Donald Trump: Breaking With The Past..
..and The Beltway Ain’t Happy.
President Trump is taking an axe to the old ways of doing the nations business. From Iran to China, the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula he’s pulled out of arrangements made by the previous administration, re-negotiated treaties in America’s favor, and wants to end the nearly 70 year old stand-off in Korea. With the South being the victors, of course.
Poetrooper sent me this link to a very interesting article, discussing these issues, and more.
By Doug Macgregor
The first quality of a great leader is the courage to break with the past when the facts change. For President Trump, facing facts means change. But real change—ending the Korean War, disengaging forces from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan—is anathema to just about everyone inside the Washington Beltway.It’s tempting to view the recent attacks from within his own party on Trump’s decision to leave Syria or the public wounds inflicted on the president by an ungrateful national security advisor as unique in American history, but that’s not the case. In 1969, when President Richard Nixon first confided his intention to seek a rapprochement with China—three years before Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing—members of his own Administration were not enthusiastic.
Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, reacted to Nixon’s decision with more than a little trepidation: “Our Leader (President Nixon) has taken leave of reality. He thinks this is the moment to establish normal relations with Communist China.” Kissinger later revised his opinion, but Kissinger’s initial reaction demonstrates that Washington’s emotional investment in the past all too often overwhelms reason and obscures opportunity.
Fortunately, President Trump is not easily deterred. In Northeast Asia, the president is pursuing a strategy aligned with Nixon’s strategy in 1972. It’s designed to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate the potential for armed conflict between China and the United States.
Trump’s determination to move forward with a new summit is based on much more than the president’s perception of North Korea as the poster child for the failure of state socialism, a Northeast Asian State with a sub-Saharan African economy and a dying society sinking deeper and deeper into despair. President Trump also knows that half of China’s investment in national defense is committed to internal security.
The true rationale behind President Xi’s being granted exceptional authority is the real potential for nation-wide unrest if the Chinese economy’s slowdown results in a potentially destabilizing “hard landing.” It’s an open secret that Xi has chosen Seoul to manage North Korea’s decline. Thus, President Trump knows what Nixon knew: The United States and China have no compelling reasons to be enemies.
In Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, President Trump confronts a different challenge: A legacy of American military and political disaster that even the launching of U.S. military operations on the scale of Desert Storm could not reverse. After 9/11, Americans went abroad in search of a new enemy—Islamist Terrorism—to destroy. Trump knows these military operations failed.
President Trump is well aware that the American military supplanted a secular Arab dictatorship only to replace it with Iranian political, military and economic domination of Iraq. Having lost 800,000 soldiers in its fight with U.S.-backed Iraqi Forces in the 1980s, It’s painfully clear to Trump that Tehran will now fight any attempt by any foreign power to install an anti-Iranian regime in Baghdad—an Iranian version of the Monroe Doctrine.
In Ankara, Trump knows that Turkey’s membership in NATO is about as nominal as that of Greece or Bulgaria, but the president sees no benefit to the United States in cultivating conflict with Turkey. Like everyone else in the West, Trump knows that President Erdogan’s Turkey is a Sunni Islamist Republic, much as Iraq is a Shiite Islamist Republic.
President Trump knows that when U.S. forces withdraw from Syria, then Moscow, Damascus, Tehran and Ankara will try to craft a solution to the civil war’s devastation. Yet, Trump knows that solution will remain vulnerable to the violence of ruthless groups across the region. He also knows that Iran and Turkey will both compete for regional hegemony, but, like Russia, Iran and Turkey lack the economic strength and societal cohesion to bear the heavy burden that the competition will impose.
~~~~~~~~~
Doug Macgregor, is a decorated combat veteran and the author of five books. His latest is Margin of Victory, (Naval Institute Press, 2016). The retired Army colonel may be best known in the military for his book, Breaking the Phalanx.
The rest of this ‘must read’ article may be viewed here: Breaking Defense News
Thanks, Poe. Get rest and take your time; we’ll still be here when your ready to post again.
Category: Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Military issues, Syria, Trump!
After 9/11, Americans went abroad in search of a new enemy—Islamist Terrorism—to destroy. Trump knows these military operations failed.
He also knows that Iran and Turkey will both compete for regional hegemony, but, like Russia, Iran and Turkey lack the economic strength and societal cohesion to bear the heavy burden that the competition will impose.
These two points are correct. As is the reference to China’s defense budget spending half to keep the Chinese population in line.
Additionally China’s GDP is slowing dramatically and their stock exchange lost a quarter of its value in 2018. With three times the population of the US and only two thirds the GDP China doesn’t benefit at all from fighting with the US because no other market has the funds to purchase Chinese goods. Their GDP is ten times the output of Russia, there’s no chance of a reasonable trade agreement with the Russians that benefits China in any measurable way.
The US can use that information to push Venezuela where we want them to go, it’s our backyard and China might make some noise but there’s no benefit to them to try and interfere. The Russians can piss and moan all they like but logistically they are incapable of providing real aid there.
How he handles the next 16-18 months will determine how easily he can be re-elected.
Might remember that Japan’s biggest foreign trading partner in 1940 was the USA. Conflict is not always logical.
But Japan had thought to create a quick peace with their attack and resume trading after negotiating a peace with the United States. They didn’t count on a war of production and attrition they couldn’t win.
China has always been a more inward looking nation than Japan, in my opinion, but I understand your point that conflict doesn’t always make sense.
The thing with Venezuela is neither China or Russia can really stage anything nearby to support the Venezuelan government and neither nation benefits from a continuing unstable Venezuela. An American puppet selling oil to both is a better outcome that risks zero assets of either the Russians or the Chinese. They will make noise but will do nothing in all actuality. Once they do nothing the Cubans will understand they have no role to play either.
Hopefully it goes that way peacefully, if not it could get interesting for certain.
Think yer math’s a bit off, amigo. US population is around 320M, give or take. Pretty sure China’s population is around 2.1B.
I was using numbers from worldometer, they show China at 1.4 billion and the USA at around 330 miillion…should be 4 times the population.
Point remains that their GDP output isn’t at all proportionate and is unlikely to become proportionate any time soon.
They should be the largest economy bar none based on population, but they lack the resources and productivity to achieve that.
“Washington hates him for doing those things….future generations will love him.” Preach & Testify. Drain the Swamp. Love him, hate him, indifferent to him, the man is trying to do what he thinks best for the country. Now does he have ulterior motives? Who knows, and frankly right now, who can say for sure? The professional politicians from both parties have done what they had to do for DECADES to ensure their re-election. And the American public let them get away with it. Jimmuh Carter made an attempt to drain the swamp, Bless his heart, and he, along with his Presidency was nearly destroyed. The Trumpster has come along and surprised hell out of a lot of folk. Nobody really expected him to win, and his own party has not given him the support that they should have. Too many other career politicos felt that the job should have gone to them. I doubt if any of the people that Pres Trump defeated in the primaries would have gotten as much done as he has, because they would have been trying to do business the same old way with the same negative results. Give more to the free shit army, allow Joe Six Pack a decent enough job and line of credit to buy his house and some fishing toys. Continue to talk about the big bad Russian Bear of Chinese Dragon, provide American Blood and Treasury to protect the world, tax and spend, we the “leaders” have ours, to hell with the future of this country. My opinion only. Trump is not in it for the money…He has plenty. He is not in it for the power trip. He has plenty of that. Not in it for the cooter kitty. He sleeps with one of the classiest and best looking women on earth. I wish him the best of luck in his endeavor to bring America back from the brink of socialistic self destruction to a world that our Grandchildren can grow up in that was as good as we had, if not better. Good post Poet, we Thank… Read more »
Nothing to argue with there because I agree with every word in your comment!
I don’t care whether he is motivated by the profit motive or some deeply held moral conviction – he’s doing the right thing for all of us.
Profit is not necessarily a bad motive for doing things. Sure, it can be, but the idea that gaining financial security is in and of itself bad is simply nonsense. Of course Trump will make even more money if he gets this mess straightened out, but so will the rest of us. The more of the “haves” who can do the same the better because they are the ones who hire and secure the financial futures of the “have nots.”
Of course some of the “haves” are quite evil. Just look to members of Congress to find some of those. Most, however, are not because it is not in their best interests to be so even if they otherwise have no reason to do morally correct things.
Well said 5th/77th FA, Trump is only looking to the future. He wants an America that is poised to take advantage off all that will come. China can’t sustain itself, and needs to acquire as much raw materials as it can not just for its own consumption but in order to bring in capital. Russia is dying (literally), and as its economy changes from communism to capitalism it is learning that it will survive only if it can maintain what it has. Its current birth rate says it will be gone in 100 years (estimate).
President Trump has done a much better job of wealth redistribution than any of the socialist liberals could ever hope to do.
“President Trump has done a much better job of wealth redistribution than any of the socialist liberals could ever hope to do.”
True, and Capitalism has moved far more people out of poverty than any other economic system ever has.
I remember someone on Quora using an analogy that Trump took the apple cart and overturned it and the elite is not happy about it. I think what he did is he grabbed the cart, smashed all the apples, before taking it to a cliff and wheeling it over the edge.
Just about everyone I know is better off under current conditions. The few that are not mostly have a track record of dumb stuff.
Jobs up. Inflation down. Taxes down. Economy moving along nicely.
That is a very weird “smashed” you have there.
I mean he took the apple cart the elites of both parties were running and destroyed it because it obviously wasn’t working. I’m not really referring to the economy itself but what the elites of both sides were doing. He realized it was not working so he began doing things differently. That’s the analogy. It’s a wake up call for everyone in Washington. He realized it was screwing everyone else over so he decided to change the game. And change it he did, and it’s working.
China has thrived because it took its business model from the return of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong to the mainland. The Chinese government was smart enough to see the value in capitalism, which they adopted and got out of its way.
Russia,, on the other hand, was at first, under the control of the charismatic alcoholic Yeltsin, who beat out Gorbachev for the Presidency but could not bring Russia out of the backward-looking mindset of Communist Russia, and operated as if he were still in the Politburo. He was followed by Putin, then by Medvedev, and back to Putin, who also has no idea how to run a business nor does he understand capitalism and how it works. All he cares about is cash.
Putin does know that selling the production of Gazprom to UK/Europe governments, as well as to New England states in the USA, brings in cash, which he needs to operate his show of “strength” in the Middle East. If anything, he is looking for access to Venezuela’s muddy oil, and very will likely do the same thing with Iran. He is limited to this one product: oil/natural gas.
I’m not sure I agree with Macgregor on the situation with China. It so happens the U.S. intelligence community released a worldwide threat assessment this week which paints a different picture:
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/2019-ATA-SFR—SSCI.pdf
My own view is that the economic playing field has been tipped in favor of the Chinese in a way which has long-term consequences. Theft of intellectual property is one issue, currency manipulation is another, subsidized “dumping” of key products to gain a market monopoly still another, and so forth. It’s a long list.
Anybody who has been following the case of the Huawei executive recently arrested should also be concerned about China being able gain control over the security of global communications.
According to the threat assessment report, an additional concern is that the Chinese have shown an increased cooperation with the Russians which does not bode well for U.S. interests.
Be a bit skeptical of anything published by DNI.
What sane person would widely publish the -actual- intelligence estimates of the clandestine services?
That would be kinda like playing stud poker with all your cards face up.
Also, we definitely have other examples of swamp-critters sabotaging this admin.
The first things the Mailclerk administration would do in this area is tell the Intel services
“STFU. Intel services have -no- public statements on -anything-”
And ” you work for the executive branch that was elected by the States. Act like it or resign.”
And “Read ‘the art of war’. Expect quizzes.”
While he might only know one product and cash economically; Putin fully understands what his nation’s core interests are and is unabashed at working to achieve them.
OTOH, we can’t agree what ours are.