Drafting men is the bad idea for any but the military purpose of pretty clearly true blue and honest to gosh national defense.
Does that include drafting men to participate in any mess we might get into because of our far flung Cold War alliances like Article 5 of NATO?
I hesitate to say aye or nay to drafting men to save Riga from the dreaded Russkies.
Yes, I suppose, given the alliance. But that is another argument against that alliance.
The even worse idea is drafting women.
Male-Only Military Draft Is Constitutional, Federal Appeals Court Rules
A federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality of the male-only military draft system on Thursday, overturning a lower court ruling.
In an opinion issued Thursday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans noted that the Supreme Court upheld the male-only draft in 1981 and said the 5th Circuit is a “strict stare decisis” court and “cannot ignore a decision from the Supreme Court,” adding that only the Supreme Court may revise its precedent.
. . . .
After arguments before the 5th Circuit in March, a federal commission recommended extending the draft to include women as well.
“The Commission concluded that the time is right to extend Selective Service System registration to include men and women, between the ages of 18 and 26.
"This is a necessary and fair step, making it possible to draw on the talent of a unified Nation in a time of national emergency,” a summary to the commission’s final report said.
Showing posts with label NATO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NATO. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
America First? Just another big issue the virus has completely obscured.
Will we hear again of Big Stick isolationism from Trump before the election?
Or will he just surprise us and walk away from NATO, the WTO, the UN, and some or all of our Pacific alliances, all after the election?
And then shock us all by again urging a formal US-Israel mutual defense pact, extending our nuclear umbrella to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?
His muddled neo-isolationist nationalism played pretty well in his 2016 campaign, and might again.
And though I haven't seen much on that point I'd expect Biden to continue to be what he has been for all his career, a standard-issue adherent of liberal globalism, firmly defending its post WW2 institutional creations and affirming, if asked, our Article 5 commitment to putting Riga under our nuclear umbrella.
On the other hand, it has been the custom of Democrats to run on peace and then give us war, once in the White House.
Wilson, FDR, and even Kennedy/Johnson all did that.
The Duce could pull a Republican reversal, running as a foreign policy tough guy and then actually going through with major pieces of his 2016 America First agenda.
Or will he just surprise us and walk away from NATO, the WTO, the UN, and some or all of our Pacific alliances, all after the election?
And then shock us all by again urging a formal US-Israel mutual defense pact, extending our nuclear umbrella to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?
His muddled neo-isolationist nationalism played pretty well in his 2016 campaign, and might again.
And though I haven't seen much on that point I'd expect Biden to continue to be what he has been for all his career, a standard-issue adherent of liberal globalism, firmly defending its post WW2 institutional creations and affirming, if asked, our Article 5 commitment to putting Riga under our nuclear umbrella.
On the other hand, it has been the custom of Democrats to run on peace and then give us war, once in the White House.
Wilson, FDR, and even Kennedy/Johnson all did that.
The Duce could pull a Republican reversal, running as a foreign policy tough guy and then actually going through with major pieces of his 2016 America First agenda.
Friday, August 2, 2019
Meanwhile, we are still in NATO
Serious Buchananites need to consider how we might deal with issues of nuclear balance and security from outside NATO.
Hard enough nut to crack from within, no?
Nato and Russia trade barbs after collapse of nuclear arms treaty
Hard enough nut to crack from within, no?
Nato and Russia trade barbs after collapse of nuclear arms treaty
The Duce continues dogged by piss poor vetting of prospective nominees
Trump withdraws Ratcliffe as Intelligence pick
Ratcliffe, a three-term congressman who sits on the House Intelligence, Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees, has received criticism for having a dearth of national security qualifications when compared to previous intelligence chiefs.
He is viewed as a staunch Trump ally and has criticized the origins of the Russia investigation, suggesting the FBI acted improperly in its investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump may have been seeking to name somebody to the job who, like him, is skeptical of continued American participation in NATO and other Cold War alliances.
It could not be clearer he regards Putin and Putin's Russia as not remotely as threatening to the US or to US interests as the now defunct Soviet Union was, back in the day.
Or anyway was seen to be.
In a city of globalists, it's not going to be easy to find somebody both competent and ideologically congenial to Trump's isolationist side.
Ratcliffe, a three-term congressman who sits on the House Intelligence, Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees, has received criticism for having a dearth of national security qualifications when compared to previous intelligence chiefs.
He is viewed as a staunch Trump ally and has criticized the origins of the Russia investigation, suggesting the FBI acted improperly in its investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump may have been seeking to name somebody to the job who, like him, is skeptical of continued American participation in NATO and other Cold War alliances.
It could not be clearer he regards Putin and Putin's Russia as not remotely as threatening to the US or to US interests as the now defunct Soviet Union was, back in the day.
Or anyway was seen to be.
In a city of globalists, it's not going to be easy to find somebody both competent and ideologically congenial to Trump's isolationist side.
Undermining US commitments
Do they really want to encourage Trump to further disenchantment with the usefulness, to the US, of our Cold War alliances?
Wary of Trump’s Hard Line on Iran, Europeans Decline to Join Escorts in Gulf
This does not help.
Wary of Trump’s Hard Line on Iran, Europeans Decline to Join Escorts in Gulf
This does not help.
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
A natural ally for the nationalist parties of Europe
Italian PM to address claims League sought money from Russia
The Cold War is soooo over.
And in European eyes, Communism is just gone.
Russian power, much diminished in any case, is no threat at all to capitalism or representative government, and Russia is not exporting any sort of revolutionary and crazy ideology just the thing to terrify everyone.
And Putin's authoritarianism, for these folks, just doesn't much matter; if it's anybody's problem, it's the Russians'.
Fewer Europeans, every day, have any interest in NATO and its Cold War II.
More and more people, not just in America but in Europe, and anywhere on the political spectrum but notably on the right, when asked "Should you or your kids be willing to fight and die in a full-scale, pan-European and maybe even global war for the independence of Estonia?", are inclined to answer with a wholly unabashed, "No."
They are equally skeptical of NATO and wholly opposed to the EU superseding Europe's individual nations as a military power.
And just as European parties of the West were not much bothered by, and often actually colluded in, American meddling in their elections to keep power out of the hands of anybody soft on defense against the Soviet bloc back in the day, some parties now seek or tolerate Russian meddling on behalf of nationalists seeking to lead their countries away from the old Cold War alliances and even, sometimes openly and specifically, the power of the US.
The Cold War is soooo over.
And in European eyes, Communism is just gone.
Russian power, much diminished in any case, is no threat at all to capitalism or representative government, and Russia is not exporting any sort of revolutionary and crazy ideology just the thing to terrify everyone.
And Putin's authoritarianism, for these folks, just doesn't much matter; if it's anybody's problem, it's the Russians'.
Fewer Europeans, every day, have any interest in NATO and its Cold War II.
More and more people, not just in America but in Europe, and anywhere on the political spectrum but notably on the right, when asked "Should you or your kids be willing to fight and die in a full-scale, pan-European and maybe even global war for the independence of Estonia?", are inclined to answer with a wholly unabashed, "No."
They are equally skeptical of NATO and wholly opposed to the EU superseding Europe's individual nations as a military power.
And just as European parties of the West were not much bothered by, and often actually colluded in, American meddling in their elections to keep power out of the hands of anybody soft on defense against the Soviet bloc back in the day, some parties now seek or tolerate Russian meddling on behalf of nationalists seeking to lead their countries away from the old Cold War alliances and even, sometimes openly and specifically, the power of the US.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Channeling Alex Jones
Donald Trump Jr. Scolds Theresa May Over Brexit: ‘Was It All a Ruse?’
The party of lies and disinformation is in the White House and doing its best to shatter the EU, undermine NATO, and earn brownie points redeemable for cash from Vladimir Putin.
Bear in mind the Brexit plebiscite was non-binding and purely consultative.
It was the Tories and pro-Brexit others who have since then at every opportunity lied that it was actually a binding referendum leaving the decision entirely to the voters, the Parliament's remaining role in the matter being only to smooth the path.
But never in my life - I am seventy - has the blog name "Crooks and Liars" seemed so apt.
President Trump has offered the British prime minister advice on Brexit.
The president’s son said this week that she should have followed it.
Donald Trump Jr. accused “the European elites” of trying to sabotage Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, in an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.
He put some of the blame on Prime Minister Theresa May, and declared that “democracy in the U.K. is all but dead.”
“Next Friday, March 29, is supposed to be the British people’s Independence Day,” Mr. Trump wrote.
“But because the elites control London from Brussels, the will of the people is likely to be ignored.”
During a visit to Britain last summer, President Trump told Mrs. May to “sue the E.U.,” according to her account of the meeting — advice the prime minister dismissed in favor of negotiating.
According to Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, Mr. Trump told the British leader to “overshoot the target” on her deal, be on “terms agreed within six months” and “use every arrow in your quiver even if you have to do litigation later.”
“She laughed it off,” Mr. Bannon told the British network Sky News on Monday.
. . . .
Because she didn’t listen, the younger Mr. Trump wrote, “a process that should have taken only a few short months has become a yearslong stalemate.”
Such an outcome, he added, was “exactly as the European elites were hoping.”
Plenty of Britons would dispute the claim that anyone is in control in London, where Mrs. May has been tripped up by one Brexit dispute after another.
The notion that puppet masters in Brussels are pulling the strings might come as a surprise to European officials who have been exasperated by Britain’s paralysis.
. . . .
Mr. Trump described both Britain’s vote to withdraw and his father’s election as victories over establishments that have since tried to “overturn their mandates.”
“What we’re seeing now in Washington, London and Brussels is the desperate, last-gasp attempt by those previously in power to cling on to what was once theirs in the face of an overwhelming mandate for change,” he asserted.
He thinks you don't remember that the voters chose Hillary, a choice the Electors overruled in favor of the mad orange suffering mad cow now in the White House.
The Times helpfully reminds its readers, who probably need no reminding.
[T]he senior Mr. Trump won the presidency, despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, 45.9 percent to 48 percent.
The party of lies and disinformation is in the White House and doing its best to shatter the EU, undermine NATO, and earn brownie points redeemable for cash from Vladimir Putin.
Bear in mind the Brexit plebiscite was non-binding and purely consultative.
It was the Tories and pro-Brexit others who have since then at every opportunity lied that it was actually a binding referendum leaving the decision entirely to the voters, the Parliament's remaining role in the matter being only to smooth the path.
But never in my life - I am seventy - has the blog name "Crooks and Liars" seemed so apt.
President Trump has offered the British prime minister advice on Brexit.
The president’s son said this week that she should have followed it.
Donald Trump Jr. accused “the European elites” of trying to sabotage Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, in an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.
He put some of the blame on Prime Minister Theresa May, and declared that “democracy in the U.K. is all but dead.”
“Next Friday, March 29, is supposed to be the British people’s Independence Day,” Mr. Trump wrote.
“But because the elites control London from Brussels, the will of the people is likely to be ignored.”
During a visit to Britain last summer, President Trump told Mrs. May to “sue the E.U.,” according to her account of the meeting — advice the prime minister dismissed in favor of negotiating.
According to Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, Mr. Trump told the British leader to “overshoot the target” on her deal, be on “terms agreed within six months” and “use every arrow in your quiver even if you have to do litigation later.”
“She laughed it off,” Mr. Bannon told the British network Sky News on Monday.
. . . .
Because she didn’t listen, the younger Mr. Trump wrote, “a process that should have taken only a few short months has become a yearslong stalemate.”
Such an outcome, he added, was “exactly as the European elites were hoping.”
Plenty of Britons would dispute the claim that anyone is in control in London, where Mrs. May has been tripped up by one Brexit dispute after another.
The notion that puppet masters in Brussels are pulling the strings might come as a surprise to European officials who have been exasperated by Britain’s paralysis.
. . . .
Mr. Trump described both Britain’s vote to withdraw and his father’s election as victories over establishments that have since tried to “overturn their mandates.”
“What we’re seeing now in Washington, London and Brussels is the desperate, last-gasp attempt by those previously in power to cling on to what was once theirs in the face of an overwhelming mandate for change,” he asserted.
He thinks you don't remember that the voters chose Hillary, a choice the Electors overruled in favor of the mad orange suffering mad cow now in the White House.
The Times helpfully reminds its readers, who probably need no reminding.
[T]he senior Mr. Trump won the presidency, despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, 45.9 percent to 48 percent.
Friday, March 8, 2019
Buchananist neo-isolationism
With no chance to get any of his agenda done that requires congressional consent, Bozo is turning his attention to implementing as much of his neo-isolationist outlook as he can without it.
Trump Seeks Huge Premium From Allies Hosting U.S. Troops
The Duce is turning our troops into expensive mercenaries to encourage the host countries to refuse their presence.
The claim that he just wants to prod them into spending a bigger share of their own GDPs on their own defense is a figleaf for a policy of deliberate destabilization of the alliances.
For years, President Donald Trump has complained that countries hosting American troops aren’t paying enough. Now he wants to get even, and then some.
Under White House direction, the administration is drawing up demands that Germany, Japan and eventually any other country hosting U.S. troops pay the full price of American soldiers deployed on their soil -- plus 50 percent or more for the privilege of hosting them, according to a dozen administration officials and people briefed on the matter.
In some cases, nations hosting American forces could be asked to pay five to six times as much as they do now under the “Cost Plus 50” formula.
Trump has championed the idea for months.
His insistence on it almost derailed recent talks with South Korea over the status of 28,000 U.S. troops in the country when he overruled his negotiators with a note to National Security Adviser John Bolton saying, “We want cost plus 50.”
He sees our troops in allied countries as there exclusively to protect faraway foreign lands in which we have no significant national security stake.
He sees a few thousand migrants in a caravan heading for the Mexican border as a national security emergency, but not a war against our allies in Europe or Asia, perhaps excepting only Israel.
Yes, this is absolutely Buchananism - apart from Bozo's strong support for Israel that mostly reflects the position of his Evangelical base and enables him to urge Jewish voters in America to come over to the GOP.
[I remember an old joke that Jews have the incomes of Episcopalians and the politics of Puerto Ricans.]
Was Buchanan paid off by the Russians, too?
Trump Seeks Huge Premium From Allies Hosting U.S. Troops
The Duce is turning our troops into expensive mercenaries to encourage the host countries to refuse their presence.
The claim that he just wants to prod them into spending a bigger share of their own GDPs on their own defense is a figleaf for a policy of deliberate destabilization of the alliances.
For years, President Donald Trump has complained that countries hosting American troops aren’t paying enough. Now he wants to get even, and then some.
Under White House direction, the administration is drawing up demands that Germany, Japan and eventually any other country hosting U.S. troops pay the full price of American soldiers deployed on their soil -- plus 50 percent or more for the privilege of hosting them, according to a dozen administration officials and people briefed on the matter.
In some cases, nations hosting American forces could be asked to pay five to six times as much as they do now under the “Cost Plus 50” formula.
Trump has championed the idea for months.
His insistence on it almost derailed recent talks with South Korea over the status of 28,000 U.S. troops in the country when he overruled his negotiators with a note to National Security Adviser John Bolton saying, “We want cost plus 50.”
He sees our troops in allied countries as there exclusively to protect faraway foreign lands in which we have no significant national security stake.
He sees a few thousand migrants in a caravan heading for the Mexican border as a national security emergency, but not a war against our allies in Europe or Asia, perhaps excepting only Israel.
Yes, this is absolutely Buchananism - apart from Bozo's strong support for Israel that mostly reflects the position of his Evangelical base and enables him to urge Jewish voters in America to come over to the GOP.
[I remember an old joke that Jews have the incomes of Episcopalians and the politics of Puerto Ricans.]
Was Buchanan paid off by the Russians, too?
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Who thought he was kidding?
New York Times: Trump raised withdrawing the US from NATO several times in 2018
In 2018, President Donald Trump privately raised the threat multiple times of withdrawing the United States from NATO, The New York Times reported.
The Times reported that Trump's repeated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new concerns among national security officials amid a Washington Post report that Trump concealed details of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a Times report that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into why Trump was acting in ways that seemed to benefit Russia.
In 2018, President Donald Trump privately raised the threat multiple times of withdrawing the United States from NATO, The New York Times reported.
The Times reported that Trump's repeated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new concerns among national security officials amid a Washington Post report that Trump concealed details of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a Times report that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into why Trump was acting in ways that seemed to benefit Russia.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Trump's mini-me at State has embraced his Buchananite nationalism almost entirely
Pompeo Questions the Value of International Groups Like U.N. and E.U.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke out against several treaties and institutions, including the United Nations and the European Union, during a speech in Brussels.
In a major speech on Tuesday [December 4], Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to explain one of the abiding conundrums of the Trump administration: How does a nationalist lead on the international stage?
The answer, he said, is to revamp or jettison some treaties and institutions while bolstering others.
Among the institutions that Mr. Pompeo criticized were the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of American States and the African Union.
But he embraced NATO, which President Trump has harshly criticized, as an “indispensable institution.”
. . . .
The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization also came in for sharp criticism.
“International bodies must help facilitate cooperation that bolsters the security and values of the free world, or they must be reformed or eliminated,” he said.
After the short speech, Mr. Pompeo took no questions.
Did Kissinger get it right or not?
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke out against several treaties and institutions, including the United Nations and the European Union, during a speech in Brussels.
In a major speech on Tuesday [December 4], Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to explain one of the abiding conundrums of the Trump administration: How does a nationalist lead on the international stage?
The answer, he said, is to revamp or jettison some treaties and institutions while bolstering others.
Among the institutions that Mr. Pompeo criticized were the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of American States and the African Union.
But he embraced NATO, which President Trump has harshly criticized, as an “indispensable institution.”
. . . .
The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization also came in for sharp criticism.
“International bodies must help facilitate cooperation that bolsters the security and values of the free world, or they must be reformed or eliminated,” he said.
After the short speech, Mr. Pompeo took no questions.
Did Kissinger get it right or not?
Last week I was browsing through Henry Kissinger’s 2014 book, World Order, when the news broke that Jim Mattis, the US defence secretary, had resigned, sending a shockwave of new uncertainties across Europe.
It made these lines from Kissinger all the more striking:
“The United States has every reason from history and geopolitics to bolster the European Union and prevent its drifting off in a geopolitical vacuum; the United States, if separated from Europe in politics, economics and defence, would become geopolitically an island off the shores of Eurasia, and Europe itself could turn into an appendage to the reaches of Asia and the Middle East.”
One key sentence in Mattis’s resignation letter pointed to the importance of the US respecting its allies.
It read like a final verdict on something Europeans had been dreading ever since Donald Trump’s election but were wary of acknowledging: the utter indifference of this American leader to postwar alliances.
A US “separated from Europe” has suddenly become more of a reality.
. . . .
The spectre that’s haunting Europe today is multifaceted: a Trump‑Brexit‑Putin nexus has taken shape.
With the Brexit countdown approaching and European parliament elections due in May, things look ominous, and Mattis’s message will have done little to reassure anyone.
But much could change if Brexit is somehow halted.
. . . .
This year, Trump’s hostility to the EU (he calls it a “foe”) morphed into a systematic onslaught.
One shocking moment came when Trump’s national security adviser Mike Pompeo gave a speech in Brussels this month lambasting the European project.
This year, Trump’s hostility to the EU (he calls it a “foe”) morphed into a systematic onslaught.
One shocking moment came when Trump’s national security adviser Mike Pompeo gave a speech in Brussels this month lambasting the European project.
Meanwhile, both Trump and Putin have made clear they want the Brexit train wreck to run its course.
The US president has openly encouraged a no-deal British departure from the EU, and last week Putin mused that Theresa May should “fulfil the will of the people”.
These men’s motives may vary but the endgame they seek – sowing division – is much the same, and it’s just as obsessive.
Trump is interested in an isolated UK and a disembowelled EU which would no longer be able to set rules and standards in trade.
Putin wants to secure geopolitical gains for Russia in Europe in a quest for a sphere of influence, as revenge for defeat in the cold war.
. . . .
Brexit has so far united continental Europe much more than it has divided it.
Brexit is also a lose-lose project on which more and more Britons are apparently starting to turn their backs.
Neither Trump nor Putin are going away any time soon.
Brexit, on the other hand, increasingly looks like a fading prospect.
. . . .
But the biggest boon to all Europeans – and the biggest blow to both Trump and Putin’s calculations – would surely come if Brexit didn’t happen at all.
This could change the entire narrative about a continent beholden to hostile forces.
In fact, a Brexit reversal could be Europe’s finest hour, after a decade of crises.
If Britain changed its mind and remained in the European club, it would save itself and Europe from unnecessary havoc and absurdity: a cause for celebration whatever side of the Channel you live on.
If you judge the EU by the very nature of its enemies – autocrats or would-be autocrats – then surely putting an end to Brexit takes on a wider meaning than just securing market access.
Trump and Putin have placed high stakes on Brexit as something that would vindicate their world view.
Brexit is very much part of their project. Now is the time to disappoint them.
Not one hint from the Guardian columnist on how that might happen.
Mattis and Trump both urge that the United States cannot be "the world's policeman," but they mean very different things by that.
For Buchananist Trump the cliche expresses rejection of the postwar/Cold War alliances, supranational institutions, and global institutions the US led in building and in which the US still participates.
For Mattis it is a reason for embracing, expanding, and strengthening them all.
More on Trump's Buchananist commitments can be found in the New Yorker.
Expect more this from the Duce in the new year, when Democrats in the house are expected to pretty much put a stop to his domestic agenda.
He will turn to foreign policy, where presidents are stronger than the congress and the courts.
He will be a wrecking ball.
Mattis and Trump both urge that the United States cannot be "the world's policeman," but they mean very different things by that.
For Buchananist Trump the cliche expresses rejection of the postwar/Cold War alliances, supranational institutions, and global institutions the US led in building and in which the US still participates.
For Mattis it is a reason for embracing, expanding, and strengthening them all.
More on Trump's Buchananist commitments can be found in the New Yorker.
Expect more this from the Duce in the new year, when Democrats in the house are expected to pretty much put a stop to his domestic agenda.
He will turn to foreign policy, where presidents are stronger than the congress and the courts.
He will be a wrecking ball.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Mattis quits
His domestic agenda will be dead in 2020.
It will be the year of Trump's isolationism.
And he's starting early with his withdrawal from Syria and an impending withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Too much for the last globalist general working for the Duce.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigns, scolding Trump over his military judgment
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation Thursday afternoon, sending President Donald Trump a letter that implicitly criticized the president's military judgment.
In the letter, Mattis suggested Trump was not treating allies with respect and had not been "clear-eyed" about U.S. enemies and competitors.
“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues,” he wrote.
Mattis told the president in the letter that he should have a defense chief who shares his views.
“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” he wrote.
It will be the year of Trump's isolationism.
And he's starting early with his withdrawal from Syria and an impending withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Too much for the last globalist general working for the Duce.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigns, scolding Trump over his military judgment
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation Thursday afternoon, sending President Donald Trump a letter that implicitly criticized the president's military judgment.
In the letter, Mattis suggested Trump was not treating allies with respect and had not been "clear-eyed" about U.S. enemies and competitors.
“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues,” he wrote.
Mattis told the president in the letter that he should have a defense chief who shares his views.
“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” he wrote.
. . . .
"One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships," the general wrote.
"While the U.S. remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies," the letter said.
. . . .
Previously, Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal without consulting Mattis, who had to scramble to get the president on the phone before that formal announcement was made.
This past summer, Trump surprised Mattis again by pausing U.S. military exercises with South Korean in a concession to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
A short time later, Mattis was blindsided by Trump again when the president directed the Pentagon to develop a sixth branch of the military to oversee space.
Globalists in his own party are as dismayed as those among the Democrats.
In the media some are reminding us how freaked Mattis was at Trump's proposal to withdraw from South Korea and his suggestions of withdrawal from NATO.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a statement seemed to echo some of Mattis' comments about alliances in the letter.
"I believe it’s essential that the United States maintain and strengthen the post-World War II alliances that have been carefully built by leaders in both parties," McConnell said.
"We must also maintain a clear-eyed understanding of our friends and foes, and recognize that nations like Russia are among the latter.
"I am particularly distressed that he is resigning due to sharp differences with the president on these and other key aspects of America’s global leadership," he continued, urging Trump "to select a leader who shares Secretary Mattis's understanding of these vital principles and his total commitment to America’s servicemembers."
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Globalism or America First?
This is a piece by an academic who wrote a book about FDR getting us into the war in Europe.
Republican leaders need to remember what happened the last time America chose to be isolated
She quotes Henry Luce's The American Century in opposition to Trump's America First policy and his hammer blows against American globalism.
Luce published his famous article, "The American Century," in February 1941, seven months after all the European democracies -- except Great Britain -- had surrendered to Hitler's ruthless armies.
Luce traced this catastrophe to the end of World War I when the Senate rejected Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations and the United States began its retreat from world affairs.
In the 1920s and '30s, Americans embraced "the moral and practical bankruptcy" of isolationism, Luce wrote, and "failed to play their part as a world power."
That unwillingness to confront Hitler's aggression in the 1930s, he underscored, brought "disastrous consequences" to "all mankind."
All the same, the idea that we should or had to eventually enter the war to keep Hitler from conquering the world is exactly the sort of childish twaddle that it appears, and Luce himself said just that in this very piece.
Even the British, whose regime and empire Hitler vastly admired, could probably have negotiated a separate peace without accepting any degree of nazification.
And Luce in this piece concedes that an American defense of North America against all enemies, if that was what Americans wanted, could well have worked.
Anyway, there was no convincing argument against that notion.
For Luce, the question whether America should send armies to fight in Europe to stop Hitler depended on what Americans wanted to do.
Defend only their own democracy in their own country, or defend and advance "so-called democratic principles" and government throughout the world?
Isolationism or engagement?
In the latter part of his piece, Luce presents a brilliant and sweeping picture of what American internationalism could and should be.
It is, today, a stirring and powerful defense of the kind of international liberal order built up after the Second World War.
But what it really comes down to, today, is whether we continue our engagements in NATO, in the Far East, in Oceania, and elsewhere, along with participation in global institutions like the UN and the WTO and support for pan-European institutions like the EU.
All for the encouragement, construction, and consolidation of a civilization of global democratic capitalism.
Or instead let it - or even make it - all fall apart.
And risk enemies rising up everywhere, surrounding fortress North America and forcing us to risk fighting a war to save ourselves right here in our home turf, rather than far lesser wars, often proxy wars, at a very great distance from ourselves.
PS. Luce in this piece suggests America commit itself to feeding everyone in the world who would otherwise go without, at taxpayer expense, with food produced by American agriculture.
But we have not done it and are very unlikely to.
We won't even feed all our own.
Republican leaders need to remember what happened the last time America chose to be isolated
She quotes Henry Luce's The American Century in opposition to Trump's America First policy and his hammer blows against American globalism.
Luce published his famous article, "The American Century," in February 1941, seven months after all the European democracies -- except Great Britain -- had surrendered to Hitler's ruthless armies.
Luce traced this catastrophe to the end of World War I when the Senate rejected Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations and the United States began its retreat from world affairs.
In the 1920s and '30s, Americans embraced "the moral and practical bankruptcy" of isolationism, Luce wrote, and "failed to play their part as a world power."
That unwillingness to confront Hitler's aggression in the 1930s, he underscored, brought "disastrous consequences" to "all mankind."
All the same, the idea that we should or had to eventually enter the war to keep Hitler from conquering the world is exactly the sort of childish twaddle that it appears, and Luce himself said just that in this very piece.
Even the British, whose regime and empire Hitler vastly admired, could probably have negotiated a separate peace without accepting any degree of nazification.
And Luce in this piece concedes that an American defense of North America against all enemies, if that was what Americans wanted, could well have worked.
Anyway, there was no convincing argument against that notion.
For Luce, the question whether America should send armies to fight in Europe to stop Hitler depended on what Americans wanted to do.
Defend only their own democracy in their own country, or defend and advance "so-called democratic principles" and government throughout the world?
Isolationism or engagement?
In the latter part of his piece, Luce presents a brilliant and sweeping picture of what American internationalism could and should be.
It is, today, a stirring and powerful defense of the kind of international liberal order built up after the Second World War.
But what it really comes down to, today, is whether we continue our engagements in NATO, in the Far East, in Oceania, and elsewhere, along with participation in global institutions like the UN and the WTO and support for pan-European institutions like the EU.
All for the encouragement, construction, and consolidation of a civilization of global democratic capitalism.
Or instead let it - or even make it - all fall apart.
And risk enemies rising up everywhere, surrounding fortress North America and forcing us to risk fighting a war to save ourselves right here in our home turf, rather than far lesser wars, often proxy wars, at a very great distance from ourselves.
PS. Luce in this piece suggests America commit itself to feeding everyone in the world who would otherwise go without, at taxpayer expense, with food produced by American agriculture.
But we have not done it and are very unlikely to.
We won't even feed all our own.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
He facilitates globalism even as he continuously undermines it
Trump says defending tiny NATO ally Montenegro could result in World War III
He sounds like Pat Buchanan.
Montenegro, located on the Adriatic Sea in southeastern Europe, joined the NATO alliance during the Trump administration.
The nation, which borders Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Croatia, is geographically smaller than Connecticut and has a smaller population than Washington, D.C. Russia has condemned its NATO membership.
The most recent addition to the alliance became a topic of discussion Tuesday during a Fox News interview with the president in the wake of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Membership in NATO obligates the members to defend any other member that's attacked," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said to Trump.
"So let’s say Montenegro, which joined last year, is attacked. Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?"
Trump answered: "I understand what you're saying. I've asked the same question. Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. … They're very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and, congratulations, you're in World War III."
But he carries on like Hillary.
Despite his rhetoric on defense spending, the president signed onto an agreement at the NATO summit that reiterated the mutual defense language included in Article 5 of NATO's founding document.
The agreement the president signed last week notes that any "attack against one Ally will be regarded as an attack against us all."
Article 5 is the bedrock principle of NATO and the reason it is widely considered the most powerful military alliance in the world.
The last time NATO invoked Article 5 was after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Montenegro's prime minister was asked about Trump's interview Wednesday in parliament.
"He said that the Montenegrin people are brave and that he does not want the U.S. citizens to fight for others and for other NATO member states," Prime Minister Duško Marković said, according to an official translation provided to NBC News.
"He did not say that only on that occasion, but he also said the same at the NATO summit, you know it because he said it publicly, not in terms of justification of NATO's existence, but of NATO funding."
According to NBC News, citing official figures, Montenegro contributes more troops per capita to the war in Afghanistan than the United States.
Overall, Montenegro maintains a standing military of less than 2,000.
Montenegro joined NATO last year with the overwhelming consent of the U.S. Senate, which voted 97-2.
Trump himself signed off on the country's entrance into the alliance.
He sounds like Pat Buchanan.
Montenegro, located on the Adriatic Sea in southeastern Europe, joined the NATO alliance during the Trump administration.
The nation, which borders Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Croatia, is geographically smaller than Connecticut and has a smaller population than Washington, D.C. Russia has condemned its NATO membership.
The most recent addition to the alliance became a topic of discussion Tuesday during a Fox News interview with the president in the wake of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Membership in NATO obligates the members to defend any other member that's attacked," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said to Trump.
"So let’s say Montenegro, which joined last year, is attacked. Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?"
Trump answered: "I understand what you're saying. I've asked the same question. Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. … They're very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and, congratulations, you're in World War III."
But he carries on like Hillary.
Despite his rhetoric on defense spending, the president signed onto an agreement at the NATO summit that reiterated the mutual defense language included in Article 5 of NATO's founding document.
The agreement the president signed last week notes that any "attack against one Ally will be regarded as an attack against us all."
Article 5 is the bedrock principle of NATO and the reason it is widely considered the most powerful military alliance in the world.
The last time NATO invoked Article 5 was after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Montenegro's prime minister was asked about Trump's interview Wednesday in parliament.
"He said that the Montenegrin people are brave and that he does not want the U.S. citizens to fight for others and for other NATO member states," Prime Minister Duško Marković said, according to an official translation provided to NBC News.
"He did not say that only on that occasion, but he also said the same at the NATO summit, you know it because he said it publicly, not in terms of justification of NATO's existence, but of NATO funding."
According to NBC News, citing official figures, Montenegro contributes more troops per capita to the war in Afghanistan than the United States.
Overall, Montenegro maintains a standing military of less than 2,000.
Montenegro joined NATO last year with the overwhelming consent of the U.S. Senate, which voted 97-2.
Trump himself signed off on the country's entrance into the alliance.
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Is it time to leave, after all?
Time and past time, since the Cold War alliance system and both the Democrats' containment policy and the Republicans' rollback policy were products of absurd capitalist terror of and hatred for communism and, indeed, anything that smelled a bit like socialism.
And maybe, too, a lot of them drank their own Kool Aid, and actually believed of the Reds, as they had claimed they believed of Hitler, that they were out for world conquest.
And that, if we didn't oppose them everywhere in everything, they really could do it.
They really could conquer the whole world, including us.
And that, if they succeeded, the loss of freedom and democracy from the whole planet, the global triumph of totalitarian communism, would be irreversible, a fate so awful that the nuclear destruction of the world would actually be preferable.
Humbug, all of it.
As to the issue of the day, it's not just Trump who's a NATO skeptic.
It's a lot of Americans.
And it was, until Hillary became their candidate and Trump their opponent, a lot of the Americans in the Democratic Party - and I don't just mean the Bernie Sanders supporters - and a lot of people who spoke for them at MSNBC, as well as other major and conspicuous Democratic media.
But most of them have shut up since the election as Trump and the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party have stolen anti-globalism completely from all but the further and more anti-Democrat left.
And it's not just our alliance with Europe the skeptics are and have been long skeptical of.
Look at what Trump has really done in Korea, aided by Kim's cooperation in putting on an amazing propaganda show giving Trump a purely fictitious Cold War II triumph.
He has declared victory, weakened the US military defense of the peninsula, and publicly said he wants to remove US forces both from there and from Europe.
And Europeans see it, too.
For most of its history, the US has sought to avoid entanglement in Europe, and more or less succeeded from independence in 1776 until 1917 and the country’s reluctant entrance into the first world war.
Even then, most Americans were keen to leave again as soon as possible.
Congress turned its back on President Woodrow Wilson’s international ideals and refused to ratify the Versailles peace treaty or to allow the US to join the new League of Nations.
Congress was just as resistant to being sucked into the second world war, and the US could well have sat on the sidelines had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and then Germany declared war on the US four days later.
When the second world war was over in 1945, Americans again made plans to pull out, demobilising 90% of their troops.
But over the next two years it became increasingly clear European states were not going to recover economically without US help and that Stalin’s Soviet Union was looming as a global threat.
So the US stayed in Europe, rebuilding Germany, and forming Nato.
Now Europe is mostly prosperous, and the Soviet Union has gone. A revanchist Russia has taken its place, but it is a far punier power, with only the fifth biggest economy in Europe.
“Russia is not an existential threat. It’s not felt in London, Paris or Rome as an existential threat. It’s not a unifying threat,” the senior European official said.
With the cold war conditions that persuaded the US to stay engaged in Europe now in the past, some argue that it is inevitable Americans would at some point reconsider their role.
But the American military, diplomatic, and national security establishments are still globalist.
Globalism, after all, is their job.
And there are all those fans of all those books and essays about how awful the world would have been without America's past globalism, how awful it would be now without today's American globalism, and how awful it will be in the future without continuing, persistent, one might even say unrelenting American globalism.
All those people who think that America is, for the good of all mankind, the indispensable nation.
Or say they do to dress up their arrogance of power, their ambition, their delusions of national and personal grandeur, their imitation of global altruism, and their fear of losing such control as America, through its participation in those far-flung alliances as well as other global institutions, actually has of global events and developments.
These are the people who reject immediately and with angry contempt the least suggestion that, for most purposes and most of the time, the rest of the world and what happens in it is not our problem, no skin off our nose, no threat to us, and no business of ours.
These are the people who have irreversibly spun Russiagate into a seemingly endless barrage of pro-NATO, anti-Putin, anti-Russia propaganda and painted every effort of Trump to back off the most extreme of these globalist policies as bought and paid for treason.
Even as Trump rails against Nato, his administration – the Pentagon in particular – has been boosting its commitment to the alliance in resources and troops deployed on its eastern flank.
This month’s summit will see the creation of two new commands, one on the US east coast to oversee the protection of transatlantic sea lanes, and another in Germany to run logistics to ensure that the alliance can reinforce quickly when threatened.
The new commitments reflect the atlanticist convictions of the US military and diplomatic corps, who may well be seeking to compensate for Trump’s anti-Nato rhetoric.
And maybe, too, a lot of them drank their own Kool Aid, and actually believed of the Reds, as they had claimed they believed of Hitler, that they were out for world conquest.
And that, if we didn't oppose them everywhere in everything, they really could do it.
They really could conquer the whole world, including us.
Humbug, all of it.
As to the issue of the day, it's not just Trump who's a NATO skeptic.
It's a lot of Americans.
And it was, until Hillary became their candidate and Trump their opponent, a lot of the Americans in the Democratic Party - and I don't just mean the Bernie Sanders supporters - and a lot of people who spoke for them at MSNBC, as well as other major and conspicuous Democratic media.
But most of them have shut up since the election as Trump and the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party have stolen anti-globalism completely from all but the further and more anti-Democrat left.
And it's not just our alliance with Europe the skeptics are and have been long skeptical of.
Look at what Trump has really done in Korea, aided by Kim's cooperation in putting on an amazing propaganda show giving Trump a purely fictitious Cold War II triumph.
He has declared victory, weakened the US military defense of the peninsula, and publicly said he wants to remove US forces both from there and from Europe.
And Europeans see it, too.
For most of its history, the US has sought to avoid entanglement in Europe, and more or less succeeded from independence in 1776 until 1917 and the country’s reluctant entrance into the first world war.
Even then, most Americans were keen to leave again as soon as possible.
Congress turned its back on President Woodrow Wilson’s international ideals and refused to ratify the Versailles peace treaty or to allow the US to join the new League of Nations.
Congress was just as resistant to being sucked into the second world war, and the US could well have sat on the sidelines had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and then Germany declared war on the US four days later.
When the second world war was over in 1945, Americans again made plans to pull out, demobilising 90% of their troops.
But over the next two years it became increasingly clear European states were not going to recover economically without US help and that Stalin’s Soviet Union was looming as a global threat.
So the US stayed in Europe, rebuilding Germany, and forming Nato.
Now Europe is mostly prosperous, and the Soviet Union has gone. A revanchist Russia has taken its place, but it is a far punier power, with only the fifth biggest economy in Europe.
“Russia is not an existential threat. It’s not felt in London, Paris or Rome as an existential threat. It’s not a unifying threat,” the senior European official said.
With the cold war conditions that persuaded the US to stay engaged in Europe now in the past, some argue that it is inevitable Americans would at some point reconsider their role.
But the American military, diplomatic, and national security establishments are still globalist.
Globalism, after all, is their job.
And there are all those fans of all those books and essays about how awful the world would have been without America's past globalism, how awful it would be now without today's American globalism, and how awful it will be in the future without continuing, persistent, one might even say unrelenting American globalism.
All those people who think that America is, for the good of all mankind, the indispensable nation.
Or say they do to dress up their arrogance of power, their ambition, their delusions of national and personal grandeur, their imitation of global altruism, and their fear of losing such control as America, through its participation in those far-flung alliances as well as other global institutions, actually has of global events and developments.
These are the people who reject immediately and with angry contempt the least suggestion that, for most purposes and most of the time, the rest of the world and what happens in it is not our problem, no skin off our nose, no threat to us, and no business of ours.
These are the people who have irreversibly spun Russiagate into a seemingly endless barrage of pro-NATO, anti-Putin, anti-Russia propaganda and painted every effort of Trump to back off the most extreme of these globalist policies as bought and paid for treason.
Even as Trump rails against Nato, his administration – the Pentagon in particular – has been boosting its commitment to the alliance in resources and troops deployed on its eastern flank.
This month’s summit will see the creation of two new commands, one on the US east coast to oversee the protection of transatlantic sea lanes, and another in Germany to run logistics to ensure that the alliance can reinforce quickly when threatened.
The new commitments reflect the atlanticist convictions of the US military and diplomatic corps, who may well be seeking to compensate for Trump’s anti-Nato rhetoric.
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
If they don't pony up he will gladly begin American withdrawal from Europe
And that will be how he begins to back away from NATO, to back away from globalism.
Trump demands NATO spend more or face shifts in US military
President Donald Trump is demanding that Norway ramp up its defense spending as a NATO partner, according to a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Erna Solberg that was obtained by CNN.
The letter was one of a series that Trump sent to NATO allies, including Germany, Belgium, Canada and others, demanding they boost spending and threatening to shift the US military presence in Europe if they do not.
The letters were first reported in The New York Times on Monday.
. . . .
In advocating for increased defense spending, Trump joins his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both of whom also lobbied NATO allies to spend more on defense.
Robert Gates, who served as defense Secretary under both Obama and Bush, warned in 2011 that the US could lose interest in NATO if allies did not increase investment in their militaries.
Trump demands NATO spend more or face shifts in US military
President Donald Trump is demanding that Norway ramp up its defense spending as a NATO partner, according to a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Erna Solberg that was obtained by CNN.
The letter was one of a series that Trump sent to NATO allies, including Germany, Belgium, Canada and others, demanding they boost spending and threatening to shift the US military presence in Europe if they do not.
The letters were first reported in The New York Times on Monday.
. . . .
In advocating for increased defense spending, Trump joins his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both of whom also lobbied NATO allies to spend more on defense.
Robert Gates, who served as defense Secretary under both Obama and Bush, warned in 2011 that the US could lose interest in NATO if allies did not increase investment in their militaries.
Saturday, June 30, 2018
A step away from NATO?
Emmanuel Macron l’a fait.
Angela Merkel l’a fait.
Pourtant, on peut pardonner aux Européens s’ils ne voient pas la rencontre entre Donald Trump et Vladimir Poutine comme un rendez-vous ordinaire.
Il faut remettre les choses dans leur contexte.
Trump va s’entretenir avec Poutine alors qu’il n’est toujours pas d’accord avec ses propres services de renseignement sur l’ingérence russe dans la présidentielle américaine de 2016.
La Russie, a tweeté Trump le 28 juin, “maintient qu’elle ne s’est pas du tout mêlée de notre élection !”.
Les renseignements américains ne sont pas de cet avis et plusieurs pays européens ont aussi été la cible d’ingérences russes en période électorale.
Trump est également en conflit avec les alliés européens des États-Unis sur plusieurs dossiers, notamment la politique commerciale, le changement climatique et l’accord sur le nucléaire iranien.
Au vu de l’ambivalence du président américain concernant l’OTAN, les dirigeants européens discutent ouvertement d’une autonomie européenne en matière de défense.
Angela Merkel l’a fait.
Pourtant, on peut pardonner aux Européens s’ils ne voient pas la rencontre entre Donald Trump et Vladimir Poutine comme un rendez-vous ordinaire.
Il faut remettre les choses dans leur contexte.
Trump va s’entretenir avec Poutine alors qu’il n’est toujours pas d’accord avec ses propres services de renseignement sur l’ingérence russe dans la présidentielle américaine de 2016.
La Russie, a tweeté Trump le 28 juin, “maintient qu’elle ne s’est pas du tout mêlée de notre élection !”.
Les renseignements américains ne sont pas de cet avis et plusieurs pays européens ont aussi été la cible d’ingérences russes en période électorale.
Trump est également en conflit avec les alliés européens des États-Unis sur plusieurs dossiers, notamment la politique commerciale, le changement climatique et l’accord sur le nucléaire iranien.
Au vu de l’ambivalence du président américain concernant l’OTAN, les dirigeants européens discutent ouvertement d’une autonomie européenne en matière de défense.
Is this how Trump backs the US away from globalism?
Pentagon Mulls Withdrawing US Troops From Germany
But if he's doing that what does he need with a bigger military budget?
It makes little or no sense to maintain such sizable forces just to have them sit around in stateside barracks.
If we're backing away from our overseas alliances to defend America from North America, we certainly won't need such large and expensive forces.
WAPO reports
The Pentagon is analyzing the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany, amid growing tensions between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to people familiar with the work.
The effort follows Trump’s expression of interest in removing the troops, made during a meeting earlier this year with White House and military aides, U.S. officials said.
Trump was said to have been taken aback by the size of the U.S. presence, which includes about 35,000 active-duty troops, and complained that other countries were not contributing fairly to joint security or paying enough to NATO.
But if he's doing that what does he need with a bigger military budget?
It makes little or no sense to maintain such sizable forces just to have them sit around in stateside barracks.
If we're backing away from our overseas alliances to defend America from North America, we certainly won't need such large and expensive forces.
WAPO reports
The Pentagon is analyzing the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany, amid growing tensions between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to people familiar with the work.
The effort follows Trump’s expression of interest in removing the troops, made during a meeting earlier this year with White House and military aides, U.S. officials said.
Trump was said to have been taken aback by the size of the U.S. presence, which includes about 35,000 active-duty troops, and complained that other countries were not contributing fairly to joint security or paying enough to NATO.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Macron speaks up
To a joint session of congress, for NATO, for the EU, for American leadership, for the friendship and steadfast alliance tying France and America together, against protectionism and trade wars, for the Paris Accords and the need to deal globally with global warming, for the continued fight against ISIS and other Muslim Jihaders in Africa as well as the Middle East, for continuing but strengthening the Iran deal, for denuclearization of Korea, to repeated rounds of applause from both sides of the aisle, and to a standing ovation at the end.
And see this.
And see this.
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Italy craps its pants
As one EU headache subsides in Germany, another starts in Italy
In delivering a horrendously hung parliament, Italy’s voters had also turned their back on their mainstream ruling parties, with a majority backing populist, anti-establishment, hard-right and broadly EU-critical candidates.
The poor showing by Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia and Matteo Renzi’s Democratic party may be no surprise given Italy’s two decades of stagnation (its economy remains 6% smaller than in 2008, with unemployment stuck at 11%) and the migration crisis: more than 600,000 irregular migrants have arrived since 2014.
But the fact that the insurgent Five Star Movement finished as the country’s biggest party by far, and the anti-immigration La Lega as the strongest force on the right, raises questions not just about Italy’s capacity to pursue domestic reforms, but also its inclination to play any part in planned closer EU and eurozone integration.
Italy’s angry, fed-up voters rejected the path of economic modernisation and broad eurozone compliance followed by successive Italian governments since the financial and economic crisis, opting instead for parties whose generous campaign promises – a flat tax rate, a universal income, early retirement – would set them on a collision course with Europe’s budget constraints.
Demagogues Win as Europe’s Populist Tide Sweeps Italy
The Italian elections on Sunday were the latest powerful wave in a tidal turn of anti-immigrant, anti-European Union and antidemocratic fervor that has ravaged European politics.
The vote was a stinging rejection of traditional parties, and of national leadership that has been frustrated by a flood of migrants from Africa and the Middle East and stymied by years of stagnation.
While the populist parties that were the two biggest vote-getters were different in many ways, both want to abandon the euro and support for migrants, and shared conspiracy theories about bankers, vaccines and the 9/11 attacks.
. . . .
The big winner, with about 32 percent of the vote, was the Five Star Movement, a grass-roots mélange of libertarians, progressives, Euroskeptics and other disenchanted voters formed less than a decade ago by a comedian, and now led by a 31-year-old college dropout, Luigi Di Maio.
Next was the far-right League (formerly Northern League) led by Matteo Salvini, 44.
An enthusiastic fan of Marine Le Pen’s National Front and Donald Trump, Mr. Salvini fanned sadly familiar flames of nationalism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia, promising, among other things, “cleansing” Italy of immigrants, threatening force.
The League ran with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.
If there was a sliver of good news it was that the party of Mr. Berlusconi, forerunner of today’s populists who was forced out as prime minister in 2011 in a swirl of sex scandals and legal troubles, took only 14 percent of the vote.
The winners are pro-Russian, anti-NATO, strongly nativist promising mass deportations of migrants, and make the usual ridiculous, blowhard promises of wild economic successes.
Italy’s Frightening Election Result
“While we were sleeping, Putin won the Italian election,” the Twitter user Southpaw wrote this morning.
Far-right and anti-Europe parties did very well in that election.
It’s still unclear who the new prime minister will be.
But Italy’s new government will likely join the list of governments — including those in Hungary, Poland and, yes, the United States — hostile to immigrants and even to democratic values.
“After Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France beat back populist and far-right insurgencies in the past year, Europe had seemed to be enjoying a reprieve from the forces threatening its unity and values,” The Times’s Jason Horowitz writes.
“That turned out to be short lived.”
In delivering a horrendously hung parliament, Italy’s voters had also turned their back on their mainstream ruling parties, with a majority backing populist, anti-establishment, hard-right and broadly EU-critical candidates.
The poor showing by Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia and Matteo Renzi’s Democratic party may be no surprise given Italy’s two decades of stagnation (its economy remains 6% smaller than in 2008, with unemployment stuck at 11%) and the migration crisis: more than 600,000 irregular migrants have arrived since 2014.
But the fact that the insurgent Five Star Movement finished as the country’s biggest party by far, and the anti-immigration La Lega as the strongest force on the right, raises questions not just about Italy’s capacity to pursue domestic reforms, but also its inclination to play any part in planned closer EU and eurozone integration.
Italy’s angry, fed-up voters rejected the path of economic modernisation and broad eurozone compliance followed by successive Italian governments since the financial and economic crisis, opting instead for parties whose generous campaign promises – a flat tax rate, a universal income, early retirement – would set them on a collision course with Europe’s budget constraints.
Demagogues Win as Europe’s Populist Tide Sweeps Italy
The Italian elections on Sunday were the latest powerful wave in a tidal turn of anti-immigrant, anti-European Union and antidemocratic fervor that has ravaged European politics.
The vote was a stinging rejection of traditional parties, and of national leadership that has been frustrated by a flood of migrants from Africa and the Middle East and stymied by years of stagnation.
While the populist parties that were the two biggest vote-getters were different in many ways, both want to abandon the euro and support for migrants, and shared conspiracy theories about bankers, vaccines and the 9/11 attacks.
. . . .
The big winner, with about 32 percent of the vote, was the Five Star Movement, a grass-roots mélange of libertarians, progressives, Euroskeptics and other disenchanted voters formed less than a decade ago by a comedian, and now led by a 31-year-old college dropout, Luigi Di Maio.
Next was the far-right League (formerly Northern League) led by Matteo Salvini, 44.
An enthusiastic fan of Marine Le Pen’s National Front and Donald Trump, Mr. Salvini fanned sadly familiar flames of nationalism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia, promising, among other things, “cleansing” Italy of immigrants, threatening force.
The League ran with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.
If there was a sliver of good news it was that the party of Mr. Berlusconi, forerunner of today’s populists who was forced out as prime minister in 2011 in a swirl of sex scandals and legal troubles, took only 14 percent of the vote.
The winners are pro-Russian, anti-NATO, strongly nativist promising mass deportations of migrants, and make the usual ridiculous, blowhard promises of wild economic successes.
Italy’s Frightening Election Result
“While we were sleeping, Putin won the Italian election,” the Twitter user Southpaw wrote this morning.
Far-right and anti-Europe parties did very well in that election.
It’s still unclear who the new prime minister will be.
But Italy’s new government will likely join the list of governments — including those in Hungary, Poland and, yes, the United States — hostile to immigrants and even to democratic values.
“After Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France beat back populist and far-right insurgencies in the past year, Europe had seemed to be enjoying a reprieve from the forces threatening its unity and values,” The Times’s Jason Horowitz writes.
“That turned out to be short lived.”
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Yes. But not.
Trump’s Still Gunning for NATO
Josh Marshall is perfectly right to make this argument that there is nothing like a NATO fund to which anybody could owe back payments.
But Trump is saying that over all that time that country X did not carry its weight everybody else, mostly the US, was carrying its weight.
And for that payback is due, not to some imaginary NATO defense fund but to the US.
He just hasn't made the point completely clear.
In his view, each member of the NATO alliance should spend as much on its own defense as we spend on its defense - not absolutely in dollars, d-marks, or whatever (so far, anyway), but according to its ability, as a percentage of GDP.
And if they haven't they owe us.
Not NATO.
Us.
Not an easy point to dispute.
Which is not to say it's indisputable, but so far the left is avoiding even engaging the point by instead leaning heavily on the always entirely believable "Trump is ignorant, confused, and incoherent" line.
Worse than John McCain in a senior moment.
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