Topic: Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Florestan]

The United States is at the center of every crisis around the world

Bullshit.

[BasilValentine]

Another in an ongoing series from the failing New York Times: Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves

An important, telling paragraph from the article:

“The United States is at the center of every crisis around the world, and you simply cannot be effective if you don’t have assistant secretaries and ambassadors in place,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat who was an under secretary of state for President George W. Bush. “It shows a disdain for diplomacy."

The bolded portion exemplifies the imperialist and messianic (or residual Wilsonian) mindset that afflicts some American policy makers.  This outlook, even if exaggerated, needs to be removed or at least weakened.  Go Rex!

(Alas, any true progress on this front is thwarted by unlimited expansion of operations, and outright lies about it, by the Pentagon.  Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.)

Just what we need, a cheering section for amateurs too stupid, arrogant and inexperienced to realize they don't understand what they are disassembling. Go Rex!

[nodogen]

Bullshit.

True, but they do like to cause or exacerbate them.

[nodogen]

     Trump is on TV making a speech and says "I'm highly educated. I know words. I have the best words."

   

Context is central to humour. If it weren't real it would be the funniest satire ever.

[SimonNZ]

Trump 'incorrect' over Time person of the year claims, magazine says

"Trump tweeted his thoughts on Friday evening, after a day of golf with Tiger Woods and world No 1 Dustin Johnson and, in his words, talking to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey about “bringing peace to the mess that I inherited in the Middle East”.

“Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Man (Person) of the Year,” like last year,” Trump wrote, a little before 6pm ET, from Florida where he is spending the Thanksgiving break at his Mar-a-Lago club.

“But I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!”

In the fashion of the times, just before 8.30pm ET, Time tweeted back: “The president is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. Time does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.”

[71 dB]

A lot of people hope Trump will be the next person on the cover of TIME IS UP -magazine.

[drogulus]

Bullshit.

     It's a little overstated but not bullshit. The U.S. has always had a faction that thinks U.S. power can be somehow unused and wished away, and that by signalling the world how virtuous we are by avoiding conflict with them we can run our dollar empire and stay out of trouble. I don't think that, our economic reach and political and military reach are tied together in ways that we can't isolate them. A liberal economic and political world order will be maintained principally by the power that can, there is one such power. That condition being fulfilled the important questions of who and why are answered.

[Todd]

It's a little overstated but not bullshit.

It's messianic foreign policy thinking that dates back to at least Wilson. 

The U.S. has always had a faction that thinks U.S. power can be somehow unused and wished away, and that by signalling the world how virtuous we are by avoiding conflict with them we can run our dollar empire and stay out of trouble.

It's OK if dollar supremacy withers and dies.

[Florestan]

     It's a little overstated but not bullshit.

The way it's formulated, it is bullshit with capital b.

This spring there was a political crisis in Romania. Were the US at its center?

Are the US at the center of the Ukrainian crisis?

Has the Rohingya crisis got anything to do with the US?

[nodogen]

The way it's formulated, it is bullshit with capital b.

This spring there was a political crisis in Romania. Were the US at its center?

Are the US at the center of the Ukrainian crisis?

Has the Rohingya crisis got anything to do with the US?

There is a political crisis unfolding in the UK, aka Brexit. The political editor of ITV, Robert Peston has just published a book about it. It's called WTF. We've created this crisis by our own efforts, no help needed from the US.

[kishnevi]

Another in an ongoing series from the failing New York Times: Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves

An important, telling paragraph from the article:

“The United States is at the center of every crisis around the world, and you simply cannot be effective if you don’t have assistant secretaries and ambassadors in place,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat who was an under secretary of state for President George W. Bush. “It shows a disdain for diplomacy."

The bolded portion exemplifies the imperialist and messianic (or residual Wilsonian) mindset that afflicts some American policy makers.  This outlook, even if exaggerated, needs to be removed or at least weakened.  Go Rex!

(Alas, any true progress on this front is thwarted by unlimited expansion of operations, and outright lies about it, by the Pentagon.  Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.)

Yet there is a corresponding belief on the Right which leads to the claims, for instance, that Obama let the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt, and that his reticence led directly to the failure of Iran's Green Revolution.

[Todd]

Yet there is a corresponding belief on the Right which leads to the claims, for instance, that Obama let the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt, and that his reticence led directly to the failure of Iran's Green Revolution.

Sure, messianic foreign policy, which can be seen as American Exceptionalism or Manifest Destiny globalized and militarized, finds strong adherents in both parties.  It is not uncommon to find neocons who insist on more aggressive foreign policy than liberal interventionists, though both have engaged in regime change, both support maintaining a gigantic military in excess of one necessary for the defense of the US, both advocate a permanent continuation of the existing liberal world order underwritten by the US, both advocate what amounts to extraterritorial application of US statutory and case law, and so forth.  I remember when Condoleeza Rice went on the TV talk show circuit and compared "liberating" Iraq to civil rights struggles in the South as a deliciously cynical defense of Bush era actions.  I think the Obama folks argued that ousting Gaddafi would save lives, or some such.  (Turns out Obama did do some stupid shit.)  The real policy making challenge is weakening or removing almost reflexively interventionist thinking from the foreign policy establishment.  Maybe Trump and Tillerson achieve some of that.  Maybe not. 

[drogulus]

It's messianic foreign policy thinking that dates back to at least Wilson. 



It's OK if dollar supremacy withers and dies.

     Sure, it's OK to have a fantasy of a 19th century foreign policy as an ideal, the good old nonexistent days. And I have no interest in promoting the U.S. economy for the sake of the dollar empire, mostly just for having a good economy. The dollar empire follows from buying all that stuff we buy and foreigners saving in dollars.

     Perhaps what's called messianic is just recognizing our position for what it is. No one has come up with a way to get America First notions into a policy that will outlast the first major crisis. Once again the '30s demonstrated the same thing shown in 1914, the failure to act collectively and the domino effects of uncoordinated bilateral alliances.

[drogulus]

The way it's formulated, it is bullshit with capital b.

This spring there was a political crisis in Romania. Were the US at its center?

Are the US at the center of the Ukrainian crisis?

Has the Rohingya crisis got anything to do with the US?

    The answer is more yes than no. The comment by Burns is exaggerated but so is the reaction to it. U.S. policy on the Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the ethnic cleansing in Mayanmar will turn out to be very important.

    Trying to get rid of U.S. military action by weakening U.S. diplomacy is super America First and unsuited to practical implementation.

[Todd]

     Sure, it's OK to have a fantasy of a 19th century foreign policy as an ideal, the good old nonexistent days. And I have no interest in promoting the U.S. economy for the sake of the dollar empire, mostly just for having a good economy. The dollar empire follows from buying all that stuff we buy and foreigners saving in dollars.

     Perhaps what's called messianic is just recognizing our position for what it is. No one has come up with a way to get America First notions into a policy that will outlast the first major crisis. Once again the '30s demonstrated the same thing shown in 1914, the failure to act collectively and the domino effects of uncoordinated bilateral alliances.

• 19th Century reference: check
• 1930s reference: check
• Domino effect: check

A predictable regurgitation of platitudes used by interventionists for years.  The combination may change, but it's still stale.

[drogulus]

• 19th Century reference: check
• 1930s reference: check
• Domino effect: check

A predictable regurgitation of platitudes used by interventionists for years.  The combination may change, but it's still stale.

     Yes, but you have no argument against what they say. You don't like Wilsonian messianism, neither does Meade, who's more my kind of interventionist.

     The 19th century fantasy was indeed fantastic as we were concentrating on our inland empire. There was no lack of intervention there.

     As for the '30s they did teach what happens when noninterventionists stymie collective action until they can't, as well as a valuable lesson about the kind of politics that flourish after economic calamity in democratic countries. I note that Trump is all in on 1914 style bilateralism. If Cousin Vladdy gives his word as a gentleman, he won't "intervene". Also, all dictators are admirable on a one on one basis.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

     Yes, but you have no argument against what they say.

Why, you write almost as if you expected Todd to address content.

[Todd]

Yes, but you have no argument against what they say.

Meh.

Also, all dictators are admirable on a one on one basis.

You're one fruity person.

[Rinaldo]

Kinda sums it all up.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/qmEDQRitGMo" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/qmEDQRitGMo</a>

[drogulus]

     Maybe one day an isolationist will come up with a form of nonintervention that isn't downright stupid, so we can all pretend to be small and weak with no consequences. But I want to see that idea. I want to know how it works and what happens when a major challenge comes up, as they do from time to time.

You're one fruity person.

     That's probably not it.