RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/allies-worry-over-u-s-public-opinion-11551741006There is no more important question in world politics than this: Will U.S. public opinion continue to support an active and strategically focused foreign policy? During the Cold War and for 25 years after, there was rarely any doubt. While Americans argued—sometimes bitterly—over the country’s overseas priorities, there was a broad consensus in both parties that sustained engagement was necessary to protect U.S. interests.

That consensus is more fragile today. Questions about the reliability of American commitments keep the lights burning late in foreign and defense ministries around the world. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists, as he said in Manila last week, that a Chinese attack on Philippine forces or territory in the South China Sea would activate Article 4 of the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty. But will the American people honor the check that Mr. Pompeo has written on their behalf?

The best answer appears to be “maybe.” A recent poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 70% of Americans want the U.S. to take an “active part” in world affairs in the abstract. But in a 2018 Pew survey, only 32% said limiting China’s power should be an important long-term foreign-policy priority for the U.S.

Similarly, while a strong majority of Americans support membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, just over half of Americans would support military action in response to a hypothetical Russian invasion of Estonia, according to a recent Eurasia Group Foundation survey. The Kremlin studies such poll results carefully, and so do NATO allies on Russia’s borders.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-is-ceding-the-pacific-to-china-11551649516

The way to deal with China, and thus North Korea, its naughty but wholly dependent vassal, is not by a failing and provocative attempt to weaken it, but by attending to America’s diminishing strengths. Unlike the short-focused U.S., China plays the long game, in which the chief objective is a favorable correlation of forces over time and the most important measure is military capacity.

As a dictatorship, it can continue military development and expansion despite economic downturns. With big data and big decrees, Xi Jinping has severely tightened party control in expectation of inevitable variations of fortune. The hatches are battened for a trade war that would adversely effect China and the world should the U.S. not blink first or fail to reject false or delaying assurances.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/01/

“So Kim, a dead man walking now, gets back in his armored train while Trump flies back to freedom aboard Air Force One, knowing that it’s just a matter of time before the phone rings again. And this time, his terms for what in effect will be North Korea’s final surrender will be even tougher than the ones he offered now.”

In the course of a high-stakes negotiation, the player who walks away from the table is the one with the least to lose. Ronald Reagan did it to Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986, and Donald Trump did it to Kim Jong-un this week in Vietnam. Good for the president.

A lot of people have brought up Reykjavik; I discussed the similarities on the Hugh Hewitt radio show with guest host Kurt Schlichter on Thursday. Reagan met Gorbachev in Iceland in the fall of 1986 and the two men were approaching an agreement that might have included the abolition of all nuclear weapons. But the Soviet premier wanted the Americans to drop the Strategic Defense Initiative, colloquially known as “Star Wars.” That was a bridge too far for Reagan, who abandoned the talks and went home.

Naturally, the hostile press was appalled—the abolition of all nukes! And this cowboy won’t give up a pet program that probably won’t work anyway! Warmonger! Reagan was widely viewed at the time as an “amiable dunce” who didn’t understand the first thing about the complexities of international diplomacy; why, the doddering old fool actually thought “We win, they lose” was a strategy.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/03/whats-next-after-the-north-korea-nuclear-summit-breakdown/
The Trump-Kim Hanoi Summit ended without any agreement, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.

Now that the Hanoi nuclear summit talks have ended in failure, the two crucial questions are (1) whether there will be a major escalation of tensions and (2) whether the North Koreans have made a fundamental decision to keep their nuclear program, despite the pressures.

Only Kim Jong-Un can answer the second question.

Pres. Trump himself clearly wants to avoid an escalation. His comments were firm but not harsh, giving Kim a chance to reconsider. He continued to stress the good personal relations between the two leaders, referred to his counterpart by his honorific title, “Chairman Kim,” and avoided diminutive nicknames like “Rocket Man.” That keeps the door open for negotiations, but Trump will not make any more goodwill payments like those that suckered his predecessors. Trump himself has already made one gesture by suspending joint US-South Korean military exercises. One important question now is whether Trump intends to resume those regular exercises.

For Kim, the main question is what it always was: Will he take costly, irreversible steps to begin dismantling his nuclear program? The summit failure shows he has not yet decided to do that, which is different from saying he has definitely decided to keep the weapons and rocket program. We already know North Korea is still building new facilities. We don’t know if the US will call them out on that, either publicly or through leaks.

To prevent an escalation, Kim must avoid any actions to show how “powerful” and independent he is, such as testing a missile. In making these decisions, Kim faces his usual problem: he cannot get good information about the risks and rewards because he is so isolated. Offer the Big Boss advice he doesn’t like and you die, as one of Kim’s aides did simply for falling asleep in a meeting.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/28/trump

When Donald J. Trump took office in January 2017, the outgoing Obama Administration national security team cautioned Trump’s transition team that North Korea was a significant nuclear threat. Obama White House officials explained how North Korea’s leaders had built up their nascent nuclear arsenal. Since at least 2013, the Obama Administration knew about the rising threat of a potentially nuclear-armed North Korea and did nothing.

It was not a matter of ignorance; it was a matter of indifference on the part of former President Barack Obama and his national security team. Obama—the man who the media claimed was the smartest of all of America’s presidents—likely had no idea how to mitigate the North Korean threat and therefore didn’t even try.

How’s that for leadership?

Tag, You’re It, Donald Trump!
Two years into Trump’s presidency, the world seemed poised for nuclear war in a way that it hadn’t since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yes, the combined forces of the United States, South Korea, Japan, and any other ally inevitably would have overcome North Korea’s military in combat. But, the cost would have been great—particularly to South Korea and the Americans stationed there.