (TRADE) WAR: As Martin Wolf put it in Why the US will lose against China this week in the Financial Times, “Trump’s unreliable America is throwing away the assets it needs to maintain its global status.”
China, naturally, is doing all it can to help. Domestically, President Xi has boosted unemployment benefits, loosened loan requirements for businesses and stimulated domestic demand. The government is promoting domestic consumption in hopes of reducing reliance on exports to the U.S.
Abroad, China has proactively approached countries in the Pacific, including U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, and President Xi has just personally visited Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia.
In Europe, China lifted sanctions on five EU lawmakers that had been in place since 2021, hoping to recalibrate relations with the EU. Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot in March and plans three more dialogues this year. In the Middle East China has “accelerated negotiations on a free trade agreement with the Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council.”
Internationally, Beijing China has used forums like the WTO to criticize the tariffs as “abusive” and damaging to global supply chains and the multilateral trading system.
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AMERICA ENCOURAGES NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: The Australian defense analyst Mick Ryan writes that he thinks the question of whether to go nuclear
“has become a more normalized discussion in Europe, and that other nations (including those in the Pacific) are being forced to reconsider the development of indigenous nuclear weapon programs because they are not sure the American nuclear umbrella provides a reliable deterrent against Chinese or Russian aggression. The key question is how fast those wanting nuclear weapons might be able to develop them.”
Former Obama Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes categorized a whole assortment of Washington foreign policy establishment figures as ‘the Blob.’ He saw journalists, think tank experts, former officials, policymakers and random hangers on as forming a self-reinforcing Washington echo chamber, and he was clearly right.
Here’s a prediction: in the next several months we’ll see a collection of weighty, considered pieces by the Blob based on how the new American unreliability will lead to nuclear proliferation. It sounds right to me, and it sounds like the perfect topic for the Blobby commentariat to weigh in on.
Here’s an opening salvo:
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Remember that AI generated video promoting redevelopment of the Gaza strip that the American president posted to his social media accounts? Here’s a screenshot. Apart from that unfortunate withered right leg, Donald Trump appears hale, robust and a trim forty years younger, in his characteristically thematic solid gold.
As I’m sure you did, I thought immediately of Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the world’s most fun-loving leader. The 67 year old former dentist is currently chairman of the People's Council of Turkmenistan. Here he is on a horse in Ashgabat, also in gold.
Berdymukhamedov needed to have a big gold statue up on a rock, because his predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov had a gold statue, too:
Niyazov was the first president of Turkmenistan, "Turkmenbashi" or "Father of the Turkmen." His statue rotated throughout the day so that Niyazov always faces the sun. A nice little add-on option worth considering. Just saying.
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DEAR EVERY WEBSITE I MIGHT EVER WANT TO READ: Will you stop blocking every last article that brings me to your site with offers I don’t want [Subscribe for half off!], admonitions that make me feel unwelcome [I see you’re using an ad blocker!] and various ploys to gain and sell my information [This is not a paywall! Just sign up and we have more marvelous things for you!].
You take pains to promote your site in hopes that you can lure me to engage. Once I’m there you begin by being irritating. Where did you learn how to welcome a customer? Who brought you up? Email me and I’ll share some clues about basic marketing techniques.
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That’s it for this week, but I’ll see you twice next week.
First we’ll try to solve a puzzle. America’s abrupt decline from ‘hyperpower’ to the Trump administration took barely a quarter century, and it came not under pressure, not in crisis, but amid an embarrassment of prosperity. How can that possibly be? I have a theory.
Then we’ll be back next Friday with another What Just Happened end of the week wrap up. Enjoy the weekend. See you next week.
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Bill
They could start a rumor. All American f-35s are built on Mondays and Fridays.