Let Trump Be Trump

Posted by Tina

Since Donald Trump’s shocking win, his detractors have tried to convince us that President Trump is dangerous on foreign policy…a stupid man who’s creating chaos in the international community. Some actually believe he will blow up the world! See also here and here. The other opinion is that the international community was already sitting on numerous time bombs, most of which were brought on via the previous administration…real crises forming within the last eight years through the policies of an extremely weak president. It’s a wild ride but we need to let Trump be Trump….he’s got a lot on his plate, internationally speaking.

In August of 2014 the National Defense Panel issued a report. It’s findings were, “a scathing indictment of Obama’s foreign policy, national security policy, and defense policy.” The particulars were reported at the Daily Caller:

In particular, the report addresses the need for the administration to return to the flexible response doctrine — a policy where the military was tasked with being capable of fighting two wars at the same time. Given the current state of affairs and the threats posed to our nation, the panel felt that the two-war doctrine was still required to meet our nation’s national security challenges. The man-power reductions and budget cuts are both reflections of this change in policy, so it must be altered before that is possible. …

… In 2012, the Obama administration decided to change the (JFK) two-and-a-half war policy of the Flexible Response doctrine, in part due to the nation’s war fatigue, after having been at war for over a decade, and also in response to budgetary constraints exacerbated by a sluggish economy. …

… Here’s the problem: At the time the Obama administration announced the change in our defense doctrine, the president was also in front of the cameras threatening to use military force in Iran and Syria, announcing a “strategic pivot” toward Asia to counter a rising China, and swearing to uphold our defense treaties with Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, NATO, etc, all while we were still at war in Afghanistan. How can you threaten to take military action that could start a war when you are already fighting one in Afghanistan if you have changed your military doctrine to only fight one war at a time?

Short answer, “You can’t! Not without creating serious problems.” Chaos anyone?

In 2013 Peter Foster asked two important questions in the Telegraph

How is it that a putative nuclear deal with Iran can be welcomed as a “historic” opportunity in Washington and Tehran, but as a “historic mistake” in Jerusalem and “more dangerous than 9/11” in Riyadh, in the phrase of one leading Saudi Arabian commentator?

At the very least, the breadth of variance in those responses points to the immense stresses being placed on an old geopolitical framework, while inviting the question: is the world a safer place? And will it be safer tomorrow?

In 2015 Mikhail Gorbachev issued a scathing indictment of American foreign policy:

“…America has pulled us into a new cold war, trying to openly implement its general idea of triumphalism. Where will it take us all? The [new] cold war is already on. What’s next? Unfortunately, I cannot say firmly that the cold war will not lead to the hot one. I’m afraid that they might take the risk.”

March 2018, the website, Constitution reported the thoughts of two Obama era foreign policy officials, Barry Pavel and Gary Samore:

…both men now say that the former president’s inaction has made the world more unstable and dangerous. … Pavel, who was the senior director for defense policy and strategy on the U.S. National Security Council staff said, “I think he left a more dangerous world. In Syria, a major mistake was treating it like a humanitarian crisis, when it was a major national security crisis that has caused destabilization on our closest allies in Europe. Syria has been a source of terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States, and future attacks. I worry about that very much. … Potential adversaries know we had the capability, but not the will” to strike out at aggressive actions by certain nations against their neighbors or their own people. Because they knew that the Obama administration would never use military force for any purpose, they felt free to conduct their coercive actions in the South China Seas, the Russians went into Iran and Syria and North Korea accelerated their nuclear arms program.” Pavel called it unfathomable that it wasn’t until this year that U.S. troops arrived in Europe to deter Russia from a repeat of its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. “That should have been done in 2014,” he said. “We could have reinforced NATO to reassure our allies that we had their back, or we could have given the sovereign country under attack from Russia legitimate defensive weapons.”

Gary Samore concurs with his former colleague. Samore who served for four years as Obama’s White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, argued that while a softer response was the right way to go with Iran, it was counterproductive to in the case of Russia and Syria. Samore also praised Trump’s decision to strike Syria for using chemical weapons against their civilian population. “I applaud Trump. It was the kind of strike that Obama was planning – a limited military attack against the airfields in order to deter Assad from carrying out additional chemical weapons attacks, but he decided not to use it. Obama made a huge mistake by saying he was going to go to Congress for authorization, it turned out he did not have the votes. Trump was very smart to do it without congressional support,” Samore said.

Today in The Hill, “Informant provided FBI evidence Russia aided Iran nuclear program during Obama years,” by John Solomon and Alison Spann:

A former undercover informant says he provided evidence to the FBI during President Obama’s first term that Russia was assisting Iran’s nuclear program even as billions in new U.S. business flowed to Moscow’s uranium industry.

William Douglas Campbell told The Hill his evidence included that Russia was intercepting nonpublic copies of international inspection reports on Tehran’s nuclear program and sending equipment, advice and materials to a nuclear facility inside Iran.

Campbell said Russian nuclear executives were extremely concerned that Moscow’s ongoing assistance to Iran might boomerang on them just as they were winning billions of dollars in new nuclear fuel contracts inside the United States. …

… He said he became concerned the United States was providing favorable decisions to the Russian nuclear industry in 2010 and 2011 — clearing the way for Moscow to buy large U.S. uranium assets and to secure billions in nuclear fuel contracts — even as he reported evidence of Moscow’s help to Iran.

Evidence of Russian collusion? For now we’ll call it the “We can all be friends” foreign policy approach. Whatever! Obama’s presidency did make the world a much more dangerous place. And that is the world that Trump faces as our new president. It’s been a little over a year and even Trumps most ardent critics have admitted his success. Example:

December 2017, Peter Bergen of CNN, “Trump has scored some successes in foreign policy”

An apparent admirer, Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger predicted foreign policy success for Trump in the Western Journal: “The man is doing changes like never before and does all of it for the sake of this nation’s people. After eight years of tyranny, we finally see a difference. Every country now has to consider two things: One, their perception that the previous president, or the outgoing president, basically withdrew America from international politics, so that they had to make their own assessments of their necessities. And secondly, that there is a new president who’s asking a lot of unfamiliar questions. And because of the combination of the partial vacuum and the new questions, one could imagine that something remarkable and new emerges out of it. … Trump puts America and its people first. This is why people love him and this is why he will remain in charge for so long.”

The left doesn’t get it. Most probably never will. But the rest of us do and we also know about the dangers left in the wake of our former president.

The world is paying attention and learning to respect the man that makes them want to be better leaders by pressing them to keep their commitments and agreements. He’s rough around the edges and he doesn’t back down, but, if the nations of the world show they are willing, he’ll make a fair deal with them. Peace is better than war. Trump works hard toward peaceful resolutions.

Let Trump be Trump!

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6 Responses to Let Trump Be Trump

  1. Libby says:

    Do we have a choice? He’s sacked all the grown-ups.

    Rumor has it the man is in a colossal sulk cause Stormy got better ratings than his 60-Minutes inauguration interview. Poor boy.

    P.S.: I think Henry may be yanking your chain.

  2. Tina says:

    “He’s sacked all the grown-ups.”

    Lie!

    “Rumor has it…”

    Tall tale.

    “colossal sulk”

    He has no time for silliness…he’s too busy working!:

    The feathers of the Washington establishment were similarly ruffled when Trump committed the economic apostasy of finally standing up to China’s years of unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft by assessing $60 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports. “Free trade” had long been the zombie mantra of Washington’s elite, even as China demonstrated repeatedly it wanted nothing to do with the concept. “Trade war” became the new fearful mantra, and the stock market dutifully tanked.

    What Trump the dealmaker knew, and what Washington didn’t understand, is that your opponents often require threats before they come to heel. “China and the U.S. have quietly started negotiating to improve U.S. access to Chinese markets,” the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, and then on Monday reported, “U.S. stocks surge as trade worries ease,” and the market recorded its biggest one-day gain in nearly ten years. (The market was down on Tuesday due to declines unrelated to Trump’s trade strategy).

    Trump faced more hysteria when he announced an emphatically sane and probably overly tolerant policy permitting transgender persons to serve in the military unless they had been given a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria, reasoning – yes, reasoning – that his prior policy of banning all transgender troops went too far.

    But perhaps the most harrumphing of all accompanied his decision last week to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin on his “election” as president, without even getting the permission of the “experts” in his administration before doing so. Little did anyone know that Trump was already planning to expel 60 Russian diplomats to punish Putin for assassinating an opponent in Britain.

    A reasonable, rational, and balanced approach to a foreign leader we already know acts very badly but who has a vast military machine and nuclear weapons arsenal at his disposal.

    One might even say it was a very “sane” approach amid the insane cacophony of Washington.

    “I think Henry may be yanking your chain.”

    Poor you…wishful thinking. Henry is the most serious man the planet has ever seen…he may be incapable of “yanking chains.”

    March 19, Kissinger’s opinion of Trump at National Review:

    Henry Kissinger has endorsed President Trump’s planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying he thinks Trump’s unique style was instrumental in facilitating it.

    “The president has his own original style, and it’s unlikely to be changed at this stage of his life,” the former secretary of state told the New York Times. “But it also is conducive to bringing forward opportunities like this Korean conversation. It is not what we traditionalists would have recommended in the first place. . . . But I have to say, when I have thought it through, and how it could play out, it could restore a political initiative to us, and could compel a conversation with countries [who may not otherwise want one].”

  3. Peggy says:

    Loving Trump being Trump. Wish now I’d voted for him in 2016. I will in 2020.

    Haley: The US is capping its funding of the UN:

    “United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced on Wednesday that America will no longer fund more than 25 percent of the organization’s peacekeeping operations.

    Haley told the Security Council, “Peacekeeping is a shared responsibility. All of us have a role to play, and all of us must step up.”

    Currently, the US is shouldering roughly 28.5 percent of the UN’s peacekeeping missions. The next-largest contributor is China, which pays 10 percent.

    The contribution from the US has already been reduced $570 million from last year, at the insistence of the Trump administration. When that cut was made in June, Haley announced, “We’re only getting started.”
    https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/03/28/haley-the-us-is-capping-its-funding-of-the-un?utm_content=buffer24fd7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=theblaze

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