World Refuses to Clean Up Trump's Mess (Updated)

As of today:

UPDATE ON THE HORMUZ COALITION (Mon, March 16):

🇫🇷 France: REJECTED
🇬🇧 UK: REJECTED
🇮🇹 Italy: REJECTED
🇪🇸 Spain: REJECTED
🇯🇵 Japan: REJECTED
🇳🇴 Norway: REJECTED
🇨🇦 Canada: REJECTED
🇦🇺 Australia: REJECTED
🇩🇪 Germany: REJECTED
🇨🇳 China: NO RESPONSE
🇳🇱 Netherlands: NO RESPONSE
🇰🇷 South Korea: NO CONFIRMATION

Trump has been demanding that NATO step in, but as the Germans pointed out, Trump started this war and it is not NATO's war:

Stefan Kornelius, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, told reporters in Berlin that Germany will not participate in any military operations in the region.

“This war has nothing to do with NATO. It’s not NATO’s war,” Kornelius said. He stressed that NATO is an alliance focused on defending member countries’ territories, not intervening in conflicts outside its borders.

The Germans have also just pointed out that most of the NATO nations have small navies and their largest ships are frigates, they're not going to make a maningful contribution compared to the US Navy.

Even so, the surface Navy is little more than a pale shadow of what it was during the Cold War. All that's left are one class of destroyers and some aging cruisers. The large number of frigates that they had are long gone, without replacement. The littoral-class ships are a joke (something that I've been going on about for awhile).

But back to the point: Trump's style (if you can call it that) has been as well-thought as a toddler's. He breaks things and demands that others clean up his messes. Right now, he's not asking for help, he's demanding it, and the rest of the world is saying "thanks, but no." He's forgotten that most of those countries are democracies, their governments answer to their people, and, thanks to Trump's badmouthing and tariffs, they are not at all interested in sending their young people to help pull Trump's chestnuts out of a fire of his own making.

Bloody Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan seem to think that no matter what the outcome will be, it's going to be awful.

And he apparently doesn't understand that oil is a global commodity. Because he's either stupid or he believes that his MAGAt followers are.

The big winner in all this is Trump's boss, Putin. Russia gets to sell some of its oil at market price. And NATO relationships between the Trump Administration and the rest of the Alliance will be further strained. We'll be lucky if it can be repaired somewhat in 2029.

Admiral Painter was right.