The Trump foreign policy thread

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malchior
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

I'm plopping this here because he technically said it standing in a foreign country. Un-FUCKING-acceptable. Remember when attacking a domestic 'political' opponent from foreign soil was a breach of the norm? This is attacking the judiciary from foreign soil. Unbelievable.


Trump, during news conference in India, explains that he thinks Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse herself from cases involving him because she didn't support him in 2016. He also calls on Justice Sotomayor to recuse herself for an unspecified "inappropriate" statement.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

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Just a other line crossed into the new normal. He's blazing a trail straight to a lesser standard.
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The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Zarathud »

Zarathud wrote:He is doing it because Trump’s ego is more important than being neutral in the India-Pakistani conflict. And Trump has hotels in India.
Holy shit, it’s worse than that. They’re both racist nationalists as John Oliver explains:


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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

In the past, Modi was barred from entering the U.S. due to his encouragement of anti-Muslim violence.

More anti-Muslim violence was going on simultaneous with POTUS' visit, where he praised Modi's record on religious freedom.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Kraken »

"Biggest event they've ever had in India"
although Trump said with satisfaction that 125,000 people had turned out to see him, more than one third of the crowd appeared to leave before the end of his nearly 30-minute remarks, and another third was gone by the time Modi spoke after him.
...
(The rally was likely not even the biggest Indian turnout for a US president: Dwight D. Eisenhower drew a crowd of 1 million during a 1959 visit to New Delhi, according to an Associated Press report at the time.)
But sure, Indians think you're the GOAT.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Kraken wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:41 pm "Biggest event they've ever had in India"
although Trump said with satisfaction that 125,000 people had turned out to see him, more than one third of the crowd appeared to leave before the end of his nearly 30-minute remarks, and another third was gone by the time Modi spoke after him.
...
(The rally was likely not even the biggest Indian turnout for a US president: Dwight D. Eisenhower drew a crowd of 1 million during a 1959 visit to New Delhi, according to an Associated Press report at the time.)
But sure, Indians think you're the GOAT.
Heard some reports about the violence there. It started on the day of Trump's arrival. Some government officials were spouting "bad people on both sides" nonsense straight out of the Charlottesville aftermath. Modi has been sowing discord for years and the media is gobbling it up and regurgitating it. I'm not saying this is Trump's doing but it is straight out of his playbook. Again.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

I spent ~6 weeks in India last year. My experience is that hardcore Modi fans tend to be drawn to Trump. I was there with several other Americans and we were asked various questions about Trump. They were generally positive and curious about him. I'd say those folks greatly aligned with Hindi nationalists. There colleagues would talk about this in a similar way to how we talk about MAGATs. Except it was without the eye rolling because...they don't really do that. It is more midwestern passive aggressive to make the best comparison I can. :)

I happened to be in Bangalore when the 2019 Citizenship Act was passed. There was some disruption there but fairly limited. However, there was significant fighting between Muslim/Hindi segments in the northern cities. It paused and resumed when Trump came into town. It could just be a coincidence but I can't help but think they were related.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by El Guapo »

malchior wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:24 am I spent ~6 weeks in India last year. My experience is that hardcore Modi fans tend to be drawn to Trump. I was there with several other Americans and we were asked various questions about Trump. They were generally positive and curious about him. I'd say those folks greatly aligned with Hindi nationalists. There colleagues would talk about this in a similar way to how we talk about MAGATs. Except it was without the eye rolling because...they don't really do that. It is more midwestern passive aggressive to make the best comparison I can. :)

I happened to be in Bangalore when the 2019 Citizenship Act was passed. There was some disruption there but fairly limited. However, there was significant fighting between Muslim/Hindi segments in the northern cities. It paused and resumed when Trump came into town. It could just be a coincidence but I can't help but think they were related.
I would think that if you're a big Modi fan / Hindu nationalist there would be a lot to like about Trump. At least insofar as both Trump and Modi partisans are not super thrilled about the existence and presence of Muslims.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

El Guapo wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:28 amI would think that if you're a big Modi fan / Hindu nationalist there would be a lot to like about Trump. At least insofar as both Trump and Modi partisans are not super thrilled about the existence and presence of Muslims.
It goes beyond that. But that is the 'hate engine' in their movement. They have similar authoritarian instinct. He promised to clean up their version of the swamp. He likewise hasn't done it and has embraced it. His government has focused a lot of effort on protecting the wealthy and pushing controls onto the poor (e.g pushing the poor into electronic commerce to clamp down on tax evasion and terrorism-related money laundering). That said, there is a decent amount of alignment in the political sphere that doesn't match up to the vast differences between our cultures that exist outside the political realm.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Kraken »

I tried to link to the Irish Times source for this, but it's behind an unbeatable paywall. So here it is, copied from Facebook in its entirety. It's long.

April 25, 2020

By Fintan O’Toole

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT
Spoiler:
Irish Times

April 25, 2020

By Fintan O’Toole

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

Fertile ground
But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

Kraken wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:55 am I tried to link to the Irish Times source for this, but it's behind an unbeatable paywall. So here it is, copied from Facebook in its entirety. It's long.
It's long but it is unfortuantely also mostly right on the money.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Kraken »

malchior wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 11:17 am
Kraken wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:55 am I tried to link to the Irish Times source for this, but it's behind an unbeatable paywall. So here it is, copied from Facebook in its entirety. It's long.
It's long but it is unfortuantely also mostly right on the money.
That's why I went to the trouble of copy/pasting it. I suspect that his opinion is widespread among our erstwhile allies.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

Kraken wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 1:13 pm
malchior wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 11:17 am
Kraken wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:55 am I tried to link to the Irish Times source for this, but it's behind an unbeatable paywall. So here it is, copied from Facebook in its entirety. It's long.
It's long but it is unfortuantely also mostly right on the money.
That's why I went to the trouble of copy/pasting it. I suspect that his opinion is widespread among our erstwhile allies.
I read something similar out of Australia as well but couldn't find it. I suspect they thought this before the pandemic (and he says that to an extent) but the pandemic response and his daily briefings did as much if not more harm outside than people are letting on.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

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This is an interesting look at how the rest of the world is trying to fill the void left by the abdication of American power.
SYDNEY — When Australia started pushing for a global inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, no other countries were on board, and officials had no idea how it would work or how harshly China might react.

Europe soon joined the effort anyway, moving to take up the idea with the World Health Organization later this month. And Australia, in its newfound role as global catalyst, has become both a major target of Chinese anger and the sudden leader of a push to bolster international institutions that the United States has abandoned under President Trump.

“We just want to know what happened so it doesn’t happen again,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, describing his conversations with other nations.

Confronting a once-in-a-generation crisis, the world’s middle powers are urgently trying to revive the old norms of can-do multilateralism.

Countries in Europe and Asia are forging new bonds on issues like public health and trade, planning for a future built on what they see as the pandemic’s biggest lessons: that the risks of China’s authoritarian government can no longer be denied, and that the United States cannot be relied on to lead when it’s struggling to keep people alive and working, and its foreign policy is increasingly “America first.”

The middle-power dynamic may last only as long as the virus. But if it continues, it could offer an alternative to the decrees and demands of the world’s two superpowers. Beyond the bluster of Washington and Beijing, a fluid working group has emerged, with a rotating cast of leaders that has the potential to challenge the bullying of China, fill the vacuums left by America, and do what no lesser power could do on its own.

“Australia is resetting the terms of engagement so we have more strategic freedom of action, and in order to do that, you need to build a coalition of like-minded nations,” said Andrew Hastie, a backbencher in the Australian Parliament who leads its Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

“To act on the global stage as a middle power, you need to do it from a position of strength — that includes strength in numbers,” Hastie said.

Morrison has insisted that his call for a global inquiry is not directed at any one country, but all available evidence points to China as the birthplace of the pandemic, which means Australia could hardly have chosen a more sensitive subject for its leap onto the world stage.

China’s leaders have made clear that they see criticism of their initial response to the coronavirus — which included a coverup that allowed the contagion to spread — as a threat to Communist Party rule.

Even a fact-finding mission appears to be too much for China’s leadership. The country’s ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, called the inquiry proposal — which China is expected to block at the WHO — a “dangerous” move that could lead to an economic boycott.

“If the mood is going from bad to worse,” he said, “people would think ‘Why should we go to such a country that is not so friendly to China?’ The tourists may have second thoughts.” He added that Chinese consumers might refuse to buy Australian wine and beef or to send their children to Australian universities.

The economic pain, if actually meted out, could be severe. China is Australia’s No. 1 export market, its largest source of international students, and its most valuable market for tourism and agricultural products. On Sunday, the country’s grain industry warned that China is threatening to place a hefty tariff on Australia’s barley exports in what some members of parliament are describing as “payback.”

Australian officials, however, are betting that China will remain a major customer, including for the coal and iron ore it needs to spring back to life post pandemic. And they are convinced that the Australian public will tolerate some Chinese punishment if it means relying less on a country that, according to polls, it had already distrusted — a negative view that is widely shared in Western Europe.

The frustrations have been building for years. Under President Xi Jinping, China’s hacking and intellectual property theft have increased.

In such situations, Australia would usually turn to America. For the seven decades after the end of World War II, the United States was seen as a defender of transparency and cooperation.

But relying on Washington for that kind of leadership seems impossible now. Much of the world views with disappointment and sadness an America laid low by the virus and Trump’s erratic response.

The president has shown little interest in working with any other country. He has said his administration is conducting its own investigation of China, but that move is widely seen as an effort to shift blame away from his own botched handling of the pandemic.

“Normally, however imperfectly, America would also have mobilized the world,” Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister, wrote in a recent essay. “This time, in America’s absence, nobody did.”
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

Kraken wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 6:25 pm This is an interesting look at how the rest of the world is trying to fill the void left by the abdication of American power.
In the late- and then post-Cold War, the USA led in various initiatives (sometimes squandering that role, e.g. Iraq) but was always crucially supported by a varying range of specific parties in allied countries, most but not all of them in Europe.

The next Free World might consist of a range of specific global parties supported (variably, and when possible) by Democratic power in the USA.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

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Holman wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 7:26 pm
Kraken wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 6:25 pm This is an interesting look at how the rest of the world is trying to fill the void left by the abdication of American power.
In the late- and then post-Cold War, the USA led in various initiatives (sometimes squandering that role, e.g. Iraq) but was always crucially supported by a varying range of specific parties in allied countries, most but not all of them in Europe.

The next Free World might consist of a range of specific global parties supported (variably, and when possible) by Democratic power in the USA.
I had thought that Germany would take the lead, which would be...ironic. But I don't think the German people have the will to go down that path. I wonder if a real federation without a dominant leader will be too fractious to be effective.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

Kraken wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 8:14 pm
Holman wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 7:26 pm
Kraken wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 6:25 pm This is an interesting look at how the rest of the world is trying to fill the void left by the abdication of American power.
In the late- and then post-Cold War, the USA led in various initiatives (sometimes squandering that role, e.g. Iraq) but was always crucially supported by a varying range of specific parties in allied countries, most but not all of them in Europe.

The next Free World might consist of a range of specific global parties supported (variably, and when possible) by Democratic power in the USA.
I had thought that Germany would take the lead, which would be...ironic. But I don't think the German people have the will to go down that path. I wonder if a real federation without a dominant leader will be too fractious to be effective.
It depends on what the Allies are defending.

Fighting Soviet communist influence was hard and dirty, but the lines were relatively clear. The new struggle is defending liberal democracy against those constituents of liberal democracy who prefer racism/nationalism. It's much harder.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Kraken »

Holman wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 8:34 pm
Kraken wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 8:14 pm
Holman wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 7:26 pm
Kraken wrote: Tue May 12, 2020 6:25 pm This is an interesting look at how the rest of the world is trying to fill the void left by the abdication of American power.
In the late- and then post-Cold War, the USA led in various initiatives (sometimes squandering that role, e.g. Iraq) but was always crucially supported by a varying range of specific parties in allied countries, most but not all of them in Europe.

The next Free World might consist of a range of specific global parties supported (variably, and when possible) by Democratic power in the USA.
I had thought that Germany would take the lead, which would be...ironic. But I don't think the German people have the will to go down that path. I wonder if a real federation without a dominant leader will be too fractious to be effective.
It depends on what the Allies are defending.

Fighting Soviet communist influence was hard and dirty, but the lines were relatively clear. The new struggle is defending liberal democracy against those constituents of liberal democracy who prefer racism/nationalism. It's much harder.
We will never have the same leadership role. Trust is easy to lose and hard to build. But as long as we are the 900-lb gorilla, we will have a prominent role.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

Trump to withdraw from Open Skies' arms control treaty'.

This is essentially one of the cornerstones of post-cold war nuclear deterrence strategy. I'll let General Hayden put in perspective below via @RadioFreeTom. FWIW - this has been rumored for some time but people have been pushing back on it throughout the IC and Congress passed legislation to restrain him from doing it before next inauguration. He is ignoring it. In any case, there is a hardcore faction of MAGATs who don't believe in any international treaties and goes back to priorities set by Bolton. This has no benefit for the US. This has been one of *our impositions* post-cold war on the former Soviet Union order. This only helps Putin.

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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

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All the work this country and its presidents did over the decades and 1 moron can just toss it away.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Daehawk wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 12:34 pm All the work this country and its presidents did over the decades and 1 moron can just toss it away.
Several morons actually. The GOP that backed him and the millions who "elected" him.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Unagi »

Congresses passed legislation to stop this?

Did that get approved (veto proof) by the senate?
In this universe ?
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

Unagi wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 12:43 pm Congresses passed legislation to stop this?

Did that get approved (veto proof) by the senate?
In this universe ?
I found an in depth discussion about this on the lawfare blog from late last month. To boil it down the Trump administration is (or will) claim they have a constitutional right to do it despite the defense appropriation legislation. It sets up a constitutional fight which the lawfare folks reason is unlikely to be adjudicated by the courts. They'll say it is political and not want to sort out the constitutional elements. In other words, Trump's minions are smashing through another wall because they can. This so transparently helps Russia while undermining allies that I cannot believe that the President and/or many aides aren't compromised. There is no upside to killing it. I won't be shocked to learn some time down the road that either there was a lot of money to be made or severe kompromat involved.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Unagi »

I’m thinking the same exact thing.

I mean, honestly, there really doesn’t seem to be any other likely answer to this.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

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Picture Putin offering Trump $5 million to kill a treaty. Now try to picture Trump turning him down.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

El Guapo wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 4:55 pm Picture Putin offering Trump $5 million to kill a treaty. Now try to picture Trump turning him down.
Election hacking, more like.

Pompeo is on board, and he doesn't care about Trump's wealth. He just needs a second Trump term to assure the triumph of Christian Dominionism.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by malchior »

I don't know if the Chinese high five each other but they should be. Great take from @RadioFreeTom here.

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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Skinypupy »

These two responses seem to hit the nail right on the head:
Even if you disagree with international organizations, it is folly to withdraw from them and let others take your influence.
China will pick up the void left by the USA in rendering aid to countries no longer served by WHO.
China will gain favor from those countries using emissaries and political influence.
Poor countries will be indebted to China

Trump is purposely ruining our status in the world.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »


Trump says until Germany pays what it owes ⁦@NATO, the United States will reduce its troop presence there.
Gonna need to hear from more generals.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Defiant »

President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects, according to a damning new account of life inside the Trump administration by former national security adviser John Bolton.
At the same meeting, Xi also defended China’s construction of camps housing as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang — and Trump signaled his approval. “According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by pr0ner »

Egads.

Hodor.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by LawBeefaroni »

pr0ner wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2020 10:32 am Egads.

More of Trump's classic projection. Bolton set us back "very badly" with NK. Trump has set us back very super badlier with the rest of the world.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Remus West »

LawBeefaroni wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2020 12:55 pm
pr0ner wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2020 10:32 am Egads.

More of Trump's classic projection. Bolton set us back "very badly" with NK. Trump has set us back very super badlier with the rest of the world.
ftfy
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

LawBeefaroni wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2020 12:55 pm More of Trump's classic projection. Bolton set us back "very badly" with NK. Trump has set us back very super badlier with the rest of the world.
This shows Trump's stupidity wrt NK.

IIRC, Bolton's "Libyan model" comment was the excuse NK used to pull back from any real commitment after they'd won the appearance of equality on the world stage, which is all they were after.

Trump is saying Bolton broke it because he believes Kim was being sincere rather than playing him.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »


Pompeo wrote:If the @UN Arms Embargo on Iran expires in October, Iran will be able to buy new fighter aircraft like Russia’s SU-30 and China’s J-10. With these highly lethal aircraft, Europe and Asia could be in Iran’s crosshairs. The U.S. will never let this happen.
This is literally a map of aircraft ferry ranges: one-way flights without weapons loaded.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by El Guapo »

I'm pretty sure that Iran could reach Asia before this.
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Isgrimnur »

El Guapo wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 5:23 pm I'm pretty sure that Iran could reach Asia before this.
:o
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Holman »

Maybe it's a defection map.

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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Max Peck »

Holman wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 5:22 pm
Pompeo wrote:If the @UN Arms Embargo on Iran expires in October, Iran will be able to buy new fighter aircraft like Russia’s SU-30 and China’s J-10. With these highly lethal aircraft, Europe and Asia could be in Iran’s crosshairs. The U.S. will never let this happen.
Did Pompeo just tip Trump's October Surprise?
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Re: The Trump foreign policy thread

Post by Unagi »

Or just desperately trying to meet an obligation?
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