What Does Non-Agreement-Capable Mean & Why Does It Matter?

If someone of low morals calls you "virtuous" is that actually a burn? 

The fact that President Joe Biden called my home state Maine "a virtuous place" last week during a fundraiser where the price of entry began at $3,000 and went up to $25,000 seems a tad ironic. On the water in Freeport, they're still only a few miles from parts of the state where free school breakfast and lunch are what poor kids survive on. 

This administration seems to want to outdo the Trump administration in a race to the bottom, frequently breaking agreements and violating ethical barriers as if they mattered not at all.

Even if they don't give a rat's ass about their integrity, this is pragmatically the wrong thing to do. Some examples of why:

https://electrek.co/2023/03/13/biden-alaska-oil-drilling-project-willow/

Climate agreements have been trashed opening federal lands to new energy extraction schemes. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline with its big methane release was also a climate blow out. And today comes news that a key ocean currents system, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, could collapse soon -- with huge implications for weather and agriculture.

Black Sea Grain Deal Due to client state Ukraine and the U.S.'s inability to abide by the terms of the grain deal, there were two bad outcomes:

𐂎 Impoverished people in the Global South got almost none of the grain as Ukraine sold the bulk of it to Europe.

𐂎 Both grain and fertilizer were not allowed to be traded by Russia, despite the terms of the agreement.

Negotiating NATO countries are said to be "non-agreement-capable" by government officials of Russia and China. It's not hard to see how they reached this conclusion.

This current NATO map from Al Jazeera makes me want to create a geography quiz. How many of these countries can you name?

So many aspects of the proxy war on Russia in Ukraine have demonstrated bad faith. Remember assurances made but not kept about NATO expansion eastward? From Libertarian Institute:

In 2007, Putin complained, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” A year later, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev complained that the United States “promised that NATO wouldn’t move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and Eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted.”

The Minsk agreements were negotiated as a stalling tactic for Ukraine to arm up -- but fulfilling their terms was never really on the table.

Similarly the mission creep of U.S. involvement in Ukraine has officials assuring the public that no troops will be sent to Ukraine (long since happened and here are the receipts), cluster bombs won't be sent (and then they are), etc.

Germany's defense minister told the public their government wasn't sending German Panther tanks to Ukraine at all. They may have been built in Germany, but they were Ukrainian tanks. Uh huh. 

How can one negotiate with such people? 

How dangerous is it to slide into escalating hot war without agreement-capable counterparts? And note that its own citizens don't trust the U.S. military.

Campaign promises Finally, we can't discuss being "non-agreement-capable" without mentioning false assurances made with the goal of winning over voters. Biden and his party promised to codify Roe v Wade, create a public option for health insurance, forgive federal student loans, and raise the minimum wage. They did none of these, and their approval ratings are commensurately low.

Back in my grandparents' day there was no higher compliment you could give a person in Maine than to say of them, "their word's good." 

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?