RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/25/lessons-from-bill-call-the-s-o-b/

In January 2016, Bill Clinton’s presidential library made public transcripts of telephone calls between the president and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The calls, placed between May 1997 and December 2000, represent, as the New York Times noted, “a time capsule . . . captur[ing] the priorities and perceptions of the moment that, judged with the harsh certainty of hindsight, look prescient or wildly off base.”

One remark of the former president is striking, not so much for its prescience or its predictive error but rather for what it tells us about the American foreign policy status quo and the potentially tragic enslavement of our presidents to media narrative. Speaking with Blair about Saddam Hussein, Clinton said, “If I weren’t constrained by the press, I would pick up the phone and call the son of a bitch. But that is such a heavy-laden decision in America. I can’t do that and I don’t think you can.”

Clinton’s statement is a loaded one. It tells us much about the traditional power of “media optics” in our national politics, much about the constraints such optics have placed upon our presidents—and much, also, about how President Donald Trump stands apart.

Would the world be a different place today if President Clinton had actually picked up the phone and called the S.O.B. in Baghdad? Clinton hoped to assure Saddam of his intentions: that he wanted the elimination of any chemical or biological weapons programs, not the destruction of the Iraqi regime itself. But, to keep the media at bay, Clinton relied upon third parties to make his point to Saddam. We are left only to wonder if Clinton’s message was ever really conveyed. And even if it was, did the Iraqi leader believe it given the impersonal and roundabout manner of its delivery?

As Winston Churchill once remarked, “meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.” This was not a call for some type of spineless appeasement—surrendering to the insatiable demands of a tyrant and strengthening that tyrant, in turn, to do his worst. Churchill’s call was for dialogue and interpersonal summit politics: discussion between leaders at the apex of government, without interference, and certainly without bowing before the dictates of the media.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-goes-to-japan-and-japan-to-him-11562020774

Even before he stunned the world by arranging an impromptu summit with Kim Jong Un, President Trump worked his media magic at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, last week. Whether shaping the world economy through discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping or elevating his daughter Ivanka to senior-diplomat status by bringing her into critical meetings, Mr. Trump and his trademark dazzle-and-spin approach to foreign affairs fascinated, worried and flummoxed diplomats and pundits.

Many hope that such personalized, improvisational and unilateral diplomacy will fade from world politics when Mr. Trump returns to private life. But two developments in Japan suggest the Trumpification of world politics may be here to stay.

First, a small fleet of whalers set out on the first commercial hunt in Japan in 31 years, as Japan’s departure from the International Whaling Commission became effective. The IWC may not be one of the world’s most important multilateral institutions, but its troubles typify the crisis increasingly gripping its peers.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/01/trump

Vladimir Putin may be the expert on interfering in U.S. elections, but this past weekend Donald Trump gave North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un the power to tilt the 2020 election decidedly in favor of whoever his Democrat opponent ends up being.

The president on Friday evening tweeted: “I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”

Assuming the tweet didn’t disguise previous secret arrangements, it was a shortest-of-short-notice cold invitations. Press reports say it was entirely spontaneous, the president’s own idea, and at variance to the advice of national security aides. Had Kim rebuffed him, it would have been arguably the greatest embarrassment of Trump’s presidency and would have dominated the coverage of the establishment media for days, and provided fodder for heavy attacks from the Democrats running for president.

Instead, Kim came a running to the infamous Demilitarized Zone at the South Korean border. Trump’s tweet, from Japan, was at 6:51 p.m. Eastern time on Friday; he and Kim met just before 2 a.m. Eastern on Saturday. To get a notorious dictator to show up at a place of your choosing in seven hours is a dazzling rarity, if not a first, in the annals of diplomacy.

After shaking hands at the line dividing north and south, Kim invited Trump, and we saw the dramatic spectacle of the first sitting president of the United States setting foot on North Korean soil. Their encounter went on for an hour, much longer than expected, and in its practical effect it clearly erased the stalemate in Hanoi; they agreed to arrange for officials to meet and discuss the differences left unresolved at that second summit in Vietnam in February.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274176/trump-and-kim-jong-un-korean-dmz-joseph-klein

President Trump took an historic step on Sunday by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to cross into North Korea, after shaking hands with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un across the border at the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Kim hailed the president’s move as a “courageous and determined act” that “means that we want to bring an end to the unpleasant past.” President Trump said, “Stepping across that line was a great honor. I think it’s historic, it’s a great day for the world.” After Kim crossed the demarcation line to enter South Korea, President Trump said that he would invite Kim at some point to visit the White House. The two leaders held a 50-minute meeting at the Demilitarized Zone, resulting in their decision to designate teams for the resumption of nuclear negotiations that have stalled since the failed summit meeting in Vietnam earlier this year. President Trump noted, following the meeting, that “speed is not the object.” He added, “We’re looking to get it right.”

All of this came about because of President Trump’s willingness to break the mold of formal diplomacy. “The United States, under the Trump administration, has disrupted the longstanding, but failing, US policies of past administrations by seeking to build trust from the top down,” said Barry Pavel, senior vice president and director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. About a day prior to President Trump’s face-to-face talk with Kim, while the president was still at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, the president took a bold gamble. He tweeted the suggestion that he and Kim meet at the Korean Demilitarized Zone for a quick hello and handshake. Much to the president’s relief, he avoided the embarrassment of a no-show when his North Korean counterpart accepted the invitation. “It is good to see you again,” Kim said to the president through an interpreter. “I never expected to meet you in this place.” The hello and handshake turned into a nearly hour-long substantive meeting.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/apocalypse-now-charles-koch-and-george-soros-team-up-for-foreign-policy-initiative/

The Boston Globe:

BESIDES BEING BILLIONAIRES and spending much of their fortunes to promote pet causes, the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its “forever war” and adopt an entirely new foreign policy.

In one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history, Soros and Charles Koch, the more active of the two brothers, are joining to finance a new foreign-policy think tank in Washington. It will promote an approach to the world based on diplomacy and restraint rather than threats, sanctions, and bombing.

We should begin with a little clarification here. George Soros is actually a raging progressive and the Koch brothers are very libertarian. A left wing rag like the Globe rarely gets things like this right.

What they’re trying to do is paint Soros as some sort of centrist and the Kochs as fringe loons, when the opposite is true.

Either way, this is a most interesting alliance. These are the two most financially influential entities in American politics in recent years. That they are finding common ground is worth paying attention to.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/trump-meets-kim-for-third-time-becomes-first-u-s-president-to-enter-north-korea/

President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday and became the first U.S. president to enter North Korea.

Kim greeted Trump in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and asked him if he would like to step inside his country. Trump told Kim he would be “honored” and he took 20 steps into North Korea.

“It is good to see you again,” Kim told Trump through an interpreter. “I never expected to meet you in this place.”

“Big moment. Big progress,” Trump said in response.

Through an interpreter, Kim said that their latest meeting has “a lot of significance because it means that we want to bring an end to the unpleasant past and try to create a new future, so it’s a very courageous and determined act.”

Kim noted, “You’re the first US president to cross this line.”

Watch:

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/26/america-can-afford-to-stay-calm-with-iran/

President Trump recently ordered and then called off a retaliatory strike against Iran for destroying a U.S. surveillance drone. The U.S. asserts that the drone was operating in international space. Iran claims it was in Iranian airspace.

Antiwar critics of Trump’s Jacksonian rhetoric turned on a dime to blast him as a weak, vacillating leader afraid to call Iran to account.

Trump supporters countered that the president had shown Iran a final gesture of patience—and cleared the way for a stronger retaliation should Iran foolishly interpret his one-time forbearance as weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be reciprocated.

The charge of Trump being an appeaser was strange coming from leftist critics, especially given Trump’s past readiness to bomb Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons, his willingness to destroy ISIS through enhanced air strikes, and his liberation of American forces in Afghanistan from prior confining rules of engagement.

The truth is that Iran and the United States are now engaged in a great chess match. But the stakes are not those of intellectual gymnastics. The game is no game, but involves the lives, and possible deaths, of thousands.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-president-china-and-the-spooks/

“I’m an Always Trumper. I want the president to win another term. If I complain about tactics, it’s because I want him to succeed. The right thing to do now is to declare an armistice in the long-run economic war with China, and concentrate on building up American semiconductor and communications manufacturing to out-compete the Chinese.”

Why is it that every time Donald Trump gets together with Xi Jinping, someone gets busted on a sanctions violation? I’m not privy to the inner workings of our cops and spooks, so I’m just asking. While Trump and Xi sat down to dinner at the November 2018 Group of 20 meeting in Argentina, the chief financial officer of Huawei was arrested in a Vancouver airport transit lounge. Now that Trump and Xi are meeting again next week at the Osaka Group of 20 meeting, there are reports of a contempt-of-court order against Chinese banks for violation of North Korea sanctions. This has caused more than a flutter, as I report this morning at Asia Times.

President Trump’s relationship with the U.S. intelligence establishment is less than satisfactory. The spooks didn’t like it when Attorney General William Barr proposed to declassify documents relating to surveillance of his 2016 presidential campaign. Elements of spookdom evidently conspired with the FBI to sandbag the Trump campaign using alleged Russian contamination as a pretext. I have argued in this space that CIA set up Gen. Michael Flynn, the only senior intelligence official to call them out for incompetence and (probably) corruption.

During the past month, we’ve observed a president who steers away from unnecessary confrontation. He suppressed the advice of his National Security Adviser and chose to sanction and threaten Iran rather than start a firefight. In May, Trump overruled his advisers and declared that North Korea’s latest missile launch was not a violation of UN resolutions, contradicting then Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. Shanahan since stepped down, reportedly for personal reasons. He chose to declare victory with Mexico and forbear from imposing tariffs over the immigration issue. And, unlike most of his administration and the Senate neo-cons (Romney, Rubio, et al.), he wants to fold the Huawei issue into the broader trade negotiations.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-iran-show-11561416216

President Trump’s Iran policy over the weekend was both erratic and masterful. Doves and isolationists, panicked by what they see as the administration’s inexorable drift toward war, rejoiced when Mr. Trump announced that a military strike had been called back. Hawks criticized him for an Obama-like climb-down, but the announcement of cyberattacks and tightening sanctions helped smooth ruffled feathers.

The result? Mr. Trump more than ever dominates U.S. Iran policy; contending political factions within the administration and outside it must jockey for his support. And the more he talks and tweets about Iran, the less clear anyone is about his ultimate intentions.

None of this should be surprising. Consistently inconsistent on issues from trade with China and immigration from Mexico to Venezuela and North Korea and now Iran, Mr. Trump has been by turns more hawkish than any of his predecessors and dovish enough to thrill Sen. Rand Paul.

This president is first and foremost a showman. From his early real-estate days in 1970s New York through his time in reality television and into his third career in politics, Mr. Trump has understood and shrewdly deployed the power of fame. He has turned American politics into the Donald Trump Show, with the country and the world fixated on his every move, speculating feverishly about what will come next. Whether threatening on Twitter to rain down destruction from the sky, reining in the dogs of war at the last minute, or stage-managing high-stakes summit meetings, he is producing episodes of the most compelling reality show the world has ever seen.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274101/trump-vs-mullahs-bruce-thornton

In any fight, keeping your opponent off balance is critical, and telegraphing your punches is dangerous. Feints and tactical retreats are ways to avoid becoming predictable. Even threats and bravado can be used to confuse the enemy, as boxing legend Muhammed Ali proved. But eventually, you have to punch your opponent in the face hard enough to knock him flat.

Whether by design or instinct, Donald Trump’s foreign policy so far has followed this age-old strategy. He has abandoned the West’s predictable foreign-policy narrative that conflicts can be resolved with “diplomatic engagement,” “international summits,” “UN Resolutions,” “multilateral agreements,” and all the other verbal rituals for avoiding risky action while the enemy uses the time for working more mischief. His direct, blunt, sometimes wild public pronouncements blow through the understated, vapid, stylized diplo-speak of “grave concern” and “deeply troubling” that are mere verbal place-holders, ways of providing the press copy without saying anything significant. And he has dropped the pretense that thugs and fanatics deserve to be treated with the “mutual respect” due to legitimate leaders of free nations.

But two years of Trump’s using this strategy with Iran may be becoming predictable, at least to the mullahs. In the last few months, attacks on six commercial vessels in the Gulf, and now the destruction of one of our drones flying over international waters, suggest Iran believes that for all his tough talk, Trump is a typical Western leader who will not back his words with action.

Take the drone incident. Conflicting reports say that the president ordered a strike on three of Iran’s military sites, then called it off after the jets were already in the air, though the president disputes the claim that the strike was “cancelled,” but rather is “on hold.” More baffling are Trump’s reasons for holding back. He speculated that a rogue Iranian officer was “loose” and did “something stupid” not approved by the regime. That’s not likely with a military tightly controlled by the ayatollahs, who have demonstrated in the past the brutal wages of acting without their approval.