Posted on 04/18/2017 5:03:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem?" tweeted President Donald Trump on Easter Sunday.
Earlier, after discovering "great chemistry" with Chinese President Xi Jinping over "the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake" at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had confided, "I explained ... that a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korean problem!"
"America First" thus takes a back seat to big-power diplomacy with Beijing. One wonders: How much will Xi end up bilking us for his squeezing of Kim Jong Un?
Trump once seemed to understand how America had been taken to the cleaners during and after the Cold War. While allies supported us diplomatically, they piled up huge trade surpluses at our expense and became virtual free-riders off the U.S. defense effort.
No nations were more successful at this than South Korea and Japan. Now Xi is playing the game -- and perhaps playing Trump.
What is the "North Korean problem" Beijing will help solve in return for more indulgent consideration on future U.S.-China trade deals?
North Korea's nuclear arsenal. As 80 percent of Pyongyang's trade comes through China, Trump believes that Beijing can force Kim to stop testing missiles and atomic bombs before he produces an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the U.S.
But what is to prevent Xi from pocketing Trump's concessions and continuing on the strategic course China has long pursued?
For in many ways, Pyongyang's goals parallel China's.
Neither could want an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. For Kim, this would devastate his country, bring down his regime, and cost him his life. For China, war could mean millions of Koreans crossing the Yalu into Manchuria and a disruption of Beijing's march to Asian hegemony.
A continuing crisis on the peninsula, however, with Trump and the U.S. relying on Beijing's help, could leave Xi in the catbird seat.
And now that North Korea has declared its goal to be building missiles with nuclear warheads that could hit all U.S. bases in Asia -- and even California -- the clock is running for the White House.
"It won't happen," Trump has said of North Korea's developing an ICBM that could hit the United States. "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will."
"The threat is upon us," says outgoing deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland. "This is something President Trump is going to deal with in the first year."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice President Mike Pence have declared that our policy of "strategic patience" with Pyonyang is at an end.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster said Sunday the U.S. has "to take action, short of armed conflict, so we can avoid the worst" in dealing with "this unpredictable regime."
With a stunning parade of missiles in Pyongyang on Saturday, the North's failed firing of a solid-fueled missile that same day, and the promise of new missile tests weekly, Kim is forcing our hand.
Either he backs away from building atomic bombs and long-range missiles or Trump and his generals must make good on their warnings.
How did we get to this point?
Why, 64 years after the Korean War, a quarter-century after the Cold War, are we still obliged to go to war to defend South Korea from a North with one-half the South's population and 3 percent of its gross domestic product?
Why are we, on the far side of the Pacific, still responsible for containing North Korea when two of its neighbors -- Russia and China -- are nuclear powers and South Korea and Japan could field nuclear and conventional forces far superior to Kim's?
How long into the future will containing militarist dictators in Pyongyang with nuclear missiles be America's primary responsibility?
Another issue arises. Before the U.S. launches any pre-emptive strike on North Korea, Congress should be called back into session to authorize any act of war against the North.
Perhaps this time, Congress would follow the Constitution.
Though Korea is the crisis of the moment, it is not the only one.
Not since 9/11 have the Afghan Taliban been stronger or controlled more territory. The United States' commanding general there is calling for thousands more U.S. troops. Russia and Iran are reportedly negotiating with the Taliban. Pakistan is said to be aiding them.
To counter Vladimir Putin's Russia, we have moved U.S. and NATO troops into Poland, the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria. We have fired missiles into Syria. We are reportedly preparing to back the Saudis in the latest escalation of their war on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Twenty-four years after "Black Hawk Down," the weekend brought reports of U.S. troops returning to Somalia.
The promise of a Trump presidency -- that we would start looking out for our own country and own national interests first and let the rest of the world solve, or fail to solve, its own problems -- appears, not 100 days in, to have been a mirage.
Will more wars make America great again?
Precisely
Lordy I am sick of the whining done by some
“...the military industrial complex...”
Ahhh...The phrase of the leftist “hippies” of the 60’s....
Was Eisenhower a leftist hippie?
No, but the ones who repeated this phrase over and over and over during the 60’s damn sure were.....
Totally agree....
So....Are you Eisenhower???
Or one of the 60’s leftist “hippies”?????
You are still fighting the last war
The radical left of the 60s hated war because they feared we would win, while a lot of patriotic people hate war today because they hate American deaths and the eventual national exhaustion which has destroyed every world power which has taken up the perpetual war path.
And thru most of our existence, the USA was also an isolationist nation. I see nothing wrong with taking care of our selves and mining our own business. In fact doing so is what made us a great nation. We are now in decline because we are not taking care of our selves and mining our own business.
You’re still out of your tree but climbing higher.
The media doesn’t get Trump, the dems don’t get Trump, most of the GOP don’t get Trump, the Chinese don’t get Trump and many FReepers don’t get Trump.
Trump will fight for everything he ran on, he just temporarily shifts on a position as he positions whoever he is dealing with.
The Chinese are a good example. Trump knows it is best to deal with N.K. now before they develope nukes that will be real threat, and there isn’t much time before that happens.
The Chinese will put pressure on Kim and that is needed, but the Chinese can’t and won’t do enough. Once Trump has reigned in Kim ( no easy task but there is a plan in place, Trump is always thinking 8 moves ahead) he will pick up Chinese currency manipulation and unequal trade policies again, it is his signature goal going back at least 20 yrs.
SOVEIGNTY IS EVERYTHING! When you understand sovereignty you will understand how we have lost our liberties by giving Globalists like the United Nations the power over us to rule us through proxy votes of enemy nations.
You are dead set against what we need to do to REGAIN our Sovereignty because somebody put a label on something and you would rather THEY do your thinking for you.
It is obvious from your remarks that you ARE NOT FOLLOWING the executive orders and instructions to the agencies that have ALREADY been issued by the Trump administration. Do some research!
Who said any different?
And what did congress do that caused us to bomb Syria and shake our missles at North Korea?
When Hillary Clinton and John McCain agree on something the president did it should be taken as a big warning that we might be going in the wrong direction.
Many of us just don't want to see President Trump get sucked into the war-mongering/globalist foreign entanglements that have bogged us down and sapped our spirit, our fortune and our military for 50 years with little to show for it.
The president was elected on the strength of his major domestic agenda items, not to get us bogged down in the foreign messes that George Bush and Barack Obama left.
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Ya got any more pathetic comments lady? Maybe we should have voted for another Boosh, or Hillary and just allowed N.Korea to develop delivery systems that’ll hit any target on the planet, including where you live.
People like you don’t deserve this level of leadership.
That is exactly how I feel. President Trump was left the result of the worst foreign policy administration ever to deal with. Of course he has to do some things to get things where they should be.
Yeah no we weren’t.....check the history of the marines.....we engaged with pirates off the Somali coast. We have engaged with foreign nations in a violent and war like manner since day one. To suggest otherwise ignores US history
Well let’s look at what congress has given the president authority to do.....we have US troops in both locales.....we have US citizens in South Korea plus NoKo is threatening to nuke the west coast.
Trump has done nothing to fit the ridiculous Pearl clutches claims. You people need to chill ax for a moment or two. You sound as did mob as Hillary Geaham and mcshamey
"You people"?
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Yup you p are clutches and concern trolls who keep slobbering about the globalist war.mongers taking over Trumps mind
You are in good company, I think that's just about what my conservative brother thinks about my arguments when we we discuss the same subject. But I can't help but think that we have gone far astray since the end of the Cold War. I think we need more rational cold self interest instead of emotional interventions, a sober foreign policy based on realism and the balance of power rather than an eternal crisis and clash of ideologies and a foreign policy that is humble enough to recognize that God has never looked kindly on a one world order since the days of the Tower of Babel- and that includes arrogance based in Washington DC just as much as arrogance based in ancient Babylon.
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