Trump’s Foreign Policy Philosophy Hard to Pin Down
Masood Farivar, Voice of America
Is President-elect Donald Trump a foreign policy realist or idealist? Is he bringing Richard Nixon’s hard-edged realpolitik to his foreign policy or following in the footsteps of the more idealistic Ronald Reagan?
The question has become a parlor game among Washington's policy pundits.
Trump’s frequent invocation of Reagan’s “peace through strength” mantra and campaign pledge to rebuild America’s “depleted” military has invited comparisons to the Republican icon credited with winning the Cold War.
His advocacy of a foreign policy based on America’s national interests has led some to liken it to Nixonian realism, while his aversion to foreign interventions has won him the label of a non-interventionist and even isolationist.
Don’t Fence Trump In
Trump has professed no great power doctrine and his advisers discourage applying labels to his vision of the world.
“I’m not going to be put into the little academic, graduate school box because I think it doesn’t suit, and it doesn’t apply in a rapidly changing world,” said K.T. McFarland, Trump’s incoming deputy national security adviser, when asked to describe the Trump doctrine.
While Trump’s call for “peace through strength” reflects Reagan’s view of deterrence, “there are parts of Nixon and (Henry) Kissinger that Donald Trump has also advocated,” McFarland said at the U.S. Institute of Peace, alluding to Trump’s interest-based approach to world affairs.
Trump’s Speeches
A foreign policy neophyte, Trump has shied away from declaring any grand foreign strategy during the campaign, though he did give two major speeches devoted to foreign policy and national security.
In the first speech, delivered at the realist-leaning Center for the National Interest in Washington in April, Trump outlined what he called a “coherent foreign policy based on American interests” and called for “getting out of nation building,” creating stability and quashing “radical Islam.”
“Containing the spread of radical Islam must be a major foreign policy goal of the United States and indeed the world,” Trump said. “Events may require the use of military force, but it’s also a philosophical struggle, like our long struggle in the Cold War.”
In the second speech, at Youngstown University in Ohio in August, Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric about terror, warning countries around the world that they’d be judged based on their commitment to the U.S. goal of fighting terrorism.
“All actions should be oriented around this goal, and any country which shares this goal will be our ally,” Trump told a rally of supporters.
‘Strategic Surprise’
It was a theme that Trump would repeat, in one iteration or another, throughout the campaign, but his advisers say Trump’s pre- and post-election pronouncements on foreign policy, often delivered off the cuff, should not be read as policy prescriptions.
“Actually, he didn’t say a lot about foreign policy and national security on the campaign trail, and what he did say really doesn’t add up to a policy,” said James Carafano, director of foreign policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation who advises the Trump transition team on foreign affairs. “That’s very frustrating because the people want to know what’s this guy going to do.”
With the new administration yet to take office, McFarland, too, cautioned that Trump’s foreign policy is in an early stage of development.
“That’s what a new administration does: It takes time to rethink things and to come up with policies,” she said.
If history is any guide, Trump could quickly find himself facing a set of foreign policy crises different from the issues he campaigned on. Political scientists have a term for an unexpected world event that drives a new president into uncharted territory: “strategic surprise.”
For former President George W. Bush, who campaigned on pursuing a “humble foreign policy,” the strategic surprise came September 11, 2001.
For President Barack Obama, who vowed to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the “Arab Spring” protests in North Africa and the Middle East marked a strategic surprise, leaving his administration more deeply mired in the region than he’d hoped.
What international crisis might alter the trajectory of the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda has become a guessing game, with the number of scenarios exceeded only by the variety of foreign policy labels attributed to Trump.
A game-changing terrorist attack on American interests is one possible candidate. Another contender: an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch by North Korea.
“I think the world is not necessarily going to allow President Trump to do everything he’s planned on,” said Blaise Misztal, director of the national security program at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “I think you’re going to see a triangulation between what he’s said, what he’s advised to do, and what is actually feasible on the world stage.”
Flip Flopping on Issues
While Trump has flip flopped on some issues, NATO and torturing terrorists, for example, he’s held steady on others. Among them: terrorism, trade, China and Russia.
In the weeks since his election, he’s reiterated his pledge to make terrorism a focus of his foreign policy, talked tough on trade, challenged the “One China” policy, and iterated again a desire to reset relations with Russia even as he embraced intelligence findings that Moscow interfered in last year’s presidential election.
Brian Katulis of Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank, said the “most radical shift” Trump will likely undertake will be “engagement and involvement” with Russia, something Obama unsuccessfully attempted during his first term in office.
But former CIA director Michael Hayden said Trump is likely to reconsider his approach to Russia once he learns from intelligence agencies and allies that Russia and Syria are not committed to fighting IS.
“I’m personally very, very skeptical of any convergence between American and Russian interests in this part of the world,” Hayden said. “In fact, I’d offer the view that American and Russian interests are actually heading in different directions.”
Another major change: downplaying a postwar American foreign policy tradition of promoting democracy and freedom around the world.
“Trump has signaled as a candidate and in the transition a proclivity to appreciate authoritarian and repressive leaders around the world,” Katulis said. “And this may be the biggest departure that is historic, that there really won’t be as much of a values-based approach that focuses on human rights democracy and freedom in other countries. And that I think puts the United States itself on shaky territory.”
But McFarland played down those concerns, saying “the three bedrocks of (postwar) American foreign policy” — American leadership, American values and international alliances — will remain under the Trump administration.
Unpredictability
There is usually some continuity between administrations on foreign policy, but “that rule actually may not apply under Trump,” Katulis said.
“We’re dealing with something here that is just fundamentally different and off the charts,” Katulis explained.
That 'something' is Trump’s well-known unpredictability. Trump has criticized President Obama for telegraphing his policy moves and has vowed to remain unpredictable. But experts say unpredictability can be dangerous in the international arena where both allies and adversaries expect a certain degree of predictability from the United States.
"Predictability is the cornerstone of deterrence," said Clarke. "You need to be predictable if you’re the United states, both in what your allies know you’ll do and in what your adversaries know you’ll do and how you’ll respond."
Comments
"We look at America as our 1st enemy, the source of all evil”
- Spokesman for #Iraq-based #Iran-backed militia:
Kataib Hizballah, main Hashd militia, designated terrorist group, #Iran proxy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/trump-wants-to-push-ba… …
Kyle W. Orton @KyleWOrton
My write-up on formation of #HTS for @HJS_Org: "Al-Qaeda Reshapes the Insurgency in Northern Syria"
https://goo.gl/Cy2OU6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr34m0dyNjE …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhugCJIgkVU …
#Russia’s Ch.5 translates #Trump’s exec order to rebuild military as ‘great perestroika.’
NOW that is a solid disconnect and it is not just a langauge disconnect....
Wikileaks Russian editor says Women's March was part of a Jewish conspiracy to bring down Trump.
http://www.unz.com/ishamir/from-yin-to-yang/
YET Trump prepares to lift Russian sanctions because Putin writes him a "nice letter"?????
US FP towards Russia is in utter chaos right now.....
Putin's spokesman says the Kremlin is waiting for an apology from Bill O'Reilly @oreillyfactor for saying Putin is a killer..
APPEARS Russians did not catch the Trump response that the US kills as much as does Putin...which actually sounded like a compliment to Putin.....
Likely Kremlin will be waiting a long time for that apology from O'Reilly....
APPEARS Trump...Bannon...Flynn do not fully understand the global logistics in the just in time manufacturing process....
He still voices his demands for an import tax...ie border tax...NOT realizing he is hitting US companies badly.....
Example the Boeing Dreamliner is built in the US from 80% of it's construction elements and parts being delivered from outside the US.....thus driving Boeing into dropping the Dreamliner as being unprofitable....as compared to say Airbus...
AND it would force Airbus to stop their US production laying off well paid workers and destroying the supply chain also US producers in the mix.....
THAT is just how ell informed this so called highly successful businessman is....????
"Russia doesn't believe in free lunches." WSJ on Trump's plan to drive Russia and Iran apart, with Ukraine as lunch.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-looks-at-driving-wedg…
Right now this depicts just how unlearned this group of Trump advisors are....Iran and Russia share a deep dislike of the US in ME and yes while they might have differences between them ...they share the same common enemy....US and US FP in the ME....with Syrian as the binding connection there is no chance Trump and his merry band will drive a wedge between the two....
This morning America wakes up to a NYTs WH leak that apparently Trump had no idea that his NSC EO included kicking out the JCoS and ODNI...replacing them with Bannon a known and confirmed white nationalist....he called himself even a Leninist who wants to destroy the establishment...his words....
AND he did not know what was contained in the Muslim Ban EO...
This is not just bad..it is a disaster... ..no wonder this depicts why many foreign leaders currently simply do not trust Trump to lead the West...cannot blame them....
So White House Chief Ideologue Bannon evidently put himself on National Security Council w/o "fully briefing" Trump.
http://bit.ly/2jRhP7q
Speaks sadly about the total failure of a so called highly successful businessman who evidently cannot read....
Trump’s Plan to Fight ISIS With Putin Isn’t Just Futile. It’s Dangerous.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/trumps-plan-to-fight-isi…
…
What is Trump truly hiding from the US private citizen and from his own party....
Trump Orders Putin Phone Call Completely Secret…No Recording, No Transcript
http://www.bluedotdaily.com/trump-orders-putin-phone-call-completely-se…
NOTICE just how long this President seems to want to hold onto disproven myths or basically outright lies....how is he then to get foreign leaders to even think about believing anything he states.....believe European leaders listen intently to every single word he utters....
Trump says Pence will lead voter fraud panel
http://reut.rs/2ldn90W
The myth he believes in is a report by a totally discredited blogger who was registered to vote in three states....and remember Trump stated illegal voters were those registered in two or more states.....
Let's see....Trump.....NATO obsolete......now calls NATO SG...
QUOTE
President Donald Trump expressed "strong support for NATO" and its allies during a Sunday call with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the White House says. Trump and Stoltenberg discussed a "peaceful resolution of the conflict along the Ukrainian border," the White House said, although the readout did not acknowledge Russia's aggression in the conflict in Crimea. Trump's support of NATO comes as an apparent reversal of his previous positions, when he implied that he might not come to the aid of NATO allies in the Baltic states, should Russia invade.
BUT WAIT...trump and his so called natsec advisor Flynn apparently do not know that the fighting involving Russian troops and logistics is not along the border BUT 250 MILES further inside Ukraine....
THAT is not a "border dispute" as Trump appears to want to make it....
A not so subtle warning from a Chinese businessman to a US businessman...think Trump heard the message?????
Alibaba CEO warns that 'if trade stops, war starts'
http://gizmo.do/wOWgtPf
Russia's state TV: Potential U.S. Ambo to the EU, Ted Malloch, hinted that he wants to destroy the EU, like he helped destroy the USSR.
Russia's state TV: The EU is now falling in line with Trump's migrant policy - and not a word against the U.S., to avoid waking the animal.
Russia's state TV: Everybody needs Russia as a partner, it holds the golden ticket. The EU is just political trash, wanted by no one.
THEN WHY does Russia want EU sanctions lifted if just trash?????
Another Trump lie....
This story is not true and appears to still be on Trump's FB page
https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/10158589407710725
Russia's state TV predictably delights in the content of Trump's conversation with Ukraine's Poroshenko: "Not a hint of condemning Russia!"
That is exactly the correct view of the US WH two sentence readout of the call vs the SEVEN paragraphs done by the Ukrainians....
First Russian influence operations against Us election in support of Trump...then against now Germany's Merkel and now the French election.....
And now, hardly surprising, Russian and Wikileaks propaganda resources are aimed against Emmanuel Macron in France.
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201702041050340451-macron-us-agent-dhu…
Russia's state TV: the real story is not #Trump hiring Manafort, but Ukrainian lobby's meddling by exposing his corruption & Kremlin links.
BREAKING: Germen FM official: it is a 'serious struggle' to understand what Trump Administration is 'thinking, saying or doing'.
Trump's Amateurish White House Thinks Poland Invaded Belarus
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/02/...-belarus.html#
I can't recall either Belarus or Russia complaining about "Polish incursions". Why is White House concerned (acc to AP)?
As Lukashenka rails against Russia for hours on end, Trump's WH invents a phantom Polish campaign against him. Where'd they get that idea?
Russia's state TV: Ukrainian lobbyists worked in close collaboration with the CIA to discredit Trump! This scandal is bigger than Watergate!
Russia's state TV: Obama's CIA worked to discredit Trump, feeding off the hand of #Ukraine's Security Service (SBU).
New @AP: excerpt of call shows that Trump threatened to send US troops to Mexico to stop "bad hombres down there"
https://apnews.com/0b3f5db59b2e4aa78cdbbf008f27fb49/Trump-to-Mexico:-Ta…
Julian Assange now working to get the far-right (and pro-Putin) National Front elected in France.
How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S. - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-au…
READ and really think this through and then ask yourself are the current President and company acting in an illegal manner...
During the confirmation hearing process for Ms. Yates to take the position she was fired from by Trump and company......
QUOTE
Sessions asking Yates at conf. hearing if she thinks she has a responsibility to tell the president no if something unlawful.
YNQUOTE
Her reply was YES....
NOW the very same Sessions will be the incoming AG..DO you think he will "speak truth to power" as did Ms. Yates????
Finally someone stands up and speaks power to truth...a former Virginian federal prosecutor as acting AG until Sessions comes in stands up and dares Trump with his EO Muslim Ban as being illegal....is fired by Trump ...
BUT WAIT....FOUR Federal District Courts have ruled a large number of points in the Trump EO Muslim Ban to be illegal and or unconstitutional......
AND behold Trump does not fight those decisions in Federal Court...so he himself knows they are illegal BUT by conceding the fact...WHY...he is attempting to avoid a SC fight which will in the end state his actions were illegal....
QUOTE:
WASHINGTON — President Trump fired his acting attorney general on Monday after she defiantly refused to defend his immigration executive order, accusing the Democratic holdover of trying to obstruct his agenda for political reasons.
Taking action in an escalating crisis for his 10-day-old administration, Mr. Trump declared that Sally Q. Yates had “betrayed” the administration, the White House said in a statement.
The president appointed Dana J. Boente, United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as acting attorney general until Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is confirmed.
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Ms. Yates’s decision confronted the president with a stinging challenge to his authority and laid bare a deep divide at the Justice Department, within the diplomatic corps and elsewhere in the government over the wisdom of his order.
“At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities, nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful,” Ms. Yates wrote in a letter to Justice Department lawyers.
The extraordinary legal standoff capped a tumultuous day in which the White House confronted an outpouring of dissent over Mr. Trump’s temporary ban on entry visas for people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, went so far as to warn State Department officials that they should leave their jobs if they did not agree with Mr. Trump’s agenda, after State Department officials circulated a so-called dissent memo on the order.
“These career bureaucrats have a problem with it?” Mr. Spicer said. “They should either get with the program or they can go.”
Ms. Yates’s decision effectively overruled a finding by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which had already approved the executive order “with respect to form and legality.”
Ms. Yates said her determination in deciding not to defend the order was broader, however, and included questions not only about the order’s lawfulness, but also whether it was a “wise or just” policy. She also alluded to unspecified statements that the White House had made before signing the order, which she factored into her review.
Mr. Trump responded to the letter with a post on Twitter at 7:45 p.m., complaining that the Senate’s delay in confirming his Cabinet nominees had resulted in leaving Ms. Yates in place. “The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons,” Mr. Trump said. “They have nothing going but to obstruct. Now have an Obama A.G.”
One of Mr. Trump’s top advisers condemned the decision as an illustration of the politicization of the legal system. “It’s sad that our politics have become so politicized that you have people refusing to enforce our laws,” Stephen Miller, the senior policy adviser, said in a televised interview.
Mr. Trump has the authority to fire Ms. Yates, but as the top Senate-confirmed official at the Justice Department, she is the only one authorized to sign foreign surveillance warrants, an essential function at the department.
“For as long as I am the acting attorney general, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the executive order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so,” she wrote.
Ms. Yates’s letter transforms the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s attorney general nominee, Mr. Sessions, into a referendum on the immigration order. Action in the Senate could come as early as Tuesday.
The decision by the acting attorney general is a remarkable rebuke by a government official to a sitting president that recalls the dramatic “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general for refusing to dismiss the special prosecutor in the Watergate case.
That case prompted a constitutional crisis that ended when Robert Bork, the solicitor general, acceded to Mr. Nixon’s order and fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor.
Ms. Yates, a career prosecutor, is different because she is a holdover from President Barack Obama’s administration, where she served as deputy attorney general. She agreed to Mr. Trump’s request to stay on as acting attorney general until Mr. Sessions is confirmed to be attorney general.
At the State Department, which is also without a leader, career officials are circulating a dissent memo that argues that closing the borders to more than 200 million people to weed out a handful of would-be terrorists would not make the nation safer and might instead deepen the threat. Mr. Spicer countered that the effects of the ban had been exaggerated and that it would help fulfill Mr. Trump’s vow to protect the country.
Taken together, the developments were a stark confrontation between the new president, who is moving swiftly to upend years of policies, and a federal bureaucracy still struggling with the jolting change of power in Washington. There is open hostility to Mr. Trump’s ideas in large pockets of the government, and deep frustration among those enforcing the visa ban that the White House announced the order without warning or consulting them.
The reverberations extended beyond Washington. Corporate chieftains from Detroit to Silicon Valley sharply criticized the ban, saying it was inconsistent with their values. Mr. Trump also faced mounting legal challenges across the country as two Democratic-leaning states, Massachusetts and Washington, signaled they would attack the policy in court and a Muslim advocacy group filed a lawsuit calling it an unconstitutional religious test.
Over the weekend, four federal judges temporarily blocked part of the executive order, prohibiting the government from sending people back to their home countries. Court hearings and further motions in those cases are scheduled this week.
At the White House on Monday, questions about the ban overshadowed all other issues. Mr. Spicer acknowledged the State Department’s “dissent channel” has long been a way for its staff to register objections over administration policies. But he displayed little patience for it.
“The president has a very clear vision,” Mr. Spicer said. “He’s been clear on it since the campaign, he’s been clear on it since taking office — that he’s going to put the country first.”
“If somebody has a problem with that agenda,” he added, “that does call into question whether or not they should continue in that post.”
The visa ban has also rattled other agencies: the Defense Department, which says it hurts the military’s local partners in conflict zones like Iraq; and the Department of Homeland Security, whose customs officers are struggling to enforce the directive.
But Mr. Spicer’s blunt warning posed an especially difficult choice for the more than 100 State Department officials who indicated they would sign the memo. They can sign a final version, which would be put on the desk of Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s designated secretary of state, on his first day in office. Or they can choose not to identify themselves, and instead rely on the leak of the letter to make their point.
Under State Department rules, it is forbidden to retaliate against any employee who follows the procedures and submits a dissent memorandum. One of the signatories, in a text message, said State Department signatories were trying to figure out what to do.
“This is an important process that the acting secretary, and the department as a whole, respect and value,” said a spokesman, Mark Toner. “It allows state employees to express divergent policy views candidly and privately to senior leadership.”
The speed with which the memo was assembled and the number of signers underscore the degree to which the State Department has become the center of the resistance to Mr. Trump’s new order. More broadly, it represents objections to his efforts to cut back on American participation in international organizations and to issue ultimatums to allies.
Not surprisingly, the diplomats and Civil Service officers of the State Department are among the most internationally minded in the government; they have lived around the world and devoted their careers to building alliances and promoting American values abroad.
“This channel was established to allow Foreign Service officers to express constrictive dissent,” said John D. Negroponte, a Republican former deputy secretary of state. “This type of commentary seems pretty harmless to me. The administration is being pretty defensive.”
Last spring, 51 State Department officials signed a dissent cable protesting President Barack Obama’s hands-off policy in Syria, which they asserted had been “overwhelmed” by the violence there. They handed the cable to Secretary of State John Kerry.
Unlike that memo, which advocated military action in Syria, this one is broadly focused on not sacrificing American values. It warned that the ban would “increase anti-American sentiment” and that “instead of building bridges to these societies,” it would “send the message that we consider all nationals of these countries to be an unacceptable security risk.”
Among those whose views will be changed are “current and future leaders in these societies — including those for whom this may be a tipping point towards radicalization.” It also warned of an immediate humanitarian effect on those who come “to seek medical treatment for a child with a rare heart condition, to attend a parent’s funeral.”
“We do not need to alienate entire societies to stay safe,” the draft memo concluded.
At the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has been on the job since last week, there is frustration for another reason. Mr. Mattis, who was not consulted on the order, plans to send the White House a list of Iraqi citizens who have served with American military forces with the recommendation that they be exempt from the ban, the Pentagon said on Monday.
“There are a number of people in Iraq who have worked for us in a partnership role whether fighting alongside us or working as translators, often doing so at great peril to themselves,” said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. “Those who support us there and do so at risk to themselves, we will make sure those contributions of support, those personal risks they’ve taken, are recognized in this process.”
Captain Davis said department officials were compiling names of Iraqis who served as drivers, interpreters and linguists and in other jobs with American military personnel in Iraq over the years. He declined to say how many Iraqi citizens might be included in this list or what Mr. Mattis’s personal recommendations to Mr. Trump were on the matter.
The Pentagon list is intended to address a major criticism of Mr. Trump’s executive order: that it will stop the flow of former Iraqi interpreters and cultural advisers who have sought special visas to move to the United States for their own protection.
The White House has argued that the temporary ban is needed so that the United States can develop procedures for the “extreme vetting” of travelers from nations that have been stricken by terrorism. Officials said the Iraqis who will be put on the Pentagon list have already undergone a stringent form of vetting: serving with the United States military in combat.
Washington Post
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@washingtonpost
"Sean Spicer is right. That five-year-old refugee has diabolical plans." http://wapo.st/2kauQpg by
BTW....this 5 year old was handcuffed and kept from his mother for hours until ACLU lawyers were able to get through the CBP barrier with a Federal Court order.....and reunited the two separated by CBP....
AND American prides itself in telling the entire world about the so called rule of law...come on...with this single move by Trump we lost that ability to tell anyone anything...
Spicer: "Suggesting a 5YO can't be a terrorist is discrimination based on age, and you should be ashamed of yourselves".
BUT WAIT...does the WH spokesperson...think a 5 year is a "radical Islamic terrorist" carrying a suicide vest.....
BUT WAIT...let's see in getting to a major US airport he has had both his ticket and passport checked at these three times....and his flight data confirmed by the DHS database on his information entered before he flew....
THEN he went through a security screening and his onboard luggage was also checked as well as his in cargo luggage.....
SO spending hours held by CBP with no explanation and having no legal representation on a VALID US issued visa....IS NOT IN ITSELF government sanctioned state terrorism...?????
Spicer w quite an amazing alternative fact.......
- that Trump has "by and large been praised for" statement omitting "Jews" from Holocaust.
BUT WAIT.....just who are these "by and large praised for".....
Trump has by and large been praised by neo-Nazis for omitting any mention of Jews from a statement about the Holocaust
Donald Trump Is One of the EU's Most Serious Threats, Says Europe's Brexit Negotiator Guy Verhofstadt
http://europe.newsweek.com/donald-trump-muslim-ban-guy-verhofstadt-eu-t…
The White House Just Charted a Dangerous Course With NSC Machinations
Trump’s national security coup cuts military and spies out of big decisions
By John R. Schindler •
01/30/17 10:45am
This weekend the mainstream media went bananas over President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Seemingly every bien-pensant in the United States and far beyond went on social media to howl gigantic curses at the White House, denouncing it as un-American, hateful, and quite possibly Hitlerian for temporarily halting immigration from seven Muslim countries. That the ban lasts only 90 days seemed to get lost in the hysteria that Trump unleashed.
As someone who favors tough counterterrorism measures, I too was underwhelmed by the executive order. I want stronger vetting of immigrants and visitors, who need to be asked more questions about possible involvement in jihadism and extremism. Banning simply on the grounds of nationality makes little sense, while many have noted that countries which produce huge numbers of jihadists such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt were suspiciously left off the block list. Not to mention that if you want to keep terrorists out, Muslims in Brussels per capita are more likely to advocate violent jihad than their co-religionists in most Muslim countries.
Nevertheless, getting tough on terrorists and other undesirable immigrants was a big part of Trump’s campaign last year, so nobody should be surprised that he followed up, decisively, just a week after his inauguration. Moreover, panic about this executive order is overwrought, since presidential EOs are subject to checks and balances, and this one will likely be held up in courts for years.
The biggest problem with this EO is that the White House seems to have written and released it without the slightest consultation with the Federal departments and agencies charged with its implementation. The result has been chaos and confusion about how to bureaucratically execute what the president wants. This sort of approach indicates the White House is more interested in appearing tough than implementing successful policies.
That said, the weekend’s immigration EO accomplished what may have been its actual purpose—distracting everyone from the White House’s far more consequential changes to the National Security Council. The NSC has been around since 1947, but it’s not the sort of outfit that usually generates much public interest. Customarily staffed by wonks who excel at giving briefings, the NSC isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s enormously influential in policymaking.
Over the last seven decades, presidents have approached the NSC differently, some relying on it more than others to make big decisions on national security. Its real purpose is to ensure that the president gets to hear a wide array of voices, from the full Washington alphabet soup of security-related agencies, before he makes fateful choices in foreign and defense policy.
Not for nothing did he openly proclaim himself a ‘Leninist’ who wanted to ‘destroy the state.’
President Obama set the bar decidedly low with his bloated and ineffectual NSC, which was run during his second term by Susan Rice, who was both incompetent and foul-mouthed, to the consternation of the Pentagon, the State Department, and many of our key allies. Her deputy, Ben Rhodes, was an aspiring novelist with zero national security experience but ample chutzpah plus a gift for manipulating the press—of which he openly boasted.
Although the new White House has promised to pare back the NSC, which under Obama grew far too large to be effective, virtually everything else Team Trump has done there is unwelcome.
The new boss is Mike Flynn, the retired Army three-star general who was fired by President Obama for his serious mismanagement of the Defense Intelligence Agency. How Flynn will handle the NSC, which has far more high-profile moving parts than DIA, is an open question, particularly since Flynn’s abrasive personality was a major factor in his cashiering by Obama.
Flynn, a career military intelligence officer, was a first-rate intelligence boss for the military’s shadowy Joint Special Operations Command, which kills terrorists almost daily, but he failed to transition from the tactical world of whack-a-mole in the Middle East to the big-picture, strategic game inside the Beltway. Why President Trump thinks Flynn now has those critical skills is a mystery.
To say nothing of Flynn’s erratic personality and strange choices, particularly his cuddly relationship with the Kremlin. Why a career intelligence officer thought it was appropriate to sit at the head table with Vladimir Putin for the 10th anniversary gala of RT, Moscow’s propaganda network, then take RT money, is difficult to explain.
Flynn’s appointment to lead the NSC led to considerable head-scratching in official Washington, where his reputation is anything but good.
However, a lot is now riding on Flynn’s ability to make wise choices, since the brand-new executive order on the NSC includes important changes about who will be sitting at the big table. Traditionally, its Principals Committee, which does the heavy lifting on NSC decisions, includes the President, the Vice-President, the National Security Adviser, the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Energy, plus the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence.
However, the new EO removes those last two from the Principals Committee, meaning that the nation’s top military officer and spy boss will be at the table only when Flynn wants them to be. This, to put it mildly, is a sea change. It needs to be asked why any White House would not want the country’s top military and intelligence officials at the big table when major decisions about our national security are being made.
Making matters worse, the new EO adds to the Principals Committee the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor, Steve Bannon. Best known to the public as the head of the rabble-rousing Breitbart News, Bannon took over Trump’s presidential campaign last August, and his success there has now propelled him into the inner sanctum of our national security apparatus. Why Trump wants a controversialist like Bannon inside the NSC—but not the country’s top military and intelligence bosses—is a good question that needs an answer.
Bannon isn’t wholly unqualified. As a young man, he served as a junior officer in the Navy, and while he lacks any experience with governing and how Washington works, Flynn is rather deficient there too. The real problem is twofold. First, both Flynn and Bannon require no stamp of approval from the Senate, so there’s no Congressional oversight of their hiring.
Then there’s the matter of Bannon’s politics. Although he’s casually called a fascist and worse by his enemies, I have more judiciously termed him “at least an Alt-Right fellow traveler.” Bannon is unquestionably highly intelligent, but he’s also a professional fire-starter. He finds political danger exciting and useful—and when he was heading Breitbart, very lucrative. Not for nothing did he openly proclaim himself a “Leninist” who wanted to “destroy the state.” This is hardly the level-headed person you want when discussions of (nuclear) war and peace are on the table.
Given that the president is prone to mood-swings and needlessly harsh rhetoric, plus a total neophyte in the job, and Flynn isn’t all that well-grounded either (at DIA, his active imagination led staffers to term his more dubious pronouncements “Flynn facts”), the third member of this ruling national security triumvirate ought to be a calming influence—and that sure isn’t Steve Bannon.
In truth, there’s only one reason any White House would not want top military and intelligence officials at the NSC table, and that’s because they bring unwanted truths into the discussion. Spies especially must deal with reality while eschewing ideologically-driven flights of fancy. For right-wing ideologues like Flynn and Bannon, the opinion of the military brass and particularly the Intelligence Community would be more an obstacle to their far-reaching agenda than an aid, so they’ve cut them out.
There is real danger to this novel approach. America has a complex, and at times cumbersome, national security apparatus to prevent the White House from making avoidable dumb decisions. This system isn’t perfect. We invaded Iraq in 2003 thanks to flawed groupthink in the White House and the NSC, notwithstanding that most of the principals then possessed decades of Washington experience. Trump’s administration possesses a full plate of Rumsfeldian self-confidence without any of the relevant experience.
Ponder Trump’s NSC taking on issues of global consequence—for instance, the aftermath of 9/11 or the Cuban Missile Crisis—while being led by ideologues, and the country’s top military and intelligence officials may or may not be present, depending how Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon feel that day.
Every new White House makes mistakes. Wise administrations learn from them and get smarter, fast. Trump’s aggressive demeanor is already scaring allies and angering foes unnecessarily. The president’s unwise tweets have spurred Beijing to real anger, and top Chinese military officials have termed war with this new, combative America a “practical reality.”
This isn’t a game, and the new White House needs to get serious without delay. It would be best if such weighty decisions weren’t being made by people like Flynn and Bannon, with the top military and intelligence brass locked out of the room.
This article crosses this thread nicely with the sidelining of the JCoS and DNI in the NSC....as well as it goes to the Putin dream of a Yalta 2.0 that he has been preaching since 2006...that he wants a zone of influence political and economic running from Portugal to the Russian Far East.....
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.de/...pe-of-emerging...
Monday, January 30, 2017
Solovey on the Shape of the Emerging Putin-Trump ‘Big Deal’ on Ukraine and Much Else
Staunton, January 30 – Valery Solovey, one of the best connected and most thoughtful of Moscow’s foreign policy commentators, says that the telephone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was the “first step toward ‘a big deal’” between the two not only over bilateral ties but also over a re-division of the world that will leave many countries at Russia’s mercy.
The MGIMO professor outlines what he sees as the seven most important aspects of such a deal in a Facebook post that subsequently has been picked up by other outlets (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1842744842662560&id=10000 7811864378&pnref=story, echo.msk.ru/blog/vsolovej/1918678-echo/# and #hvylya.net/news/exclusive/ssha-blizki-k-zaklyucheniyu-s-rf-bolshoy-sdelki-kasayushheysya-ukrainyi-solovey.html).
Quote:
Solovey’s seven points of a possible “deal” between Putin and Trump are:
1. “Moscow considers that a personal meeting of Putin and Trump will be marked by mutual understanding and can lay the groundwork for a strategic deal.”
2. “In the new American administration there are influential people who think that agreement with Russia corresponds to the national interests of the US. Expert workups of these agreements have already begun.”
3. “For the US, the main themes of the deal are the destruction of ISIS and restraining Iran and China. For Russia, they are the de facto recognition of a new geopolitical status quo, a recognition of the post-Soviet space (except for the Baltics) as a zone of Russian influence, a normalization of relations with NATO, and a decisive easing of sanctions.”
4. “A mass joint operation of the US and Russia against ISIS (the theater of military operations in addition to Syria would include two or three additional countries) would prove capable of removing the objections of the Congress against a deal with Russia.”
5. “Regarding the policy of post-sanctions Iran, Moscow now has poorly concealed objections so that a firm base for a future agreement exists.”
6. “For Russia, it is critically important to avoid complications with china, therefore the potential model of agreement with the US regarding China may be formed not on a military-political but on a geo-economic basis involving massive economic cooperation in Siberia and the Far East, with the involvement of South Korea and Japan.”
7. “Regarding Ukraine, the position is the following: to give guarantees that the Russians will not seize Ukraine, and in the future to allow the two neighboring sides to agree among themselves. The US has other priorities.”
It is important to remember that Solovey’s conclusions, however accurate they may be as a statement about where Putin and Trump are now, may not be what any final “deal” will look like: There are simply too many players in both Russia and the US to be certain of that. But they do point to two disturbing possibilities in the former Soviet space.
On the one hand, if Solovey is right, Trump is prepared to leave the 11 former Soviet republics to face Russian power on their own, something that will represent a betrayal of what has been American policy since 1991.
Moscow apparently is prepared to recognize that the Baltic countries are out of its zone, but any Putin promise to not try to take Ukraine is worthless.
And on the other, in the MGIMO analyst’s view, Trump and Putin are prepared to launch a major military campaign against ISIS not because it would really defeat Islamist radicalism – the experience of Syria shows how unlikely that is -- than because it could serve as a means for Trump to marginalize critics in the Congress of his all-too-obvious tilt toward Russia.
Given the gratitude that Trump would likely have for such additional Russian assistance in US domestic politics, it would be most unlikely that the US president would do anything to block Putin’s authoritarianism and imperial pretensions in Eurasia, guaranteeing not only more violence there but destroying what is left of US credibility more generally.
#
And tragically, if Solovey is right, Trump apparently is only concerned about containing Islamic radicalism and China and is prepared to yield to Russia on everything else. Thus his constant promise to “make America great again” will in the first instance contribute to making Russia great again even as it diminishes America’s influence and standing in the world.
Today in the Parliament question and answer session May's own FM stated that she only learned about Trump's EO Muslim Ban after leaving the US.....
BUT a MP asked if she knew about it before she left DC and did not respond for over 46 hours publicly that is a major disaster for her...her own FM reassured the MPs that she did not know about Trump's move.....
BUT WAIT....
This makes May look really, really bad. She was told a refugee ban was coming by the White House in person.
https://www.channel4.com/news/by/gary-gibbon/blogs/theresa-may-told-a-u…
THIS will seriously call into question her invitation to Trump to visit UK....
This article crosses this thread nicely with the sidelining of the JCoS and DNI in the NSC....as well as it goes to the Putin dream of a Yalta 2.0 that he has been preaching since 2006...that he wants a zone of influence political and economic running from Portugal to the Russian Far East.....
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.de/2017/01/solovey-on-shape-of-emergin…
Monday, January 30, 2017
Solovey on the Shape of the Emerging Putin-Trump ‘Big Deal’ on Ukraine and Much Else
Staunton, January 30 – Valery Solovey, one of the best connected and most thoughtful of Moscow’s foreign policy commentators, says that the telephone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was the “first step toward ‘a big deal’” between the two not only over bilateral ties but also over a re-division of the world that will leave many countries at Russia’s mercy.
The MGIMO professor outlines what he sees as the seven most important aspects of such a deal in a Facebook post that subsequently has been picked up by other outlets (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1842744842662560&id=100007811864378&pnref=story, echo.msk.ru/blog/vsolovej/1918678-echo/ and hvylya.net/news/exclusive/ssha-blizki-k-zaklyucheniyu-s-rf-bolshoy-sdelki-kasayushheysya-ukrainyi-solovey.html).
Solovey’s seven points of a possible “deal” between Putin and Trump are:
1. “Moscow considers that a personal meeting of Putin and Trump will be marked by mutual understanding and can lay the groundwork for a strategic deal.”
2. “In the new American administration there are influential people who think that agreement with Russia corresponds to the national interests of the US. Expert workups of these agreements have already begun.”
3. “For the US, the main themes of the deal are the destruction of ISIS and restraining Iran and China. For Russia, they are the de facto recognition of a new geopolitical status quo, a recognition of the post-Soviet space (except for the Baltics) as a zone of Russian influence, a normalization of relations with NATO, and a decisive easing of sanctions.”
4. “A mass joint operation of the US and Russia against ISIS (the theater of military operations in addition to Syria would include two or three additional countries) would prove capable of removing the objections of the Congress against a deal with Russia.”
5. “Regarding the policy of post-sanctions Iran, Moscow now has poorly concealed objections so that a firm base for a future agreement exists.”
6. “For Russia, it is critically important to avoid complications with china, therefore the potential model of agreement with the US regarding China may be formed not on a military-political but on a geo-economic basis involving massive economic cooperation in Siberia and the Far East, with the involvement of South Korea and Japan.”
7. “Regarding Ukraine, the position is the following: to give guarantees that the Russians will not seize Ukraine, and in the future to allow the two neighboring sides to agree among themselves. The US has other priorities.”
It is important to remember that Solovey’s conclusions, however accurate they may be as a statement about where Putin and Trump are now, may not be what any final “deal” will look like: There are simply too many players in both Russia and the US to be certain of that. But they do point to two disturbing possibilities in the former Soviet space.
On the one hand, if Solovey is right, Trump is prepared to leave the 11 former Soviet republics to face Russian power on their own, something that will represent a betrayal of what has been American policy since 1991. Moscow apparently is prepared to recognize that the Baltic countries are out of its zone, but any Putin promise to not try to take Ukraine is worthless.
And on the other, in the MGIMO analyst’s view, Trump and Putin are prepared to launch a major military campaign against ISIS not because it would really defeat Islamist radicalism – the experience of Syria shows how unlikely that is -- than because it could serve as a means for Trump to marginalize critics in the Congress of his all-too-obvious tilt toward Russia.
Given the gratitude that Trump would likely have for such additional Russian assistance in US domestic politics, it would be most unlikely that the US president would do anything to block Putin’s authoritarianism and imperial pretensions in Eurasia, guaranteeing not only more violence there but destroying what is left of US credibility more generally.
And tragically, if Solovey is right, Trump apparently is only concerned about containing Islamic radicalism and China and is prepared to yield to Russia on everything else. Thus his constant promise to “make America great again” will in the first instance contribute to making Russia great again even as it diminishes America’s influence and standing in the world.
Comments today that reflect a growing anger at Trump from various corners of Europe....
1. The EU Chief Negotiator for Brexit stated the EU must now deal with Trump from a position of direct opposition....
Brexit negotiator warns Donald Trump poses 'third threat' to EU
http://d.gu.com/NFFNW6
2. Merkel openly and publicly critiqued Trump's EO Muslim Ban for being contrary to international laws and regulations that the US has signed up for years...in joint relations with Europe.....
THERE is a growing feeling from European leaders that Trump and or individuals within his inner circle are actively against EU and want the diminishment of EU....as an entity.
Petition hits 1 million + and climbing: Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928
Looks like Trump is not getting his overnight in the Queens Palace that he signaled May he would like to do....what an embarrassment....
JUST gets worse with the Trump EO Muslim ban FP....
Baghdad Invest @baghdadinvest
Breaking: Iraqi parliament blocks visas for all Americans, including contractors & journalists
http://www.baghdadinvest.com/breaking-americans-banned-iraq-retaliation…
The New York Times
✔
@nytimes
Leaders from Britain, Germany and Italy reject President Trump's refugee ban
http://nyti.ms/2kHQ5ht
APPEARS that Trump with his "Art of the Deal"... appears to have stumbled his way into a major FP failure.....
Apparently not the greatest negotiator....
Putin's "grey cardinals" Flynn & Bannon guided Trump through Putin phone call.
Russia's armed forces launched attack on Ukraine right after for a total of 60 attacks by Russian mercenaries under Russian military control on UAF positions...
Three UAF killed and 1 WIA....
And Putin wants a partnership with the US in Ukraine YET constantly fails to adhere and or fulfill Minsk 2....WHICH even Flynn and Bannon should be able to confirm and or deny....
BUT WAIT...Trump's aide claiming our values are the same as #Russia's, it's a necessary reminder of just where the Trump inner circle values lie...
So the Russian values of military annexation...the deliberate bombing of schools...marketplaces...hospitals....and the use of cluster and incendiary munitions against civilians and starvation ARE US values?
WHERE did this Trump aid grow up?????
Former GWB chief of staff Josh Bolten explains why the president did not allow Karl Rove to attend NSC mtgs, ever
http://www.whitehousetransitionproject.org/wp-content/upl
oads/2017/01/LBJ_National_Security_Forum_National_Security_Council_9-23-2016.pdf
BUT WAIT....
Trump kicks out the JCoS to replace him with a white nationalist/white supremacist....and former chief editor of Breitbart.com a major conspiracy theory blogsite...
Former Defense Sec. Bob Gates calls sidelining DNI, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs from NSC meetings a "big mistake"
http://abcn.ws/2kBznkl
Giuliani claims he and others wrote the Muslim ban EO....if a lawyer then he is a bad one as the EO have been overridden by two Federal Courts and a fast track is on to the SC for final injunction decisions to end the entire EO...
Giuliani was also the one who stated that he knew the second FBI ran at Clinton over emails was also going to happen and two days later it did happen....
NOW we see that DHS from the reading of the Trump Muslim Ban EO...they felt it did not include Green Card holders.....they were then told their concerns were overridden by the WH especially coming from Bannon himself.....
HOW in a democracy does an advisor to the President speak with the authority of DOJ and DOS....???
HOW does a known and verified white nationalist/white supremacist get that much power and a TS/SCI security clearance?????
White nationalists overriding DOJ and DOS....and we are not on the road to fascism.....????
ANS since when do taxpayers pay the monthly salary for a white supremacist to be in the WH next thing it will advisors from KKK and the American Nazi Party.....?
UK Parliament has received over 100K signatures demanding a debate on the wisdom of throwing out the May offered State visit to Trump.....EVEN May a full two days after her visit is in full critique of the Trump Muslim Ban EO....
With a debate on Trump's visit on the cards in Parliament, Theresa May's rushed visit could turn into own goal.
He's up! Hoping for a full on Corbyn-Trump Twitter war today...Corbyn has now called for Trump to be officially dis-invited...a first for UK....
Heck even Prince Charles is challenging publicly Trump views on climate change....and that is totally new for UK politics that the Queen's family gets involved....
Wow..even now the 3000% Russian propaganda media outlet Sputnik is worried about the countless Trump mistakes and missteps......BUT for a different reason....since he is compromised they are afraid of losing him from the WH.....
Kremlin-backed @SputnikInt worries Trump regime's incompetence could lead to a color revolution in US
https://sputniknews.com/blogs/201701261050021276-why-only-russian-journ…
NOTICE the Russian use of the term "regime" and the reference to "color revolt"...the underlining central fear for Putin himself.....
@LibyaLiberty I was born in Baghdad, I'm a Norwegian citizen, have British Residency, half of my extended family is American, I'm banned.
And Trump...Bannon....Flynn...figured out how to handle this EO?????
BUT WAIT...Trump stated in public...the EO is "going smoothly"....who the heck told him that....?
In the words of Trump himself......
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world - a horrible mess!
BUT that he just creaed a massive mess himself he still does not see....tone deaf and blind it appears to his own actions...which he has not accepted responsibility for because it was his signature on the EO..
Appears he is not use to the concept..."the buck stops with me"....
Trump...Bannon..and Flynn are collectively heading to the SC for a sounding defeat of their Muslim Ban EO as it clashes with the Constitution and Congressional passed discrimination laws that they thought they were above....
US District Judge Brinkema ordered @DHSgov to give detainees at Dulles access to counsel. Order must be followed asap & they should be freed
AND that from a perceived Conservative Court....because they failed to follow the "process".....that they actually want to destroy.....