Category Archives: Foreign Policy

UPDATED (3/13): The Great Negotiator Never Negotiated With Nikki Haley. Trump Gave Her Power And Let Her Keep John McCain’s Foreign Policy Positions

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Neoconservatism

Another mainstream Republican President Trump has empowered big time is Nimrata Nikki Haley, the 46-year-old daughter of immigrants from Punjab, India, former governor of South Carolina (where she disrespected Southern history by removing Robert E. Lee’s battle flag), and now US ambassador to the United Nations. I wonder which wars Haley will launch when her time comes to really call the shots?

Haley, heavily pushed by the Ivanka-Jared wing of the White House, waltzed into her job without conditions, having been given “a free hand to set foreign policy.”

Diplomats say “She doesn’t know enough about foreign policy to know what is her foreign policy.” Well, she knows enough to “distance herself from the new president on multiple key foreign-policy fronts, carving out an approach that hewed closer to Republican foreign-policy leaders in the Senate, including Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain. She pilloried Russia, denouncing Putin as an untrustworthy rival and dismissing the prospects of working productively with Assad in the war against the Islamic State.”

Even as she accepted Trump’s offer to serve at the U.N., Haley distanced herself from the new president on multiple key foreign-policy fronts, carving out an approach that hewed closer to Republican foreign-policy leaders in the Senate, including Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain. She pilloried Russia, denouncing Putin as an untrustworthy rival and dismissing the prospects of working productively with Assad in the war against the Islamic State….
Haley’s European colleagues noted that her core positions from Russia to Syria and Ukraine aligned neatly with their own, making her a potential partner who might soften the contours of the president’s controversial policies. “She couldn’t have been better from our point of view,” says one U.N. Security Council member. “She positioned herself comfortably at our end of the administration’s spectrum.”

MORE: “Candidate Haley: The portrait that emerges is of a retail politician turning U.N. diplomacy into a ticket to the White House.”

UPDATE (3/13):

The newly hired has Haley’s approval:

Neocons are happy about Mike Pompeo:

The woman who should have had the job. An old-school Democrat:

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UPDATED: Not Russia, But American Ally Turkey Is ‘The World’s Biggest Jailer Of Journalists,’ Frequently For LIFE

Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Russia, War

If you’re getting your news from the American media, you probably don’t know that Turkey, so far an American ally, headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is massacring “Kurdish insurgents in Syria’s Afrin province.”

Turkish troops are capturing Kurdish villages, and killing members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Lots of civilians, no doubt, are perishing. Except that Turkish journalists are forbidden to report about their government’s atrocities ongoing.

When “Turkey’s army claims to have ‘neutralized’ over 2,000 YPG fighters in Afrin without killing a single civilian,” that’s what goes to press. “Not a single mainstream media outlet has question[s] the figures.”

Why?

Because “Turkey is the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, with over 100 currently behind bars.” (“Muzzling the Media No one in Turkey dares report accurately on the war in Syria,” The Economist, Mar 1st, 2018.)

On February 16th a court sentenced six media workers, including a prominent novelist, to life in prison without parole on trumped-up charges of involvement in an abortive coup in 2016. … The internet is no longer a safe space for dissent. In the past month more than 800 people have been detained for protesting against the war on social media.

MORE.

UPDATE: Trump turning on the Kurds to pacify the Turks. Us “moving to repair relations with Turkey, endangering ties with Kurdish allies.”

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Hiring The Best People, POTUS? Start By Firing The Family And The Fashion Models

Donald Trump, Family, Foreign Policy

Sadly, it’s true. The one vow Trump made that “went the way of many campaign promises” was candidate “Donald Trump’s promised to hire only ‘the best people.'” (“Land of the flee: Staffing the White House,” The Economist.)

For example, there are now two former models—with no particular gifts or qualifications other than their guile and good looks—in senior positions in the White House: Ivanka Trump and Hope Hicks.

The First Daughter is conducting diplomacy with South Korea, no less. Ivanka is as qualified as her silly husband is to meddle in the Middle East. But at least Jared Kusher is a mute. He doesn’t speak.

“Ivanka Trump Briefed South Korea President on North Korea Sanctions Despite Reportedly Lacking Permanent Security Clearance,” blared a 2/23/18 Newsweek headline. Never mind security clearance. Steve Bannon attested that Ivanka Trump was as “dumb as a brick.”

And you can take that to the bank.

UPDATED (2/12/019): Funding The Soros Alliance … In Ukraine

America, Democracy, EU, Foreign Policy, Russia

Did you know that “the American government approved plans last year to provide lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, a move … President Barack Obama had resisted.”

Well, now you know.

As I pointed out in “Presstitute-Cultivated Ignorance On Ukraine” (2014),

The “the struggle for Ukraine” is a chapter in a series of US orchestrated provocations, which began with the expansion of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) eastward to abut Russia’s borders—an expansion pursued by Clinton, Bush and Obama alike. It gathered momentum with the US-backed attempts to incorporate Georgia and the Ukraine into the North Atlantic alliance.

The next stage in goading the Russian Bear consisted in American-funded NGO political-action groups—many of them backed by George Soros—flooding Russia proper. (“Purple” in Iraq, Blue in Kuwait, Cotton in Uzbekistan, Grape in Moldova, “Orange” in the Ukraine, “Rose” in Georgia, “Tulip” in Kyrgizstan, “Cedar” in Lebanon, Jasmine in Tunisia, Green in Iran, still un-christened in Russia and Syria: Dig around and you’ll find American activists à la Alinsky behind these “color-coded,” plant-based revolutions, blessed and backed by Foggy Bottom.)

“A US-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia” completed the provocation. “Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, it is … deceitful,” inveighed scholar of Russian history Stephen Cohen.

Back in February of 2014, I also predicted “a second Cold War between the US and Russia …”

The ignoramuses of the Beltway are still flouting America’s national interests and squandering Russian goodwill…

UPDATE (2/12/019):