Sagar

So then we took their money.

And now we're like, just so you know,

We're going to have to wait a few years to give it to you because we blew it all with the Iran war.

This was the interruption is the big blow to Japan.

Ordered Tomahawks again for the first time in 2024 at the insistence of the U.S.

to enhance its deterrence against China.

The missiles would have given Japan a, quote, counter-strike capability to hit coastal China, and it was a $2.5 billion deal after Washington urged Japan to increase its defense spending.

So Japan does it, and they give us the money.

They're like, all right,

So give us the missiles.

Nope, we can't even turn those missiles over right now.

This comes on the heels of this, you know, increasingly all of these reports that are coming out, which, you know, you don't need a report necessarily for the obvious.

But let's put this Washington Post piece that I sent in post-production.

U.S.

allies in Asia are now trying to shield themselves from Trump's unpredictability.

And what they say is that Trump's seeming ambivalence about the value of allies has created a sense of urgency among nations with close U.S.

ties.

As China now shows greater willingness to strong-arm its neighbors and Trump injects waves of unpredictability, Japan and South Korea are banding together as smaller nations redraw the geostrategic balance in Asia despite their complicated history.

So to get Japan and South Korea to work together, that takes a titanic feat from the United States, two countries which hate each other.

For good reason.