Daily Archives: July 4, 2017

More than five months into Donald Trump's presidency, American adversaries and allies alike are adjusting to a new era in which Washington seeks its own idiosyncratic and unpredictable "America First" path.

In Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, governments are assessing shifting US priorities and in some cases seeking alternative sources of leadership and partnership in the belief that America has stepped back.

Trump's unpopularity abroad is forcing leaders to consider their own political positions, before getting too close to the American President -- even if they seek to preserve Washington's still vital global role as the guarantor of liberal market economics and democracy.

That dynamic will be on display during Trump's second visit to Europe this week, just weeks after his first transcontinental trip opened new gaps between Washington and some longtime allies.

Trump starts in Poland, which is hoping for his strongest affirmation yet of NATO security guarantees. Then he will head to the G20 summit in Germany, where he may confront hostility deepened by his decision to exit the Paris climate accord.

The Trump administration refutes the notion that it has downgraded American leadership, arguing that Trump's foreign trips, flurry of meetings and frequent calls with foreign presidents and prime ministers shows intense engagement.

But increasingly, top foreign policymakers from Germany to Iraq and Canada to Asia are contemplating a period when US leadership that many took for granted may be less evident in global affairs, after Trump turned his back on multilateral trade deals and downplayed multinational institutions and agreements.

"Whoever believes the problems of this world can be solved by isolationism and protectionism is making a tremendous error," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament last week, in a clear shot across Trump's bow.

It was not the first time the German leader, running for a fourth term in September's election, had rebuked the President.

After Trump visited Europe in May, and declined to reaffirm NATO's Article 5 principle of mutual self defense during a visit to the Western alliance headquarters, Merkel said US allies needed to rethink their place in the world.

"We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands," she said.

Canada, America's closest geographical ally, is also watching.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland profoundly thanked the United States for being "truly the indispensable nation" that had ensured 70 years of peace and prosperity in a speech to parliament last month.

But she acknowledged that halcyon period was ending.

"The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership, puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course," Freeland said.

"For Canada that course must be the renewal, indeed the strengthening, of the postwar multilateral order."

It is not just America's most traditional allies that sense that America is pulling back from the world, amid a perception that diplomacy has been de-emphasized and the State Department downgraded in a Trump administration more respectful of military leadership.

Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi told CNN's Christiane Amanpour last week that the United States was "absent" in maintaining global security and that there was a "vacuum in the overall leadership in the world."

"The Americans need to ... get back to their role as an international power, an important international power." Allawi said.

Despite an impending victory over ISIS by Iraqi forces in western Mosul, with US support, Allawi argued that Washington lacked "clear cut policies" for tackling extremism and a future strategy for the Middle East.

Some American competitors see an opening.

At the Global Economic Forum in Davos, a few days before Trump was inaugurated, China's President Xi Jinping, offered a vision of a world turned on its head when he offered his own nation as a guardian of free trade, globalization and efforts to combat climate change -- areas where the United States had formerly taken the leadership role.

"Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean you cannot escape from," Xi told delegates at the Swiss mountain resort.

Over the last few days, Trump has spoken to leaders of US allies in the Gulf, amid a showdown over terrorist financing that has led to the isolation of Qatar, and has also had conversations with counterparts in Germany and Italy.

In contrast to the way Trump's first trip to Europe was seen across the Atlantic, national security adviser H.R. McMaster argued that the President had reinvigorated US alliances which Republicans believed eroded under the Obama administration.

"America First ... does not mean America alone. President Trump has demonstrated a commitment to American alliances because strong alliances further American security and American interests," McMaster told reporters last week.

While much of America's future foreign policy course remains uncertain to foreign states, Washington has made some clear moves.

It significantly stiffened resistance to Iran in the Middle East, a reorientation that was the underlying theme of Trump's first stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel.

But at the same time, there is no real clarity on the Trump administration's strategy on Syria following the apparently imminent eradication of ISIS strongholds. Iran envisages a future Shiite crescent of influence, that would stretch from Tehran through Iraq, Syria and into Lebanon, backed by Russia, and would change the balance of power in the region.

It is unclear how actively the Trump administration plans to resist such a scenario, in concert with allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt and Jordan.

In Afghanistan, the Pentagon dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on ISIS targets and plans to use its new autonomy under Trump to send more troops to train and assist Afghan soldiers.

But the administration has yet to lay out a detailed vision of how it sees Afghanistan's future or long-term US war aims.

In Asia, Trump dropped his hostility toward China in an effort to convince Beijing to do more to rein in its volatile ally North Korea amid a nuclear and missile crisis. But he now seems to have concluded the effort failed, and imposed sanctions against a Chinese bank with links to the pariah state, and approved a $1.4 billion arms package to Taiwan, heightening tensions with Beijing.

But Trump, despite saber rattling, has yet to explain to Americans any new approaches on how he will thwart Pyongyang's bid to put a nuclear warhead onto a weapon that could reach the US mainland.

It's not just uncertainty about American global strategy that is convincing some allied leaders to look past the United States.

Trump's unpopularity makes it much more difficult for them politically to support him. The recent Pew Global Attitudes poll showed Trump with rock bottom approval ratings across the world. Only in Russia and Israel did more people trust him to do the right thing than former President Barack Obama.

The former President, meanwhile, has stayed mostly out of the limelight. But Monday, Obama couldn't resist during a Seoul conference organized by South Korea's Chosun Ilbo media group, saying the Paris climate accord won't vanish despite the "temporary absence" of American leadership.

See more here:

The world looks past Donald Trump - CNN

Trump, beginning around 2011, seized on the issue -- which had been percolating in the fever swamps on the far right since Obama won -- and used it to cast himself as the lone voice among conservatives willing to stand up to Obama (and political correctness).

That the whole thing was, wait for it, a totally false conspiracy theory was beside the point for Trump. It proved useful to him, so he used it.

Given that origin story, we shouldn't be terribly surprised that Trump's willingness to engage in conspiracy theories as a candidate has continued since he entered the White House.

Take Trump's tweets on Saturday alone. They amounted to a conspiracy theorist's dream.

Let's take these one by one.

The first tweet deals with MSNBC parting ways with host Greta van Susteren. Van Susteren, in a series of tweets, offered no evidence that she left because of any pressure from the bosses that she be more anti-Trump.

In each of these examples, what Trump does is similar: He takes something that's happened and insists (or insinuates) that there's something more to the story. Something people aren't telling you. Something the "elites" are covering up.

He, of course, provides no evidence to back up those claims. That's because there isn't any evidence. What Trump is doing in each of these three tweets is throwing just enough red meat to the conspiracy-minded to keep them coming back for more (and more)(and more).

What Trump is relying on is the self-fulfilling prophecy that drives all good conspiracy theorists. He knows more than "they" will let him say! Anyone who doubts Trump is part of the conspiracy! And so on and so forth.

Now, Trump didn't create conspiracy theories. He is just taking advantage of their rise, a rise fueled by the NSA's massive program of personal data collection exposed by Edward Snowden, Trump backer Alex Jones and a thousand and one Reddit sub-Reddits that bring together like-minded conspiracy theorists to prove that they can't all be wrong.

What Trump has done is mainstream conspiracy theories for his own political purposes. Much more so than any other past presidential candidate or president, Trump is willing to indulge conspiracy theories that fit his political purposes.

There's LOTS more examples. (Millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election! Muslims were celebrating on the rooftops in New Jersey on 9/11! Etc. Etc. Etc.)

The point here is that Trump knows exactly what he's doing. It's not important whether he believes all the conspiracy theories he helps churn up and push into the mainstream. What's important is that by doing so he benefits politically.

The result? Conspiracy theories -- and the people who spout them -- have never been more prevalent.

Read the rest here:

Donald Trump has made conspiracy theories great again - CNN

A former GOP congressman who voted to impeach then-President Bill Clinton in 1998 has hit out at what he labeled theDonald Trumpshow.

On Monday, former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) told CNN International host Christiane Amanpourthat the current presidents situation involving the investigations into his associates alleged ties to Russia ismuch more serious than the scandal that ended up engulfing Clintons administration.

Inglis made his comments after Amanpour played out an interview from 1998 in which he explained just why Clinton should be impeached.

There are issues around the world that require American leadership, Inglis said in the archive clip. The leader of the free world needs moral authority. And weve got a president who is sorely lacking in that regard.

Amanpour asked Inglis how he measured Clintons lack of moral authority in the run up to his impeachment with what Trump currently has or doesnt have.

Well, I guess that young guy you were just playing there apparently hadnt seen something called the Donald Trump show, said Inglis of his younger self, before adding that Trumps behavior is much more serious than anything we ever accused Bill Clinton of.

Inglis noted how Clintons impeachment involved perjury with the underlying matter being a sexual affair. Trumps situation, however, was something quite different.

Particularly when it gets into the Russia investigation and the firing of (former FBI Director) James Comey, he added. These are very serious matters.

Check out the full interview in the clip above.

See the article here:

GOPer Who Voted To Impeach Bill Clinton: Donald Trump Situation Is 'Much More Serious' - HuffPost

This story was updated on Monday, July 3 at 12:53pm.

Charlie Gard was born with a rare genetic condition and has suffered from brain damage and loss of muscle function. After British doctors advised his parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, that they should end life support for the terminally ill 10-month-old, they raised nearly 2 million dollars to transfer Charlie to the U.S. for experimental treatment. But three separate British courts intervened, siding with medical specialists who said that further prolonging treatment would cause the baby significant harm. In June, the European Court of Human Rights weighed in on the parents final appeal. They lost. Charlie would be taken off of life support.

Since then, the global reaction has been chaotic, with leaders from the pope to the president of the United States weighing in on the case.

First, the Vaticans Pontifical Academy for Life issued a statement, seeming to side with the European courts. We must also accept the limits of medicine and avoid aggressive medical procedures that are disproportionate to any expected results or excessively burdensome to the patient or the family, wrote Vincenzo Paglia, the bodys president. While people should never deliberately end a human life, he added, sometimes we ... have to recognize the limitations of what can be done.

Then the pope weighed inand said almost exactly the opposite. Francis is following with affection and sadness the case of little Charlie Gard and expresses his closeness to his parents, a Vatican press office statement said. For this he prays that their wish to accompany and treat their child until the end is not neglected.

On Monday, President Trump added his support with a tweet supporting Charlie and his family.

Charlies case touches on some of the most sensitive moral and political questions about the role of the state at the end of life. The decisions of the European courts represented the final word on whether Charlies parents could pursue treatment in the U.S., and after the ruling, Yates and Gard claimed the hospital had denied permission for them to take Charlie back to their home to die. Yates and Gard have framed the medical dispute as Charlies fight, developing a large social-media following as they chronicled their effort to pursue further treatment for their son. The case also has religious dimensions: On their instagram page, Yates and Gard documented their celebration of their sons baptism and showed him clutching a pendant of St. Jude, the Catholic figure most often associated with hospitals and medical care. Media in the U.K. have followed the Gard familys case closely and the court orders to end Charlies life have been fiercely criticized by conservatives in the U.S. and abroad.

With the Church weighing in, the case took on a whole new dimension. The competing statements seemed to reveal an internal dispute over end-of-life issues within the Vatican. But they also teed up Trumps intervention. Religious conservatives in the U.S. were outraged over the Pontifical Academy for Lifes original statement: Besides being patronizing, the Vaticans statement is a gross distortion of the situation, wrote Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review. It portrays the Gards as acting alongside the doctors, but subject to outside manipulation. The Gards are resisting the doctors. The Gards are not facing their decisions. They are facing authorities that have overridden them.

Trump, who has consistently expressed his verbal support for religious freedom, has now stepped in, cementing the issue as an international cause for conservatives. Upon learning of baby Charlie Gard's situation, President Trump has offered to help the family in this heartbreaking situation, the White House said in a statement issued on Monday afternoon. Although the President himself has not spoken to the family, he does not want to pressure them in any way, members of the administration have spoken to the family in calls facilitated by the British government. The President is just trying to be helpful if at all possible.

Its not clear how the presidents statement would change the Gard familys situation: They already had the money for Charlies treatment and had sought to bring him to the U.S. The American president cant change the way European courts work, or annul their authority. But Trump has marked a difference in orientation between at least one part of Europe and the United States. While the high courts of Europe have asserted their authority and doctors right to decide when and how Charlie dies, the president of the United States has decided he will champion the familys choice to decideno matter whether or not he actually has the ability to intervene in one British babys life.

Go here to read the rest:

Donald Trump Offers to Help Charlie Gard - The Atlantic