Monday, September 10, 2018

Publius Tacitus — Is Donald Trump Going to Do the Syria Backflip?

Forget about the Mueller investigation. It is irrelevant. Trump’s Presidency hinges on what he does in Syria in the coming weeks. The choice is unambiguous. Maintain his commitment to non-intervention that spills over into nation building or start acting like George W Bush and Barack Obama. Either Trump meant what he said during the campaign or he was lying. He has no middle ground here.
Part of the problem afflicting Donald Trump is his reliance on his media image as a tough, hard nosed business guy who fires people if they do not measure up or are failures. But Trump is really more a confused pussy cat. He has, with a few exceptions, been pretty passive on appointing people to serve in his Administration. The Trump foreign policy team is populated by a toxic mix of NeoCons and Hillary Clinton accolytes. Not exercising control over the personnel who are supposed to carry water for him means he does not have control of the policy.… 
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Is Donald Trump Going to Do the Syria Backflip?
Publius Tacitus

Wait it get better (worse).
The Trump administration is considering introducing economic sanctions against China for violations of human rights, citing Uygur minority internment camps, the New York Times reported Monday.
According to sources cited by the newspaper, the idea has been discussed around the White House, Treasury Department and State Department for months already.
Aside from the usual economic sanctions, the US is also considering limits on surveillance technology sold to China that Beijing allegedly uses to monitor Uygurs, the newspaper reports.
Elect Donald Trump and get Hillary Clinton. Why do Americans bother to vote anyway?

Sputnik International
White House Mulls Sanctions Against China Over Muslim Camps – Report

See also

Statement of A. Wess Mitchell
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
U.S. Strategy Towards the Russian Federation
August 21, 2018
Defend Democracy Press
The US-Neocon project of a world war against Russia and China and its implications for Europe

See also

The American Conservative
Is Donald Trump Going Full Neocon in Syria?
Patrick J. Buchanan




4 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

I don't understand why Syria is so important to control. Turkey, yes, Syria, not for US.

Syria is important to Russia, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Jordan... But not United States.

Ryan Harris said...

If the United States opposition to China is about more than trade but about the liberal systems, standing up for Uighurs should be important, even for Donald Trump. Trump supports a less extreme liberal ideology, pragmatic but still is firmly a liberal order guy despite the claims of lefties in the USA.

Tom Hickey said...

Who controls MENA controls the world, since this is were the oil and natural gas is.

OK, the US supposedly self-sufficient in oil and gas, but the point is that US global hegemony hangs on control of vital resources, with the ability to deny access.

Same with control of the financial system.

This is all of one piece and it is about maintaining empire and expanding the periphery until it includes the whole world.

This is why I say that understanding geopolitics, geostrategy and geo-tactics is crucial in understanding everything else. I would also add understanding economic geography in addition to political geography, and social demographics. Of course it is also necessary to understand international relations, political theory, social science, and history, too.

Without knowing what's really going on — the hidden agenda — doing economics is waste of time practically speaking, especially focusing on particular nations in macro without reference to the world system as it actually exists and operates.

I post links and comment with this in mind although I don't always do so politically. Fortunately, some top people are blogging and otherwise making their views known on social media gratis. (There is more behind paywalls but I don't include links to this.)

This amount and level of information — public intelligence, really — is unprecedented

Tom Hickey said...

If the United States opposition to China is about more than trade but about the liberal systems, standing up for Uighurs should be important, even for Donald Trump. Trump supports a less extreme liberal ideology, pragmatic but still is firmly a liberal order guy despite the claims of lefties in the USA.

But is the story true? There are reasons to think it is not. I was reading a piece yesterday criticizing a media report that grossly mistranslated the Chinese and therefore basing the story on blatant lies. Stupidly, they quoted the Chinese. Did they think that all readers are ignorant of Chinese?