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By Robin Wright 07:26 P.M.
... Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil, General Tony Thomas, who heads the United States Special Operations Command, remarked at a military conference in Maryland this week. I hope they sort it out soon, because were a nation at war.
The President is increasingly bewildering or worrying friends and foes alike. Longstanding allies now publicly chide America. On Thursday, the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, called the Trump Administrations policy on the volatile Middle East very confusing and worrying. German Chancellor Angela Merkelwho has become the de-facto spokesperson for the Wests liberal democracies since Trump took officerebuked his America First policy this week. No country can solve the problems alone; joint action is more important, she said.
Even the Russians began complaining as Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held their first talks in Europe this week. On Friday, the prominent Russian senator Alexey Pushkov tweeted about the contradictory messages coming from the White House. Trump hopes to make a deal with Russia. Mattis thinks (in vain) that he can put pressure from a position of strength. Tillerson is playing a 2nd Kerry, he wrote, referring to John Kerry, the Secretary of State under President Obama. Three lines from 1 administration.
Trumps baffling foreign policy is a central focus of the annual Munich Security Conference this weekend. Top officials from almost fifty countriesincluding Mattis and Vice-President Mike Penceare attending the three-day event, which is the premier global forum on security policy. The preparatory reportwritten by an international team as the official conversation starteruses stark language about the new American President. The worries are that Trump will embark on a foreign policy based on superficial quick wins, zero-sum games, and mostly bilateral transactionsand that he may ignore the value of international order building, steady alliances, and strategic thinking, it says. Or, maybe worse, that he sees foreign and security policy as a game to be used whenever he needs distractions for domestic political purposes. The report, Post-Truth, Post-West, Post-Order? adds candidly, What is uncertain is how Trumps core beliefs will translate into policy (and whether policies will be coherent) ...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-flailing-foreign-policy-bewilders-the-world
struggle4progress
(118,338 posts)By Phil Stewart and Robin Emmott | MUNICH, GERMANY
Republican Senator John McCain broke with the reassuring message that U.S. officials visiting Germany have sought to convey on their debut trip to Europe, saying on Friday that the administration of President Donald Trump was in "disarray".
McCain, a known Trump critic, told the Munich Security Conference that the resignation of the new president's security adviser Michael Flynn over his contacts with Russia reflected deep problems in Washington.
"I think that the Flynn issue obviously is something that shows that in many respects this administration is in disarray and they've got a lot of work to do," said McCain, even as he praised Trump's defense secretary.
"The president, I think, makes statements (and) on other occasions contradicts himself. So we've learned to watch what the president does as opposed to what he says," he said ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-usa-idUSKBN15W1J2
Phoenix61
(17,019 posts)But is he doing to fix things? Nothing.