RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeos-iran-truth-telling-1532388462

Donald Trump’s all caps Twitter warning Sunday night to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani not to “THREATEN” the United States or suffer severe consequences gathered all the media attention on Monday. Which is too bad, because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech Sunday that deserved more notice for speaking the truth about Iran.

Mr. Pompeo explained at the Reagan Presidential Library how the Iranian regime’s zeal to spread Islamic revolution has led its leaders to direct funds to “terrorists, dictators and proxy militias” rather than to the welfare of ordinary Iranians, and he called out Tehran’s corruption by name and example.

Consider Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli’s “lucrative construction and oil trading contracts” with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked (IRGC) companies. Or Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, the “Sultan of Sugar,” whose business has generated more than $100 million. Or Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “own personal, off-the-books hedge fund called the Setad, worth $95 billion,” which is untaxed and serves as a “slush fund for the IRGC.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/peter-beinarts-forgets-nato-problems/NATO’s problems, Putin’s aggression, and American passivity predate Trump, who had my vote in 2016 — a vote I don’t regret.

Peter Beinart has posted a trademark incoherent rant, this time against Rich Lowry and me over our supposed laxity in criticizing Trumpian over-the-top rhetoric on NATO.

At various times, I have faulted Germany for much of NATO’s problems; I was delighted that we got out of the Iran deal and happier still that we pulled out of the empty Paris climate-change accord; and I agree that NAFTA needs changes. All that apparently for Beinart constitutes support for Trump’s sin of saying that the U.S. has “no obligation to meet America’s past commitments to other countries.”

Last time I looked, the Paris climate accord and the Iran deal (and its stealth “side” deals) were pushed through as quasi-executive orders and never submitted to Congress as treaties — largely because the Obama administration understood that both deals would have been summarily rejected and lacked support from most of Congress and also the American people, owing to the deal’s inherent flaws.

The U.S. may soon come closer to meeting carbon-emission-reduction goals than most of the signatories of the Paris farce. Following the Iran pullout, Iranians now seem more inclined to protest their theocratic government. They are confident in voicing their dissent in a way we have not seen since we ignored Iranian protesters during the Green Revolution of 2009. Incidents of Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf this year have mysteriously declined to almost zero.

The architects of NAFTA who in 1993 promised normalization and parity in North America through free trade and porous borders apparently did not envision something like the Andrés Manuel López Obrador presidency, which seems to think it exercises sovereignty over U.S. immigration policy, a cumulative influx of some 20 million foreign nationals illegally crossing the southern border over the last three decades, a current $71 billion Mexican trade surplus, $30 billion in remittances sent annually out of the U.S. to Mexico, record numbers of assassinations, and a nearly failed state as cartels virtually run affairs in some areas of Mexico. After all that, asking for clarifications of and likely modification to NAFTA is hardly breaking American commitments.

” Neither I nor anyone else other than two translators, knows what went on when Trump met Putin yesterday. The press conference afterwords was not the President’s finest moment. Sometimes he seems eager to make already agitated political enemies and reporters (the latter a subset of the former) go completely insane with rage at statements that are really unnecessary unless he is merely goading them into an over-reaction. Presidents meet with leaders of countries who are adversaries all the time. American Presidents have met with Russian leaders throughout the Cold War.

I am not one who believes the recent Russian behavior or the current tensions between the two countries is anywhere near as heated or dangerous as in earlier periods- the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin blockades, the 1980s. Of course most journalists writing today were born after these events and are ignorant of history . So Trump meeting Putin was fine.

Bibi Netanyahu has met repeatedly with Putin to make Israel’s red lines in Syria clear to the Russians. He seems to have made some progress. It is possible Russia will choose to stay in Syria and continue to support Assad, but rely less on Iran and push them away from a direct confrontation with Israel. The fact that Israel came up in the press conference suggests it came up in the meeting.

For me, this kind of substantive discussion matters more than whether Russia tried to interfere with our election . I believe they did, and they have done this before with US elections, and in other countries as well. Obama team members seem to have become concerned about this interference after the fact, but not before when they could have addressed it. And of course, the United States and other countries also interfere in other countries’ elections. .

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/trump-in-helsinki-the-score-i/

The hysterical media/establishment/Deep State reaction to President Trump’s comments in Helsinki is based on a lie. U.S. intelligence chiefs, current and former, fire back at Trump—a sample offering from the NPR—quotes Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats as saying the U.S. intelligence community has been “clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.” Former CIA director John Brennan went many steps further: “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.” The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr of North Carolina said his committee has no reason to doubt the (alleged) intelligence community’s “conclusion that President Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the 2016 elections.” Und so weiter, and so on, ad nauseam . . .

Let us clarify this key issue with the help of Jack Matlock, a career U.S. diplomat who “served on the front lines of American diplomacy during the Cold War” and was U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union when the edifice collapsed. Did the U.S. “intelligence community,” asks he, really “judge that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election? Most commentators seem to think so. Every news report I have read . . . refers to ‘Russian interference’ as a fact.” In fact, Matlock points out—on the basis of freely available, unclassified evidence—that the “intelligence community” has done no such thing, ever. It has not been tasked to make a judgment, and its key members did not even participate in preparing the report which is routinely cited by Trump’s critics as proof of “Russian interference.” Unprecedentedly long quotes are in order because of the importance of this issue in making a judgment on what President Trump said on July 16.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270760/american-president-london-bruce-bawer

In the U.S. we’ve always prided ourselves on being a society without classes. Yes, we always had rich and poor, and back in the day we even had slaves and masters – and, yes, after that was over we had monstrous racism, plus no small amount of prejudice directed by natives toward newly arrived immigrant groups, not to mention tension among many of those groups. But however unpleasant those tensions, they were generally mild compared to the kind of tribal hatreds that could found almost everywhere else in the world. Moreover, these problems tended to fade rapidly, so that the grandchildren of people who had warred viciously with one another back in the Old Country could sit side by side in American classrooms without ever giving a thought to their respective family backgrounds.

Furthermore, America has always been overwhelmingly middle class, and has always been characterized by a remarkable degree of social mobility. The poor could become weathy. Foreigners could become Americans. Some of the most accomplished and esteemed Americans, indeed, first came to its shores as children of the wretched and tempest-tost. The genius of America was that you could re-create yourself, invent yourself. The classic American hero was always the self-made man – the rags-to-riches Horatio Alger protagonist. Nothing has ever been less American than condescending to a fellow who put in a hard day’s work, kept his nose clean, and took care of his family.

That universal American respect for the responsible solid citizen, however, has disappeared. Its demise was brought about by the rise of a politically lockstep American cultural elite – an elite made up of business, media, and high-culture types in New York, Internet magnates in Silicon Valley, show-business notables in Los Angeles, the great and powerful in Washington, and academics at universities across the country, all of whom share a deep and unprecedented contempt for millions of their fellow Americans. If we can’t let go of Hillary’s word “deplorables,” it’s because it perfectly sums up the profoundly un-American attitude toward ordinary working Americans that defines and unifies our cultural elite.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270767/trump-and-putin-meet-helsinki-joseph-klein

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their first summit meeting Monday in Helsinki, Finland. The meeting took place just days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had announced indictments against 12 Russian military intelligence officers for allegedly hacking the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Clinton’s election campaign during the 2016 election campaign. Some Democrats and media pundits wanted President Trump to cancel the meeting in the wake of the indictments, or at least to place the election meddling issue front and center of their discussions before any other issue. Reporters’ questions at the joint press conference following the meeting focused primarily on the election meddling issue. Critical security threats to the world, such as Iran and Syria, Islamic terrorism, and nuclear proliferation, are evidently of much lesser concern to President Trump’s critics.

In his opening remarks before the one-on-one meeting, President Trump noted the deteriorating state of U.S.-Russian relations and emphasized the importance of dialogue between the two countries’ leaders. “I think we have great opportunities together as two countries that frankly we have not been getting along well for the last number of years,” President Trump said. “I really think the world wants to see us get along.” The Russian president said that “the time has come to have a thorough discussion on various international problems and sensitive issues. There are quite a few of them for us to pay attention to.” Both presidents ignored reporters’ shouted questions regarding the issue of Russian election meddling.

The private meeting between the two leaders lasted more than two hours, longer than originally scheduled, followed by a luncheon session that included top aides on both sides. Then President Trump and President Putin conducted a joint press conference.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/17/diplomacy-101-vs-politics-writ

The high professional quality of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performance at their Monday press conference in Helsinki contrasts sharply with the obloquy by which the bipartisan U.S. ruling class showcases its willful incompetence.

Though I voted for Trump, I’ve never been a fan of his and I am not one now. But, having taught diplomacy for many years, I would choose the Trump-Putin press conference as an exemplar of how these things should be done. Both spoke with the frankness and specificity of serious business. This performance rates an A+.

Both presidents started with the basic truth.

Putin: The Cold War is ancient history. Nobody in Russia (putting himself in this category) wants that kind of enmity again. It is best for Russia, for America, and for everybody else if the two find areas of agreement or forbearance.

Trump: Relations between the globe’s major nuclear powers have never been this bad—especially since some Americans are exacerbating existing international differences for domestic partisan gain. For the sake of peace and adjustment of differences where those exist and adjustment is possible, Trump is willing to pay a political cost to improve those relations (if, indeed further enraging his enemies is a cost rather than a benefit).

In short, this was a classic statement of diplomatic positions and a drawing of spheres of influence.

Flexibility and Inflexibility
As Putin listed his agenda, he showed that today’s Russia is a status quo power, whose primary objective is stability. Having come to power over a country diminished and dispirited, he sought to recover as much as possible of what Russia had lost in the Soviet break-up. He forcibly took back parts of Georgia and Ukraine. In doing so, he pushed against open doors.

Today, no other doors are open. Now being ahead, he wants to stop the game. He knows that this is possible because nobody is going to wage or even risk war against Russia to try disgorging Abkhazia and Crimea. He wants Trump to acknowledge that. Warning against extending NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, he signaled that all else is negotiable.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/16/what-critics-missed-about-the

When Presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin ended their joint press conference in Helsinki, the punditocracy predictably swarmed all over it like ants around a pile of crumbs. Was Trump winking at Putin? Did he really say he believes Putin more than he believes Robert Mueller about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election? Former Gus Hall enthusiast John Brennan, off his meds again, tweeted that the presser was “treasonous.” Professional chatterer Anderson Cooper said it was “perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit.”

Every phrase, every gesture of the event will be picked apart and second-guessed to death in the next few days. I’ll leave them to the carrion.

Would You Rather Fight?
To my mind, the chief point was enunciated by Winston Churchill in 1954: “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”

As President Trump repeatedly put it during his 2016 campaign, it would be a good thing, not a bad thing, to get along better with Russia. Let me stipulate that I think that Vladimir Putin is a murderous thug. He has demonstrated time and again that while you can take the lout out of the KGB, it’s much more difficult to take the KGB out of the lout.

That said, Russia is a world power that commands an enormous nuclear arsenal. Which means we cannot—or at least we should not—simply take our marbles out of the game and go home in a snit because they do things of which we do not approve.

As Trump and Putin both frankly acknowledged, there are issues on which they diverge—the fate of Crimea may lead the list—but there are also many areas in which our national interests intersect. It is a mark of the realistic and far-seeing diplomat to seize and build upon the latter while trying to find common ground about the former. This is what both men are trying to do.

Big If’s
I think there are essentially two takeaways from this historic event in Helsinki. The first is that Donald Trump is a bold, risk-taking statesman whose demotic style of delivery prevents many from appreciating the beneficently radical nature of his diplomacy. Maybe he will wind up being played by Kim Jong-un. But maybe his astonishing meeting with the tubby tyrant in Singapore is the beginning of the normalization of North Korea. If that happens—and I acknowledge that history suggests it is a big “if”—then President Trump will have achieved a world-historical diplomatic victory. His willingness to meet “jaw to jaw” would then be seen as a gambit of genius.

Maybe Putin is running circles around a gullible Trump. But maybe it is a real, as distinct from an Obama-Clinton merely rhetorical, reset. Then that, too, will be seen as a masterly and peace-enhancing initiative.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/16/trumps-meeting-putin-major-missed-opportunity-american-interests/

President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and joint press conference have left many of his supporters scratching their heads. His opponents have been desperate for something to pounce on because they can’t get the collusion narrative to bear the fruit they need to neuter him, so they now alternate between condemnation and ridicule.

But observers who have applauded Trump’s tough words and actions regarding both U.S. allies and foes are having a hard time understanding why he did not choose to treat Putin as he has all others: with both carrots and sticks. Why all carrots for Putin in public?

Trump has been able to use words and deeds to get the kind of action he wants out of whomever he is negotiating with. So far it has been working fairly well, and certainly better than his predecessor’s approach. But today the president created a problem for himself that only strong action can mitigate. In short, he let Putin save too much face and that may well delay improvement in U.S.-Russia relations.
What Putin Wants from the United States

Putin is not interested only in the removal of sanctions and an end to U.S. strikes against his allies. He certainly wants that. But above all Putin wants to stay in power. It is a matter of survival for him. Unlike Western leaders, who win and hold power by elections, Putin holds and wields power by appearing strong and in charge. He needs to appear strong to the Russian people, and to his gang of elites, who regularly have to consider if Putin in power is good for their interests.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trump-first-doctrine-1531781061

Donald Trump left for Europe a week ago with his reputation enhanced by a strong Supreme Court nomination. He returned Monday with that reputation diminished after a tumultuous week of indulging what amounts to the Trump First Doctrine.

Mr. Trump marched through Europe with more swagger than strategy. His diplomacy is personal, rooted in instinct and impulse, and he treats other leaders above all on how much they praise Donald J. Trump. He says what pops into his head to shock but then disavows it if there’s a backlash. He criticizes institutions and policies to grab headlines but then claims victory no matter the outcome.

The world hasn’t seen a U.S. President like this in modern times, and as ever in Trump World everyone else will have to adapt. Let’s navigate between the critics who predict the end of world order and the cheerleaders who see only genius, and try to offer a realistic assessment of the fallout from a troubling week.

• NATO. The result here seems better than many feared. Mr. Trump bullied the allies with rhetoric and insulted Germany by claiming it is “totally controlled” by Russia. But his charges about inadequate military spending and Russia’s gas pipeline had the advantage of being true, as most leaders acknowledged.

The 23-page communique that Mr. Trump endorsed is a solid document that improves NATO’s capabilities to deter and resist a threat from Russia. Mr. Trump’s last-minute demand that countries raise military spending to 4% of GDP was weird, but he is right that more countries are likely to meet the 2% target.