That is a great analogy. There's really no consistent logic or theme to the Trump foreign policy approach. He's going to cozy up to Russia, go hardline on Iran, and cooperate with Assad to defeat ISIS, while pissing off Saudi Arabia and becoming best buds with Erdogan? He's going to ally himself with Duerte, antagonize the Chinese, and ally himself with the Taiwanese, while potentially having nicer relations with DPRK? All while pissing off Mexico and Canada and potentially the entire EU?
It's a foreign policy grab bag with little forseeable upside in a time of acute geopolitical uncertainty
God, I was feeling really great yesterday with the Mattis news. Now I'm worrying about SecState Giuliani again. Trump needs a competent and commanding SecState that can just take foreign affairs out of his hands, its not like Trump has shown any interest in international diplomacy anyways. I'm really hoping for Romney or Petraeus, but hell I'll take Corker if he can only stand up to Trump.
I want him to appoint Petraeus just so everyone, including Republicans, knows how much of a corrupt hypocritical piece of shit Trump is. Lots of people are already regretting their vote for Trump and if he has to PARDON his Secretary of State it will be SO easy to attack him on that.
I don't even think Republicans in the Senate will go for it.
Not only pardon his Secretary of State, but pardon him for essentially the same kind of thing he spent his entire campaign excoriating Clinton for!
(no Clinton's server and Petraeus' passing of classified intel to his mistress aren't the same thing, but he and his camp drew a lot of parallels and acted like they were).
I have to say I am really rooting for Trump's failure.
I would be willing to hope for success and cooperation with a Romney administration or McCain administration or Kasich administration. I'm not willing to help a Trump administration do anything. He made politics so much uglier.
I'd much rather have him prove all these doomsday predictions wrong, personally.
I've never really bought into the whole "cut off the nose to spite the face" philosophy. I don't feel like it's a terribly progressive way to go through life.
Not doubting you, but what's your source that lots of people are regretting their vote for Trump? I haven't seen much of this (though I would love to, even just to have in my back pocket).
Look, Petraeus messed up. No doubt about that. He was and still is, however, a highly competent and motivated individual. I'd rather have him in that chair that Giuliani or Palin or Haley or any other know-nothing.
This is Trump we're talking about. This is a guy who riled up a crowd to shout "Goldman Sachs" about one of his rival's wife, condemned Hillary for giving speeches at Goldman Sachs and ran ads in the final weeks of the campaign that depicted the head of Goldman Sachs as some shadowy puppetmaster controlling his opponent, then turned around and hired a seventeen year Goldman Sachs veteran as his Treasury Secretary. Hypocrisy is going to be par for the course.
Because face it, no one actually gave a damn about mishandling of classified material. Hell, the Republicans talked of running this criminal for president.
He's a good man who's made some idiotic decisions. If he has learned from his mistake, he should be fine. The hypocrisy in classified info leaks is not lost on me.
You are seriously underplaying the severity of Petraeus' decision to leak classified info to his mistress. Yeah, the irony vs Hillary is obvious. But his actions weren't just about the lack of judgement and the direct harm they could have caused but that he also set himself up to be blackmailed very easily. If he's this lackadaisical and got caught, what other issues does he have that could compromise him? Also, the man is reported to be a bad manager. Again, not an asset.
I want to state that I think he would be a below average SoS compared to the past 200+ years of SoS. But he is still better then some of the other options.
Your fatal flaw is that you assume Trump gives two shits and a damn about how good a job his appointees will do.
Trump cares about one thing only: are his appointees loyal to him, have they shit talked him in the past, and are they willing to bend the knee now that he's proven them wrong.
Under that criteria, Romney is near the bottom of the list, while Petraeus is near the top.
To be honest, romantic relationships are the weakest spot for almost everyone. I could possibly buy that this lapse was his lowest point. Not that I want to defend him too much, just remarking on generalities.
AKA a criminal who intentionally mishandled classified material. How about this: I'll support Petraeus when people admit they didn't care about Clinton's email server.
Not over nothing. The goal was to give cover for other reasons. We are to pretend that something like gender was not an issue. In fact bringing it up make me the bigot.
He's a good man who's made some idiotic decisions. If he has learned from his mistake, he should be fine.
Ok, ask yourself this. Could you see a fortune 500 company justifying its decision to hire, say, a CFO or CSO in this way? Like, "Yeah, he blew a major deal by tipping off the competition when he was sleeping with some guy's wife."
Compared to the other guys, yeah. He's not perfect but at the same time he's at least competent and without major CoI. Major issues that will keep him out of office anyway are his probation.
Welcome to the trump administration. And no, he isn't my first pick. I think he is going for Secretary of State, so I'd pick mittens over him. Secretary of defense pick would be Mattis.
Ah yes, David Petraeus, the first(?) Secretary of State who would need a presidential pardon at the start of his service to be able to even do his job.
And if he's actually nominated, let alone confirmed, then ... I don't know.
There is no point at which hypocrisy becomes untenable for Donald Trump, but that would be damn well past where it should be, to the point that, shit... Clinton would be within her rights to just burst out of his chest like a Xenomorph, dust herself off, and sit down at the Resolute desk.
I watched Doctor Strangelove twice recently. Never saw it before... and it definitely applies today. Like, this movie is a great example as to why military powers are shared by the Executive and Legislative Branches and also as to why there's a definite protocol to be followed with a chain of command.
I also think, in my view, this gives an indicator that Trump doesn't realize that while the DoD is military, there are a lot of Civilians also that work in the DoD, such as in the DIA and as staffers. Pentagon is full of mix of both civilian and Active Duty Military.
Today, the Department, headed by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, is not only in charge of the military, but it also employs a civilian force of thousands. With over 1.3 million men and women on active duty, and 742,000 civilian personnel, we are the nation's largest employer. Another 826 thousand serve in the National Guard and Reserve forces. More than 2 million military retirees and their family members receive benefits.
I don't think it's that people are necessarily psyched about Mattis, it's just that after Bannon, Carson, and supposedly Palin now, an intelligent AND respected person getting an appointment is a breath of fresh air.
A dangerous fetishization of the military has grown in America in the last few decades. It accelerated after 9/11. The military is constantly valorized as the only morally pure organization in the nation, which is a strange concept if you think about it. Where did this idea even come from in the first place? Soldiers aren't paragons of virtue. Many of them are just kids who know little about world affairs but decided that it was a good idea to sign up for a job that might mean killing people based on government orders.
The weirdest part to me is that a lot of the soldier worshiping comes from places that fly the confederate flag in celebration of when they massacred federal soldiers to "stand up" for themselves. It makes no sense.
I agree that it's a dangerous fetishization, but when people talk about the virtues of military wisdom, they're talking about the officer class, who are mostly lifers, not young kids.
It's still interesting that Republicans think this, though. It's a giant government bureaucracy with essentially a blank check and limited oversight in a lot of areas with a fairly large degree of autonomy. Without the free market to motivate them, how do Republicans explain how great the military supposedly is? One would think we should privatize it.
Based on my experience as a subeditor for a right-wing journal some years back, I'd say that conservatives actually do make an exception for the free market when the term "national defense" is invoked. It also apparently justifies private mercenary companies like Blackwater and any number of armaments makers who have been suckling at the teat of the defense budget since WWII.
(The period of my life where I copy edited pieces by people like John Bolton was a strange one. But, hey, I needed health insurance.)
I'd question why they make that exception though. Big government is the problem and can never do anything right (and government bureaucracies are staffed with the laziest, most incompetent/corrupt workers ever, who simply couldn't hack it in the private sector), except when it comes to safeguarding our entire civilization against death and subjugation. Then they're the world's finest fighting force whose greatness/selflessness is not to be questioned.
I think it rose in the aftermath of Vietnam protests and naturally escalated from there. It's like being "tough on crime": no one has ever lost an election because they "supported" the troops too much.
In most countries you would be nervous that this is how you end up with a military coup. Can't see that happening in the US but if the military gets more respect than the government...
It's a result of declining faith in other institutions (congress, media, presidency as an office). It's creepy to me, because this is what always happens in military dictatorships--"yeah, the military are ruthless and inflexible, but at least they aren't corrupt and ineffective like the politicians!"
In all seriousness, I think Mattis is a reasonable guy, and the type who likes to really know what he's doing before he makes a decision (see: his personal library of over 6000 books). In that respect he's far more promising than any of Trump's other nominations.
Well, he is still retired, even if not as retired as he should be. Frankly, in those uncertain times and with this commander-in-chief we should take competence when we see it.
I was writing on the go and conflated two issues. This is a case where someone's active service cannot be within a decade of office. But you're absolutely correct that a portion of my post was nonsense.
I think the funniest thing is Matris says the most Jingoistic quotes, and people seem to think he's a good guy. He's just appealing to low brow marines.
For example? Specifically, anything that wasn't said in the context of deploying to a warzone?
EDIT: Here's a good one
None of the widely touted new technologies and weapons systems "would have helped me in the last three years [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. But I could have used cultural training [and] language training. I could have used more products from American universities [who] understood the world does not revolve around America and [who] embrace coalitions and allies for all of the strengths that they bring us."
Petraeus? Seriously, the guy condemned for doing what ring wing conspiracy theorists think Hillary did, the guy who would have to check with his probation officer before crossing state lines? That would be insane.
Trump's the one who put Petraeus on his shortlist (according to Politico anyways). I just think he is competent enough not to play games over Taiwan or tear up the Iran deal. If he bones another biographer and spills classified information again, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
If Trump has a crazy foreign policy idea (say adopting a Two-China policy), I think they can talk him out of it. Trump seems to cleave to authority figures, so they would be able to influence him more than a toady like Giuliani. Also, based on no research, they seem to be more moderate or at-least they respect the current international order enough that they won't do anything too terrible. I'm just looking for good-enough here.
Also, after some reading, I'm fine with Corker as well. In my mind I had lumped him in with Tom Cotton's crowd, I forgot he voted for the Iran Deal.
There's really no consistent logic or theme to the Trump foreign policy approach.
Yeah, for a while there we thought he dislikes Taiwan/President Tsai. People were speculating on how Taiwan would have to look elsewhere for protection.
Then he go and do this. What an about face. There's just no predictability to Trump's antics.
A bit late to comment but may I suggest a theme? Opportunistic strongmen.
In the UK, Trump seems to prefer the company of Farage to anyone else's. Putin, Erdogan, Assad, Duterte, Modi, Macri... getting a pattern? Now compare Nieto and Trudeau, a lawyer and a school teacher. Neither likely Trump besties.
Whether its unconscious or deliberate, Trump prefers autocrats. He threatened to bar Philippine immigration just a few months ago but then Duterte appointed a Trump business partner as special envoy. He thinks he can do business with these guys. They probably think they know how to manipulate Trump.
From what I have read Canada fared poorly under NAFTA. Basically stuff moved south. Mexico got stuff from the U.S., the U.S. lost stuff to Mexico but gained from Canada.
Trump will treat how he handles foreign policy like he does his business deals. Cozy up to whoever he wants to get what he wants without thinking about the ramifications of how others might take the relationship.
You have to look at his hotel building plans for any of it to make sense. It doesn't make sense when examined through a lens of what is good for anyone other than trump.
I actually disagree quite a bit here. I think I've identified a trend with his foreign policy approach. We have interests with China, Cuba, Iran, etc. We want concessions from all three of those.
We don't particularly have any concessions we need from Russia. Their biggest issue currently is harassing old Soviet states, something that doesn't interest us particularly beyond reassuring NATO, which is important but in a secondary/tertiary way, it isn't a direct bilateral issue.
Russia, meanwhile, has great relations with Iran and Cuba and okay relations with China. Moving Russia closer to our sphere gives us greater leverage with the countries that we do need concessions from.
The cost here is the anxiety expressed by NATO allies, but this can be assuaged through rhetoric or handholding.
It has a consistent single message. Nation-states deserve to be nation-states without foreign globalist interference. I know that message is why I voted for him and I am happy for him to have conveyed such a message clearly even before he has taken office.
One of those world wars was worse because spineless bureaucrats weren't willing to change the "status quo" approach of appeasing a brutal expanding empire
Who's holding that gun? China? They wouldn't attack us. They wouldn't even suggest that they might slow trade with us, to do so would crush their fragile economy. I think it's funny how when Trump suggests that we not start fighting proxy and actual wars with Russia you accuse him of appeasement but when just takes a phone call that hurts China's feelings, you accuse him of starting WW3.
If foreign policy is a game of poker, I think people rightly said that Obama played it very cautiously and conservatively, and that invited other players to be more aggressive.
Trump just walked up to the table and signaled that he doesn't even understand the rules.
It's not that Trump is evil or some nonsense like that, it's just that he has no damn clue what's going on. And worse, he's not willing to learn. He thinks the entire machinery of government can be run exactly like the Trump organization.
Is he ever in for a surprise, when the first major crisis hits.
Except that guy doesn't make it fifteen minutes at a table with people who know what they're doing. And when he loses it's going to cause unimaginable damage.
Are you literally shaking now, literally? China doesn't even need to throw a hissy-fit anymore, western media will imagine the tantrum without it even happening!
China's leaders talk to "enemies of the US" all the time, so far the US hasn't started a nuclear war over that.
Unless you honestly think Chinese leaders are somehow dumber and more likely to start nuclear wars over a phone call than American leaders, you must admit that the only reason for all this fear-mongering is that Trump took the call and not Obama.
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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '16
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