As Donald Trump prepares to travel to Germany for the G20 summit, he has succeeded in getting the country he leads defriended:
In their campaign program for the German election, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have dropped the term “friend” in describing the relationship with the United States.
Four years ago, the joint program of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), referred to the United States as Germany’s “most important friend” outside of Europe.
The 2013 program also described the “friendship” with Washington as a “cornerstone” of Germany’s international relations and talked about strengthening transatlantic economic ties through the removal of trade barriers.
But the words “friend” and “friendship” are missing from the latest election program – entitled “For a Germany in which we live well and happily” – which Merkel and CSU leader Horst Seehofer presented on Monday ahead of a Sept. 24 election.
The German people are similarly unimpressed with our new president.
A survey by the Pew Research Center last week showed that just 35 percent of Germans have a favorable view of the United States, down from 57 percent at the end of President Barack Obama’s term.
I don’t really care if this helps or hurts Trump politically here at home. It’s an indication that he’s failing to lead the Western world and putting American interests at risk.
I don’t expect that either Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell really will give two shits about any of this kind of stuff until they have wrung out every bit of their Ayn Randian philosophy that is politically possible, and have created their utopian Dickensian world for all the poors and soon to be poors among us.
They don’t have time for foreign policy, until it comes time to authorize a war with North Korea.
Or approve arms sales to our so-called Middle Eastern allies.
Trump has made the Ugly American uglier than ever.
Trump has only made the Ugly American the transparent face of foreign policy and suppressed the other commitments that the US use to extol in its foreign policy.
The faces of Henry Luce, Allen Dulles, Dick Cheney, and Curtis LeMay combined, without the dignity of the usual media distance. And given a silly yellow cowlick.
That Trump’s incompetence would put “American interests” at risk is a given. The question is “what interests are those?” Trump regards international treaties as “mere scraps of paper” to be ignored if he doesn’t like them.
But, not all those treaties are things we can and should continue indefinitely. Trump’s disengagement from the World leaves a power gap and increases instability. But, this process was an inevitable part of the U.S. slowly losing it’s dominant position in the world over time, and was always inevitable. Trump is dangerously accelerating a trend of independence that already existed – with other countries just deciding to go about their business without reference to the U.S.
Trump probably doesn’t contemplate withdrawal from all our military bases abroad, but why should countries tolerate our owning military bases on their territory if the U.S. isn’t a reliable defense partner?
Those bases generate jobs and revenue for the hosting state. If we leave who will fill that void? In south america that void is economic not military.
Are there not better foreign policies for filling the economic void than military bases? The US used to be more creative than that, or at least seemed to be more creative.
Second thought: China is willing to fill that void with infrastructure development financing and deployment of dual-use infrastructure like high-speed rail, pipelines, and ports.
They are talking with all sorts of nations, including some within NATO.
Trump regards international treaties as “mere scraps of paper” to be ignored if he doesn’t like them.
Remember when a coke-head, frat-boy drunk we once called President called the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper”?
Absent the continuing of national interests, treaties essentially are scraps of paper and have been so treated throughout American (and other) history.
Trump’s problem is more serious. He has no clue what US national interests actually are.
I also remember another member of W’s entourage opining that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were “quaint”.
“How many divisions does the Pope have?” – Josef Stalin
Yet a Pope still exists and has worldwide respect. Stalin and his Soviet Union are in the ashcan of history.
I guess the Pope had enough troops.
The world was shocked 17 years ago when you elected Bush 2 and we barely survived 8 years of his profound incompetence.
Then from March to November 2016, we watched the United States again nominate an ignorant blowhard to the nation’s top office.
This time we were being assured over and over by your foreign policy establishment that there was simply no way that Trump could be elected by the American people.
Then you did it, you elected him.
So the world won’t believe your assurances anymore. Even if Trump is not reelected in 2020, it will take a generation – 20 or 30 years — for the world to trust the United States again.
As for the belief that the US can still be regarded as the “leader of the free world”, I’m sorry but forget it — that ship has sailed.
That’s basically correct. It’s not just Trump that’s not trusted – it’s a country with a political party that is clearly, v. hatefully, incompetently deranged.
The past 3 elected Republican presidents have been a war criminal/national disgrace, an Alzheimer’s victim, and an incompetent, unmotivated war criminal.
Fundamentally, America is just not providing the kind of stable leadership the world needs. Thus the ROW will now adopt a policy of containment to blunt the stupidity and constant incompetence that now is the American norm.
It’s ironic, even if it’s historically predictable, that the deluded neocons and the deranged Trumpists that are so enamored of American ‘invincibility’ are in fact just exposing the raw limits of American power so that those limits can be exploited by others for their advantage and, if not checked, will be the immediate cause for the economic and military decline of the United States.
The fact that after Iraq, Afghanistan, the contagion from improperly regulated US financial markets the American electorate, along with with a flawed electoral process keeps electing such woefully inept morons means, effectively, we have become a country of morons.
It’s not up to the rest of the world to deal with the details – you are who you send or don’t send to these international conferences, etc.
If this was just the United States that would be one problem, but right-wing reactionary policies and parties are increasingly attempting to seize power all over the world, and for much the same reason as in the 1930’s.
In Britain we see the government collapse due to the same sort of idiot anti-immigrant hysteria in the vote for Brexit, although this will inevitably lead to financial chaos and hardship. In Europe anti-immigrant parties and policies grow more powerful and conventional parties and politicians increasingly struggle to keep them out of power.
There is the shameful crushing of Greece by the EU, and smug chortling when their desperate attempt to resist is destroyed. Being stripped of all their wealth in order to satisfy cruel and greedy austerity policies of international bankers is just their fate.
All over the world, the seizing of more and more wealth for the 1% and the collapse of economic security for everybody else leads inevitably towards totalitarianism. This is hardly a U.S. problem. It’s a nationalist reaction to downsizing and globalization.
The crushing of Arab Spring has led to a swath of authoritarian regimes confronting more and more violent terrorism. All over the world we see the same results. Everywhere elites instantly mobilize to crush any signs of popular resistance, so such resistance is channelled into fascist, nationalist and self-destructive forms like terrorism, which inspires and excuses more totalitarianism.
If the governed won’t consent voluntarily to the system any more than more and more violence is imposed. It’s apparently impossible these days to save the system like FDR did with the New Deal – much against their will of course.
I have seen this coming. It is really a form of USExit from the world. And it is embedded in the slogan, “America First”.
The delusion that the sole superpower status that W destroyed by going to two regional wars at once and failing didn’t hurt our standing is now brought home hard.
Barack Obama tried to hold on to American leadership by deferring to our European allies on numerous occasions. But even that would not have brought back sole superpower status, but it would have brought a community of powers in the world who could work together. Too bad neither Congress nor the military nor the intelligence community understood that policy of restraint and negotiation. Nor sadly did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I think that John Kerry did the best he could, given the politics, to make that policy of restraint work. He failed at selling it and we have Trump. Or better said, the Republican response to reality is like the tee shirt I saw today, “I can’t hear you for the sound of my freedom.”
When people say “American interests”, I wish they’d start being more specific. America’s interests in the Western world (back in the day that mean the North Atlantic community, Japan, and the ANZUS alliance) were at first to not have internecine nationalist rivalries cause another war. They were also to have a commercial architecture that benefited US companies. And they were finally a cultural environment that propagated American values and tastes, both for political understanding and for marketing ease. For several decades the Western world was willing to accede to that sort of American leadership and gentle dominance.
The consequences of Bush’s wars and Obama’s constricted foreign policy have brought Europe to political crisis through having to accept large numbers of refugees from the Middle East and from the continuing austerity policy of Western financial interests.
Trump’s “America First” walks away from the US’s role in Europe’s current issues, leaving them high and dry. Trump’s ambivalent relationship with Russia and hostile relationship with China, coupled with his general rhetorical belligerence scares the shit out of Europeans to the extent they take his statements seriously.
Those of us who did not vote for Trump are once again merely tourist in his handbasket to hell. I think that most Europeans and probably most of the old Western alliance understand that.
Not only is America under Trump’s Presidency failing to lead but it is also failing to signal where it is going in terms of foreign policy. Not adrift, but there is a struggle for the tiller.
That will further make any recovery of American leadership in the world possible. With Trump, the American Century that Henry Luce called for is over.
China is already making its bold move for dominance.
The situation is very fluid and as a consequence very dangerous from those who stake out rigid positions.
The US media are asleep to this danger in their befuddlement over how to deal with Trump’s information war.
The G-20 in Hamburg will likely be clarifying on a number of trends beyond defriending of the US and loss of American leadership. They likely will further clarify how America lost power by going to war too frequently and ignoring the interests of other nationsa and their citizens while extolling the “sound of freedom”. Or as was written during the Age of W, “free-dumb”.
Excellent!
“Obama’s constricted foreign policy”
You are too kind here! The Obama administration with U.S. Congress were too belligerent versus Russia and forced Putin’s hand with a coup d’état in Kiev. Calling Russia a regional power, which it is expressed as in military terms except for its nuclear capability, didn’t help one iota. NATO general Breedlove double-crossed the diplomatic efforts of the State department under John Kerry on numerous occasions. It tied Kerry’s hands and made him a laughing stock in both the Kremlin and in Jerusalem. On many occasions Obama didn’t show leadership and unravel the Gordian knot of complex issues on foreign policy. To have a jack-ass like John McCain and neocon buddies running loose upsetting the apple cart didn’t help. This made it easier for the Republican power grab … unfortunately with end result of DT.
Next step under Trump: U.S. Congress and IC calls Russia its nr. 1 enemy!
In 2012 this contour was already drawn by candidate Mitt Romney. A presidential term later the progressive Democrats have switched to the same position.
Examine the early foreign policy (including cashiering McChrystal), the foreign policy where Clinton had ascendancy, and the foreign policy that was being second-guessed by a partisan Congress.
In terms of the latitude given most Presidents, as his administration went on, partisan politics more constricted his ability to follow his own direction.
I’m not sure where US foreign policy towards Russia is going despite the current focus on Russia’s alleged actions during the US election. Evidence is beginning to be brought forward on the allegations, and the rest of the world leaders are making their realignments in reaction to Trump’s behavior. Peter Van Buren, in my opinion, is premature with this prediction.
If ever political discussion about great powers gets small-r realistic again, we might understand where everyone’s national interests actually align and where they conflict. As it is, the cap-R realists are still playing the cap-G Great Game that brought ruin to Europe in 1914.
None of those things you mentioned made it easier for “the Republican power grab” as they were largely non issues for domestic US politics.
The American public did not care what Russia or the US did in Kiev or or how the US treated Russia during the Obama years.
Only people who are strictly focused on US foreign policy cared about these things.
Congressional Republicans grabbed partisan institutional power that ordinarily would have been bipartisan latitude for the President to operate. This power was independent of popular support and was targeted at Obama’s strengths in foreign policy (the New START agreement signed in 2010, the Iran agreement, the disarming of Syria of its chemical weapons, and the insistence on finding a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), The GOP tried in each case to go over Obama’s head to try to get a popular support against these policies; they failed in every case, even though Netanyahu acted as their visible ally.
That failure and frustration led to the Benghazi investigation, which also failed. That in turn led to the Clinton private server investigation, which also failed. That frustration led to whatever covert operation the GOP (with whoever’s help) did in re-raising the private server issue within the last weeks of the 2016 campaign. If you do not see the 2016 election as a GOP power grab, I wonder what rock you’ve been hiding under.
We are not looking at politics as usual on the GOP side. No matter how much the Democratic side thinks politics as usual will be sufficient to restore them to power.
Only people who hated Hillary Clinton before the campaign cared about these things no matter how little they cared about or even were aware of Clinton’s conduct of foreign policy.
As critical as my retrospective views of Clinton’s foreign policy directions and proposals for the future, I still voted for her over Trump. More people in my state did not.
I’m not sure what you’re responding to but it’s not to my response to Oui’s comment.
The use of quotes in my post was to refer to Oui’s phrase and not to deny the existence of an actual GOP power grab, which should have been obvious.
I’m not sure what to tell you if you think the specific things I mentioned in my post, none of which you addressed, led to the 2016 result.
Re-posted from @EuropeTribune
Trump’s white-nationalist dog whistles in Warsaw | Jonathan Capehart | Washington Post
H/T by Gag Halfrunt on Fri Jul 7th, 2017 at 04:35:08 PM PDT
From my earlier diary – Steve Bannon as Representative of a US Islamophobic Network .
○ HRC’s speech on the alt-right as Ukip’s Farage campaigned with Trump in Mississippi, blaming Putin – Aug. 2016
HRC never got a grip on her campaign to either focus on the issues or go along with the craziness of the media and tweets of the day. She was jubilant when the IC establishment of Langley and Washington (neo-cons) backed her candidacy. Like a kiss of death.
Angela Merkel offered her G20 guests a classical music concert in the new concert hall of Hamburg’s symphony orchestra. Merkel made sure Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 9th “Ode to Joy” was played, a sort of torture moment for U.S. president Trump!
Front-paged @European Tribune …
○ Trump’s Revival of anti-EU Sentiment in Warsaw by Oui
That was planned when you and I were in diapers. It was aided and abetted by Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
And financed by Goldman-Sachs et al. As Khrushchev and Lenin said, we have sold them the shovels to bury us with.
When I was in diapers, Chiang Kai-Shek was ruling China, barely liberated from Japanese occupation.
China was struggling to develop as an equal for the period between 1949 and 2013. Parity in GDP and the ascension of Xi Jinping marked the long awaited (in the West) Chinese turn to dominance. Western interests overstated China’s external focus to provide a foil to their own ambitions.
It was Carter’s relationship with Deng Xiao-Peng, not Nixon’s opening with Mao, that allowed Deng to shift China to a state capitalist economy. It was Silicon Valley that first transferred major assets to Chinese chip fabricators during the Bush I administration. Clinton’s contribution was to see the WTO trade agreement to approval.
What trade deals do is change the restrictions on trade to benefit a different set of nations than the ones in the previous trade deal.
Good trade partners find burying their customers not conducive to continued prosperity.
The other nations of the world allowed China to have a preferential monetary policy that sucked in foreign exchange, especially dollars. China now has the problem of what to do with all that foreign exchange. Like the United States (after World War II) and Saudi Arabia (during the OPEC oil cartel reduction of produciton, the 1970s oil crisis), China has chosen to invest that money internally and externally in land and infrastructure. The Marshall Plan for Europe looks a lot like the Belt Road Initiative for Eurasia.
China is entertaining talk of a port-rail connection between the Arctic across Finland and Latvia to connections in Russia to handle shipments from one part of Russian Siberia and Russian Far East along the Arctic Coast to a Finnish Arctic port and by rail back into Russia through Latvia. Or down the Baltic to Western Europe.
It is Transcontinental Railroad kind of bold.
Had the US not blown its trust, it could do similar projects throughout the Americas and integrate the Western hemisphere. But the US is trapped in an imperial model relative to the rest of the Americas. It will take a long time for the wounds from that policy to heal enough for that kind of collaborative infrastructure development.
Me too. September 1945
You have recommended books to me that I have enjoyed. May I recommend Why the West Rules–for Now?
Morris documents the seesaw between East and West since the dawn of civilization. I find particularly interesting the observation that once East and West trade freely, no matter which has the “higher” civilization, after a generation or two, plagues start in China, travel West, boomerang back to China and both civilizations collapse. To be fair, he thinks that the closing of the “steppe superhighway” by the Soviets and Red Chinese has broken that cycle. We shall see. Personally, I had thought that the Asian bird flu was the start of another plague. Perhaps medical science has stopped this cycle. Perhaps.
Simon Tisdale, The Guardian: China-Russia Double Act Exposes Trump’s Crudeness
Defriending the US is only half of the story. Here are the wooing nations with a joint strategy and a focus on doing in North Korea what Trump is unable to do.
North Korea threatens the US mainland; Russia and China defuse the threat. Trump is further squandering US power with his fat mouth.
Business man was mainly interested in sending a $1bn invoice to South Korea for the THAAD deployment. Recall Trump pushed his grievance towards Chancellor Merkel in their first chilly meeting: pay up for the U.S. Defense umbrella in Europe. Must include billions of back-payment for NATO. Merkel was not amused.
From your link:
Trump knows lots about golf courses … ideal location to install a THAAD missile system:
○ US Military Install THAAD Missiles as South Korean Protests Erupt