Originally a comment by KB Player on In the wake.

I absolutely don’t get this. In our imperial days (British variety) we were known as perfidious Albion for betraying our allies (actually we were no more perfidious than France, the Habsburgs, Russia, or any of our rivals) but we were polite to them before stabbing them in the back. It’s sheer prudence to be so, just in case perfidiousness is no longer in your interest. This blatant rudeness serves no purpose at all.

If you have vassals – and we in Britain have been a servile vassal to our imperial overlord – there’s no point in humiliating them unnecessarily. Humiliate them in deed if it serves your purposes, but why humiliate them in word and gesture? (If you have ever watched that appalling film in Love Actually, there is a scene where the British PM tells off the nasty American president – that’s what the British would love to do, but of course are not in a position to do so.)

In our jobs we know where we are in the hierarchy. I know I have to do what my bosses tell me to do – but they ask me to carry out my tasks in a civil and friendly way – which doesn’t cost them anything and means I am a more cheerful underling.

And it’s so unAmerican. Americans (except for the immigration officials) are usually polite and friendly. Do they get this snarling from Marvel movies?

Personal emotions – resentments, cockiness – seem to be replacing the normal courtesies of dealing with foreign powers. There is no advantage in it at all except to infuriate people who might be useful to you at some point, to put it at its lowest.

I listened to a podcast from three American security experts (Christopher Preble, Zack Cooper, and Melanie Marlowe), which was recommended as being from the informed right . They were trying to find some kind of rationale behind Trump’s attitude towards Ukraine – perhaps trying to prise Russia from China, though that was probably mistaken and there was a lack of long-term thinking. Now these people are far better informed than me but except for mentioning Trump’s desire for a Nobel peace prize, they missed out the personal grudges, petty vindictiveness and spite which animate Vance, Trump and Musk, the admiration for the strong man Putin; the affront that the annoying little David (Zelenskyy) is not bowing to the grand Goliath (Russia). Trump is always going on about how he “likes” this dictator or other – it’s all personal to him – there is no strategy, no acting in American interests – it’s all real estate and vanity.