Well said Red
The question I keep coming back to is who benefits from all this chaos?
And the answer keeps coming back Russia and China.
Since WWII the U.S. has been the leader of the Western industrialized countries. We have built alliances, made sacrifices to bolster those alliances, and advocated for the prioritization of principles over profit. From the Marshall Plan, to the U.N., to NATO, to our trade policies and foreign aid. Our President seems to never miss an opportunity to undermine our long standing policies and alliances. Who benefits? those outside of the existing power structure. I have been reluctant to believe President Trump is a Russian plant, but I can't ignore the effects of insulting our allies at every opportunity, aggrandizing and normalizing the totalitarians and despots, and creating chaos in the world order that has served American interests well for 3/4 of a century.
There was an Afghanistan War U.S. Army Vet, Dan Helmer, running for congress here in Virginia. He lost, but he had a commercial where he called President Trump "the greatest threat to our democracy." When it first ran I thought, BS, that is too far over the top. It may not have been the best political strategy, but I have to wonder if he wasn't accurate.
There is an article explaining Trump's foreign policy, recently written by editor Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, and appearing in that periodical. It's entitled "A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: 'We're America, B***h'". This article has been cited and summarized by many sources in both print and broadcast media since it was published on June 11th. In a way, it's really a self evident description for anyone who has followed Trump's words and actions toward the world beyond our borders.
Unfortunetly, I cannot leave a direct link to this article, as the last few sentences include a profanity that would not be permitted. Of the many summaries of the article, the one at this link X's out those profanities. This link also allows one to find that original short article, or one can google it, which is well worth a read in understanding Trump's foreign policy. Here is the summary link, but below that I am going to include excerpts from Goldberg's piece, since none of the summaries include everything Goldberg learned. The very last paragraph from the Goldberg article, the last paragraph in this comment, is something I agree with. Since I therefore believe this president is very much acting against the interests of the country I love, why anyone would conclude that my opposition to this man is nothing but "left wing hate" is absolutely beyond me. How could I possibly not speak out against a president who is acting against the best interests of my country and undermining the Western alliance?
The profanity-free summary article, followed by excerpts from Goldberg's original piece:
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...-foreign-doctrine-america-20180611-story.html
"Over the past couple of months, I’ve asked a number of people close to the president to provide me with short descriptions of what might constitute the Trump Doctrine. I’ve been trying, as part of a larger project, to understand the revolutionary nature of Trump’s approach to world affairs. This task became even more interesting over the weekend, when Trump made his most ambitious move yet to dismantle the U.S.-led Western alliance....
Trumpian chaos is, in fact, undergirded by a comprehensible worldview, a number of experts have insisted. The Brookings Institution scholar (and frequent
Atlantic contributor)
Thomas Wright argued in
a January 2016 essay that Trump’s views are both discernible and explicable. Wright, who published his analysis at a time when most everyone in the foreign-policy establishment considered Trump’s candidacy to be a farce, wrote that Trump loathes the liberal international order and would work against it as president; he wrote that Trump also dislikes America’s military alliances, and would work against them; he argued that Trump believes in his bones that the global economy is unfair to the U.S.; and, finally, he wrote that Trump has an innate sympathy for “authoritarian strongmen.”
Wright was prophetic. Trump’s actions these past weeks, and my conversations with administration officials and friends and associates of Trump, suggest that the president will be acting on his beliefs in a more urgent, and focused, way than he did in the first year of his presidency, and that the pace of potentially cataclysmic disruption will quicken in the coming days. And so, understanding Trump’s foreign-policy doctrine is more urgent than ever.
The third-best encapsulation of the Trump Doctrine, as outlined by a senior administration official over lunch a few weeks ago, is this: “No Friends, No Enemies.”.........Trump, this official said, doesn’t believe that the U.S. should be part of any alliance at all. “We have to explain to him that countries that have worked with us together in the past expect a level of loyalty from us, but he doesn’t believe that this should factor into the equation,” the official said.
The second-best self-description of the Trump Doctrine I heard was this, from a senior national-security official: “Permanent destabilization creates American advantage.” The official who described this to me said Trump believes that keeping allies and adversaries alike perpetually off-balance necessarily benefits the United States, which is still the most powerful country on Earth. When I noted that America’s adversaries seem far less destabilized by Trump than do America’s allies, this official argued for strategic patience. “They’ll see over time that it doesn’t pay to argue with us.”
The best distillation of the Trump Doctrine I heard, though, came from a senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking. I was talking to this person several weeks ago, and I said, by way of introduction, that I thought it might perhaps be too early to discern a definitive Trump Doctrine.
“No,” the official said. “There’s definitely a Trump Doctrine.”
“What is it?” I asked. Here is the answer I received:
“The Trump Doctrine is ‘We’re America, B***h.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.”
It struck me almost immediately that this was the most acute, and attitudinally honest, description of the manner in which members of Trump’s team, and Trump himself, understand their role in the world.
I asked this official to explain the idea. “Obama apologized to everyone for everything. He felt bad about everything.” President Trump, this official said, “doesn’t feel like he has to apologize for anything America does.”
“We’re America, B***h” is not only a characterologically accurate collective self-appraisal—the gangster fronting, the casual misogyny, the insupportable confidence—but it is also perfectly Rorschachian. To Trump’s followers, “We’re America, B***h” could be understood as a middle finger directed at a cold and unfair world, one that no longer respects American power and privilege. To much of the world, however, and certainly to most practitioners of foreign and national-security policy, “We’re America, B***h"would be understood as self-isolating, and self-sabotaging.
But what is mainly interesting about “We’re America, B***h” is its delusional quality. Donald Trump is pursuing policies that undermine the Western alliance, empower Russia and China, and demoralize freedom-seeking people around the world. The United States could be made weaker—perhaps permanently—by the implementation of the Trump Doctrine.
