RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-nato-progress-1531088542

President Trump will attend a summit of North Atlantic Treaty Organization national leaders this week, and the stakes are unusually high for everyone. He plans to meet Vladimir Putin shortly afterward, and Mr. Trump will be at a disadvantage if he doesn’t set the right tone in Brussels.

That tone should be a united front between America and its allies, within a NATO committed to and capable of deterring new threats. This doesn’t mean Washington must always avoid raising uncomfortable truths within the alliance. It does mean Mr. Trump should recognize how NATO benefits America, and how it can help him avoid the diplomatic traps into which his predecessor fell.

The good news is that Mr. Trump is doing better on this score than many of the pearl-clutchers among foreign-policy worthies will admit. He has taken a particularly aggressive stance on defense spending among NATO members, most recently in a series of testy letters reportedly sent to other national leaders. Allies have pledged to spend at least 2% of GDP, a promise they repeated at the 2014 Wales summit. Mr. Trump is continuing a long tradition of bipartisan frustration in Washington when they don’t meet that pledge.

But Mr. Trump should also give credit where it’s due, especially when he can claim part of the credit for success. Inflation-adjusted defense spending among non-U.S. NATO members has increased each year since 2014, and at an accelerating rate that likely will deliver the largest annual spending growth since the Cold War this year. More than half of NATO’s 29 members are on track to meet their 2% pledge by 2024, compared to four or five in a typical year before 2014. Mr. Trump’s win here is keeping up the pressure for more burden sharing as memories of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea fade.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/03/trumps-deplorable

Liberals see Donald Trump as the embodiment of toxic masculinity. Trump’s voters see a real man.

My husband jokes that in our family, if anything is dead, bites or is on fire, it’s his job. North Korea was beginning to approach the “bites” and “is on fire” category.

It took a year of intense economic and military and psychological pressure to bring Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table in Singapore. Trump’s critics tried to spin the initial meeting as a diplomatic disaster.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will arrive in Pyongyang this week to kick off the negotiations. Satellite images show that North Korea is expanding missile production, so the Washington Post is calling the entire diplomatic effort a “sham” before actual negotiations have begun.

Trump’s critics are going to fall on their faces with North Korea, as with their other predictions of doom. They underestimate Trump time and again because his strengths are invisible to them.

The United States does not have to blink at threats from a squirt like Kim Jong-un. Our experts don’t know this. Trump does.

When Kim tried some last-minute bluster before Singapore, Trump canceled the summit. Setting clear lines is not a setback, it is a key to success. Trump was defining the relationship. Kim cannot make threats. We can. Trump was his usual blunt self: “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-expands-key-missile-manufacturing-plant-1530486907?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

SEOUL—North Korea is completing a major expansion of a key missile-manufacturing plant, said researchers who have examined new satellite imagery of the site, the latest sign Pyongyang is pushing ahead with weapons programs even as the U.S. pressures it to abandon them.

The facility makes solid-fuel ballistic missiles—which would be able to strike U.S. military installations in Asia with a nuclear weapon with little warning—as well as re-entry vehicles for warheads that Pyongyang might use on longer-range missiles able to hit the continental U.S.

New images analyzed by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., show that North Korea was finishing construction on the exterior of the plant at around the time North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore last month. The U.S. is pushing Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic-missile programs.

Last week, 38 North, another organization that monitors North Korea, published satellite images of the country’s main nuclear-research center in Yongbyon, showing that Pyongyang was rapidly upgrading its facilities there. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-keeps-enriching-uranium-1530481136

New satellite photos show that Kim Jong Un is continuing to develop his nuclear weapons program, and U.S. intelligence sources say they believe North Korea has increased its production of nuclear fuel at multiple sites. This wasn’t supposed to happen after the Donald Trump-Kim summit last month in Singapore.

According to an analysis by experts at the Stimson Center in Washington, North Korea has improved the cooling system of its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon. Activity also continues at a nearby building where plutonium is extracted from spent fuel, and staining on the roof of another building suggests the North is enriching weapons-grade uranium using centrifuges. U.S. intelligence sources essentially confirmed this news by telling news agencies last week that the North has been increasing its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

After the June 12 summit with Kim, President Trump said that he trusts the young dictator and expects him to start fulfilling his promise to denuclearize immediately. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Mr. Trump tweeted the next day.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7211/full

Three separate questions compose the topic of US foreign policy under Donald Trump: what the policy has been since he took office, what parts of that are due to Trump’s decisions, and what may be those decisions’ root. I will examine these components with regard to each aspect of US policy, rather than in any chronological order of events.First, we must understand how they interact with one another generically. This requires grasping why the American people’s dissatisfaction with foreign policy had reached a critical point by the 2016 election, and how Trump incorporated that dissatisfaction in his campaign.

Prior to running for President, Trump viewed international affairs with the not-so attentive, ordinary patriotism of ordinary Americans. That view has been at odds with official US policy for most of the past 100 years. During the past quarter-century, all of the foreign policy establishment’s constituent parts have become increasingly unpopular — each for its own reasons — so that, by 2016, US foreign policy had no constituency outside the establishment.

Ordinary Americans’ approach to foreign affairs has remained remarkably steady since the country’s founding: America and its way of life are uniquely precious. The oceans to the east and west, as well as non-threatening neighbours north and south, offer Americans the chance to live peacefully and productively in what Benjamin Franklin called “the land of labour”. The Declaration of Independence aimed to secure neither more nor less than a “separate and equal station” among the powers of the earth. To that end, American diplomats are to give no offence and to suffer none, while the US armed forces — the Navy foremost — are to keep danger far away. America has interests all over the world, which coincide with those of others occasionally. But they are never identical. Hence, America is to mind its own business, aggressively, while steering clear of others’ business. As John Quincy Adams said, America “enters the lists in no cause but its own”. Bothering no one, Americans will make short, brutal work of whomever bothers them. As General Douglas MacArthur put it: “In war there is no substitute for victory.” But like him, the few major figures who have championed this point of view in the past hundred years — Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert Taft, Jr., and Barry Goldwater — have been damned at once as isolationists and warmongers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeo-on-what-trump-wants-1529966363

Is the Trump administration out to wreck the liberal world order? No, insisted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview at his office in Foggy Bottom last week: The administration’s aim is to align that world order with 21st-century realities.

Many of the economic and diplomatic structures Mr. Trump stands accused of undermining, Mr. Pompeo argues, were developed in the aftermath of World War II. Back then, he tells me, they “made sense for America.” But in the post-Cold War era, amid a resurgence of geopolitical competition, “I think President Trump has properly identified a need for a reset.”

Mr. Trump is suspicious of global institutions and alliances, many of which he believes are no longer paying dividends for the U.S. “When I watch President Trump give guidance to our team,” Mr. Pompeo says, “his question is always, ‘How does that structure impact America?’ ” The president isn’t interested in how a given rule “may have impacted America in the ’60s or the ’80s, or even the early 2000s,” but rather how it will enhance American power “in 2018 and beyond.”

Mr. Trump’s critics have charged that his “America First” strategy reflects a retreat from global leadership. “I see it fundamentally differently,” Mr. Pompeo says. He believes Mr. Trump “recognizes the importance of American leadership” but also of “American sovereignty.” That means Mr. Trump is “prepared to be disruptive” when the U.S. finds itself constrained by “arrangements that put America, and American workers, at a disadvantage.” Mr. Pompeo sees his task as trying to reform rules “that no longer are fair and equitable” while maintaining “the important historical relationships with Europe and the countries in Asia that are truly our partners.”

The U.S. relationship with Germany has come under particular strain. Mr. Pompeo cites two reasons. “It is important that they demonstrate a commitment to securing their own people,” he says, in reference to Germany’s low defense spending. “When they do so, we’re prepared to do the right thing and support them.” And then there’s trade. The Germans, he says, need to “create tariff systems and nontariff-barrier systems that are equitable, reciprocal.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-russia-will-ultimately-bear-responsibility-for-any-further-escalations-in-%e2%80%8esyria/

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said the pressure is on Russia to stop ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from violating the ceasefire brokered by Jordan, Russia, and the United States.

Syrian regime forces were dropping barrel bombs on opposition-held areas in the southwest part of the country Friday, the first such assault bordering Jordan and the Golan Heights since the U.S. and Russia agreed on the “de-escalation zone” last year.

Abu Bakr al-Hassan, spokesman for the rebel group Jaish al-Thawra, which fights under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, told Reuters that he believes Assad is using the bombardment) to test two things: “the steadfastness of the FSA fighters and the degree of U.S. commitment to the de-escalation agreement in the south.”

Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin, speaking in the pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar, warned Israel — which doesn’t want the Assad-aligned Iranian militias on their border — against intervening, saying the Jewish state has “no justification to carry out any action.”

In a statement today, Haley criticized Assad’s “intensified military operations” including “airstrikes, artillery, barrel bombs, and rocket attacks” which “unambiguously violates ‎the southwest de-escalation arrangement and risks broadening the conflict and exacerbating civilian displacement.” CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thehill.com/opinion/international/393669-a-timely-anniversary-of-american-greatness
Seventy years ago this coming week, the Soviets blocked all access to West Berlin, prompting President Truman to launch an airlift of food and supplies that saved the city and convinced Josef Stalin to back down 11 months later.

The airlift came amid Truman’s broad-scale reinvention of U.S. foreign policy in which – through the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, and other initiatives – the United States shed its traditional isolationism and seized global leadership to defend freedom and democracy. In the ensuing decades, the United States fought the Cold War, built a network of alliances, and promoted free markets, all of which helped maintain peace and drive prosperity at home and abroad.

At a time when the United States is disparaging its allies, stroking its adversaries, threatening its alliances, and undermining its trade relationships, Berlin offers a timely reminder of what truly made America great.

After World War II, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union controlled separate quadrants of Germany. They also controlled separate sections of Berlin, but the city was entirely situated within the Soviet quadrant. As tensions rose over the final status of Germany, so too did fears in Washington that Moscow would seize all of Berlin.

U.S.-Soviet tensions began to reach the boiling point in the spring of 1948. The United States and Britain, which by then had consolidated their zones into “Bizonia,” introduced a new deutschmark for Bizonia and West Berlin, with an eye toward creating a more permanent West Germany.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12561/support-us-iran-policy

“On one level, Iran acts as a legitimate Westphalian state conducting traditional diplomacy… At the same time, it organizes and guides nonstate actors seeking regional hegemony based on jihadist principles: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria; Hamas in Gaza; the Houthis in Yemen.” — Henry Kissinger, 2015.
Last week came to light “… details about a second building at the Parchin site involved in high explosive work related to nuclear weapons in an explosive chamber. This building has not been visited by the IAEA… [There was also] direct evidence that the secret Fordow enrichment site was being built to make weapon-grade uranium.” — David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
It is time for everyone to join the U.S. and President Trump in their efforts to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from having the ways and means to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

President Donald Trump’s May 8 announcement that the United States was withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and considering fresh sanctions on Iran is a step in the right direction toward defending the country against Iran’s growing nuclear-weapons program and open aim to destroy both Israel and America.

In addition, last week came to light in testimony by the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright, that Iran had:

“… blueprints for the production of all the components of nuclear weapons, the location of planned nuclear weapons test sites, [and] details about a second building at the Parchin site involved in high explosive work related to nuclear weapons in an explosive chamber. This building has not been visited by the IAEA… [There was also] direct evidence that the secret Fordow enrichment site was being built to make weapon-grade uranium.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/is_trump_pivoting_east_in_europe.html

As Trump haters are having yet another field day on account of his ostensible faux pas at the G-7 meeting in Canada, and leftist pundits fall over each other screaming that Trump has no strategic vision, as others just as self-assuredly accuse him of planning to “break the West,” which, on the face of it, requires plenty of strategic vision. While this silliness continues to rapidly declining effect, there are now signs that the White House is putting together a robust strategy in Europe that was missing until now.

It comes in the shape of A. Wess Mitchell, who was just appointed the point man at the State Department for Europe and Eurasia. The significance of this appointment, which was missed in the cacophony of anti-Trump perorations, was much on display at the very first programmatic speech he gave last week at the Heritage Foundation. Before delving into the speech, a couple of words about his background, which is important part of his appointment. Mitchell is a bona fide expert on Eastern Europe with three books to his credit and, more importantly, the long-term leader of CEPA (Center for European Policy Analysis), the only Washington think tank dedicated to the study of Eastern Europe.

Mitchell started his speech with a ringing endorsement of the Western alliance and the civilization undergirding it, which guaranteed “democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” But he also noted that the West collectively is “under-prepared” for its defense. There are a number of reasons for that, including the dismal legacy the Trump administration inherited from President Obama with its failed reset of relations with Russia, conflict in Ukraine, policy failure in Syria, and the largest ever Muslim migration to Europe.