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https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-hesitant-embrace-of-human-rights-11563835208

The big news from Washington is that Woodrow Wilson is back. From Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Vice President Mike Pence and even, if somewhat hesitantly, President Trump, senior American officials are putting human-rights concerns front and center in American foreign policy.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has condemned Chinese repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, hosted a conference of 106 countries to discuss religious freedom around the world, and announced the formation of the International Religious Freedom Alliance. Mr. Pompeo called China’s mass repression of the largely Muslim Uighur people “the stain of the century.” On Wednesday Mr. Trump met at the White House with 27 people from around the world who have faced persecution for their religious beliefs.

At first glance, the embrace of human rights by the Trump White House seems odd. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the idea that promoting human rights overseas should be a major theme of American foreign policy. Outreach to leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mohammed bin Salman is predicated on the president’s willingness to overlook their dismal records on human rights. And that an administration whose domestic supporters attack an opponent by chanting “Send her back!” should head a global drive for human rights strikes even many Republicans as improbable.

But the political logic behind the administration’s Wilsonian pivot is strong. Team Trump needs to unify its populist and conservative supporters in the U.S. even as it builds a coalition against Chinese overreach in Asia and beyond. Incorporating a vision of human rights focused on religious liberty helps on both fronts.

http://www.ilanberman.com/22924/trump-strategy-is-

It’s hardly a secret that European leaders dislike Donald Trump. Over the past two years, the U.S. President’s divisive personal style, and his confrontational rhetoric on everything from Europe’s deficient defense spending to bilateral trade, have severely strained trans-Atlantic relations. And yet, on at least one issue — Iran — European countries are slowly but surely drifting into alignment with the White House, even if they are doing so grudgingly.

On Sunday, the Iranian government announced plans to imminently breach the limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with the West. If it follows through on the threat, the Islamic Republic will begin enriching uranium this week beyond the 3.67 percent threshold outlined by the agreement — laying the groundwork for an eventual “sprint” to nuclear status, should the regime choose to do so. Moreover, according to Iranian officials, unless the U.S. and its allies scale down their pressure on the regime in the next two months, Iran will take further steps to fracture the atomic pact, and is “prepared to enrich uranium to any level and with any amount.”

The objective of Iran’s threats is clear. As Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute has eloquently outlined, Iran’s indications of nuclear breakout — and its increasingly bellicose behavior in the Persian Gulf — are intended to raise the specter of war with the United States, and prod increasingly nervous European nations to pressure the U.S. to back off its campaign of “maximum” economic and political pressure.

But Tehran’s maneuvers could actually have the opposite effect. European nations, already nervous over Iran’s recent recklessness in the Strait of Hormuz, are becoming more and more alarmed by what they view as an increasingly undependable partner in Tehran.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/british-ambassador-to-u-s-resigns-after-leak-of-cables-criticizing-trump-administration/

The British ambassador to the U.S. stepped down Wednesday amid controversy over leaked cables in which he harshly criticized the Trump administration.

Sir Kim Darroch became the object of heavy criticism from the president over the weekend after the leak of private messages to Parliament in which he calls the administration “unpredictable,” “inept,” and “uniquely dysfunctional,” and the president himself “insecure.” The messages also wondered whether the administration would fall in “disgrace” and mused on whether Trump may be indebted to “dodgy Russians.”

“We could be at the beginning of a downward spiral . . . that leads to disgrace and downfall,” the ambassador wrote.

Trump returned fire after the criticisms were leaked, calling the British ambassador a “pompous fool,” “wacky,” and “a very stupid guy.” The president added that his administration would refuse to work with Darroch, which may have forced the ambassador’s hand.

“I do not know the Ambassador, but he is not liked or well thought of within the U.S. We will no longer deal with him,” Trump wrote Monday on Twitter.” The good news for the wonderful United Kingdom is that they will soon have a new Prime Minister.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nationalism-is-necessary-but-insufficient-11562626113

As President Trump reveled in air-force flyovers and a tank display this Fourth of July, the idea that dominates his administration’s domestic and foreign policies was on full display. That idea is nationalism, and Mr. Trump hopes it will reshape both American politics and the international order.

At home, Mr. Trump relies on the power of nationalism to isolate and marginalize his opponents. At a time when some on the left believe it is more important to denounce America’s failings than to hail its accomplishments, Mr. Trump seeks to wrap himself in a flag that most Americans revere.

We’ll know in November 2020 if this strategy has paid off at the polls. The results of a frankly nationalist foreign policy may take longer to assess. The Trump administration’s hostility to such multilateral institutions as the European Union, the World Trade Organization and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—and its apparent cynicism toward international law and democracy itself—have astounded and embittered many longtime American allies. This is costly; the trans-Atlantic alliance that grounded American policy for 70 years is visibly and rapidly weakening.

For many of Mr. Trump’s critics, “America First” foreign policy reflects demagogic populism, incompetence or worse. The reality is more complicated. As America’s foreign-policy focus shifts to the Indo-Pacific to balance the rise of China, the globalist, cosmopolitan ideas that guided American foreign-policy makers through the post-Cold War era may create as many problems as they solve.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/07/07/real-way-do-american-diplomacy-leader-leader-thatcher-regan/

In leaked emails, the British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Kim Darroch, describes President Trump as “radiating insecurity”, and speaks of his White House as a “uniquely dysfunctional environment”. 

Sir Kim deserves a smidgeon of sympathy: it is no secret that dealing with the ever-changing Trump team can be tricky. But, overall, his memos raise a question: “What is the valued-added here?” We send diplomats abroad so that they can get closer insight into foreign powers. Sir Kim is effectively saying that he and his team cannot manage this. He blames Mr Trump’s shortcomings for their failures. The information contained in his missives is the sort of stuff you can read every day in posh newspapers and seems to contain nothing from the inside. 

It is not true that no one British can get close to Donald Trump. I can immediately think of at least four people who have managed this in recent years. Three of them – Nigel Farage, Conrad Black and Piers Morgan – are outside the normal systems with which diplomats are familiar; but one was Foreign Secretary when Sir Kim first started writing his plaintive emails. Now that same man, Boris Johnson, is almost certain to become our next Prime Minister. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/unalienable-rights-and-u-s-foreign-policy-11562526448

America’s Founders defined unalienable rights as including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They designed the Constitution to protect individual dignity and freedom. A moral foreign policy should be grounded in this conception of human rights.

Yet after the Cold War ended, many human-rights advocates turned their energy to new categories of rights. These rights often sound noble and just. But when politicians and bureaucrats create new rights, they blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments. Unalienable rights are by nature universal. Not everything good, or everything granted by a government, can be a universal right. Loose talk of “rights” unmoors us from the principles of liberal democracy.

That’s why I’m launching a Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department, chaired by Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon and populated with scholars, legal experts and activists. The commission’s mission isn’t to discover new principles but to ground our discussion of human rights in America’s founding principles.

The commission is an advisory body and won’t opine on policy. My hope is that its work will generate a serious debate about human rights that extends across party lines and national borders, similar to the debate sparked by the human-rights panel Eleanor Roosevelt convened in 1947. The Commission on Unalienable Rights will study the document that resulted from that effort, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, along with our founding documents and other important works.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14499/trump-iran-sanctions-fallacies

…sanctions are working. The mullahs have started to reduce their footprint in Syria and Yemen… Offices in more than 30 Iranian cities, to enlist “volunteers” for “Jihad” in Syria, have been closed, and the recruitment of Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries has stopped. Tehran’s military and diplomatic presence in Yemen has been downsized, ostensibly for security reasons. Smuggling arms to Houthis continues albeit at a reduced rate.

Cash-flow problems caused by sanctions have also forced the mullahs to cut the stipends of proxies, notably the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian “Islamic Jihad” by around 10 percent with more cuts envisaged…. More importantly, perhaps, the mullahs have frozen their missile program at the current range of 2000 kilometers.

The seventh claim is that Trump’s sanctions strengthen hardline factions and weaken the “reformists” around President Hassan Rouhani. Since Rouhani and his associates have never said or even hinted, what it is they may want to reform, it is hard to speak of a “reformist” faction. Moreover, the extensive purge of the military currently undertaken by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei does not seem to have affected any “moderates”.

As President Donald Trump tightens the screws on the current ruling elite in Tehran, the debate on the possible consequences of his policy rages on in American media, think tanks and political circles. Moreover, because Trump’s constituency is outside such elite spheres the impression created is that his Iran policy either has failed already or is set to produce undesirable unintended consequences.

In that context, seven claims form the main themes of the campaign launched by the pro-Tehran lobby with support from sections of the US Democrat Party and others who dislike Trump for different reasons. The first claim is that sanctions do not work.

That theme is developed without spelling out what the intended aims of sanctions are. Trump has said his aim is to persuade the Khomeinist clique in Tehran to change aspects of its behavior abroad. In that sense, sanctions are working.

The mullahs have started to reduce their footprint in Syria and Yemen, without quite opting for total withdrawal. Offices in more than 30 Iranian cities, to enlist “volunteers” for “Jihad” in Syria, have been closed, and the recruitment of Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries has stopped. Tehran’s military and diplomatic presence in Yemen has been downsized, ostensibly for security reasons. Smuggling arms to Houthis continues albeit at a reduced rate.