Tag: International relations

Please, Return Sanity To Foreign Policy

The problem with our foreign policy is that the government is no longer in charge of directing the direction….

“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” Goldberg wrote, quoting Ledeen.

Those like Ledeen, the neoconservative intellectual henchman type, often get away with this kind of provocative rhetoric for various reasons. American intelligentsias, especially those who are close to the center of power in Washington DC, perceive war and military intervention as the foundation and baseline of their foreign policy analysis. The utterances of such statements are usually conveyed within friendly media and intellectual platforms, where equally hawkish, belligerent audiences cheer and laugh at the war-mongering muses. In the case of Ledeen, the receptive audience was the hardline, neoconservative, pro-Israel American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Predictably, AEI was one of the loudest voices urging for a war and invasion of Iraq prior to that calamitous decision by the George W. Bush Administration, which was enacted in March 2003.

US Foreign Policy Adrift: Why Washington is No Longer Calling the Shots

For too long the US has pursued a policy on the international stage of intervention….diplomacy has taken a back seat to the use of force thanks to the influence of the war industry on our foreign policy…..time for that to change….time to return to the days where diplomacy was the first reaction and not the use of extreme force.

The group Win Without War has some fine points that would go about returning sanity to our foreign policy….

. Our foreign policy is intimately interlinked with our domestic policy, so we must apply our shared values to the United States’ engagement abroad just as we do at home. The militarization of our foreign policy is intertwined with the militarization of our own society, whether in policing, incarceration and deportation, mass surveillance, or the rise of hateful ideologies like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism. At home and abroad, we must commit to advance policies of liberation and work to dismantle policies that subjugate Black, brown, and other disenfranchised communities. Our foreign policy must fulfill the same values of human rights, justice, and self-determination we seek at home by reinforcing intersectional grassroots movements to win real change.

People in the United States have the right to personal safety – as do peoples all around the globe. Endless wars, the empowerment of autocrats and human rights abusers, and the pursuit of the interests of the few at the expense of the many will not keep us safe. The United States’ safety depends on building security for all people around the world, not simply on the might of our military. Only by helping to make others secure will we ourselves become more secure.

. For too long we have applied the use of military force to a variety of security challenges that do not have military solutions, with disastrous results. Most security challenges do not have a military solution, nor does every security challenge present an existential threat to the United States. We believe that the U.S. must reorient its national security framework to be based on conflict prevention, locally-led development, democratic governance reform, accountability, and peacebuilding, and avoid policies that foment more conflict.

Principles of a Progressive Foreign Policy for the United States

I find their approach is something I can support…..and in 2024 I will be looking for a candidate that embraces a more sane foreign policy.

It maybe is just wishful thinking for as long as money and donations drive the politics in this country I will once again not vote for a winner.

But once again I can say that while I voted for a loser I have not compromised my principles that I have held for 50 years.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

My Foreign Policy

I get grief sometimes when I say that I cannot vote for any of the major candidates…..usually they blame me for their candidate losing…..I wish I had that power.

I have stated many times that for me foreign policy is the most important issue for any election…..so let me explain my issues…..

I have written that I am antiwar and that I support the efforts of some to end the endless war and interventions for regime change….but I have seldom gone deeper…..I shall do so now so that anyone that is interested in where I stand and write from can to caught up to date…..

I think of myself as a “rationalist” in foreign policy……A theoretical qualification to the pessimism of realism and the idealism of liberal internationalism. Rationalists view states as comprising an international society, not merely an international system. States come to be a part of an international society by accepting that various principles and institutions govern the way in which they conduct their foreign relations. In doing so, it can be argued, states also display a commitment to the idea that it is inappropriate to promote the national interest without any regard for international law and morality.

I guess I could be called a “Restrainer” in foreign policy as well…..to put the policy in simple terms…..it would be easier to understand what restrainers don’t want. They don’t want endless wars, bloated military budgets, and security commitments that keep expanding, but are never seriously debated or approved by the public.

But for those that would like a deeper look into this form of foreign policy…..I leave it to “Responsible Statecraft”……

1. Restrainers Want Continued U.S. Economic and Diplomatic Engagement. Critics often claim that restrainers are isolationists, a bogus charge intended to marginalize their views and stifle debate before it starts. In fact, restrainers recognize that the United States benefits from trade, investment, tourism, and other mutually beneficial interactions with other countries, and they know that Washington must work with foreign powers to address a number of significant global problems. For these reasons, restrainers reject a return to “Fortress America” and want the United States to remain fully present in today’s world.

2. Restrainers Want a Broad and Honest Debate. In recent years, public debate on foreign policy and national security has been dominated by those who believe that American power—and especially military power—is the optimal solution to most foreign policy challenges. As Zack Beauchamp of Vox.com observes, “Washington’s foreign policy debate tends to be mostly conducted between the center and the right. The issue is typically how much force America should use rather than whether it should use it at all.” 

3. Restrainers Want Realistic Foreign Policy Goals. Instead of engaging in costly and futile efforts to remake the world in our image, restrainers want U.S. foreign policy to pursue more feasible objectives. The U.S. military must be strong enough to deter attacks on the U.S. homeland, a task that is relatively easy to accomplish. When necessary, the United States can also help other states uphold the balance of power and deter war in a few key strategic areas  outside the Western Hemisphere. America’s economic clout will also give Washington considerable influence over the institutions that manage trade, investment and other beneficial forms of international cooperation, and it should use that influence to ensure these institutions are working properly. But the United States has neither the need, the capacity, nor the wisdom to conduct massive social engineering projects (“nation-building”) in deeply divided and conflict prone societies, and it should cease trying.

4. Restrainers Want Credible Foreign Commitments. The United States keeps taking on new security obligations in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but it rarely debates their wisdom or value. Americans are now formally committed to defending more countries around the world than at any time in U.S. history, even though some of these states are hard to defend, have little strategic importance for the United States, and sometimes act in ways that damage U.S. interests. Washington is also engaged in less visible military activities in dozens of other countries, some of them shrouded in secrecy. Yet anytime U.S. leaders contemplate trimming these obligations, alarmists warn that the slightest reduction in America’s global presence will undermine U.S. credibility, embolden rivals, and lead to catastrophe. Having allowed itself to become overextended, the United States ends up fighting endless wars in places with no strategic value in order to convince allies and adversaries that it will still fight in places of greater importance.

5. Restrainers Want Business-like Relations with All Countries and Special Relations with None. In his Farewell Address, George Washington famously warned against “passionate attachments” to foreign powers. His wise counsel still rings true today. No two states have identical interests, and no U.S. allies are so valuable or virtuous to deserve generous U.S. support no matter what they do. Restrainers believe the U.S. should support its allies when doing so makes the United States more secure or prosperous, and distance itself from those allies when they act in ways that are contrary to our interests and values.

6. Restrainers Want More Diplomacy and Less Coercion. Over the past two decades, Washington has repeatedly tried to compel weaker powers to do its bidding by issuing ultimatums, imposing sanctions, and in some cases, unleashing its superior military power. Yet even weak opponents have repeatedly refused to knuckle under to U.S. pressure, because they cared more about the interests at stake and Washington typically refused to compromise at all. Even when Washington was able to overthrow a weaker adversary, the result was a failed state, a costly occupation, or both.

7. Restrainers Want U.S. Allies to Bear a Fair Share of Defense Burdens. The United States currently spends roughly 4 percent of GDP on the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and other national security missions, while allies like Germany or Japan spend a little more than 1 percent. U.S. leaders have complained about this disparity for decades, but their efforts have failed to convince these wealthy allies to do more.

8. Restrainers Want to Set a Good Example for Others. Restrainers are committed to classic liberal values—representative government, a market-based economy, the rule of law, and basic human rights—but they believe trying to impose these principles on others is likely to backfire.  Indeed, democracy is now in retreat around the world, and the United States is deeply polarized and increasingly dysfunctional. When The Economist Magazine’s annual “Democracy Index” downgrades the United States from the category of “full democracy” to “flawed democracy,” as it did in 2017, it’s a clear sign that something has gone badly awry.

None of this is harder than it appears……this type of foreign policy would go a long way at ending the crappy world that we, the US, helped to create.

There you have it……this is where I stand on foreign policy.

Do you know how hard it is to find a candidate that embraces these issues….for that matter some of these issues?

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US Needs A New Foreign Policy

As a foreign policy geek I feel that foreign policy should be front and center in this election…..after all we are still fighting on at least 3 of the continents.

First there will be little new if Biden wins the election.

Our foreign policy has been one of war first diplomacy later tactic for 50+ years……this leads to the endless wars that we are plagued with today.

Cultivating any coherent national foreign policy won’t be possible without a common goal, concrete values, and a clear vision of what America is and should be. But a sharp generational divide provides major obstacles to this path forward, also a real chance for much-needed reform.

In the post-Cold War era, American foreign policy considerations seemed to be increasingly separated from domestic issues. Undergirding the American strategy was the spread of liberal democracy around the world—through international institutions or by force. Domestic support of this project was easy in a world that remembered a forceful America defeating the Nazis and landing on the moon. Today’s grandparents and their grandparents remember an America worth fighting for.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/07/30/generation_z_and_foreign_policy_building_a_common_vision_of_restraint_in_a_divided_era_115508.html

As I have said our foreign policy has been going in the wrong direction….especially since Pompeo has taken over the State Department……he is a Neocon that will do what he can to start new wars ……

The new president needs to re-structure the State Department…..

The foreign policy apparatus of the United States has a significant issue of hubris. It also has a structural problem. The two are deeply intertwined. While a lot can still happen in the next three months, it looks like Joe Biden’s team will win the presidency in November. Such a victory would signal not just consent for Biden and the Democratic party, but exhaustion at the last four years of endless dramas and politicization. That wellspring of exhaustion isn’t just from Trump, but from the American political system, and a key challenge for Biden will be to demonstrate at the outset he is different. One way to do that is to show that government actually works, and rely on careerists to fill a much larger portion of the foreign policy key positions at the Departments of State, Defense, and Treasury, both domestically and at embassies abroad.

Re-Structuring American Foreign Policy Post-Trump

The American Conservative makes some great points….

Four years after the once unthinkable election of a Republican president who called the Iraq war a “mistake,” America still needs a genuinely conservative foreign policy of realism and restraint.

Hegemonists and hyper-interventionists are being challenged for the first time in two decades, perhaps as never before in the post-Cold War era. The folly of their never-ending, no-win wars is evident to voters, prime-time cable news hosts, diplomats, academics, even the veterans and active-duty soldiers who have fought in them. A new generation of conservative thought leaders is coming of age that turns the thinking that prevailed under George W. Bush on its head, yet the Right is still underrepresented in the fight against the hawkish dead consensus and the GOP’s governing class lags well behind.

The Foreign Policy We Need

We definitely need a new way of thinking about international situations…..but sadly I do not think that no matter who wins in November our foreign policy will remain about the same…..same wars….same rhetoric…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Foreign Policy Spotlight

Yes I am a foreign policy geek…..I studied international relations and conflict management in college……so this whole impeachment thing centers around our foreign policy….and there is where I want to approach this…not from some legalese point of view but the actions within our foreign policy.

In case you hadn’t noticed (and not to notice you’d have to be blind), we’re not exactly alone in this country anymore. We were true pioneers in what might be considered a great American tradition of interfering in the affairs of other nations – think about just how radically the U.S. meddled in other democratic lands like Iran or Guatemala once upon a time.  Now, it’s being taken up big time here by others. Whether we’re talking about the Russians in the 2016 elections, the Ukrainians in the upcoming one, or Saudi royals looking into the Twitter accounts of possible critics to suppress while conducting espionage here on American soil, there seems to be quite a crowd of countries and interested foreign parties jostling illegally for advantage in the good old US of A.

Worse yet, much of that jostling is happening in ways hardly noticed that still pass for perfectly legal, ones that won’t land any country’s representatives (or their lobbyists) in trouble, no less in the clinker here. TomDispatch regular Ben Freeman has been following the all-too-legal part of the growing story of foreign interference in American domestic affairs for some time now. Back in February 2019, for instance, he wrote for this site about the money trail that leads from autocratic allies in the Middle East directly to Washington’s most prestigious think tanks and so into the heart and soul of the Washington establishment. Today, he and Ryan Summers, both with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, consider just how ripe the country’s political system is for foreign interference in ways that don’t even faintly break the law. Believe me, it’s a hell of a hellish tale to tell.

How To Make American Foreign Policy Yours

Trump’s idea of foreign policy is to spread chaos and hope something positive comes out of the confusion…..this technique is shredding what use to be a viable foreign policy….now we have hit and miss situations.  Actually that is not some idle chit chat…..there is a need to study this behavior……(chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos. Since the International System can be considered a nonlinear dynamic system, it is reasonable to take this theory into account for the study of the International Order.)

Thanx to this confusion the US seems to be losing the war on tyranny……

We are at war, under siege from a global alliance that runs from Pyongyang to Havana and Caracas. At the moment we are losing, having failed to bring down the leaders of our main adversaries: Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and Ali Khamenei in Tehran, despite monster demonstrations in the latter two countries. We have also failed to support the huge crowds clamoring for greater freedom in Hong Kong, although the regime in Beijing has canceled its law enabling it to transfer dissidents to the mainland.

We are losing because there is a growing sensibility on the conservative side of the political spectrum that the United States is simply too precious and good to sacrifice lives and coin to save failed (and continuously failing) cultures from themselves.

It is not in our national interest to be aggressively internationally engaged, they claim. This attitude is exacerbated by the sensibility on the extreme left-wing, which is increasingly defining the Democratic Party, that American ideals are a myth, its founding an act of injustice and original sin, and the projection of power on their basis an immoral fraud. Namely, it is not in the interests of the world for the U.S. to be aggressively engaged.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-us-is-losing-the-war-against-tyranny

I do not necessarily agree with this article…but I do see where they are coming from and can see the worry that is building.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

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“East Of Suez” Moment For The US

Endless wars…..countless civilian casualties…..a feckless foreign policy……all point to the US losing its influence in the Middle East.

US foreign policy nerds are seeing a change in the policies of the US towards the region of the Middle East….

President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of all U.S. troops in northeastern Syria brings to mind Great Britain’s 1968 retreat “East of Suez.” It marked an inflection point, a final abandoning of empire given London’s limited financial resources, lapsed political will and heightened anti-colonial hostility. 

The United Kingdom came to terms with a diminished global role from positions “East of Suez” – i.e., beyond the Suez Canal – and left it to America be the guarantor of the post-World War II international order.

Is the U.S. approaching its own “East of Suez” moment? In the U.S. case, the result is not a consequence of decline per se, but of radically altered U.S. domestic political circumstances (e.g., “America First”) and deepened multi-layered conflict in the region. For better or worse, President Trump’s determination to reduce troops deployed overseas, from Afghanistan to Syria, is part of an effort to make good on campaign pledges. Explaining his troop reductions in northeast Syria, Trump reiterated this imperative: “I campaigned on the fact that I was going to bring our soldiers home.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/465794-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-a-us-role-in-the-middle-east

Trump’s decision to remove US troops from Northern Syria has many pundits and analysts asking…..”what are the options for the US in the Middle East?

The U.S. decision to suddenly leave Syria has been excoriated as a betrayal yet also received some praise for ending the relationship with the Syrian Democratic Forces, which Turkey accuses of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party. That means the U.S. decision to leave Syria can be viewed through the lens of reversing an Obama-era policy of working with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) instead of the Syrian rebels. But if anyone thought the United States was pivoting toward opposing the Assad regime and Iran, that isn’t the case. Assad, Iran, Russia and Turkey are swooping in to grab the spoils.

It’s no use arguing over what might have been in eastern Syria. The war is over and the United States has to decide what its role is after Syria. This could become a key point in U.S. foreign-policy history—the bookend to George H. W. Bush’s “new world order” where America eschews its role as global hegemon, or global policeman, as it has sometimes been seen. This could also be a domino effect, causing the United States to lose more influence in Turkey, in Iraq, and potentially the Gulf as well.

https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2019/10/16/americas_options_for_the_middle_east_after_syria_113102.html

Does not appear that our options are anything to be optimistic about…..https://us11.campaign-archive.com/

Trump’s capitulation to Erdogan on Syria does mkake the region more secure…no it will open up the possibility of more wars popping up….

The crisis has long been brewing. For years, Turkey has wanted to create a buffer zone inside Syria, both for its security and to resettle the more than two million refugees who crossed the border to flee Syria’s eight-year civil war. Even more, Erdoğan has wanted to wipe out the Kurdish militia in Syria which he views as a threat because of its ties to a Kurdish movement in Turkey. Kurds are the largest minority in Turkey and a large voting bloc; a militant faction has sought autonomy or an independent Kurdistan that would unite Kurds across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The United States held off Erdoğan as long as it needed Syria’s feisty Kurds to fight ISIS on the ground, with backup from American air power. All the other U.S.-backed rebel groups failed, disintegrated, or turned into warlords.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-muddled-policy-opens-the-way-for-more-war-in-the-middle-east

That’s right….a creation of more wars in the Middle East……

The complexity of the crisis can create cognitive dissonance. What if I desperately wish to end our endless wars but I also care about the fate of Kurdish and other Syrian civilians? What if I wish U.S. hadn’t invaded these countries in the first place but I now worry that Trump’s recklessness will make matters worse?

There is a coherent strategy that can cut this Gordian knot, but it involves imagining a new U.S. foreign policy based on diplomacy and humanitarian initiatives.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/10/13/trump-isnt-really-ending-endless-wars-hes-making-them-worse

Further Reading: 

Smoke Signals in the Next Middle East War

I do not foresee any change in the standing on war in the region….if anything I think it could get worse until the US finds its foreign policy compass and steps in to make diplomacy the rule of the day….not the bullets.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Tulsi Wants A Foreign Policy Debate

As a foreign policy/international relations wonk I would love to have a debate that focuses on the candidates ideas in foreign policy….so far the DNC has been quiet on this front.

The DNC recently voted down a debate on climate change, a topic that gets more and more important as the years go by, I expect them to do something similar with the idea of a foreign policy debate……

My candidate is calling for the same thing….a debate night that focuses solely on foreign policy……

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), a 2020 Democratic White House hopeful, is calling for a debate centered exclusively on foreign policy, saying the current format doesn’t do voters justice.

“It would be very valuable for voters to have a foreign policy focused debate, period,” Gabbard told Hill.TV during an interview that aired on Thursday.

Gabbard, who served in Iraq as a member of the National Guard, said voters, including those in the military, “deserve more than just having one or two foreign policy-related questions in a two-hour long debate,” adding that not nearly time enough time is allotted to the complex issue.

“It does not do the issue justice, it does not do our service men and women justice, who have to live with the consequences of who are commander in chief is and it doesn’t do justice for the American people,” she said.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has faced growing calls to hold single-issue presidential debates, but so far it has rejected those efforts.

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/463173-tulsi-gabbard-calls-for-foreign-policy-focused-debate

I do not see many of the candidates running that could hold their ground on foreign policy…..Biden, Tulsi and possibly Bernie are the only ones that I think could do a good job on the topic…..the rest would be floundering around trying to find their footing.

Since this country is ass deep in endless wars then a foreign policy debate and how the candidates would handle world affairs if elected should be paramount.

Tulsi as a active service member knows the necessity for a stable foreign policy……https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-gabbard-on-the-issues/foreign-policy

Her policies are explained……https://www.businessinsider.com/tulsi-gabbard-complicated-foreign-policy-explained-2019-2

Then there is the Vote Smart site……Tulsi’s numerous speeches on foreign policy…..https://votesmart.org/candidate/public-statements/129306/tulsi-gabbard/32/foreign-affairs#.XY27tdVOnIU

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Africa Loves China

Recently Chief of Staff Bolton made a speech outlining the new US policy for Africa…and as usual I had to write about it……https://lobotero.com/2019/01/08/liberte-egalite-imperialisme/

According to the US point of view China is trying to get one up on the US in Africa….

A look at African natural resources distribution…..

Image result for Africa natural resources map images

But is all the US predictions actual fact or something more fanciful….

At the September 2018 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing, African Union Chairperson and Rwandan President Paul Kagame lauded the Chinese aid and investment strategy in Africa as a source of “deep transformation”. Kagame argued that the cooperation between China and Africa is based on mutual respect and is for the benefit of both partners. This sentiment is perhaps shared by most African heads of states and governments if their attendance of the summit is anything to go by.

However, despite the African leadership’s embrace of China as a valued partner, the view that Beijing is a “predatory” actor in Africa, attempting to recolonise the continent is also ubiquitous in foreign policy circles, media narratives and academia.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/africa-loves-china-190103121552367.html

All I want Americans to realize is that….not everything you hear is accurate….especially from this White House.

Outlook For Foreign Policy

I have nit taken a close look at our foreign policy in the last month or so…..and as we get closer to the end of the year I would like to look at our policies…..

We must look at our foreign policy under Pres. Trump…..his administration, his foreign policy…..

President Donald Trump’s recent statement on the Jamal Khashoggi killing by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince might well be considered a metaphor for his foreign policy. Several commentators have suggested that the text appears to be something that Trump wrote himself without any adult supervision, similar to the poorly expressed random arguments presented in his tweeting only longer. That might be the case, but it would not be wise to dismiss the document as merely frivolous or misguided as it does in reality express the kind of thinking that has produced a foreign policy that seems to drift randomly to no real end, a kind of leaderless creative destruction of the United States as a world power.

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/u-s-foreign-policy-has-no-policy/

Trump’s lack of experience at foreign policy and hiring yes men instead of experienced international relations people has made our foreign policy unexceptional…….

President Donald Trump’s campaign and years in office thus far have elicited plenty of pre-mortems on his foreign policy, as well as postmortems on the “liberal international order,” on which he is allegedly turning his back. International relations scholars, foreign policy think-tankers, and journalists continue to debate the nature of this order, whether it actually existed and was a force for good, and Trump’s influence on American grand strategy.

In the last two months alone, four books on the subject have been released, all of them by renowned scholars. Arguing that the U.S. grand strategy of the last three decades has failed and is ripe for re-thinking are Harvard University’s Stephen M. Walt with The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy and the University of Chicago’s John J. Mearsheimer with The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. On the liberal internationalist side is the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan with The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World and Ivo H. Daalder’s and James M. Lindsay’s The Empty Throne: America’s Abdication of Global Leadership.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/making-american-foreign-policy-unexceptional/

Dear Supreme Leader has tried doing the same things as past admins have done and expecting a different outcome simply because he is Trump…..

After a week of insisting that a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina was going to happen, President Trump at the last minute sent out a Tweet explaining that due to a Russia/Ukraine dispute in the Sea of Azov he would no longer be willing to meet his Russian counterpart.

According to Trump, the meeting had to be canceled because the Russians seized three Ukrainian naval vessels in Russian waters that refused to follow instructions from the Russian military. But as Pat Buchanan wrote in a recent column: how is this little dispute thousands of miles away any of our business?

https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2018/12/03/trump-foreign-policy-doing-the-same-thing-and-expecting-a-different-result/

The Midterms are over and now time to look at the foreign policies that should be coming to a president near you…..

On the day after the U.S. midterm elections, European politicians and analysts are bracing for disruption from Donald Trump that will be even greater than what he has perpetrated so far. Their concerns are well-founded, for reasons related both to the election result and to Trump’s methods of operation.

Some now-familiar characteristics of Trump’s presidency, especially pertaining to foreign relations, are relevant. Trump places highest priority on applause from his political base, which means he cares little about damage to national interests so long as the applause keeps coming. He has become, with much practice, a master in the art of distraction and diversion through manufactured crises and outrageous statements. Crisis and outrage have positive value for him. And his overall approach to foreign relations has largely been one of knocking down and destroying things, especially anything institutional or multilateral. Even when a constructive result finally comes, as with North American free trade, it is only after the storm and stress of a Trump-manufactured crisis.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/post%E2%80%93election-foreign-policy-trouble-35477

The Weasel Or The Walrus

It is not a secret that I have not been a supporter of US UN ambassador, Nikki Haley (the Weasel), I thought she was the wrong person to represent the US at the UN and so far I was correct in my belief.

Then there is Trump’s new national security adviser and ex-UN ambassador John Bolton (the Walrus)…..another person that I had no confidence in when at the UN and less so as the adviser to the president.

But of the two which is the scarier?  The Weasel or the Walrus?

In the Trumpean world of all-the-time-stupid, there is, however, one individual who stands out for her complete inability to perceive anything beyond threats of unrelenting violence combined with adherence to policies that have already proven to be catastrophic. That person is our own Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who surfaced in the news lately after she unilaterally and evidently prematurely announced sanctions on Russia. When the White House suggested that she might have been “confused” she responded that “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.” This ignited a firestorm among the Trump haters, lauding Haley as a strong and self-confident woman for standing up to the White House male bullies while also suggesting that the hapless Administration had not bothered to inform one of its senior diplomats of a policy change. It also produced a flurry of Haley for higher office tweets based on what was described as her “brilliant riposte” to the president.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/nikki-haley-scarier-than-john-bolton/5637795

Trump is hiring nothing but extreme war mongers for his foreign policy team and that does not bode well for the country and the world.

Besides it has been said that the Weasel is the most popular politician in the US…….

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is America’s most popular politician according to a study by Quinnipiac University, CNNreported yesterday.

Haley is viewed positively by some 63 per cent of US voters, while only 39 per cent gave their approval of US President Donald Trump. Haley’s popularity also stretched to both sides of the political spectrum, with 75 per cent of Republicans, 55 per cent of Democrats and 63 per cent of Independents supporting the former South Carolina governor. She was only exceeded by former president Barack Obama, who was still held in high regard by some 66 per cent of voters.

The UN envoy has taken strong stands in favour of Israel, particularly in the aftermath of the US’ recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital in December. When the UN General Assembly voted to condemn the Trump administration’s decision, Haley slammed the global forum as ungrateful for US contributions to the organisation.

http://theantimedia.com/america-favorite-politician-nikki-haley/

That is a scary thought……the Weasel as the most popular politician …..

Questioning US seriousness in ME | Arab News

In the past I have been a very loud critic of US Middle East foreign policy……my contention is that the US does not understand the complexities of a tribal society….I then set about to write a piece to help my readers, who were interested, to learn why I say this…..after many hours or research and note taking I cam upon I piece that did a better job then I was doing……..

Since the US will not try to curb its involvement in the Middle East people will be reading and hearing about the region for a very long time…..so why not understand what is happening?

The better informed the better citizen you will become…….

 

Questioning US seriousness in ME | Arab News.