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FOREIGN POLICY

Trump and Putin to Meet Next Month in Paris By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-and-putin-to-meet-next-month-in-paris/

President Trump will meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Paris next month, officials from the White House and Moscow have confirmed.

National-security adviser John Bolton met with Putin on Tuesday in Moscow, where the Russian leader suggested a meeting with Trump would be useful in the wake of “unprovoked moves that are hard to call friendly.”

“We will make the precise arrangements on that, but it will happen in connection with the 100th anniversary, the celebration of the armistice that the French are hosting on November the 11th,” Bolton later told reporters.

The meeting will reportedly focus on the war in Syria, America’s desire for Russia to enforce international sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and Trump’s decision to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Reagan-era nuclear-arms deal.

“Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years,” Trump said. ” I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out. And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to.”

Bolton gave official notice to Russia on Tuesday that the U.S. is withdrawing from the agreement.

Trump Is No ‘Isolationist’ He’s overseeing a risky but ambitious effort to contain global adversaries.By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-is-no-isolationist-1540250070

While the world was transfixed by the drama over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration last week doggedly pressed ahead with some of the most dramatic shifts in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

President Trump’s foreign policy is anything but isolationist. It is ambitious, interventionist and global. Having determined after almost two years of trying that the three revisionist powers—China, Russia and Iran—cannot, at least for now, be pried apart, the administration is preparing to take them on all at once.

This means, above all, intensifying competition with China. In the two weeks since Vice President Mike Pence’s speech laying out the far-reaching U.S. strategy for containing Beijing, the administration has not let up: The trade war has escalated; Mr. Trump announced U.S. withdrawal from an 1844 postal-services treaty that, in his view, gives Chinese shippers unfair advantages; and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Panama to warn that country’s leaders against Chinese debt-trap diplomacy.

Perhaps more surprising to some of its critics is the Trump administration’s increasingly hard line against Russia. In the same week that Mr. Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing Russian noncompliance, an American aircraft carrier visited the Russian Arctic for the first time in almost 30 years. Meanwhile, A. Wess Mitchell, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, described a new era of U.S.-Russia competition in a blistering speech Thursday at the Atlantic Council.

“From the Baltic to the Adriatic, across the Balkan Peninsula and through the Caucasus, America’s rivals are expanding their political, military and commercial influence. Russia is again a military factor in this region, following the invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. Well beyond the frontier, in the countries of Central Europe, Russia uses manipulative energy tactics, corruption and propaganda to weaken Western nations from within and undermine their bonds with the United States,” Mr. Mitchell said. He went on to hail “Ukraine, Georgia and even Belarus” as a “bulwark against Russian neo-imperialism” and signaled increased U.S. support for their independence and sovereignty.

The storm over U.S.-Saudi relations has not deterred the administration from intensifying its campaign against Iran. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is still flying to Riyadh to coordinate U.S. and Saudi economic actions to isolate Tehran. The U.S. remains on schedule to reimpose its most powerful sanctions against Iran on Nov. 5.

Traditionally, countries headed toward confrontation with adversaries look to strengthen their alliances. This has not been the Trump administration’s approach. Without mentioning Germany by name, Mr. Mitchell sharply criticized its dealings with Russia and Iran: “We expect those whom America helps to not abet our rivals. Western Europeans cannot continue to deepen energy dependence on the same Russia that America defends it against. Or enrich themselves on the same Iran that is building ballistic missiles which threaten Europe.”

Yet Mr. Mitchell also signaled a deeper U.S. involvement in Europe that Berlin should welcome. He noted that “many of America’s closest allies in Central Europe operate networks of corruption and state-owned enterprises that rig the system in favor of China and Russia.” Joint efforts by the U.S. and the European Union to stabilize democracy in Central and Eastern European countries could help give the old trans-Atlantic alliance a new lease on life. CONTINUE AT SITE

Arms Control for Dummies Trump is right to nix a treaty that Putin has violated for a decade.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/arms-control-for-dummies-1540250764

Donald Trump says the U.S. plans to withdraw from the 1987 INF nuclear arms-control treaty that everyone agrees Russia has been violating for a decade. Yet somehow this is said to be reckless behavior by—Donald Trump? Welcome to the high church of arms control in which treaties are sacrosanct no matter the violation.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty bans ground-fired ballistic and cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers and is an artifact of the late Cold War. Ronald Reagan and NATO deployed mid-range missiles in Europe in the early 1980s to counter Soviet deployments. After years of tense negotiation, Mikhail Gorbachev finally agreed to the modest INF accord on U.S. terms that traded U.S. missiles for Russia’s. This was hailed as a diplomatic triumph.

Yet when the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union collapsed over the next few years, nuclear arms control faded in importance. Which is the key point. Arms control didn’t make the world safer; the fall of the Soviet Union did that. Arms control tends to work when it is between countries that get along, while it fails with adversaries that can’t be trusted.

Enter Vladimir Putin, who has been developing a new medium-range cruise missile since the mid-2000s. The U.S. believes Moscow first tested the new missile in 2008, but the Obama Administration hid that intelligence from the Senate when it debated and ratified the New Start treaty with Mr. Putin in 2010.

The Obama Administration first went public with this news in 2014, and the State Department has noted Russian noncompliance every year. Moscow started deploying its new missiles in late 2016. This is in addition to a new ballistic missile Russia has tested that may be INF compliant only because it can travel slightly farther than 5,500 kilometers.

Don’t Ditch Riyadh in a Fit of Righteousness Khashoggi’s murder must be condemned. But Saudi Arabia still serves U.S. interests. By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-ditch-riyadh-in-a-fit-of-righteousness-1539645239

The murder (if that’s what it was) of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, was a horror in itself, and a greater horror still in what it threatens to unleash. The Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ayatollahs of Iran are huddled over the corpse, hoping to turn a political profit from the death of an innocent man.

Mr. Khashoggi was a thorn in the flesh of the hyperactive crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman, a man who faces a concatenation of problems the likes of which the House of Saud has rarely seen. Iran, hostile, arrogant and ambitious, has ruthlessly carved a “Shia crescent” from Baghdad through Damascus to Beirut. A gusher of American oil and natural gas has diminished OPEC. Turkey, sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and harboring dreams of restoring its old Ottoman glory, seeks to displace Saudi Arabia as the voice of the Sunni world. Russia has reasserted itself in the region. And inside Saudi Arabia, a growing population with high expectations demands more opportunity and better governance from a traditional monarchy largely unprepared for the 21st century.

It was out of this turmoil and fear that the MBS phenomenon emerged. At home and abroad, the Saudis attempted a series of frenzied initiatives, including a war in Yemen and the privatization of Aramco, to improve their position. Meanwhile, MBS stroked gullible American elites into the belief that he was a democrat.

It worked for a while; gullibility is America’s most plentiful natural resource. But after Mr. Khashoggi’s death, even the most naive observer can see that the crown prince is at best a modernizing autocrat, using dictatorial power to drag his country into the future: Peter the Great, not Thomas Jefferson. At worst, he could end like Phaethon, the Greek demigod who lost control of his horses while foolishly trying to drive the chariot of the sun. CONTINUE AT SITE

Bolton Speech Underscores Trump Administration Putting America First On The Global Stage The Trump administration is taking stock of agreements and treaties that do not serve American interests first. By Rebeccah Heinrichs

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/17/bolton-speech-underscores-trump-administration-putting-america-first-global-stage/

National Security Advisor John Bolton delivered a blockbuster speech at an event hosted by the Federalist Society last Monday, about how monumentally dumb and dangerous the International Criminal Court is for America.

The ICC is a multinational organization established by the Rome Statute. President Bill Clinton signed on to the statute in 2000 but never submitted the international treaty to the Senate. President George W. Bush then unsigned the treaty. President Barack Obama never signed the treaty, but he was friendly to it and cooperated with the ICC.

Bolton made the Trump administration’s position on the ICC ultra-clear in his speech:

The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.

It was a powerful rejection of the court. But that’s not all it rejected, and to singularly focus on the ICC misses larger principles that will surely guide the administration’s decisions about other international agreements. Three principles stood out.
The United States Is Not the Peer of Somalia

First, not all countries are equally bad or equally good; the United States is a force for good and rejects the notion that the United States, just like other nations, must be constrained.

“The largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States,” Bolton said. “The objective was not limited to targeting individual US service members, but rather America’s senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure.”

John Kerry, Meet George Logan Is it a crime to meet with Iranian officials? It may well be. Seth Lipsky

https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-meet-george-logan-1537129799

George Logan, call your office. That’s my reaction to news that former Secretary of State John Kerry has, by his own account, been meeting privately with Iranian officials to try to save the nuclear deal.

Logan was the Pennsylvania politician whose unauthorized efforts to end the Quasi-War between France and America led to the Logan Act of 1799, which outlaws freelance diplomacy.

The New York Post has called Mr. Kerry’s conniving a “textbook violation” of the law. President Trump, after all, has pulled out of the nuclear accord and decided on a different course. Iran’s leaders, at least for the moment, are hanging onto the deal. Why not? It has brought billions to their coffers as they expand their military campaigns in the Mideast.

Last week the New York Times quoted “experts” as suggesting that the ayatollahs are “gambling” that Mr. Trump will be “crippled” in the midterm elections or swept out of office in 2020.

So have the Democrats been colluding with them? Or, as radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Mr. Kerry last week, has the former secretary of state been “trying to coach” Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif?

“That’s not how it works,” Mr. Kerry said. “What I have done is tried to elicit from him what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East.” He insisted he’d been “very blunt.” Mr. Kerry also told Mr. Hewitt that the administration appears “hell-bent-for-leather determined to pursue a regime change strategy” in Iran. “I would simply caution that the United States historically has not had a great record in regime change,” Mr. Kerry said. He added that it makes it “very difficult, if not impossible” for Iran to negotiate.

State Department Warns John Kerry Not to ‘Compromise’ Iran Strategy By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-department-warns-john-kerry-against-talks-with-iran/

The State Department on Thursday warned former Secretary of State John Kerry against holding diplomatic talks with Iran behind the current administration’s back, possibly compromising the government’s Iran strategy.

“It’s unfortunate if people from a past administration would try to compromise the progress we’re trying to make in this administration,” the assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, Manisha Singh told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I don’t have personal knowledge of those meetings, but if that is happening, again, I would find it very inappropriate,” the senior State Department official said.

Kerry has admitted to meeting “three or four times” with his counterpart Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif after leaving his position as secretary of state. The two were key players in negotiating former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration scrapped in May.

“Every secretary of state, former secretary of state, continues to meet with foreign leaders,” Kerry told Fox News on Wednesday. “We don’t negotiate. We’re not involved in interfering with policy, but we certainly have reasonable discussions about nuclear weapons, the world, China, different policies, obviously.”

The Failure to Help Taiwan Trump bows to Beijing when it protests U.S. help for Taipei.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failure-to-help-taiwan-1536707341

The U.S. recalled its ambassadors to El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Panama on Friday, which prompted a cryptic warning from Beijing of all places not to “gesticulate” or make “thoughtless remarks.” So why are American and Chinese diplomats jousting in Latin America?

The answer is Taiwan. In the last 15 months Beijing has convinced the three countries to drop diplomatic recognition of the island and establish relations with mainland China. The U.S. recalled its ambassadors to signal that it will downgrade ties with countries that switch. Only 17 nations now recognize Taiwan, and several of those are wavering.

China’s diplomatic campaign is part of a larger effort to force Taiwan to accept reunification. Chinese leaders have threatened war if there is no progress toward this goal, and Chinese military forces are conducting maneuvers around the island. Taiwanese understandably refuse to give up their de facto independence or their hard-won democracy.

The U.S. show of solidarity with Taiwan is welcome, and perhaps the démarches will deter more diplomatic defections. But the Trump Administration could do much more to help the island. For example, in June the U.S. opened a new de facto embassy in Taipei. Taiwan’s friends in Congress requested that a cabinet-level official attend the ceremony. But after China threw a tantrum, the U.S. was represented by the assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs.

Only Trump Could End Palestine A bad time for bad ideas. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271267/only-trump-could-end-palestine-daniel-greenfield

The Soviet Union had a perverse genius for convincing the United States to not only adopt its most destructive ideas, but to also become their chief sponsor under the delusion that it would somehow stop the destruction that its old Communist enemy had unleashed around the world.

It’s fitting that President Trump struck at two terrible red birds with one stone by dumping the UNRWA. Both the UN and Palestinian nationalism were the brainchildren of Soviet Communists that the leftist American foreign policy establishment adopted under the supposed guise of fighting Soviet influence, and was then in turn quickly picked up by a clueless Republican foreign policy establishment.

Republicans embraced Arab nationalism since President Eisenhower sided with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Hitler admiring military dictator and his nationalization of the Suez Canal, over the UK, France and Israel. In what he would later describe as his greatest mistake, Eisenhower threatened his former British allies with economic warfare to keep Egypt’s Arab Socialist regime from going over to the Communist side.

It didn’t work.

But every Republican administration until now had embraced Arab nationalism and its ugly malformed terrorist stepchild, Palestinian nationalism.

Even the Reagan administration.

All the Soviet Union needed to do was adopt a bunch of Islamic terrorists and the United States would show up like a jealous rival to shower them with love, flowers and chocolates. After the Soviet Union collapsed, its old Arab Socialist client states, the Islamic oil kingdoms that first corrupted our foreign policy, and domestic Muslim Brotherhood lobbies continued successfully playing this game of Br’er Rabbit and the Briar Patch with the American Br’er Fox. With no more Soviet Union to compete against, the rationale for supporting terrorists was to convince them to turn moderate or to stop them from allying with more “extreme” terrorists. The only way to stop the terrorists was to adopt them.

The immoral foreign policy of the “Resistance”Caroline Glick

http://carolineglick.com/the-immoral-foreign-policy-of-the-resistance/

One of the constant themes of the “Resistance” — most recently restated in the New York Times’ anonymous op-ed Wednesday — is that President Donald Trump is “amoral” because he is interested in cultivating good relations with dictators.

In the words of the anonymous op-ed author: “In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.”

Notably, this is the same line used by the Israeli left and by Israel’s many critics in the West against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy.

There are two aspects of this criticism that are worth pointing out.

First, the criticisms are utterly hypocritical.

The same “Resistance” howling about Trump’s desire to forge a détente with Russia based on a shared interest in fighting Islamic terrorists and preventing Iran from becoming the nuclear hegemon of the Middle East once bent over backwards to empower Iran. They gave the ayatollahs a clear path to a nuclear weapon, as well as $150 billion to finance their wars in Syria and Yemen, and their global terror attacks.

The same Never Trump Republicans attacking Trump for his efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula without war happily supported then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Riceas she cut a deal that only empowered Pyonyang.

The Obama administration alumni who now insist that Putin is America’s number-one enemy did everything they could to appease him – in exchange for nothing — for years.