Tag: Trump Knows Foreign Policy

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – Peter Strzok Edition

If you had your fill of Trey Gowdy during the Benghazi hearings, you can be excused for vomiting if you watched the FBI’s Peter Strzok’s hearing last week.

In the hearing, the Republicans wanted to make America believe there was an FBI conspiracy to prevent Trump from being elected president. How did the FBI go about it? First, by mounting an investigation of what nearly everyone now acknowledges was a comprehensive effort by Russia to help Trump get elected. But then, the FBI kept that investigation completely secret from the public, to prevent news of it from affecting the outcome of the election.

You also have to set aside the fact that the Director of the FBI may have thrown the election to Trump when he violated FBI protocols, and announced 11 days before the election, that the Bureau was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the FBI engaged in a conspiracy, and the GOP’s claim is contradicted by everything the FBI actually did.

And so far, Republicans have not produced any evidence that Strzok, or anyone else, took any official action that was biased or inappropriate with respect to the Trump campaign.

Fake news, folks. But Gowdy’s committee managed to set a new low during their show trial of Strzok:

This is where we are: The American right have become Trumpers. The head Trumper is free to say and do whatever he likes, and so are his lackeys in Congress.

Today, there is no institutional check on Republicans, except another Republican, Bob Mueller. Ultimately all he can do is provide a report to Congress, which the Trumpers will ignore, regardless of the validity of any accusations it contains. The fate of the nation now hangs on the midterms. And since the electorate failed the country in 2016, we shouldn’t be too hopeful about the odds.

On to cartoons. Strzok tells it like it is:

Trump’s move to remake Supreme Court goes a little too far:

Trump’s new guardian is Judge Kavanaugh:

Trump was poorly received in UK:

Trump took on Germany at the NATO meeting. It wasn’t hard to know why:

Trump’s moving on to his Monday meeting with Putin:

The first Helsinki meeting will be very private:

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Pompeo Played in Pyongyang

The Daily Escape:

Ramona Falls, Mt. Hood, Oregon – 2018 photo by higher_moments

US Secretary of State Pompeo visited North Korea (NK) to further the agenda President Trump and Chairmen Kim had agreed upon in Singapore. The visit did not go well. As Bloomberg reports, there were issues from the start:

As US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touched down in Pyongyang at 10:54 a.m. on Friday, he had few details of his schedule in the North Korean capital — even which hotel he and his staff would stay in.

Pompeo didn’t stay at either of the hotels where he thought he’d be. The North Koreans took him, his staff and the six journalists traveling with the delegation to a gated guesthouse on the outskirts of the capital.

It was the start of a confused 27 hour visit, including a pair of banquets that the secretary and his staff appeared to dread for their length, and the daunting number of courses presented by unfailingly polite waiters. And a meeting with Kim Jong Un never happened, despite strenuous efforts by Pompeo’s staff.

More from Bloomberg:

The lack of US control clearly rankled Pompeo. A former military officer accustomed to short, focused meetings, he was made to sit through multi-course meals with Kim and his staff, as waiters brought plate after plate of food — foie gras, turkey, pea soup, boiled oak mushrooms, kimchi, watermelon and ice cream, plus a drink branded “American Cola.”

By the morning of his second day, Pompeo had enough. Instead of the elaborate breakfast prepared for him, he ate toast and slices of processed cheese.

The specifics of what happened behind closed doors remain unclear, but there was a clear difference of opinion about the results of the brief meetings:

As he was leaving, Pompeo told reporters the conversations were “productive and in good faith.” Hours later, North Korean state media issued a statement that did not mention him by name but called the demands he presented “gangster-like.”

One North Korea watcher, Duyeon Kim, Senior Fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum and a columnist for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, had this tweet describing Pompeo’s and the Trump administration’s failure to understand even the basics of its joint Singapore communique with Kim Jong Un:

Duyeon Kim thinks that Pompeo and the Administration have the cart before the horse on the path to denuclearization.

In another tweet in her thread, Duyeon Kim says that NK sees denuclearization as part of a package that happens only after the military threat the US poses is removed, in other words, after items #1 and #2 above are negotiated. She makes the point that NK’s reaction to the Pompeo visit reaffirms that its priorities remain in that order.

Confirming her viewpoint, the statement released by the NK Ministry of the Foreign Affairs said in part:

The U.S. side never mentioned the issue of establishing a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, which is essential for defusing tension and preventing a war…

Let’s take a close look at the Singapore Joint Statement signed by Trump and Kim. It included the following: (emphasis by Wrongo)

  1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
  2. The United States and DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
  3. [3a] to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and [3b], The DPRK commit to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

As far as we know, Pompeo didn’t talk about item #1, which would include the opening of embassies and economic engagement. He did not talk about item #2, i.e. a peace treaty. He also did not talk about Item #3a, the “security guarantees to the DPRK”. The only item he talked about was 3b, the last item on the list.

So in the words of the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, “what we have here is a failure to communicate”.

Pompeo came to Pyongyang and tried to go all gangster on Kim by asking for details about NK’s nuclear program, and its plans to abandon it. But NK wanted to talk about embassies and diplomatic relations.

The scorecard after Singapore: Kim 1, Trump 0

The scorecard after Pompeo’s visit: Kim 1, Trump 0

When does all the winning begin?

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 9, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Turkeys on the Fields of Wrong – June 2018 photo by Wrongo

We wake up this Monday in an America that seems unlike what it should be, or what it was a few years ago. Two quick stories. First, this action by the Trumpistas encapsulates everything horrible about the Trump administration’s approach to the world: (emphasis by Wrongo)

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly…. Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

More from the NYT:

When that failed, they turned to threats…Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

They scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation.

The Russians ultimately introduced the measure — and, no surprise, the American delegation did not threaten them. From Booman:

The Trump administration demonstrated almost every flaw they have here. They put the interests of corporate lobbyists ahead of the health of babies. They showed a complete contempt for science and the consensus of the international community. They abused their power and threatened well-meaning and innocent nations simply because they could.

The message is clear: If a country needs to stand up to America, they should go running to the Godfather, Russia, who will do the right thing. And for America? Another horrible outcome brought to you by Donald Trump.

Second, Politico reported that Trump is obstructing the plan to build a new Gateway Tunnel between New York and New Jersey:

The obstacle is not the usual red tape that delays US infrastructure….the environmental review for the new Hudson tunnel was fast-tracked and forwarded to the Transportation Department for approval in an unusually speedy two years. The obstacle is the Trump administration, which vowed in its infrastructure plan to accelerate the permits process, but has been sitting on this one without explanation. “I wouldn’t say we’re slow-walking it,” one administration official told me, before laughing. “OK, maybe a little.”

Ha-ha. The truth is that Trump is trying to force Chuck Schumer to vote for Trump’s Wall in order to get money for the Tunnel. Here’s the NYT: (brackets and edits by Wrongo)

President Donald Trump was in an unusually bipartisan mood on September 7, when he convened a White House meeting about a massive project to build a rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

The politicians in attendance thought [they had a deal]…. “Ask anyone on either side of the aisle. It was very upbeat, total agreement this needs to get done,” Christie told me. King describes the meeting as a love-in: “Not a single negative word, great body language, everybody on the same page.”

After the meeting, though, Trump asked Schumer to stay behind. He bluntly offered another deal, an offer suggesting he had a rather different conception of Gateway’s larger importance: Schumer could have his tunnel if Trump got his border wall with Mexico.

Schumer said he couldn’t make that trade. And ever since, the Trump administration has been doing just about everything in its power to derail the Gateway project. In March, the president threatened to veto an entire $1.2 trillion government spending bill if it included anything at all for Gateway.

It always comes back to his F*king Wall. He’s promised something he can’t deliver, so the only thing he knows how to do is try to take hostages.

This will simply get worse if we fail to turn out in massive numbers in November, and try to re-take the Senate, and absolutely take back the House of Representatives. To help you wake up today, here is John Prine’s “Long Monday” from his 2005 “Fair and Square” album, which won the Grammy for best Contemporary Folk Album:

There are a host of great musicians on the album, including Jerry Douglas, Allison Krauss and Dan Tyminski. Mindy Smith sings harmony on Long Monday.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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North Korea May Not Negotiate With Trump

The Daily Escape:

Waimea Canyon, Kauai, Hawaii – 2018 photo by Chaebi

North Korea made big news on Wednesday. From the WaPo:

North Korea is rapidly moving the goal posts for next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting it “unilaterally” abandon its nuclear program and stop talking about a Libya-style solution to the standoff.

The latest warning, delivered by former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Gye Gwan on Wednesday, fits Pyongyang’s well-established pattern of raising the stakes in negotiations by threatening to walk out if it doesn’t get its way.

North Korea (NK) has been a challenge for several presidents, and Donald Trump will be no exception.

NK has nukes, and possibly, the means to deliver them as far as the east coast of the US. South Korea is armed, and our military backs them up. Neither side has a true advantage militarily. Whichever leader best uses diplomacy in the face of a military stalemate will win.

But that leader might not be Donald Trump. Kevin Drum notes this:

The upcoming summit meeting with North Korea has been orchestrated entirely by Kim Jong-un. It started with his outreach at the Olympics. Then he proposed the meeting with Trump. He halted missile testing. He met with South Korea and it was all smiles. He’s implied that he’s in favor of complete denuclearization. He released three American hostages. And he’s now planning a public spectacle of destroying North Korea’s nuclear testing site.

And what did Kim get in return? He got this from John Bolton on Fox last Sunday: (emphasis by Wrongo)

WALLACE: Now, the joint statement from the two Koreas on Friday called for…a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and some people have suggested the North Koreans will give up everything they’ve got. But in return, the U.S. would agree that we are not going to allow any nuclear-armed airplanes or nuclear-armed ships on the Korean peninsula.

Is that acceptable?

BOLTON: Well, we certainly haven’t made that commitment. And again, I’m looking at the Panmunjom declaration as they call it in the context of a series of earlier North-South Korean agreements. And again, looking at the 1992 joint declaration, when they said nuclear-free, they meant with respect to the two Koreas.

WALLACE: So, you don’t view this as involving any kind of commitment from the U.S.?

BOLTON: I don’t think it binds the United States, no.

Personnel is policy, and Trump’s recent personnel moves brought in new wacko hardliners in key positions. Trump seems to be under the impression that the Singapore meet-up is a surrender ceremony, while the NK’s see it as two nuclear equals attempting to negotiate a final peace deal.

And Bolton is playing his usual games. It’s been true since the 1990’s that Republicans have a reflexive need to press for whatever seems more “hawkish” than whatever the Democrats had tried when they were in control.

That includes Republicans saying that “regime change” is the only realistic option when states object to the US, or its objectives in their region. The GOP is always outraged that the feckless, effeminate Democrats haven’t backed regime change since Vietnam. Iran is the GOP’s latest experiment, where throwing away the JCPOA was their goal, and Trump delivered it.

Of course, all foreign policy troubles would be solved if only our Adversaries and Enemies were magically replaced by Friends and Fans, but for some reason, that never happens.

The NK’s are doing what they have always done whenever negotiations get to this point. What Kim is doing is so blindingly obvious and predictable that only pundits and politicians could be surprised by it.

Trump says his strength is that he is unpredictable. But, in the case of NK, he put all his cards on the table, assuming that his strongman tactics would lead to peace and a legacy. Instead, it looks like Kim simply upped the ante on being unpredictable. Kim may think Trump wants the deal more than NK.

Seventeen years ago, Clinton made a deal to give NK aid and trade in return for halting nuclear weapons development, backed by inspections and monitoring. It wasn’t a perfect deal, and NK broke it, at least in spirit. The US decided to break the deal explicitly because the incoming George W Bush administration wanted regime change. The Bushies blamed NK’s breaking the deal in spirit, and wouldn’t give NK the promised aid.

Remember when Trump flattered Kim, calling him “very honorable”? What’s a guy gotta do to unify a peninsula around here?

And Trump was THIS CLOSE to becoming president for a second term based on a foreign policy triumph and a Nobel, too. Such a shame. Well, there’s always Syria.

Or, Israel. Or, Iran. Or, Afghanistan.

So many deals to try, and so few skills.

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Saturday Soother – May 27, 2017

The Daily Escape:

Baltimore Oriole

Trump returns from his international visits having moved the US into siding with the Sunnis in the Middle East. In this, he has also sided with his generals. This also puts him on the side of al Qaeda, a Sunni terror organization that did you-know-what.

Significantly, it is clear that the entire Trump foreign policy is anti-terrorism. That is one approach, but Trump’s take is mystifying: He calls Iran an enemy because they are a sponsor of terror, which is true. But he embraces Saudi Arabia, the largest sponsor of terrorism by far in the ME, and has attempted to make them his ally in the War on Terror.

The Saudis will now expect that the US will accept that their $110 billion in defense purchases and $40 billion in contributions from the Saudi state’s sovereign wealth fund will buy them enhanced power in Washington and that their demands will be greeted with great receptivity in the future.

That will probably be a difficult pill for Israel to swallow.

Siding with the Sunnis means that the “Shia Crescent” (Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria) will be difficult for the US to maintain as friends, partners, or allies. In fact, it was reported this week that Russia, Syria and Iran have been proclaimed as allies by the Iraqi Interior Minister. For all the money and blood that we spent, for all of the domestic programs that we sacrificed, the US now has little to show for its last 15 years in Iraq except a huge, and under Donald Trump, a growing national debt.

We are obviously and irredeemably ignorant, and apparently determined to remain so. The Shia Crescent will be an Iranian/Shia alliance extending through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the sea, with Russian and Chinese backing to boot.

Whomever heads ME strategy for Trump needs to hear: “You’re fired!”

Trump also met with NATO and the EU, and both relationships look less confident than at any time in recent history. In fact, European Council President Donald Tusk has said that Trump and senior European Union officials failed to find common ground on the main issues at their meeting in Brussels.

Consider this: Trump emerges from this trip as closer to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Israel than he is with the democracies of Western Europe. We can now start preparing for US War on Terror Part B; followed by Sunni insurgency 3.0: now with even better weapons and funding.

Do these thoughts make you feel that you need something to help you calm down? Wrongo’s advice is stop watching or reading the news for a few days, as he did while traveling in Europe. Talk to locals in your area. Ask them about why they think as they do.

Then grab a vente cuppa chamomile tea and listen to Janine Jansen play French composer Jules Massenet’s “Meditation from Thaïs”:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Trump’s Revealing Visit to the CIA

“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32, (Etched into the wall of the main lobby of the CIA)

On his first full day in office, President Trump spoke at the CIA headquarters, in front of the hallowed CIA Memorial Wall. The wall memorializes over 100 CIA persons who died while on duty.

Trump gave a rambling, self-serving speech suggesting that the media had created a feud between himself and the intelligence agencies (except he created it). He complained that the media had mischaracterized the crowd size at his inauguration. Then he crossed a bright line:

Probably almost everybody in this room voted for me…But I will not ask you to raise your hands.

CIA personnel do not speak about policy, only about analysis. Policy, they feel, belongs to politicians. Trump bringing up whether they voted for him, set off alarm bells inside the agency, according to ex-CIA chief John Brennan. The CIA’s concern is that last time intelligence was highly politicized, the pressure came from Bush and Cheney. It produced the notorious National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that the Agency hasn’t lived down.

The most alarming thing Trump said, however, regarded Iraq: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The old expression [is] to the victor belong the spoils. You remember, you always say keep the oil. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq, I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. I always said…if we kept the oil you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place…But, okay. Maybe we’ll have another chance. But the fact is, we should have kept the oil…

And Trump was wrong again. From Juan Cole:

The UN Charter and other treaty instruments that are part of US law actually abolished the principle of ‘to the victors go the spoils.’ Conquering states in a war are not allowed to annex territory from the vanquished as of 1945.

That wasn’t all. Saying that the US should “take the oil” in Iraq creates a yuuge issue for the 6,000 US troops in Iraq. Trump’s unthinking talk could put them in danger from Iraqis. Why would they continue to see us as allies against ISIS, when our president says “take the oil”? This isn’t speculation. Juan Cole quotes Borzou Daragahi of Buzzfeed who says that some Iraqis are now indeed ‘pissed’ and ready to fight to keep their oil away from the US.

Trump has no idea about Iraq’s political geography. Most oil in Iraq is either in Shiite territory (the South) near Basra (the vast majority of the oil that Iraq pumps) or up in Kurdish-held territory near Kirkuk. ISIS in Iraq had relatively little access to Iraqi petroleum.

His idea about ISIS profiting from oil might be true in Syria, but he was speaking about Iraq.

Trump doesn’t realize that you can’t export oil against its people’s will. They have too many ways to sabotage the effort. Moreover, you’d have to overthrow the current Iraqi government (who would never agree to Trump taking the oil), and then re-occupy Iraq.

And if the US ‘took’ Iraqi oil in a way that reduced oil profits for Iraqis, it would enable ISIS to overthrow the then weakened government and install an ISIS Caliphate, the exact opposite of our current policy!

In any case, the US doesn’t need Iraq’s oil. China’s economy has slowed enough that world oil demand has leveled. Fracking in the US has also lowered our needs for more imported oil. So the fact is, US petroleum companies wouldn’t want to “take” Iraqi petroleum.They don’t need it, and wouldn’t want the security hassles it would create.

At 7:35 AM on Sunday, Trump tweeted: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!

CBS reported that there were about 40 Trump invites and, while the front rows were senior CIA who were not cheering (on the video you can see their heads pivot to the cheers and laughter while not joining in). The cheers came from the Trump claque.

No standing “O”. No truth.

And worst of all, no thinking before speaking.

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