RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-designate-iranian-guard-corps-a-foreign-terrorist-organization-11554499401

The Trump administration is preparing to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, U.S. officials said, a step that would vastly escalate the American pressure campaign against Tehran but which has divided U.S. officials.

The decision, which could be announced as early as Monday following months of deliberation, would mark the first time that an element of a foreign state has been officially designated a terrorist entity.

National security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been strong proponents of the move, which is intended to help the U.S. crack down on businesses in Europe and elsewhere controlled by the IRGC, the officials said.

But Pentagon officials, including Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have cautioned against the move, several U.S. officials said, fearing it could lead to a backlash against U.S. forces in the region without inflicting the intended damage to the Iranian economy.

Central Intelligence Agency officials have also had reservations about consequences of the decision, the officials said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273190/pompeo-pounces-international-criminal-court-joseph-klein

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Friday new U.S. visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with U.S. and allied military and intelligence activities in Afghanistan. The ICC prosecutor had previously requested approval from the ICC’s judges to launch a formal investigation into what the prosecutor called the “situation in Afghanistan.” That request is still pending.

Secretary Pompeo warned all those working for the ICC that “if you’re responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan, you should not assume that you will still have or will get a visa, or that you will be permitted to enter the United States.”

Secretary Pompeo added that the “visa restrictions will not be the end of our efforts. We are prepared to take additional steps, including economic sanctions if the ICC does not change its course.” Secretary Pompeo said that the Trump administration, which has already begun to implement the visa restrictions, would also use such visa restrictions “to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis, without allies’ consent.”

The president of the Assembly of States Parties, the management oversight and legislative body of the ICC established by the Rome Statute treaty, responded that “the States Parties reconfirmed their unwavering support for the Court as an independent and impartial judicial institution, and reiterated their commitment to uphold and defend the principles and values enshrined in the Rome Statute and to preserve its integrity undeterred by any threats against the Court, its officials and those cooperating with it. This unwavering support continues today.”

The 123 or so State Parties to the Rome Statute decided, as was their sovereign right, to delegate their own domestic authority to adjudicate specific criminal atrocities involving genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression to the ICC. If they want to indulge in the fiction that the ICC is an impartial and non-political judicial body, they have the right to wear blinders when it comes to ceding jurisdiction over their own citizens to the ICC. However, they do not have the legal or moral right to use the ICC they have embraced to assert jurisdiction over countries such as the United States and Israel, which exercised their sovereign right to decline joining the ICC Rome Statute treaty. The United States and Israel do not need any help from the ICC and have steadfastly refused to recognize its jurisdiction.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/07/

As I have written previously, many elites think of the United States as being in a position similar to that of the vulnerable Hapsburg Empire: a large empire possessing indefensible frontiers. But, this comparison flawed. In fact, a more precise analogue to the United States is Switzerland.

A federal republic like the United States, Switzerland enjoys a natural barrier separating it from the rest of its neighbors in Europe. The United States has two massive oceans, whereas Switzerland has the beautiful Swiss Alps. From behind these natural barriers, the liberty-loving Swiss republic formed, and by European standards, so did a potent market economy. Switzerland hasn’t always been a peaceful state, but it has been able to maintain peaceful relations with all of its neighbors better than most other states. Its beneficial geography has afforded Swiss leaders the time to develop reasonable, low-cost methods for maintaining their country’s sovereignty without becoming too enmeshed in the chaotic world beyond its protective peaks.

Switzerland is not an isolationist country, however. Like the United States throughout most of its history, the Swiss simply prefer to rely on diplomacy and trade to handle the bulk of their interactions with most of the world. Switzerland has a robust international trading profile and is even an observing member in the flagging European Union. That said, it is not a full member of the EU. Such a membership would have threatened the Swiss freedom of action and they wisely avoided such a step. The Swiss interact with the surrounding world only when and how it benefits them.

Switzerland is also internationally respected. Today, America’s acceptance of an ever-increasing array of never-ending foreign entanglements has drained it of vital resources (and people) that could be put to better use making our Union more perfect.

https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/and-so-we-arrive-at-the-tenth-anniversary-of-obamas-russian-reset/

What became of that big mislabeled button?

Today brings the tenth anniversary of that famously mortifying scene in which President Obama’s first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, presented Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, with a big red plastic button meant to symbolize a “reset” in U.S.- Russia relations. As Lavrov pointed out at the time, the gift was mislabeled, adorned not with the Russian word for “reset” (perezagruzka), but the Russian word for “overcharge” (peregruzka).

These days, the Russian Foreign Ministry keeps the button on display (still mislabeled) in a diplomatic museum on the ministry’s premises — less a souvenir of U.S.-Russian camaraderie than a symbol of American folly.

Obama’s plan was to reverse the cooling of U.S.-Russian relations that had set in under his predecessor, President George W. Bush. The problem, however, lay not with the U.S., but with a resurgently aggressive Russia under the reign of Vladimir Putin, to whom an aging Boris Yeltsin had turned over the powers of the Russian presidency on New Year’s Eve, 1999. By the time Obama took office, in 2009, Russia’s rising threat was already spelled out in such horrors as the 2006 murder in London of a former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, his tea spiked with radioactive polonium-210. During Bush’s final year in office, in 2008, Russia had launched a war with the neighboring country of Georgia. The time had come for the U.S. superpower, leader of the Free World, to draw a line.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/432654-trump-is-upsetting-dcs-negotiating-model

President Donald Trump’s negotiation with North Korea hasn’t yielded verified denuclearization by Pyongyang, but it has changed the way future presidents may deal with “difficult” countries.

Trump scandalized the national security establishment, first by trading insults with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, then personally taking charge of negotiating denuclearization with the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ instead of waiting until American and North Korean staff officers had negotiated the technical details, a process that could take several years.

Trump, as an elected official and an impatient man, is mindful of the political calendar and is shaping aspects of his foreign policy to advance the 2020 campaign: The troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan are proof he is ending the “forever wars” and not embarking on new, costly foreign adventures.

Likewise, Trump wants to show the voters that, after 65 years of muddle on the Korean peninsula, he is taking charge. High risk? Sure, but if it doesn’t work, Trump can tweet “We did all we could!” and likely not suffer at the polls.