Posted on 06/22/2017 6:35:01 AM PDT by COBOL2Java
Imagine two U.S. foreign policy analysts plucked from their Washington think tanks and marooned on desert islands, one just before Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy and the other just before the 2016 election itself. After the election, both are told that the Republican candidate won and are asked to predict the new administration’s foreign policy. Whose predictions would have been more accurate?
At times this spring, the second analyst’s forecasts would have been on the money. Having followed the bitter election, he or she would have foretold the nature of the transition and the early weeks of the new administration as a logical continuation of the campaign. The starkly nationalist rhetoric of Trump’s inaugural address; the president’s unpredictable tweets; the departure of Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after only 25 days in office; and a whole host of other developments solidified many professionals’ sense that Trump would break dramatically with long-standing traditions and with recent policy. As the months passed, however, the analyst’s predictions would have been increasingly off base as the administration’s foreign policy became more conventional.
Meanwhile, the other desert-island refugee, who would have missed Trump’s surprising ascent and the bizarre campaign that followed, would likely have predicted that no matter who won the GOP nomination and despite any idiosyncrasies that emerged during election season, the realities of governing and of leading in a complex world would ultimately produce a fairly familiar Republican approach to foreign policy. And on balance, this analyst would have been right.
The Trump administration has been in office for less than six months, and most jobs below the cabinet level still remain unfilled, so one must tread carefully when making judgments about its approach or predictions about its future.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignaffairs.com ...
Calling together the leaders of 50 Muslim countries and urging them in the strongest sense to Crackdown on terrorism is hardly conventional
Damn good point!
Also: Abrams may not like Trump cozying up to el-Sisi, Erdogan and Duterte, but these three are willing to take the fight to radical Islam, and I think that’s the overriding motivation.
Elliot certainly is full of himself.
Why does Hillary Clinton still have a State Department security clearance? You ask,
because your members of Congress are fighting tooth and nail to stop Donald Trump at all cost, they are fighting day and night to keep obamacare and stop Presidents Trumps war on pedophiles!
That’s why.
Watch this video, make it go viral. https://youtu.be/9qLgLQ_l98I
Reality sometimes can be very sobering:
For example, few people remember that when Jimmah Carter was running for POTUS in 1976, he made a very big deal about his plans to remove American forces from Korea.
But after Potus Peanut moved into the WH, reality set in — with the result there was nary a post-inaugural public peep from JC on the subject. And U.S. armed forces are still very much in Korea.
Or do we recall that GWB vowed to stay out of nation-building — until the reality of 9/11 caused a huge change of course.
And what about Saint O’Bama’s plans to get us entirely out of Afghanistan and Iraq? And to close Gitmo? Again, Old Man Reality reared his ugly head and assured that Pres. O’s best laid plans went once more awry.
So:
Have the unpleasant realities of a great big, complicated and hostile world already forced changes in the “Weltanshauung” of Pres. Trump? And are more changes in the offing?
You betcha.
To me, not totally, the President does have a lot of input but it does seem US foreign policy follows a course with no matter who is the president.
What was said yesterday, the famous saying
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual.” - Henry Temple
Just one person who said it, there may be number.
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