Originally Posted by
Guisslapp
1.There are quite a few countries that would like to attain greater status with us checking out - Russia, China, India, maybe Germany.
2. Yes, we still have the strongest military. But soft power gives you an alternative way to leverage international affairs so that you don't have to use your military.
3. But the enemies we face today are often round holes to our military square peg. Our enemies are not always centralized governments with militaries that follow conventional rules of warfare. They are geographically distributed and require a huge amount of international cooperation to deal with. Their ability to rely on us is why they share information with us - and not because they think we will destroy them on a battlefield.
4. As far as people being willing to work with us on climate, forget about it. India and China are the biggest concerns and this is the deal that the international community could agree on - well, except Trump, Syria, and Nicaragua. That took decades to accomplish because China and India need cheap energy to sustain their growth and development into first world nations. If the US position is that climate change is a hoax, that doesn't leave much middle ground for other countries to deal with us.
5. As far as the alternate energy market in the US... of course it will continue. But the fact of the matter is that this agreement was an opportunity to help accelerate the growth of these already large and growing markets and provide a more level playing field for oil companies to internalize their carbon costs and fairly compete on technology in a global market.
6. All this to save a dying coal market that has very little potential to create the kind of job growth potential sticking to this agreement could have provided.