The Trump foreign policy thread

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RunningMn9
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by RunningMn9 »

The German govt denies that Trump handed them an invoice.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by stessier »

RunningMn9 wrote:The German govt denies that Trump handed them an invoice.
The paper was too big for his hands. He slid it across the table.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Scoop20906 »

Max Peck wrote:Donald Drumpf printed out made-up £300bn Nato invoice and handed it to Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel will reportedly ignore Donald Drumpf’s attempts to extricate £300bn from Germany for what he deems to be owed contributions to Nato.

The US President is said to have had an 'invoice' printed out outlining the sum estimated by his aides as covering Germany's unpaid contributions for defence.

Said to be presented during private talks in Washington, the move has been met with criticism from German and Nato officials.

While the figure presented to the Germans was not revealed by either side, Nato countries pledged in 2014 to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence, something only a handful of nations – including the UK, Greece, Poland and Estonia – currently do.

But the bill has been backdated even further to 2002, the year Mrs Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, pledged to spend more on defence.

Mr Drumpf reportedly instructed aides to calculate how much German spending fell below two per cent over the past 12 years, then added interest.

Estimates suggest the total came to £300bn, with official figures citing the shortfall to be around £250bn, and with £50bn in interest added on.
The story (only reported by the Independent.uk) only cites "a unnamed German minister". Maybe this will turn out to be fake news.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Scoop20906 »

RunningMn9 wrote:The German govt denies that Drumpf handed them an invoice.
I can't find a story of Germany denying this. Link please?
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by stessier »

Scoop20906 wrote:
RunningMn9 wrote:The German govt denies that Drumpf handed them an invoice.
I can't find a story of Germany denying this. Link please?
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Max Peck »

Scoop20906 wrote:
Max Peck wrote:Donald Drumpf printed out made-up £300bn Nato invoice and handed it to Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel will reportedly ignore Donald Drumpf’s attempts to extricate £300bn from Germany for what he deems to be owed contributions to Nato.

The US President is said to have had an 'invoice' printed out outlining the sum estimated by his aides as covering Germany's unpaid contributions for defence.

Said to be presented during private talks in Washington, the move has been met with criticism from German and Nato officials.

While the figure presented to the Germans was not revealed by either side, Nato countries pledged in 2014 to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence, something only a handful of nations – including the UK, Greece, Poland and Estonia – currently do.

But the bill has been backdated even further to 2002, the year Mrs Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, pledged to spend more on defence.

Mr Drumpf reportedly instructed aides to calculate how much German spending fell below two per cent over the past 12 years, then added interest.

Estimates suggest the total came to £300bn, with official figures citing the shortfall to be around £250bn, and with £50bn in interest added on.
The story (only reported by the Independent.uk) only cites "a unnamed German minister". Maybe this will turn out to be fake news.
That would explain why the amount was a nice round figure in £ instead of $. :)

Fox also reported it, and they picked up the story from The Times.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Kraken »

Carpet_pissr wrote:Not to mention the returns we get as a country from the top minds that we attract, that stay here and work after they graduate.
Nor to mention the fact that they pay retail for tuition. In cash.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Max Peck »

Removing Assad no longer a priority - US
The US representative to the United Nations has said that the US is no longer prioritising the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Ambassador Nikki Haley told reporters on Thursday "we can't necessarily focus on Assad the way that the previous administration did".

Under President Barack Obama, the US said Assad must go and backed rebels fighting against him.

But US resources shifted after the rise of the so-called Islamic state.

"Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," said Mrs Haley.

"Our priority is to really look at how do we get things done, who do we need to work with to really make a difference for the people in Syria," she added.

BBC State Department correspondent Barbara Plett Usher says Mrs Haley is stating something quite bluntly that has quietly been US policy for some time.

The battle against IS in Syria became the overriding priority in the last year of the Obama administration, says our correspondent.

And Russia's entry into the war in 2015 to bolster Mr Assad in effect closed off any remote chance of Washington helping the opposition to oust him.
Low-energy Rex sidestepped yet again. Sad.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Smoove_B »

So I guess having a President Tweet that a country is "looking for trouble" and that country responds by indicating they'll initiate a nuclear strike if provoked is what passes for foreign policy now?
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Zarathud »

Kraken wrote:
Carpet_pissr wrote:Not to mention the returns we get as a country from the top minds that we attract, that stay here and work after they graduate.
Nor to mention the fact that they pay retail for tuition. In cash.
This. Many state schools realized the profit and diversity in attracting non-US students when state and Federal governments cut back. They're motivated and well-funded so add to the bottom line as students and alumni.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

Smoove_B wrote:So I guess having a President Tweet that a country is "looking for trouble" and that country responds by indicating they'll initiate a nuclear strike if provoked is what passes for foreign policy now?
Look. It worked with hotel carpet wholesalers, it worked with the Atlantic City real estate board, and it will work with China and North Korea.

He's the best at this. Just the best.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by gilraen »

Max Peck wrote:Removing Assad no longer a priority - US
The US representative to the United Nations has said that the US is no longer prioritising the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Ambassador Nikki Haley told reporters on Thursday "we can't necessarily focus on Assad the way that the previous administration did".

Under President Barack Obama, the US said Assad must go and backed rebels fighting against him.

But US resources shifted after the rise of the so-called Islamic state.

"Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," said Mrs Haley.

"Our priority is to really look at how do we get things done, who do we need to work with to really make a difference for the people in Syria," she added.

BBC State Department correspondent Barbara Plett Usher says Mrs Haley is stating something quite bluntly that has quietly been US policy for some time.

The battle against IS in Syria became the overriding priority in the last year of the Obama administration, says our correspondent.

And Russia's entry into the war in 2015 to bolster Mr Assad in effect closed off any remote chance of Washington helping the opposition to oust him.
Low-energy Rex sidestepped yet again. Sad.
That's okay, they already changed their minds.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Can you blame them? Look at all the positive press it earned him - even from detractors. That's the most frightening thing from all this -- when a man that thrives on attention is praised for ordering a missile attack? No good can come of this.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Zarathud »

America elected the first reality TV President. War is reality and good for TV ratings, unfortunately.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Remus West »

Zarathud wrote:America elected the first reality TV President. War is reality and good for TV ratings, unfortunately.
War has always been good for any president's ratings. I am actually shocked it took so long for Trump to find something to engage in. Takes all the heat out of investigating him as all the sheeples line up behind the flag.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Yup. Sad.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

FWIW - early Gallup polling shows pretty much no approval bump - now that'd be remarkable. But because it is me I'll dig in a little - there are anecdotes that some of the deplorables were upset by the bombing. So it could be possible that a positive support bump from non-deplorables offset the deplorables. Wouldn't that be something...
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Defiant »

The rally-round-the-flag effect is overstated.
Most foreign policy entanglements do not result in a “rally around the flag” event — when a president’s popularity jumps because Americans rally behind their commander-in-chief. That’s according to a 2001 study by William Baker of the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences and John Oneal of the University of Alabama. Their study found that only 39 percent of U.S. military interventions1 from 1933 to 1993 resulted in a rise in the president’s approval rating.
link
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Remus West »

Defiant wrote:The rally-round-the-flag effect is overstated.
Most foreign policy entanglements do not result in a “rally around the flag” event — when a president’s popularity jumps because Americans rally behind their commander-in-chief. That’s according to a 2001 study by William Baker of the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences and John Oneal of the University of Alabama. Their study found that only 39 percent of U.S. military interventions1 from 1933 to 1993 resulted in a rise in the president’s approval rating.
link
Huh. That is actually heartening.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Max Peck »

Defiant wrote:The rally-round-the-flag effect is overstated.
Most foreign policy entanglements do not result in a “rally around the flag” event — when a president’s popularity jumps because Americans rally behind their commander-in-chief. That’s according to a 2001 study by William Baker of the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences and John Oneal of the University of Alabama. Their study found that only 39 percent of U.S. military interventions1 from 1933 to 1993 resulted in a rise in the president’s approval rating.
link
The real issue is that now Trump has reason to believe that it works.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Pyperkub »

Remus West wrote:
Defiant wrote:The rally-round-the-flag effect is overstated.
Most foreign policy entanglements do not result in a “rally around the flag” event — when a president’s popularity jumps because Americans rally behind their commander-in-chief. That’s according to a 2001 study by William Baker of the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences and John Oneal of the University of Alabama. Their study found that only 39 percent of U.S. military interventions1 from 1933 to 1993 resulted in a rise in the president’s approval rating.
link
Huh. That is actually heartening.
What it has done is completely bury the Russia connection stories. Mission Accomplished.

On the frightening side, no good whatsoever can come of this kind of split messaging:
Tillerson appeared to differ with U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley Sunday on the U.S. position on the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"Our priority is first the defeat of [the Islamic State group]... Once we can eliminate the battle against [the Islamic State group], conclude that, and it is going quite well, then we hope to turn our attention to cease-fire agreements between the regime and opposition forces," the secretary emphasized to ABC.
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In this April 6, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. Before the U.S. attack on a Syrian air base, Trump accused his predecessor of doing nothing when Syria’s government used chemical weapons against its population in 2013. He’s right that President Barack Obama issued what amounted to an empty threat of military action. The circumstances, though, were more complicated than Trump described. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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"In that regard, we are hopeful that we can work with Russia and use their influence to achieve areas of stabilization throughout Syria and create the conditions for a political process," he continued. "Through that political process that we believe the Syrian people will lawfully be able to decide the fate of [Assad]."
Haley, who has become an increasingly public face for the administration while Tillerson has kept a lower profile, weighed in less equivocally.

"We don't see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there," Haley told CNN.

Haley's statement lined up more closely with comments by H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser.

"Regime change is something that we think is going to happen because all of the parties are going to see that Assad is not the leader that needs to be taking place for Syria… There is no political solution that any of us can see with Assad at the lead," McMaster told Fox News on Sunday.
Given that it was an Ambassador's mis-statement which Led to Iraq (our former ally against Iran) invading Kuwait and ended up getting us into the first Iraq War, this is important freaking stuff.

And tweeting about international relations? How stupid can a President be? :grund:
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Pyperkub »

Trump wanted an unpredictable foreign policy. Of course, that effectively means incoherent:
Back during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump summed up his approach to foreign policy this way: “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.”

But now that he is commander in chief, anxious allies say that unpredictability might be better described as incoherence — a dangerous tendency at a moment of high tension with Russia and Syria, and with U.S. warships heading toward the Korean Peninsula.
The thing Trump needs to learn is that the details matter. A LOT.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Is dropping a MOAB on ISIS foreign policy? I don't even know anymore.
The MOAB is also known as the "mother of all bombs." A MOAB is a 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition that is America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb.

The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, according to the military sources.
They said the target was ISIS tunnels and personnel in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province.
The military is currently assessing the damage. Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, signed off on the use of the bomb, according to the sources.
This is the first time a MOAB has been used in the battlefield, according to the US officials. This munition was developed during the Iraq War.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Rip »

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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Freyland »

Never been used on the battlefield before? Probably close to it's expiration date.

Not sure I follow any outrage on this one.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by RunningMn9 »

Freyland wrote:Not sure I follow any outrage on this one.
Is there any outrage?

Edit to add: People in my office are cheering over this. I find that a bit distasteful, but I'm not outraged that we dropped it.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by YellowKing »

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it either. This is a decision signed off by generals, and who am I to question their expertise? Besides, if you're trying to take out tunnel and cave complexes, traditional weaponry just isn't going to work. You've got to use the tools for the job, and in this case a big fucking bomb was the right tool for the job.

It's not like we're going to get ISIS even *more* pissed off at us. :D
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

I don't doubt the generals here. Maybe this was the appropriate tool for the job.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Trump issued a specific order to "drop the biggest bomb we've got" after seeing how much people liked his Tomahawks.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by RunningMn9 »

YellowKing wrote:You've got to use the tools for the job, and in this case a big fucking bomb was the right tool for the job.
Well, I think they are still trying to determine if that was the right tool for the job. They were still evaluating the impact last I heard. But yeah, that's for the generals on the ground that made the request because they believed it was the right tool for the job to determine.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Yeah, as the person that posted it, I'm not outraged in any capacity. As stated I was wondering if this was indeed a foreign policy issue. Above and beyond what it means for ISIS, was this a message to North Korea? Syria? I have no idea, but when the United States drops a bomb that has previously only ever been tested, it's noteworthy.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by RunningMn9 »

Also, keep in mind that despite the fancy name, a MOAB isn't much more than a big Daisy Cutter. Yes, it's the largest conventional bomb we have, but it's more than 1000 times smaller than the Hiroshima bomb (which is itself a puny nuclear weapon). It's less than twice the juice of a Daisy Cutter.
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
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Make up bags of change
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by YellowKing »

I don't think it's been revealed how far up the chain of command this went, so it's too early to say if there was any political bent to this. I wouldn't be surprised either way. If Trump was going to sign off on dropping a bomb, I'm sure he'd want it to be the yugest bomb, just the best bomb.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by RunningMn9 »

YellowKing wrote:I don't think it's been revealed how far up the chain of command this went, so it's too early to say if there was any political bent to this. I wouldn't be surprised either way. If Trump was going to sign off on dropping a bomb, I'm sure he'd want it to be the yugest bomb, just the best bomb.
It was signed off by the general in charge at CENTCOM.

From Smoove_B's link:
"Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, signed off on the use of the bomb, according to the sources. The authority to deploy the weapon was granted to Nicholson by the commander of US Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel."
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Smoove_B »

RunningMn9 wrote:Also, keep in mind that despite the fancy name, a MOAB isn't much more than a big Daisy Cutter. Yes, it's the largest conventional bomb we have, but it's more than 1000 times smaller than the Hiroshima bomb (which is itself a puny nuclear weapon). It's less than twice the juice of a Daisy Cutter.
Sad.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Freyland »

I took Smoove's wording in his post to imply this decision was further questionable foreign policy.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Kraken »

Holman wrote:I don't doubt the generals here. Maybe this was the appropriate tool for the job.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Trump issued a specific order to "drop the biggest bomb we've got" after seeing how much people liked his Tomahawks.
I'm inclined to that view after reading this:
This particular bomb is not the biggest in the Pentagon’s non-nuclear arsenal. The larger 30,000 pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, designed for destroying heavily fortified bunker complexes, has never been used outside a test environment. While the GBU-57 is heavier, the GBU-43 has a larger warhead and explosive yield.

The U.S. military has targeted similar complexes and dropped tens of thousands of bombs in Afghanistan, raising the question of why a bomb of this size was needed Thursday. It was unclear what the GBU-43 strike accomplished, as the bomb is not designed to penetrate hardened targets such a bunkers or cave complexes. A spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan did not respond to a query regarding the bomb’s effects on its intended target, an Islamic State tunnel complex in Nangahar province.
I suspect that it was chosen mainly to intimidate, or possibly just to emphasize that there's a new sheriff in town. But it's not like I know jack about it.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by YellowKing »

Yeah sounds more and more like a dick wagging contest. I would expect no less from someone with such tiny hands.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by geezer »

Well, it's pretty obvious that you can't keep dropping MOPs on them when you have a MOAB. MOAB is mountains and ruggedness and strong and manly. MOP is just something that immigrants use in their night jobs that they're talking from real Americans. MOAB is all American, baby!
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Enough »

geezer wrote:Well, it's pretty obvious that you can't keep dropping MOPs on them when you have a MOAB. MOAB is mountains and ruggedness and strong and manly. MOP is just something that immigrants use in their night jobs that they're talking from real Americans. MOAB is all American, baby!
MOAB: Make Ordinary Americans Brave.
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Alefroth
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Joined: Thu Oct 14, 2004 1:56 pm
Location: Bellingham WA

Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Alefroth »

Well at least the MOAB appears to have hit the right target.
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