A Foreign Policy Legacy

Jews, apparently in honor of Proverbs 10:7, say "may his memory be a blessing."  Christians often say "thoughts and prayers" etc.  The former being more sincere, I'll go with the former in regard to Lindsey Graham. Rest in peace, Senator.

But to the substance of the matter.  The South Carolina senator was a fierce advocate of  regime change in Tehran and was very effective in persuading President Trump to start the current war.  Moreover, as  Vivian Salama of The Atlantic wrote on July 13

Once the war began, he accused America’s European allies of expecting U.S. leadership without assuming enough risk themselves, a sentiment the president shared. After speaking with Trump about what Graham described as “our European allies’ unwillingness to provide assets to keep the Strait of Hormuz functioning,” Graham said on X in March that he had “never heard him so angry in my life.”

“The repercussions of providing little assistance to keep the Strait of Hormuz functioning are going to be wide and deep for Europe and America,” he added in that post. “I consider myself very forward-leaning on supporting alliances, however at a time of real testing like this, it makes me second guess the value of these alliances. I am certain I am not the only senator who feels this way.”

Steve Schmidt recognized the Senator found his "need for 'relevance'" as "a cast member in the most malignant reality show ever made." So as President Trump continued to criticize NATO, Graham began second-guessing the alliance. In an opinion piece appearing in The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria argued that the President has "set off a chain reaction" by successfully leaning on our European allies to ramp up their defense spending. He notes

America’s dominance within NATO has given Washington enormous advantages. The U.S. has more than 30 military bases across Europe, and these have allowed it to project power not just in Europe but in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. U.S. operations in the Middle East, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more recently with Iran, have depended heavily on access, basing and overflight rights in Europe. Often NATO countries have allowed the U.S. to use their facilities even when they disagreed with the war being waged. But as Europeans see that America is unreliable or even hostile, they will feel less need to accommodate Washington.

Zakaria explains that "Europe may refuse" if "Washington wants to relax pressure on Moscow in a bargain with" Putin or "hesitatie" if the President "wants to intensify pressure on Iran or China." And

For American defense companies, this could be a major loss. For American strategy, it could be larger still. Weapons sales are not just commercial transactions. They create habits of cooperation and shared strategy.

There is a final danger. We speak easily of “Europe” spending more, but defense budgets are still national. And most European governments are broke. As analyst Liana Fix notes in Foreign Affairs, the country with the greatest capacity to spend is Germany. And it is now beginning to do so on a remarkable scale.

This is necessary. Germany has been too passive for too long. It is a liberal democracy deeply embedded in Europe, and there is no reason to fear some aggressive impulse hiding in its political DNA. But size and power matter in international politics. A Germany that spends vastly more than its neighbors will inevitably create anxiety in France, Poland and the smaller countries around it.

The genius of America’s post-1945 strategy was that it solved this problem. It made it unnecessary for European countries to think and act like traditional great powers. Under the U.S. umbrella, France and Germany did not have to balance each other. The U.S. damped down the intra-European rivalries that had produced centuries of catastrophic war. It created a system that was stable, peaceful and pro-American.

Lindsey Graham supported Ukraine and Israel and was an unabashed "hawk" in an age, and with a President, which is not clearly defined by "hawk" vs. "dove."  The foundation of President Trump's foreign policy is not internationalism or isolationism. It is unilateralsim and a hostility toward nations whose leaders Trump is not personally fond of.  Lindsey Graham never really understood that, or is appetite for genuflecting to power was too much to overcome.

   

 

Share |

Ever the Enemy of Our Western Allies

Unfortunately, President Trump wants it this way.

“America is no longer an ally."

Trump’s actions prove he’s no longer a Nato ally and the rest of Europe needs to “double down” on defence spending to replace America’s “firepower” says Nato’s Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, General Sir Richard Shirreff. pic.twitter.com/Uo558SgLms

— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) April 24, 2026

A year before Donald Trump previously left the presidency, we learned that he had

told the president of the European Commission in 2020 that the US would “never come help” if Europe was attacked and also said “Nato is dead”, a senior European commissioner said.

Multiple news outlets said the exchange between Trump and Ursula von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 was described in Brussels on Tuesday by Thierry Breton, a French European commissioner responsible for the internal market, with responsibilities including defence.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump said, according to Breton, who was speaking at the European parliament.

According to Breton, Trump also said: “By the way, Nato is dead, and we will leave, we will quit Nato.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, Trump added: “And by the way, you owe me $400bn, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defence.”

Just this week, The Independent reported

The Trump administration has reportedly drawn up a “naught or nice”-style list of NATO allies, separating them into different categories based on how the U.S. grades their contribution to the alliance.

The reported effort comes as President Donald Trump has furiously denounced the transatlantic alliance for not doing more to support the U.S. war against Iran.

A European diplomat told Politico the reported list appears to be an extension of an idea Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth floated in December, when he told a defense forum that “model allies” will receive the “special favor” of the U.S. and nations “that still fail to do their part for collective defense will face consequences.”

“The White House has a naughty and nice paper so I guess the thinking is similar,” the diplomat said.

Hegseth has used the “model ally” language in meetings with NATO members, another diplomat told the outlet. The list was reportedly prepared in advance of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s visit to Washington earlier this month.

The Independent has contacted the White House, the Pentagon, and NATO for comment.

The reported list could prompt the U.S. to take adverse actions against alliance members, which could range from moving U.S. troops to blocking sales of American defense tech to allied nations, though observers told Politico these moves might end up harming the U.S. more than the countries it is allegedly seeking to punish.

And in related news, does anyone remember Greenland?

An internal Pentagon email outlines options for the United States to punish NATO allies it believes failed to ​support U.S. operations in the war with Iran, including suspending Spain from the alliance and reviewing the U.S. position on Britain's claim to the Falkland Islands, a U.S. official told Reuters.

The policy options are detailed in ‌a note prepared by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's top policy adviser, who expressed frustration at some allies' perceived reluctance or refusal to grant the United States access, basing and overflight rights - known as ABO - for the Iran war, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the email.

Colby wrote that ABO is "just the absolute baseline for NATO," according to the official, who added that the options were circulating at high levels in the Pentagon.

One option in the email envisions suspending "difficult" countries from important or prestigious positions at NATO, the official said.

President Donald Trump has harshly criticized NATO allies ​for not sending their navies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, which was closed to global shipping following the start of the air war on February 28.

He has also declared he is considering withdrawing from the alliance.

Indications are, though, that President Trump does not views the Falkland Islands, which justifably belong to Great Britain, as similar to Greenland, Venezuela, or Cuba. Rather, it appears that he mostly wants to turn the territory over to Argentina and its Trump-loving "anarcho capitalist", Javier "The Rug" Milei, who is anxious to gain control over the Falklands.

It's difficult to nail down definitively Donald Trump's longstanding desire to emasculate and eventually wipe out NATO. It could be his allegiance to Vladimir Putin or a fear that a powerful, united Europe would interfere with his unilateralist foreign policy. Or it could be simply that, as an apostle of the zero-sum game, Donald believes that anything which hurts Europe helps him. Whatever it is, President Trump realizes he won't be President or alive forever.. And as he leaves, he would have the satisfaction of knowing that he has destroyed so much in his wake. 

Share |

Puny Secretary of State

Donald Trump is a brilliant man.

Though the President did not mention NATO in his televised address about Iran on Wednesday, April 1. Later that evening, The New York Times noted

Since his re-election, President Trump has threatened to leave the NATO alliance several times. On Wednesday, he did it again, frustrated that European nations had refused to join the so-far indecisive United States-Israeli war against Iran. 

(Mr. Trump added in the interview with The Telegraph of London that the the countries are "cowards" and the alliance a "paper tiger".)

And after his speech

On Thursday, speaking in Seoul, President Emmanuel Macron of France was explicit: Mr. Trump was undermining NATO with his repeated threats to pull out of it.

“If you create daily doubt about your commitment, you hollow it out,” he said.

This is where the fun comes in:

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reflecting Mr. Trump’s unhappiness with European allies, warned that relations with NATO would need to be re-examined after the war in Iran is resolved.

“Without the United States, there is no NATO,” Mr. Rubio said. “An alliance has to be mutually beneficial. It cannot be a one-way street. Let’s hope we can fix it.”

He added "I think there's no doubt, unfortunately, after this conflict is concluded, we are going to have to reexamine that relationship. We're going to have to reexamine the value of NATO and that alliance for our country."

Now, that is interesting given that it was less than three years ago that Florida senator Rubio

cosponsored legislation impeding President Joe Biden from unilaterally ejecting America from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Senate Joint Resolution 37 would require the “advice and consent of the Senate or an Act of Congress to suspend, terminate, or withdraw the United States” from NATO.

Rubio exclaimed he is “proud to reintroduce this bipartisan bill with @timkaine to ensure that no US president can make the decision to leave NATO without Congressional approval.”

The resolution would freeze any funds needed to complete the president’s attempted estrangement from NATO and authorize the Congressional Legal Counsel to legally challenge the move.

The measure ultimately was included in the 2024 National Defense Reauthorization Act, enacted on December 2, 2023.

So Marco Rubio was in favor of NATO before he was against it. He stood firm for the alliance when it was unnecessry, back when the President of the United States of America himself was committed to upholding it. Now when his support is needed, he has turned away.

This is due to more than naked parisanship. When they were both presidential hopefuls, Donald Trump ridiculed Rubio because "I've never seen anybody sweat like that and you know a lot of these guys are serious sweaters."  He called him "Marco 'Amnesty' Rubio," a "lightweight" who is "just another all talk, no action politician." 

Trump called the Senator "Little Marco".  He still is Little Marco, a zero trying to be a one. Donald Trump had him pegged from day one as someone whose convictions will always give way to expedience, a classic lapdog.

   

Share |

Erasing History

It's hard to imagine there is a connection between the Greenland controversy and slavery once common in the American south. Consider, though, that since it first deployed soldiers in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, more than 18,000 Danish soldiers were deployed to Afghanistand and 33 were killed in action.

aA explained a couple of years ago on the 9/11 Memorial & Museum website

On September 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks, NATO met in an emergency session. For the first and only time in its history, NATO invoked Article 5. All 18 of the United States’s allies stated they would support America’s response to the attacks…

Since 2001, troops from the U.S.'s NATO allies have stood shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers in Afghanistan. More than one thousand of these soldiers have paid the ultimate price. In 2017, NATO inaugurated its new headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Near its entrance, a memorial composed of a piece of mangled steel from the 107th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower sits atop a pedestal. In front of it, an inscription on a plaque pays tribute to the singular use of Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty. During a public program at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Jens Stoltenberg, the current NATO Secretary General, reflected on the memorial. He remarked, “It serves as a powerful symbol of the enduring partnership and friendship between the United States and its NATO Allies across Europe and Canada. It is also a daily reminder of the deadly dangers posed by terrorism, the importance of standing together to protect our people and our values.”

And now, this:

Trump on NATO: "I've always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? That's really the ultimate test. I'm not sure of that. We've never needed them. They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, off the front… pic.twitter.com/fA0i1S3LxY

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) January 22, 2026

This is a case not only of hostility toward allies but also of rewriting history. And so it is that  

Outraged critics accused President Donald Trump of “whitewashing history” on Friday after the National Park Service removed an exhibit on slavery at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park in response to his executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks.

Empty bolt holes and shadows are all that remains on the brick walls where explanatory panels were displayed at the President’s House Site, where George and Martha Washington lived with the people they owned as property when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. One woman cried silently at their absence. Someone left a bouquet of flowers. A hand-lettered sign said “Slavery was real”….

Workers on Thursday removed the exhibit, which included biographical details about the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the presidential mansion. Just their names — Austin, Paris, Hercules, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, Giles, Oney Judge, Moll and Joe — remain engraved into a cement wall.

The President of the USA insults our allies by stomping over the history of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance and the National Park Service "whitewashes" history by removing exhibits at museums, parks, and landmarks. Donald Trump also has demolished the East Wing of the White House and plastered a White House walkway with bronze plaques of each USA president. 

We are to believe that President Obama was "one of the most divisive political figures in American history" and that the Affordable Care Act was "highly ineffective."  And we're told that Joe Biden, represented by an autopen rather than a portrait, assumed office only "as a result of the most corrupt election evr seen in the United States and as President presided over the "worst inflation ever recorded." 

Ridiculous, but consistent with Donald's behavior throughout his presidency. Rewriting history, in the matter of describing ex- Presidents, removing cultural artifacts from public view, and lying about NATO history all are examples of rewriting history. 

A Philadelphian who recently visited Independence National Historical Park and lamented the purge of a portion of the nation's history remarked "You show all of it- the good, the bad, and the ugly." But that's becoming increasingly uncommon. Writing in 2021, one journalist noted that in dictatorships such as Russia and China, "a single version of history prevails, stamped and sealed by the leadership and imposed in classrooms, through culture, and on the internet."  Donald Trum is still in the early stages, but he understands this lesson well.

Share |

The Right Thing To Do

As hundreds of thousands of people demonstrate in Hong Kong, Santiago, London, and Lebanon, a snowflake is heard from in Washington, D.C.

So let’s see if I’ve got this straight: When crowds chant “Lock her up” toward Hillary, it is illiberal and anti-American.
(I agree). But when crowds chant the same toward Trump,
it is suddenly a fulsome exercise of sacred First Amendment rights. What hypocritical clowns.

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) October 28, 2019

This did not go well individuals on Twitter. One noted that Hillary Clinton committed no crimes, unlike President Trump, and even was exonerated by the Trump-dominant Justice Department recently. This came six months after Special Counsel Mueller concluded that had he been able to exonerate President Trump of obstruction of justice, he would have.

Other tweets noted that the the chant at Nationals Park arose spontaneously in a public place and were directed at a President under investigation for impeachment. By contrast, the choreographed "lock her up" chant was led by Michael Flynn, now a convicted felon, at the Republican National Convention.

Someone observed that Donald Trump has encouraged the Attorney General, whom he considers his private attorney, to investigate Hillary Clinton, a prerogative not possessed by the fans at the World Series.  An accomplished journalist asks three pertinent questions:

...questions to point it out:

1. Could a baseball crowd launch a criminal investigation of a Dep Director of FBI who president hates?
2. Could a baseball crowd launch another investigation of HRC emails?
3. Could they obstruct a Congressional investigation?

Get the difference?

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 28, 2019

When a tweeter argues "it might be nice if the word saw that most Americans do not support" Donald Trump, she suggests a crucial factor in America's influence in the world. South Koreans heard the President when he said that he was concerned only with Pyongyang having missiles which could strike the USA and not with those which could be launched against South Korea.  When Trump questions Article 5 of the UN Charter, complains that NATO allies spend less than does the USA on defense, threatens privately to withdraw from NATO, or directly cozies up to Vladimir Putin, members of the trans-Atlantic alliance recognize that stability of the continent is threatened.

And when President Trump withdraws soldiers from northern Syria (video from 10/21/19)and welcomes Bashar Assad to "clean out" our Kurdish allies, Kurds realize they must go elsewhere, even to Russia, for an ally.So when fans at the World Series boo Donald Trump or even call for his imprisonment, they are doing us all a favor. Donald Trump is not a king. He is President for now, an aberration. He will not be President forever, and he's not who we are. It's important that the world understands that- and that the United States of America keeps its word- even if Joe Scarborough doesn't.

Share |

Two-Nation Solution

In April, President Donald Trump asked French President Emanuel Macron "why don't you leave the EU?"  The same month, he complained "the European Union, of course, was set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank." 

Shortly before, he reportedly had told the Group of Seven leaders "NATO is as bad as NAFTA," implied to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven that Sweden should leave NATO, and suggested regime change to the German people.

In an interview with a British tabloid, Trump praised Theresa May's rival Boris Johnson and criticized her handling of Brexit.  A few days later, the Prime Minister revealed that Trump had recommended that she sue the European Union.  He suggested regime change to the German people and a few weeks later charged that Germany is "totally controlled" and "held captive" by Russia.

That did not amuse Prime Minister Merkel, who grew up in East Germany and thus knows much more about being controlled by Russia than does Donald Trump (or maybe not).

Two days before he met Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Trump labeled the EU as a trade "foe" of the USA.

And on and on and on- we get the message, and know on whose behalf President Trump is delivering it. 

When we learned that President Trump repeatedly asked his advisers last August about overthrowing Venezuelan President Maduro, it may have seemed completely unrelated to Trump's determination to destroy the Trans-Atlantic alliance.

However, it may not have been. Last Tuesday, Masha Gessen was asked on "Morning Joe" about what Vladimir Putin wants, and is getting, from the USA.   She replied

He's getting exactly what he wants. Putin does not actually want sanctions lifted. Putin does not necessarily want the United States to recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea, although that would be nice. He's perfectly happy with things as they are. A lot of his legitimacy in Russia is actually based on the image of the United States as an enemy. 

But what he really needs to project is something that he has been striving for for the last eighteen years that he has been in power, which is to recreate the sense of a bi-polar world where the United States and Russia sit down to sort of divvy up the world and he achieved so much toward that goal yesterday. Just having that press conference where he is so clearly in control of a conversation with the American president demonstrated to Russians that he has made Russia great again.

Dividing the globe into two spheres of influence, one of Russia and one of the United States, is no overnight project.  It would require a Congress of Stepford Wives- which Trump currently has- and re-election of the President.  But it's in the works.




Share |

Appeasement

"Art of the Deal" co-author Tony Schwartz, who turned against Trump well before the 2016 election, was asked Sunday how he could have so erroneously predicted that Trump would succumb within a year of becoming president and resign. He stated  “You’re right, I completely missed it. I think I underestimated the enormous attachment he would have to being in that office. I think he likes meeting all of these people and he particularly likes dominating these people.”

One of those people is NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, whom Greg Sargent reports on Thursday

was talking about how NATO members had agreed to boost their contributions to NATO defense costs, as insisted upon by Trump, who claims the United States is getting ripped off. But then Trump demanded Stoltenberg give him credit for it...

After Stoltenberg noted that NATO members had boosted their spending recently, Trump asked: “Why was that?” Stoltenberg took Trump’s cue and said it was “because of your leadership.” Trump then gestured to the press and said, “They won’t write that.” Stoltenberg then supplied Trump with the additional praise he wanted, even claiming that “your message is having an impact.” It was after Stoltenberg extolled the virtues of our alliance that Trump launched into the diatribe about Russia, Germany and energy — and again claimed the United States is being treated unfairly.

What’s remarkable here is Stoltenberg’s active effort to get Trump to take credit for getting his own way at NATO. European officials badly want Trump to do this, because they are hoping it will mollify him. The Post reports that diplomats are worried that Trump’s commitment to the organization might weaken to a crisis point, which would “send the alliance into a tailspin, damaging security by opening the question of whether NATO’s most powerful member is still willing to defend its allies if one were attacked.” On top of that, they fear this will play into the hands of Vladimir Putin, with whom Trump is also set to meet.

And so, to avert this crisis, European officials “would love nothing more than for Trump to take a victory lap and claim credit for them boosting their defense spending,” Jonathan Swan recently reported.

Stop prostrating yourself, Jen.  Donald Trump subsists on being the alpha dog or, as Schwartz observed, "dominating" people.  Capitulation to an authoritarian typically will boomerang. Yglesias adds

The trouble is that Trump won’t even acknowledge what our allies are actually doing in this regard. He keeps claiming that other NATO countries have fallen short of their defense budget commitment, but this is false: In fact, this target is a future one that NATO members agreed upon.

In that context, this exchange with Stoltenberg underscores the point. Stoltenberg gave Trump a big moment for domestic consumption, particularly for his base: The power of Trump’s “America First” message is forcing the Euro-weenie elites to stop fleecing the U.S. and pony up! They’re not laughing at us anymore, dammit! America is respected again! Or as one administration official recently described the Trump Doctrine: “We’re America, b—h!”

Yet the takeaway from the episode has to be that Trump is far from satisfied. But what would satisfy him?

Even granting him Venezuela probably wouldn't mollify him- not even if it were the Sudentenland. That didn't work previously and probably wouldn't now, either.

Share |