“Trump appears to believe that he achieved great things during his first year in office and that his critics have been proved both vicious and wrong. In fact, he has demoralized the institutions of the U.S. Government on which he depends. He has disappointed anyone, at home or abroad who expected him to mature. He is exhausting his first group of appointees and does not have much of a backup bench. And perhaps worst of all, he thinks he knows what he is doing. He does not seem to realize that he has not faced any tests comparable to the 9/11 attacks or the 2008 recession, and there is no reason to believe that he has developed the knowledge or judgment to handle such a challenge when it does arise. What he attributes to genius, most observers correctly attribute to luck. And there is a good chance that 2018 will be the year his luck runs out.”
----Foreign Affairs
Declaring that it “could have been worse”, Eliot Cohen, after a brief survey of year one of Disgustus' reign, reached the conclusion that he has been lucky but that his luck is about to run out.
It could have been worse, but one would have to conjure quite a nightmare to imagine it. Disgustus, behaving like a bull elephant in a china shop, has made a pig's breakfast of foreign policy and in the process has reduced the stature and the credibility to levels never seen.
In Europe he has insulted our allies, refusing for instance to shake the hand of German Chancellor Merkle, questioned the efficacy of our NATO alliance and pointedly omitted references to article 5 involving mutual defense agreements when referring to the defense of the old Soviet satellite states. Meanwhile, he has heaped lavish attention upon Russian President Putin about whom Disgustus has yet to level a mild criticism.
In the Middle East, he has abdicated the role of the United States as an honest broker of peace. First, he cut the legs out from under, buy cutting the funding for, the insurgent groups in Syria effectively ensuring the survival of the Assad regime and abdicating the region to the Russians.
Additionally, he has insulted our ally Pakistan declaring that no further aid will be forthcoming causing the Pakistan government to no longer share intelligence with the United States. He has backed the Saudi war with Yemen causing untold carnage in the country, and is currently threatening to withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran, notwithstanding that our European allies, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as the Disgustus-led United States State Department, have held that the Iranians are complying with the accord. But reasoning that he has not vandalized the world order quite enough, Disgustus approached the end of his first year by moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Here in one act, Disgustus, ever the negotiator, gave away the most significant bargaining chip in exchange for nothing virtually ensuring in the “bargain” continued Palestinian resistance and the end of the two-state solution. It was an act of inspired stupidity brought about at the insistence of Nevada casino owner Sheldon Adelson, the largest contributor to the tRUMP campaign.
In Latin America, Cohen, for instance, argues:
“But in Latin America (with the exception of Mexico), as in other parts of the world, there was not so much friction as absence: the United States was simply not playing much of a role one way or another. And throughout his first year, Trump acquired a global reputation for being unreliable, temperamental, and deceitful. According to the Pew Research Center, 93 percent of Swedes polled said they had confidence in U.S. President Barack Obama, but only ten percent said they felt the same about Trump. Of course, this may say more about Sweden than the United States, but in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the numbers were almost as bad. And foreign officials have begun talking openly about how, in the words of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, “our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership.” The costs of such a deterioration in U.S. standing are long term.”(2)
In the Far East, Disgustus has engaged in the kind of bluster that has led up perilously close to armed conflict, perhaps, nuclear war. The conflict on the Korean peninsula pits two national leaders with a tenuous grasp on power: the North Korean leader young, delusional and inexperienced and the American leader old, delusional and inexperienced. Neither is known for graciously backing down and in a conflict conducted under the glare of the klieg lights compromise is impossible. On this the hundredth anniversary of the Great War it is perhaps wise to remember how Europe and then the world stumbled into a global catastrophe.
After castigating the Chinese, whom tRUMP referred to as 'rapists' and vowed to set matters right as he campaigned for the presidency he immediately changed his tune upon achieving office. First the Chinese leadership came to Washington and then Disgustus went on a Far East trip suggesting to the Japanese that they re-arm themselves and that the South Koreans would be perhaps better served to look to the Chinese when dealing with North Korea. Trump took a group of Capitalists with him to Beijing and emerged not with an agreement over North Korea or any agreements dealing with our massive balance of trade deficit with China, but with an additional 250 Billion dollar trade deal almost certain to increase the deficit. The Chinese rolled out the red carpet and tRUMP folded like a lawn chair on the Titanic. So much for “The Art of the Deal” so much for the great negotiator.
As the first anniversary approached the White House, fearing massive protests should he show his face in London, canceled the upcoming trip to the United Kingdom. So low is Disgustus standing on the world stage that he cannot accept an invitation from our closest ally to visit their country.
With the questioning of our long-standing alliances, rogue diplomacy in the most dangerous hot spots in the world, a credibility daily twitted away, and the head of a regime seen universally as ignorant, incompetent, unstable and totally lacking in credibility, Disgustus has destroyed the credibility of a once great power. He has isolated the United States to such a degree that most world leaders now view this country as a rogue superpower, with attendant shifts in international diplomacy. Already the Chinese are moving to fill the void in the East, Africa and parts of the Middle East, Russia in Syria, Egypt, and Eastern Europe. With Britain withdrawing from the European Union, Germany is now seen as the leader of the Western World.
“Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh.”
Grade: F-
Impeach and Imprison.
-------------
- Cohen, Eliot A. “Trump's Lucky Year”, “Foreign Affairs” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-01-20/trumps-lucky-year?cid=int-fls&pgtype=hpg
- ibid. Emphasis mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment