I don't know that I'd call it an accidental blurt. I just think they don't care who knows their real reason. They think people support this shit. Or if they don't, who gives a fuck? He's King George now (thank you Justice Roberts, won't forget it), and he can do and say anything he wants.
UPDATE 07:05 am:
UPDATE 03/07/2025:
How many reversals is that now?
Continue reading.[Trump's] love of the [1890s] has become so pronounced that it’s now a fixture of his stump speech, meant to defend the massive tariffs now central to the economic platform he’s promising in a second term. There’s just one problem: Trump’s comments are historically oblivious, evincing no awareness of the depression of the 1890s, whose severity was owed, in part, to the protectionist tariffs he praises.
Bulwark
Pure spite. Those publications have not bent the knee to King Orange.The State Department has ordered the cancellation of all news subscriptions deemed “non-mission critical,” according to internal email guidance viewed by The Washington Post. The move aligns with the Trump administration’s crackdown on media companies that count the U.S. government as paying customers.
A Feb. 11 memo sent to embassies and consulates in Europe described the mandate as part of an effort to reduce spending. The email read, in part, “Considering this priority, posts are asked to immediately place Stop Work Orders on all non-mission critical contracts/purchase orders for media subscriptions (publications, periodicals, and newspaper subscriptions) that are not academic or professional journals.”
[...]
Embassy security teams rely on news coverage to prepare for diplomatic travel in conflict zones. The cancellation of subscriptions — including to local news outlets — could hinder their assessments of threats, the official said.
[...]
A Friday memo directed procurement teams at embassies and consulates to prioritize the termination of contracts with six news organizations in particular: the Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press and Reuters.
MSN
JFC. I suppose the DOGE boys can't read more than that. I guess it's lucky they didn't say pictures only.On a teleconference the day after the initial memo was sent, employees were given a presentation about the mandate, with one slide saying it was enacted “in support of the administration.”
[...]
About a week before the Feb. 11 guidance went out, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the government was canceling subscription contracts with Politico, which had become a target of criticism among allies of the president, including Elon Musk, after users on X called attention to government contracts for Politico Pro subscriptions.
[...]
State Department personnel were told that they could submit a request to maintain a news subscription but that it “must be done within 1 sentence.”
The regime is tightening the screws so that no one leaks to the press, meaning we won't be getting this kind of information in the future.The guidance laid out possible justifications — if the subscription affects the safety of U.S. personnel or facilities, or if it is required by treaty or law, or if it yields an affirmative answer to one of the following questions: “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
A State Department employee who received the memos and shared them with The Post expressed concern that terminating news subscriptions — particularly to local outlets — would deprive embassies and consulates of information necessary to complete their mission.
Americans of my generation have been very lucky. We live in a free and prosperous country, one that has become increasingly free and prosperous during our lifetimes. We’ve enjoyed this freedom and prosperity without having to fight a civil war or world wars. And we’ve been able to take pride in the twin facts that our liberties have expanded here at home, and that, most of the time and at times decisively, we’ve been on the side of liberty abroad.
So for many of us it’s been easy to be patriotic. It’s been easy to be proud to be an American. It’s been easy to “thank my lucky stars / To be living here today.”
But it’s more complicated today. What happens when the government of the United States is no longer clearly on the side of freedom, at home or abroad?
The Bulwark
Yeah, I don't think neutral is what this country is.What happens when we can no longer be proud of the behavior of our own government and its leaders? How are we to react when bigotry is given sanction, when lying is routine, when corruption is rampant, when public-spirited officials are forced to resign? [...] [T]here’s been nothing, at least in my experience, that’s challenged our basic pride in our own government until now.
[...]
Can we really say the government of the United States stands with those fighting for liberty and against dictatorship? Our president expresses admiration for dictators, and our vice president goes to Germany to make the case for the Alternative für Deutschland. Between Russia and Ukraine, between a brutal and dictatorial invader and a brave people defending their nation and its freedom, this administration is—at best—neutral.
And so we place our hopes for freedom abroad not in the actions of America but in those of our European allies and the people of Ukraine. And we who are used to rooting for American diplomats abroad hope their talks fail.
[...]
I take hope from the words of the greatest American, Abraham Lincoln, eulogizing his “beau ideal of a statesman,” the great senator Henry Clay, in 1852:
[...]
“He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country.”
[...]
We love our country in large part because it is a free country. We oppose the actions of the current administration because we want this nation to remain a free country and once again to become a friend of freedom abroad. We oppose the current administration not because we’re ashamed of America but because we’re proud of America.
"Saber rattling?" I hardly think that qualifies as saber rattling.Honduras is threatening to ditch a bilateral extradition treaty, furthering a pattern of snubs delivered against the United States by an array of Latin American leaders.
Anti-American rhetoric has been on the rise in the region.
[...]
Honduran President Xiomara Castro ordered her government to drop the U.S.-Honduras extradition treaty after U.S. Ambassador Laura Dogu expressed concern over Honduran military officials meeting with Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, a prominent member of President Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle.
[...]
Padrino is under indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly running a drug trafficking operation through Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.
[...]
Castro’s saber-rattling follows a week of heightened U.S.-Mexico tensions, with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declaring his relationship with the U.S. embassy on “pause” after Ambassador Ken Salazar said a judicial reform proposal “represents a risk for the functioning of Mexico’s democracy, and the integration of the American, Mexican and Canadian economies.”
The Hill
Historical vision? How about the historical reality?Seeking distance from the United States is ideologically consistent for regional leaders like Castro, López Obrador and others like Colombian President Gustavo Petro, all of whom to some extent embrace the historical vision of the United States as a post-colonial interventionist power in Latin America.
It does seem a little odd to recognize drug traffic-linked people while complaining about their relationships with other countries' drug traffickers.Castro’s motivations could be more personal than historical.
In 2009, Castro’s husband, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was ousted as president of Honduras in a coup.
While the Obama administration was critical of the coup itself, the United States quickly moved to recognize a post-coup swift election that much of Latin America saw as de facto support for the coup.
Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the president who won that election, and Juan Orlando Hernández, his successor, both have direct links to the multinational drug trade. Hernández is serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking in the United States. Lobo’s son Fabio is serving a 24-year sentence, and Lobo had related corruption charges dismissed in Honduras this year but has been under U.S. sanctions for his alleged corruption since 2021.
Also short-sighted of the US to have been fucking around in and fucking up Latin American affairs for decades now.“Revenge was inevitable, as the U.S. abandoned [Zelaya] after the coup. Now, with his wife in power, they’re back with a vengeance, exposing the shortsightedness of U.S. policy during the Lobo and Hernandez years.”
[...]
Castro’s first big play on the global scene was to recognize communist China in 2023, dropping a longstanding diplomatic relationship with Taiwan.
China’s interest in Latin America is multifaceted — political and security interests are intertwined, if not secondary, to economic interests both in Latin America as a market and provider of raw materials, and as a gateway to the U.S. market.
Putting it mildly.China is not the only major power looking to Latin America, a region that’s rarely a high U.S. foreign policy priority under either Democratic or Republican administrations.
Yeah, like maybe making Latin America a priority. And maybe promoting more feminist ideas and less machismo.“Our future is tied to this region, and we have seen in recent years all these nefarious actors, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, gaining a foothold. And we have to be able to counter that,” said [Eddy Acevedo, chief of staff and senior adviser on national security and foreign policy at the Wilson Center.]
Furious protesters interrupted Blinken as he began his testimony before the Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There were shouts that he has "blood on his hands," and Blinken flinched from a protester who approached him from behind waving a sign that said "criminal" before security officers carried her out of the room.
Blinken reiterated the support of President Joe Biden's administration for Israel, but insisted it was focused on easing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
MSN
Love you, Bernie. But we may already be there.U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) expressed support on Monday for the International Criminal Court in its request for arrest warrants of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoev Gallant, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and others for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"The ICC prosecutor is right to take these actions. These arrest warrants may or may not be carried out, but it is imperative that the global community uphold international law, Sanders said in a statement. "Without these standards of decency and morality, this planet may rapidly descend into anarchy, never-ending wars, and barbarism."
Detroit Free Press
And the Israeli government is quaking in its boots. We have let them get away with aggression toward Palestine to the verge of destroying that country altogether for decades. Being "deeply troubled" is fucking bullshit.Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday criticized a decision by Israel’s government to recognize at least nine settlements in the West Bank as part of Israel, saying such a move worsens tensions with the Palestinians.
Blinken, in a statement, said the moves to legally authorize such settlements, which had previously been identified as illegal communities, “exacerbate tensions and undermine the prospects for a negotiated two-state solution.”
“We are deeply troubled by Israel’s decision yesterday to advance reportedly nearly 10,000 settlement units and to begin a process to retroactively legalize nine outposts in the West Bank that were previously illegal under Israeli law,” Blinken said in the statement.
The Hill
Blah, blah, blah. The Middle East policy equivalent of thoughts and prayers for mass killing victims in the US. Total worthless bullshit. Fooling no one.“As I have previously stated, anything that takes us away from the vision of two states for two peoples is detrimental to Israel’s long-term security, its identity as a Jewish and democratic state, and to our vision of equal measures of security, freedom, prosperity, and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” the statement continued. “We call on all parties to avoid additional actions that can further escalate tensions in the region and to take practical steps that can improve the well-being of the Palestinian people.”
That sounds pretty shitty on Australia's part. Are there some mitigating circumstances?France has recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultations sparked by the “exceptional seriousness” of Canberra’s surprise decision to cancel an order for French-built submarines and its security pact with Washington and London.
The Guardian
Ah.The French are furious at Australia’s decision to cancel a A$90bn (£48bn) contract it signed with the French company Naval Group in 2016 for a fleet of 12 state-of-the-art attack class submarines. That deal became bogged down in cost over-runs, delays and design changes.
Ninety billion differences.It is the first time France has recalled a US ambassador; the two countries have been allies since the American war of independence. France also cancelled a gala due to be held on Friday to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Chesapeake Bay, a decisive event in the war, which ended with the French fleet’s victory over the British on 5 September 1781. A White House official told Reuters that the United States regretted the French decision and said Washington had been in close touch with Paris. The official said the United States would be engaged in the coming days to resolve differences between the two countries.
OK, that sounds pretty shitty on all of AUKUS.Peter Ricketts, a former permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office and former UK ambassador to France, tweeted: “Don’t underestimate reaction in Paris. It’s not just anger but a real sense of betrayal that UK as well as US and Aus negotiated behind their backs for 6 months. I lived the rupture in 2003 over Iraq. This feels as bad or worse.”
Fine way to show value, negotiating behind their backs.The Australian foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, in Washington, said she understood the “disappointment” in Paris and hoped to work with France to ensure it understands “the value we place on the bilateral relationship and the work that we want to continue to do together”.
I don't know what France can do on its own, but nobody trusts the US any more.*[Ricketts added,] "A signal Paris regards Washington and Canberra as ringleaders in plot, with London as accomplice. Expect further French measures targeting interests of all three.”
Not good.The chaotic withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan, which has already prompted soul-searching among Western partners, is now reviving a decades-old debate within the European Union: Does the 27-nation club need its own military?
[...]
Many experts say the prospect of rolling out a free-standing E.U. military anytime soon is unrealistic. But the clamoring, which subsided somewhat after President Biden’s election, has intensified once more, after Biden rebuffed calls to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan past the Aug. 31 deadline. European leaders say that left them no choice but to cut short their evacuations, leaving thousands of their citizens and Afghan allies behind.
WaPo
Things are rarely just black or white, are they?E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell asserted that a proposed joint rapid-deployment force of 5,000 troops could have helped to secure the Kabul airport and that a coordinated European security strategy would have allowed the bloc more influence over the “timing and nature of the withdrawal.”
“The only way forward is to combine our forces and strengthen not only our capacity, but also our will to act,” Borrell said after a meeting of E.U. defense ministers in Slovenia on Thursday.
[...]
French President Emmanuel Macron is one of the concept’s biggest boosters and has been calling for a “true European army” since he took office — while at one point criticizing NATO as brain dead.
[...]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who once endorsed Macron’s suggestion for an army, has nonetheless been a staunch supporter of NATO as well as the U.S. military bases in her country. But Armin Laschet, who is vying to succeed her, said recently that Europe must be strengthened “such that we never have to leave it up to Americans.”
[...]
Some critics say European leaders are attempting to distance themselves from the Afghanistan fiasco despite generally supporting the decision to leave. Germany, for instance, declined to send troops back to help stabilize the country last month as the Taliban made sweeping territorial gains.
And who can blame them? They still remember WWII.But the renewed debate among European leaders also reflects a growing frustration with Biden, who told the world that “America is back” but has pursued foreign policies that echo some of his predecessor’s positions.
“What happened in Afghanistan was a defining moment,” said Nathalie Loiseau, who chairs the European Parliament’s subcommittee on security and defense. When the United States decided to pull out of the country, there was scant coordination with allies, she said. Biden dismissed European calls for a “conditions-based withdrawal,” and he refused to extend the deadline for pulling out. [...] “Now, Europeans must stop focusing on what the U.S. does or does not do.”
[...]
“There is not enough oomph behind all this politically to translate it into something practical,” said [Nathalie] Tocci, the director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a global affairs think tank. “We are just not prepared to see body bags coming home, and Afghanistan is not going to change that. It’s a political question that Europeans keep on ducking.”
Putin must be smiling.NATO, now a 30-country alliance, has been the primary military force in Europe since the aftermath of World War II, but the United States has long set its agenda. In the weeks since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, European leaders have called the mission a “failure” and a “debacle,” saying it’s further evidence that the E.U. should be able to act on its own.
[...]
“If you want to go all the way to strategic autonomy, you do have to have a European command — you can’t keep pretending you can follow the NATO command structure,” said Fabrice Pothier, a former NATO policy chief. “That will indeed create some friction with NATO and possibly with the U.S. and the U.K."
[...]
Some steps have already been taken to strengthen cooperation between European militaries. France, Germany and Spain are working together on Europe’s largest defense project, developing a new fighter jet. But four years after the plan’s announcement, the countries have only recently finalized the details.
The E.U. has set lofty targets before. In 1999, member states pledged to build a military force of up to 60,000, but it never materialized. Instead, the bloc has had multinational “battle groups” of about 1,500 troops since 2007, but they’ve never been deployed because of a lack of funding and political will.
That's it. No more foreign intervention. The United States military is incompetent to operate in foreign countries. And we aren't even competent to get those people out. Hide is all they can do. Their lives are forfeit. And probably the lives of their relatives. For the love of Pete.THE TALIBAN HAVE seized U.S. military biometrics devices that could aid in the identification of Afghans who assisted coalition forces, current and former military officials have told The Intercept.
The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, were seized last week during the Taliban’s offensive, according to a Joint Special Operations Command official and three former U.S. military personnel, all of whom worried that sensitive data they contain could be used by the Taliban. HIIDE devices contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information, and are used to access large centralized databases. It’s unclear how much of the U.S. military’s biometric database on the Afghan population has been compromised.
[...]
“We processed thousands of locals a day, had to ID, sweep for suicide vests, weapons, intel gathering, etc.” a U.S. military contractor explained. “[HIIDE] was used as a biometric ID tool to help ID locals working for the coalition.”
The Intercept
I bet not.A spokesperson for the Defense Intelligence Agency referred questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Oh, it's more than fair.Billions of dollars of U.S. weapons are now in the hands of the Taliban following the quick collapse of Afghan security forces that were trained to use the military equipment.
Among the items seized by the Taliban are Black Hawk helicopters and A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft.
Photos have also circulated of Taliban fighters clutching U.S.-made M4 carbines and M16 rifles instead of their iconic AK-47s. And the militants have been spotted with U.S. Humvees and mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles.
[...]
“Clearly, this is an indictment of the U.S. security cooperation enterprise broadly,” [said Elias Yousif, deputy director of the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor]. “It really should raise a lot of concerns about what is the wider enterprise that is going on every single day, whether that's in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia.”
[...]
It is unclear exactly how many weapons have fallen into the hands of the Taliban, but the Biden administration has acknowledged it’s a “fair amount.”
The Hill
And the Afghanis who helped the US soldiers and are at risk of retaliation because of it can't even get out.The US announced on Friday it had completely vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal that the Pentagon says will be completed by the end of August.
[...]
US forces shut off the Bagram airfield’s electricity supply and did not notify the base’s senior Afghan officer when they departed on Friday, prompting puzzlement and anger among Afghan soldiers there.
The airfield’s new commander, Gen Mir Asadullah Kohistani, only discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, he said on Monday.
Guardian
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.Kohistani’s account appeared to contradict a statement issued last week by the US that its forces had co-ordinated their departure from various bases with Afghan leaders. In response to Kohistani’s account, US spokesman Col Sonny Leggett referred back to the statement.
[...]
Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital, Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barracks and storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.
[...]
Within 20 minutes of the US’s silent departure on Friday, the electricity was shut down and the base was plunged into darkness, said Abdul Raouf, a soldier of 10 years who has also served in Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
The sudden darkness was like a signal to the looters, he said. They entered from the north, smashing through the first barrier, ransacking buildings, loading anything that was not nailed down into trucks.
“In one night they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area,” another Afghan soldier told AP.
[...]
Fighting has raged across several provinces, but the insurgents have focused primarily on carrying out a devastating campaign across the northern countryside, seizing dozens of districts in the past two months.
[...]
Troops and pro-government militiamen were deployed in the northern provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan where the Taliban have captured swathes of territory at lighting speed, often without any fighting.
[...]
Meanwhile, in northern Afghanistan, district after district has fallen to the Taliban. In just the last two days, hundreds of Afghan soldiers fled across the border into Tajikistan rather than fight the insurgents.
[...]
On Monday, three days after the US departure, Afghan soldiers were still collecting piles of rubbish that included empty water bottles, cans and empty energy drinks left behind by the looters.
[...]
Kohistani said the US left behind 3.5m objects, all itemised by the departing military. They include tens of thousands of water bottles, energy drinks and military ready-made meals.
They also include thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them, and hundreds of armoured vehicles. Kohistani said the US also left behind small weapons and the ammunition for them, but the departing troops took heavy weapons with them.
[...]
The last US soldiers are likely to remain until an agreement to protect the Kabul airport, which is expected to be undertaken by Turkey, is completed.
So, back to the status quo: West vs. East."America is back. I speak to you today as president of the United States at the very start of my administration, and I'm sending a clear message to the world — America is back," [US president Joe] Biden said in what could be a summary of his speech [to the Munich Security Conference].
[...]
"Competition with China is going to be stiff. That's what I expect. And that's what I welcome," Mr. Biden said, adding the U.S. and European partners can "own the race of the future."
The president also spoke of Russia as an adversary, something that threatens the freedom of its people. That's why the U.S. must stand up for Ukraine, and stand against hacking and other Russian tools, he said.
[...]
Mr. Biden also spoke of Iran as a threat to the safety and prosperity of the Middle East.
CBS
Earlier Friday, the president participated virtually in the G7 COVID-19 meeting with world leaders and announced the U.S. would contribute $4 billion to COVAX, emphasizing the administration's stance that the coronavirus must be fought around the world.
The Biden administration is also officially reentering the Paris climate accords later Friday afternoon.
Did Australia get booted out of the "Five Eyes" intelligence group, or just snubbed for this meeting?Joe Biden, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson topped the bill on Friday in a virtual version of the world’s top gathering on foreign affairs and defense — the Munich Security Conference.
Politico
Interesting.The online event presented a first opportunity for the new U.S. president to set out his foreign policy agenda to Europe since he took office last month. John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, also addressed the conference — a scaled-down rejig of the gathering that normally fills Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof every February.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel and U.N. chief António Guterres were among the other big names on the program.
[...]
Boris Johnson (who has a reputation as a political chameleon) pulled off the trick again. The man Joe Biden once called a Trump “clone” gave a Munich speech that positioned him as the optimistic champion of the transatlantic alliance Trump so often scorned.
[...]
Johnson highlighted the U.K.’s role in standing up to Beijing on human rights over the Munich Security Conference, as he was the only national leader to mention Xinjiang and Hong Kong during the event.
Oh, we're way past the decisive decade. We're now in the desperate one.It's “not acceptable for countries to think they can go to Glasgow and simply put out big numbers” for decades into the future, [U.S. climate envoy John Kerry] said. “We are absolutely clearly … now inside the decisive decade.”
Which Joe Biden has officially rejoined as of this meeting.Scientists have warned that governments need to drastically cut emissions and drop fossil fuel use by 2030 to keep warming in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Indeed, a climate pact that leaves out China (and Russia) seems like a huge disadvantage.NATO needs to step up efforts “to fully understand the security consequences” of climate change [noted NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg].
[...]
Stoltenberg warned that climate change has a direct impact on military operations and infrastructure, with rising sea levels raising questions over where to built military bases, especially naval bases, and the future of organizing military missions as temperatures are going through the roof.
[...]
“In the future, we will need even more cooperation,” particularly when it comes to dealing with China.
“Neither NATO nor the European Union have all the tools you need to address the consequences of the rise of China,” he argued.
I wonder what "democratic limits" are.In her speech, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put the regulation of internet platforms front and center — together with fighting climate change — of a new transatlantic agenda.
“The storming on the U.S. Capitol was a turning point for our discussions on the impact social media have on our democracies,” the Commission president said.
“Imposing democratic limits on the uncontrolled power of the big tech companies alone will not stop political violence but it is an important step.”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.“I don’t think that TTIP [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership] will be revived because we are not there where the United States left us four years ago,” she said. “The world has changed, the United States has changed, and Europe has changed.”
Already have been.Boring, reassuring, normal – these are Biden’s great strengths. But he needs to be careful. They could also be his great weaknesses.
That’s because any return to “normal” would be disastrous for America.
Normal led to Trump. Normal led to the coronavirus.
Normal is four decades of stagnant wages and widening inequality when almost all economic gains went to the top. Normal is 40 years of shredded safety nets, and the most expensive but least adequate healthcare system in the modern world.
Normal is also growing corruption of politics by big money – an economic system rigged by and for the wealthy.
Normal is worsening police brutality.
Normal is climate change now verging on catastrophe.
Normal is a GOP that for years has been actively suppressing minority votes and embracing white supremacists. Normal is a Democratic party that for years has been abandoning the working class.
Given the road we were on, Trump and Covid were not aberrations. They were inevitabilities.
[...]
If the underlying trends don’t change, after Biden we could have Trumps as far as the eye can see.
[...]
Hence the paradox. America wants to return to a reassuring normal, but Biden can’t allow it. Complacency would be deadly. He has to both calm the waters and stir the pot.
It’s a mistake to see this challenge as placating the progressive wing of the Democratic party. It’s about dealing with problems that have worsened for decades and if left unattended much longer will be enormously destructive.
Robert Reich @ The Guardian
Trump’s boorish attack on traditional pieties understandably makes Washington traditions seem like comfort food after a hangover. The darker truth this response conceals is that generations of foreign policy mistakes both preceded and precipitated Trump – who often went on to continue them anyway. The record of Washington’s “wise men”, who coddled dictators, militarised the globe, and entrenched economic unfairness at home and abroad, opened an extraordinary opportunity for any Trump-like demagogue – making his ascendancy less a matter of atavism than another form of the blowback to mistakes that America perpetually made abroad. If his presence shamed US foreign policy elites, it was because they helped make him possible.
There is no doubt that Trump altered national security policy in a host of ways. But the idea that the old international order was actually rules-based is a fiction that is impossible to sustain – especially regarding the US, which bent or broke the rules across the world throughout the cold war, fearful of its Soviet adversary. After September 11, the US crafted its own version of international law, shaped in its own interests – under both George W Bush and Barack Obama, and against much resistance from others across the world.
[...]
For decades after the second world war, the system allowed other governments considerable room for manoeuvre in their economic policies. But then the US helped to impose a draconian neoliberal order that persists to the present day, including through international financial institutions it dominated.
[...]
Trump became the latest president to condemn “dumb” US wars – as Obama did before him – while building a bigger military, and ordering even more drone strikes and special forces missions. Still, he not only reversed Obama’s incursions deep into parts of Africa but continued the shift away from heavy-footprint wars to light- and no-footprint modes across Central Asia and the Middle East, facing the “resistance” of the military for trying to pull troops from Afghanistan and Iraq in his final days for doing so. Biden will rightly restore the Iran deal if he can, and re-enter the Paris climate accords. He and his staff will talk more about the importance of standard parts of US foreign policy of the past, from human rights to multilateralism and from Nato to the United Nations. He will offer slightly less support for Israel’s rightwing leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman (though still a lot). But the transformation will likely halt there, for there is little further evidence that Biden understands the need to deal with America’s belligerent traditions.
[...]
[Biden] needs to be held to his promise of ceasing US support for the calamitous Saudi war in Yemen, which Obama enabled and Trump has continued with a vengeance. Unfortunately, however, a more cautious approach to US military power may only come in exchange for restoring enmity with Russia, and continuing the path to a cold war with China that Trump blazed.
The chance Biden will end the misbegotten “war on terror” is vanishingly small – and not merely in Afghanistan and Iraq. Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for secretary of state, will undo much of the damage Trump did to America’s foreign service and international reputation. But as he explained on a recent podcast, the new administration will ratify the shift away from the “large-scale” to the microscopic and visible to invisible strategies that Bush and Obama pioneered, as if the problem were just that Trump used them with even more gusto.
[...]
While the wars of the future are hard to predict, a better indicator of whether Biden intends a restoration or a renovation will be his economic policy. In spite of campaign promises to restore US manufacturing, Biden has a long record of supporting free trade in America’s foreign relations, as a diehard supporter of Nafta and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (before the latter became politically controversial). Biden has been cagey about whether he will join the latest such agreement. Either way, how he will balance the benefits of free trade with its grievous results for inequality and stagnation remains to be seen.
[...]
[I]f Biden’s presidency stands for little more than nostalgia for a lost foreign policy, it will not only miss a historic opportunity for a US reboot. Reviving old mistakes will only lead some new rough beast to slouch toward Washington, promising to save America from them.
Samuel Moyn @ The Guardian
One problem (and it's a problem in both Republican and Democratic administrations):While Mike Pompeo has remained a domestic politician throughout his tenure as secretary of state, giving the lion’s share of his interviews to conservative radio stations in the midwest, for example, Blinken is very much a born internationalist.
He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar and play football (soccer). [...] Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists.
[...]
All those contacts and the urbane bilingual charm will be targeted at soothing the frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team player. The foreign policy priorities in the first days of a Biden administration will be rejoining treaties and agreements that Donald Trump left.
[...]
News of his expected nomination was quickly welcomed by Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’ chief foreign policy adviser.
“This is a good choice. Tony has the strong confidence of the president-elect and the knowledge and experience for the important work of rebuilding US diplomacy,” Duss wrote on Twitter.
“It will also be a new and great thing to have a top diplomat who has regularly engaged with progressive grassroots.”
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Those who know Blinken well insist that his commitment to human rights is genuine and rooted in experience. He is the stepson of a Holocaust survivor and worked in the Clinton White House on the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
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After working in Bill Clinton’s national security council, he became Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser in the Senate in 2002, as staff director on the foreign relations committee, and worked on Biden’s failed presidential bid in 2008.
After Obama picked Biden as vice-president, Blinken returned to the White House as his national security adviser.
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In the last two years of the Obama administration, Blinken served as deputy secretary of state. His return in the top job then is the embodiment of continuity. But in recent interviews, he has acknowledged the mistakes and regrets of the Obama era.
On the decision not to intervene in any significant way in Syria (a decision Blinken opposed), he told CBS News: “We failed to prevent a horrific loss of life. We failed to prevent massive displacement … something I will take with me for the rest of my days.”
He also signed an open letter with other former Obama officials in 2018, acknowledging that the initial support they gave to the Saudi war in Yemen had not succeeded in limiting or ending the war and had mutated into a blank check under the Trump administration, resulting in devastating civilian casualties. A Biden administration is expected to cut off military involvement in the conflict.
Guardian
As long as they don't try to shove foreign leaders aside to resume a stranglehold on all global issue decisions. The one thing that has been positive about Trump's reign of terror is that America's outsized role in global affairs has been pared back to something more equitable for other countries.Blinken has been adamant about the Biden administration’s commitment to Israel’s security and said military support would not be made dependent on Israel’s policy decisions.
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The policy struggles will eventually rise to the fore but Blinken – who at 58 arrives at the state department as the father of two young children – is likely to begin with an extended honeymoon simply by not being Pompeo and having the stated desire to lead the US back towards leadership on the world stage on global issues like Covid, climate and non-proliferation.
