Trump’s Foreign Policy Philosophy Hard to Pin Down

Donald Trump's new commerce chief called Brexit 'God-given opportunity' to take trade from UK

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wibur-ross-donald-trum… 

REMEMBER this was stated to the American public and to the US MSM.....

"We gathered an unbelievable amount of intelligence that will prevent the potential deaths or attacks on American soil," said Spicer.

APPEARS to have not so clearly the "truth".......

Trump is CinC whether he likes to admit it or not.....he approved this raid from his dinner table which hardly qualifies as a SCIF...AND continued to eat a five star meal as ST6 walked into a major ambush and had to fight their way out.....

As CinC all military deaths fall under his Command......BUT since he dodged the draft four times with a so called "bone spur" during VN he would not have known that simple fact.....

Trump blames SEAL's death on military, as officials admit raid yielded no significant intelligence

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-ryan-owens-seal-raid_u… …

THE BUCK STOPS WITH "THEM"...over there......

So if you are in SOF...who will you die for next???....the new CinC does not seem to be interested in your highly dangerous service....

So Trump who just keeps on stating he is creating hundreds of new jobs DECIDES 600 well paying middle class government positions with great benefits and health care coverage is a waste of time?????

On 600 unfilled Government jobs, Pres Trump told @FoxNews that "many of those jobs I don't want to fill." Says they're unnecessary.

MANY of those positions are in critical positions of critical agencies like DoS and DoD....

Foreign Policy
✔
@ForeignPolicy
If Bannon had his way, he'd destroy the liberal world order the U.S. spent 70 years building, writes @ABlinken.
http://atfp.co/2m3jAhy

Bannon...the gift to AQ that just keeps on giving.....

Latest alQaeda paper just out. Congrats SteveBannon for being lead story with headline "the war is with Islam as a religion".

Yes, a gift

WTH....now Trump has someone else to pin the blame game on after bashing the media and judiciary....

Trump says Obama is "behind" the protests at GOP town halls and leaks coming from the White House

No wonder he can never get a FP going anywhere....

DOES and or CAN Trump ever take personal responsibility for anything????

Apparently not....

Russia is trying desperately to get into some kind of conversation with Trump.....THUS showing the "good will" that Trump often recently stated was necessary to potentially lift the Russian sanctions......

Russia has reached out to Washington to get the Trump White House to coordinate policy in Libya
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-seeks-u-s-support-for-libyan-genera… 

NOTICE:...he wants talks but has already taken action to secure Russian presence in Libya....
Sending Chechen soldiers, eyeing arms deliveries, Russia has bolstered its support for strongman Gen. Haftar

REALLY what Putin is doing is extending Russian control and influence into Libya after securing bases in Syria....he is after naval bases and air bases inside Libya to expand control over the Med...simple FP geopolitical goals actually...as Trump has no FP so Putin is serving him up a FP....

The Hill
‏Verified account
@thehill
#BREAKING: Yemen raid that killed Navy SEAL yielded no significant intel: report
http://hill.cm/GAO2TVa

REMEMBER when both Trump and his spokesperson Spicer called this raid "highly successful" and blasted anyone for critiquing the raid as a failure????

I even posted I had the same CENTCOM AQ video in my research library that CENTCOM released as "evidence of the intel taken" and it was roughly 10 years old...suddenly then CENTCOM pulled the video from the net...

Raid killed 25 (!) civs + Chief Owens. Endless CT "mowing the grass" sounds clean and easy. It's not -- in any way.

Cambodia govt threatens to "crush" media it doesn't like - and cites Trump's media ban as justification http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/trump-ban-cited-media-threat …

Another Trump WH "altered state of reality" Statement......

WTH does this one mean??....WHAT Jobs???...the US is running at near full employment from Obama and Trump has not passed a single program and or budget and or law......

Motion is not Progress and there has been alot of WH motion and that is about it.....

QUOTE
Spicer: "He's created a lot of jobs." Points to tax reform and health care (both things that haven't happened yet)

AND EVEN Trump stated today tax reform will come after the ACA is thrown out and replaced...only then can taxes be addressed...We are literally months away from that happening......

To fully understand just where Trump is coming with his FP...we need to understand the following......

Long read but actually very telling ......

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/02/what-is-popul…

What Is a Populist?

And is Donald Trump one?

Uri Friedman
| 12:20 PM ET

Why does Donald Trump exaggerate the size of his inauguration crowd, brag about his election win in conversations with world leaders, and claim without evidence that voter fraud may have cost him the popular vote? Why does he dismiss protesters who oppose him as “paid professionals” and polls that reflect poorly on him as “fake news”? Why does he call much of the media the “enemy of the people”?

There are explanations for these things that focus on the individual, characterizing Trump as a self-centered reality-TV star obsessed with approval and allergic to criticism.

But there is also an ideological explanation, and it involves a concept that gets mentioned a lot these days without much context or elaboration: populism.

What is a populist?

No definition of populism will fully describe all populists. That’s because populism is a “thin ideology” in that it “only speaks to a very small part of a political agenda,” according to Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia and the co-author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction. An ideology like fascism involves a holistic view of how politics, the economy, and society as a whole should be ordered. Populism doesn’t; it calls for kicking out the political establishment, but it doesn’t specify what should replace it. So it’s usually paired with “thicker” left- or right-wing ideologies like socialism or nationalism.

Populists are dividers, not uniters, Mudde told me. They split society into “two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other,” and say they’re guided by the “will of the people.” The United States is what political scientists call a “liberal democracy,” a system “based on pluralism—on the idea that you have different groups with different interests and values, which are all legitimate,” Mudde explained. Populists, in contrast, are not pluralist. They consider just one group—whatever they mean by “the people”—legitimate.

This conception of legitimacy stems from the fact that populists view their mission as “essentially moral,” Mudde noted. The “distinction between the elite and the people is not based on how much money you have or even what kind of position you have. It’s based on your values.”

Given their moral framing, populists conclude that they alone represent “the people.” They may not win 100 percent of the vote, but they lay claim to 100 percent of the support of good, hardworking folks who have been exploited by the establishment. They don’t assert that the neglected people who back them should be kept in mind by political leaders just like all other citizens; they claim that these neglected people are the only people that matter.

“[P]opulists only lose if ‘the silent majority’—shorthand for ‘the real people’—has not had a chance to speak, or worse, has been prevented from expressing itself,” explains Jan-Werner Müller, a professor at Princeton University and the author of What Is Populism? “Hence the frequent invocation of conspiracy theories by populists: something going on behind the scenes has to account for the fact that corrupt elites are still keeping the people down. … [I]f the people’s politician doesn’t win, there must be something wrong with the system.”

Advertisement

One might expect this argument to fail once populists enter government and become the establishment. But no: Populists—ranging from the revolutionary socialist Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to the religious conservative Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey—have managed to portray themselves as victims even at the height of their power, blaming their shortcomings on sabotage by shadowy domestic or foreign elites.

The notion of one virtuous people and one vile elite is a fiction, even if it does reflect real divisions and power dynamics in a given society. “There is no single political will, let alone a single political opinion, in a modern, complex, pluralist—in short, enormously messy—democracy,” writes Müller. It’s not that populists have some special mind meld with the masses. Rather, “[p]opulists put words into the mouth of what is after all their own creation.” As an example, Müller cites Nigel Farage, the former leader of the populist U.K. Independence Party, who called Britain’s vote to leave the European Union a “victory for real people,” as if the 48 percent of British people who voted to remain in the EU were “somehow less than real—or, rather, questioning their status as members of the political community.”

Populists “tend to define the people as those that are with them,” Mudde said. The mark of a populist isn’t which specific groups of people he or she includes in “the people” or “the establishment.” It’s the fact that he or she is separating the world into those warring camps in the first place.

Continued.......

House Intel Committee Chair @DevinNunes: "We have not seen any evidence" of contacts between Trump campaign, Russia
http://abcn.ws/2lqYxlQ

Adam Schiff pushes back on Nunes: "The committee has reached no conclusion on whether the Trump campaign has colluded with Russia."

So now does Nunes actaully have to admit publicly he was in fact lying???

Nunes did use the "we" word.......

Note this: @RepAdamSchiff leaves open possibility not just of COMMUNICATIONS between Trump campaign and Russia - but of "COLLUSION"

Ever notice the recent outbreak of anti-Semitic activity at the same time as the Russian Connection debate broke out?????

This article from almost three years ago is an excellent primer to understand this connection......

Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that attacks on Jewish targets are time-tested Chekist provokatsiya BOTH in Europe and the US......

https://20committee.com/2014/03/29/understanding-provocation/

Understanding Provocation

March 29, 2014

One of the most powerful tools the Kremlin has in its secret arsenal of Special War is provocation, what they call provokatsiya. While Moscow cannot claim to have invented this technique, which has existed as long as there have been secret services, there’s no doubt that Russians have perfected the art and taken it to a whole new level of sophistication and deviousness. At times, it can become a strategy all on its own (not always, mind you, with edifying results).

Provokatsiya simply means taking control of your enemies in secret and encouraging them to do things that discredit them and help you. You plant your own agents provocateurs and flip legitimate activists, turning them to your side. When you’re dealing with extremists to start with, getting them to do crazy, self-defeating things isn’t often difficult. In some cases, you simply create extremists and terrorists where they don’t exist. This is causing problems in order to solve them, and since the Tsarist period, Russian intelligence has been known to do just that.

While this isn’t a particularly nice technique, it works surprisingly well, particularly if you don’t care about bloody and messy consequences. Credulous Westerners are a big help. Perhaps the most infamous Kremlin case of provokatsiya was the TRUST operation of the 1920s. In the aftermath of the Russian Civil War, Bolshevik control was incomplete and Moscow faced the problem that a large number of Whites, their recent enemies, had gotten sanctuary in Europe, where they plotted the reconquest of Holy Russia.

Soon the White emigration klatched in the cafes of Paris and Berlin was invigorated by tantalizing rumors that there existed a secret anti-Bolshevik movement underground in the USSR, calling itself the Monarchist Union of Central Russia. Before long, prominent Whites gave this shadowy group their political and financial support, as did several Western intelligence services who desired the end – or at least the harassment – of Bolshevism. Intelligence from inside the Soviet Union was a scarce commodity at the time. Some emigres were even prompted to clandestinely return to Russia in the hope of aiding the resistance. Among them was the famous revolutionary Boris Savinkov, who had broken with the Bolsheviks and was one of Moscow’s top public enemies.

But word of Savinkov dried up once he reached Russia, as it did for all the emigres and spies who tried to enter the Soviet Union to establish contact with the underground resistance. They were dead. The TRUST operation was all a mirage; there in fact was no Monarchist Union of Central Russia, it was a front for Soviet intelligence. By 1926, Western intelligence began to suspect the truth, but by that point the Soviet secret police had been running their false-flag operation for five years, during which time it had eliminated or neutralized several of its top enemies while causing them, and several Western spy services, to waste time, money, and energy on a mirage that was actually Soviet-run.

Russians have employed this crafty model countless times since, as have the many intelligence services that have received training in the dark arts from Moscow. Cuban intelligence is notorious for this – it can be reliably assumed that many of the most hard-line anti-Castro exiles are actually on their payroll – while in the 1990s the Algerian military intelligence service, the feared DRS, executed an enormous version of the TRUST operation against its Islamist foes, defeating them in detail, but at the cost of thousands of innocent lives.

This model must be kept in mind during current discussions of Ukraine, where the Kremlin assures us that the government in Kyiv are “fascists” planning a “Nazi” takeover. While there are right-wingers in Ukraine who have troubling views, their numbers are inflated for effect by Moscow, something which too many Westerners accept uncritically. Moreover, some of the most hardline Ukrainian nationalists are secretly under Moscow’s control, and there’s nothing new about this.

The Soviet secret police infiltrated far-right Ukrainian emigre groups in the 1920s and 1930s, provoking them into self-defeating acts and killing off their leaders. Similar provocation was employed after the Second World War by Stalin’s secret police to crush resistance in Western Ukraine, which lasted into the early 1950s, while throughout the Cold War, Ukrainian rightists abroad were targets for surveillance, harassment, and sometimes assassination by the KGB.

Since the Soviet collapse, similar Russian provocations in Ukraine are broadly understood by security circles in Kyiv, which is part of why the SBU, Ukraine’s Security Service, is now attempting to reign in far-right groups like the Right Sector (Pravyy Sektor): not only are they potentially dangerous to democracy, they may be on Moscow’s payroll too. This has come to a head due to the death this week of the notorious far-right activist Oleksandr Muzychko, AKA Sashko Billy, a vocal hater of Russians and Jews, who fell in a murky shootout with police in the Western Ukrainian city of Rivne. Muzychko was so extreme that he actually fought in Chechnya in the 1990s with the local resistance – Moscow accused him of war crimes there – and his funeral turned into a far-right rally against the government in Kyiv. Predictably, all this got huge coverage in Russian media, which is eager to demonstrate the “fascist” nature of all Ukrainians who do not wish to be ruled by the Kremlin.

Unfortunately, we can expect more provocations as this crisis continues. A directly relevant example of what may happen is a series of events in Croatia in 1991, another country where the position of Jews is politically sensitive due to the Second World War and the Holocaust. As Yugoslavia was collapsing, Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian allies constantly parroted the line that the government in newly independent Croatia was really “fascist” and they planned to resurrect Nazi-era war crimes against minorities, including Jews, and intervention was required from outside the country to prevent “genocide” (if this all sounds to you remarkably like Kremlin propaganda now against Ukraine, it should). As in Ukraine today, there were neo-fascists in Croatia in 1991, but they were politically marginal and considered a threat by the government.

Just like the Soviet Union, Communist Yugoslavia had manipulated, harassed, and killed off Croatian nationalists for decades. In a Balkan version of the TRUST, in the late 1940s, Tito’s secret police lured would-be guerrilla fighters into the country – you knew this was coming – to support a shadowy resistance army: of course it didn’t exist, and it served to get the infiltrators killed. For decades, Yugoslav secret police kept close tabs on Croatian emigres involved in anti-regime activities, employing provocation to discredit them very effectively. Several dozen Croatian exiles in the West were also murdered by Yugoslav assassins. Croatians understood that many of their most radical nationalists were actually under Yugoslav control.

Fears that newly independent Croatia was under threat by “fascists” – just as Belgrade was telling everyone loudly – reached a fever pitch in the summer of 1991 with a series of attacks on Jewish targets in Zagreb. That August, bombs went off at a Jewish community center and the main Jewish cemetery; although there were no casualties, the explosions caused a panic in Croatia’s tiny Jewish community, particularly because there were other bombings at the same time on rail lines in several locations, leading to a sense of anarchy. Soon unverified reports emerged placing blame for the attacks on the government, explicitly fingering President Franjo Tudjman as the figure behind the bombings.

This was all strenuously denied by Tudjman and his government, which moved quickly to reassure Jews they were in no danger. This was all a significant distraction while Croatia was fighting for its life as Yugoslav troops and Serbian irregulars took over one-third of the country that summer and fall. The bombings and accompanying propaganda earned Croatia a black eye internationally when it least needed it, and before long Jewish groups were pondering a mass evacuation from the country, just in case.

It turned out it was all one big provocation engineered by the Yugoslav military’s Counterintelligence Service (KOS), which boasted a substantial agent network in Croatia, including several prominent right-wingers. The Zagreb bombings and accompanying anti-Croatia propaganda were termed Operation LABRADOR by KOS, which considered it to be highly successful. On the heels of the attacks, Zagreb security services worked hard to roll up the KOS networks in the country, but by that point the damage had been done. The false-flag bombings were a reminder to the world that Zagreb was “really” under the control of “fascists,” a lie that the Tudjman government never fully overcame in certain quarters.

Provocation combined with propaganda can be powerfully effective in transmitting Big Lies about people, places, and even whole countries, especially in times of crisis. The Kremlin has been honing this unpleasant skill for more than a century. The next time you hear about violence in Ukraine – and, sadly, you certainly will – it’s good to remember that provokatsiya is real.

FIFTH Federal Court loss for the Trump Muslim Ban......

BREAKING: U.S. appeals court rejects Justice Department request to put appeal of Trump travel ban on hold - order.

http://reut.rs/2l5q2oY

As the GOP led by Trump race to throwout ACA/Obama Care..NOW he learns on the job just how hard it will be.....

Trump: 'Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated' http://hill.cm/iEMj6lF

QUOTE..
Trump also dismissed polls that show support for ObamaCare is at an all-time high.

The latest tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 48 percent view the law favorably compared to the 42 percent who don't.

"People hate it but now they see that the end is coming and they say, 'Oh ,maybe we love it.' There's nothing to love. It's a disaster, folks."

Trump evidently picks and chooses which polls to believe and or disbelieve.....

AND the Trump WH now does it's own leaking it seems.....BUT WAIT...it was not leaked BUT given to Infowars an ultra right blog site...

Looks like someone leaked the SOTU to a hard-right conspiracy site, in violation of Trump’s directive.

http://www.infowars.com/breaking-bullet-points-of-trumps-congressional-…

Donald Trump will deliver his first congressional address Tuesday, February 28, and Infowars has exclusive details regarding what the 45th president plans to discuss.

Here’s a point-by-point preview of what the president will address during his speech tomorrow before a Joint Session of Congress, as relayed to Infowars:

• One by one, President Trump has been checking off the promises he made to the American people. He’s doing what he said he was going to do.

• In Tuesday night’s speech, he will lay out an optimistic vision for the country that crosses the traditional lines of party, race and socioeconomic status. It will invite Americans of all backgrounds to come together in the service of a stronger, brighter future for our nation.

• All Americans share a desire for safe communities for themselves and their families. All Americans want their children to have access to good schools. And all Americans deserve good jobs that allow them to prosper and dream. For far too many people – “the forgotten men and women” – these fundamental desires have been out of reach for too long.

• The President will lay out the concrete steps he has already taken to make the American Dream possible for all of our people.

• He will talk about how he wants to work with Congress to pass a bold agenda. That will include:


– Tax and regulatory reform to get relief to hardworking Americans and American businesses.
– Making the workplace better for working parents.
– Saving American families from the disaster of Obamacare.
– Making sure every child in America has access to a good education.
– A great rebuilding of the American military.
– Fulfilling our commitments to our veterans and making sure they have access to the care they need.

• It will be a speech addressed to ALL Americans AS Americans—not to a coalition of special interests and minor issues.

• Americans can expect a speech that is grounded firmly in solving real problems for real people. How can we make sure that every American who needs a good job can get one? How can we get kids who are trapped in failing schools into a better school? How we can keep gangs and drugs and violent crime out of their neighborhoods?

• The President will reach out to Americans living in the poorest and most vulnerable communities, and let them know that help is on the way.

• He will also speak to the daily challenges of the Middle Class.

• He will look to the future and talk about what we can achieve if we come together.

• Finally, he will call on Congress to act. He is eager to partner with lawmakers to fix our problems and build on this renewed American spirit.

It should be noted this was not a leak, but was given directly to Infowars.

Trump has placed himself into a very deep hole in order to dig himself out of of with his Russian connections....

After a meeting with US healthcare officals

QUOTE FROM TODAY
From the White House pool: Trump says "I haven't called Russia in 10 years" in response to Q about appointing a special prosecutor

THIS is a blatant lie if there ever was one....

He had countless phone conversations concerning his Miss Universe 2013 Held in Moscow..AND I can find at least three internet videos with Trump stating he had contacts with Russians that go back to 2006....AND he was most active in the same period trying to contact Russians for his proposed Moscow Trump Towers Project .

WHICH is within his 10 years stated timeframe he himself set....

APPEARS Trum's anti-Semitic statement did not work..he does not have his rebel rousing voters under control.....BESIDES it was a really weak statement to begin with.....

NBC News confirms there has been another wave of bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers and schools across the Country

11 MORE bomb threats in 9 States.....49 the PREVIOUS WEEK.....

BREAKING: I'm now told at least *16 Jewish community centers & day schools received bomb threats today: Ann Arbor, Indy, Staten Island...

"McCarthyism" is clearly new GOP talking point on any probe of Trump team contacts w/Russia, incl Chmn of Cmte investigating the Russian link.....

Does anyone in the GOP truly watch the Russian 100% owned propaganda media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik International...WHO started using this term for those attacking Trump two weeks ago AND THEN suddenly it is a GOP "talking point"..........

SO does now Trump and the GOP actually get their "talking points" straight from Moscow???

Really bad when a US political party becomes the spokesperson for Putin AND there is no Russian connections?????

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW DEEP THE GOP IS RIGHT NOW W/RUSSIA.......

Personal observations on Nunes presser. He shouldn't have done it. It did not work. He doesn't know what FBI has. He's scared.

Comey allowing Burr and Nunes claim there's nothing going on with Russia when Flynn's call was recorded?

If Nunes & Trump think this helped. Very weak defence Nunes gave for interfering in an on-going investigation-"pressure from the press"

Nunes deliberately tried to claim Flynn was "illegal wire tap." Sciutto says -no-Flynn discovered thru wire tap of Russ. Ambass.
AND the FBI had an Warrant for the tap....

Sciutto points out Nunes won't call Obama's sanctions due to hack "sanctions." Sciutto points out that is what WH Council called them

Nunes presser. Word play fail. Sciutto caught it. NYT article-contact was w "Russ.Officials" known to US intell. Nunes uses "Russ.Intell."

BUT WAIT...WHY did Nunes use the term Russian intel instead of the offical FBI term Russian officals?????

BUT THIS TOPS IT....even the GOP cannot seem to adhere to the US Constitution......

Nunes really angry when Sciutto asks if Flynn should have been negotiating with Russ. "You one of those Logan Act guys." Um-it is the law.

GOP KICKER IS...if it had been Clinto instead of Trump..there would be investigations all over DC....and immediately.....

Sweden doesn't even recognize 'national security adviser' interviewed on Fox News. He is not even a Swede

http://cnnmon.ie/2lMHEVu

Ever notice Trump never calls out FOX News for it's profoundly fake news....

INSTEAD he actually quotes FOX.....

It has taken 18 months of Trump campaigning and five weeks of being in office BUT we now truly know what his FP is going to be.....

http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trumps-alpha-male-foreign-policy/

THE GLOBAL POLITICO

Trump’s alpha male foreign policy
An offhanded comment by a White House adviser pretty much says it all.

By Susan B. Glasser
2/27/17, 12:58 PM CET

Forget America First or the new nationalism or any of the other isms that have been offered as explanations for Donald Trump’s emerging foreign policy.
Want to really understand Trump’s philosophy of international relations?
Just listen to Sebastian Gorka, the Breitbart propagandist and Hungarian ultranationalist turned White House national security aide. He’s been saying it loud and clear for a couple months now whenever he’s asked about Trump’s foreign policy and how the new president will shake things up globally: “The alpha males are back.”
“Our foreign policy has been a disaster,” Gorka told Fox’s Sean Hannity before the inauguration. “We’ve neglected and abandoned our allies. We’ve emboldened our enemies. The message I have—it’s a very simple one. It’s a bumper sticker, Sean: The era of the Pajama Boy is over January 20th and the alpha males are back.”
He’s repeated the phrase several times since, and it strikes me as perhaps unintentionally helpful in trying to sort through Trump’s largely unformed and at times outright contradictory foreign policy views.
It can be hard to parse the president otherwise. Is Trump really an anti-free trader who wants to end globalization—or an international businessman turned politician who simply wants a “better deal”? Does he seek more aggressive military measures and a tougher approach in the Middle East—or to give up and go home altogether? Will he get the United States into new confrontations with China, Iran, North Korea and others? Or is he actually a peacemaker in waiting, one who can finally work with the wily Russians and get the grand bargain done between the Israelis and the Palestinians that eluded all his predecessors?
At different times, Trump has suggested all of the above—never mind that they are not necessarily compatible. We here in Washington continue to try to understand Trump on our terms; we look for intellectual frameworks and policy architectures and historical worldviews. But Trump has made it clear his disdain for American foreign policy as it has been practiced over the last few administrations of Republicans as well as Democrats; his version of national security has much less to do with ideology, and much more to do with what he would call losing rather than winning. It’s about approach, mindset—and who’s doing it—much more than about what’s being done.
Which is why Gorka’s comments, highlighted again a few days ago in a revealing Washington Post profile, seem so relevant. Trump’s foreign policy, Gorka says, will be a macho foreign policy, when tough guys will once again rule the world and wimpy Democrats (and maybe democrats?) are left on the sidelines.
“Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus” — Robert Kagan
This, of course, is not an entirely new notion. Author Robert Kagan posited that Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus in attempting to explain the more militarized view of national security that led President George W. Bush to the war in Iraq. In a pre-Trump era of American politics, it was commonplace to argue that Republicans were the martial party and Democrats the diplomacy-minded Venus party. Those debates grew sharp throughout the last eight years, as Obama came to office vowing to pull America out of the destructive Middle East wars pursued by Bush and emphasized “engagement” and, ultimately, dealmaking with American adversaries like Iran and Cuba.
Then came 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran as a more hawkish Democrat than the man she served as secretary of state—but also as the representative of an alliance-loving global elite with a human rights-minded tendency to lecture the world’s tyrants rather than want to do business with them.
Now that he’s president, Trump has taken the gendered politics of foreign policy to a whole different level. As the Alpha Males slogan suggests, it’s both a worldview for Trump and his team—and a philosophy of who and how to get the job done. It helps explain why he’s staffed his national security team and the power positions in his Cabinet with brawny, uniformed military officers—and also his oft-stated regard for various authoritarian strongmen leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi.
* * *
“Tough talk is quite easy. Bullying is quite easy,” says Wendy Sherman. “Getting something done in the world is quite complicated.”
“One of the lessons for the alpha males,” adds Michele Flournoy, “is to actually start with the facts.”
I asked Sherman and Flournoy, two of Washington’s most alpha of Alpha Ladies, to talk about Trump’s macho foreign policy—and what it’s really like to be a woman in the Situation Room—in an interview for this week’s edition of our new podcast, The Global Politico. Flournoy, the top policy official in Obama’s Pentagon, was in line to become the first woman secretary of defense had Clinton won the election; Sherman, who served as the chief negotiator of Obama’s Iran deal as his undersecretary of state for political affairs, was mentioned as a possible secretary in a Clinton administration. They were joined by Madeleine Albright, who became the first woman ever to hold the job of secretary of state when Bill Clinton appointed her to the post in his second term.
Trump has taken particular aim at the Iran nuclear deal Sherman negotiated, arguing it was a bad deal, the “worst” ever, and insisting he would blow it up once in office—a campaign pledge that now seems unlikely as even foes of the deal like Israel and many Republicans in Congress instead urge President Trump to focus on tough enforcement of its provisions rather than seeking to undo it altogether.
Sherman argues in the interview that without the Iran deal, “you’d probably be at war.”
Flournoy agrees, in an answer that is particularly revealing as to how she and the others choose to interpret Trump’s Alpha Male theory of the world:
“I can tell you as someone who was responsible for oversight of military planning in the Pentagon, had Wendy failed and the negotiations failed, the only option left on the table would have been to use military force to take out that program and we would have gone [and done that]. That would have started a third war in the broader Middle East… So let’s be fact-based and realistic about the consequences of the policy choices that were made…. Tough talk is easy, but actually advancing American interests in a way that’s smart is a lot harder.”
In our conversation, Flournoy, who is now CEO of the bipartisan think tank Center for a New American Security, discusses for the first time publicly her decision not to go work for the Trump administration, after having been asked to serve as deputy to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. She says she declined because it would violate her “sense of values” to work for Trump.
“I knew,” Flournoy says of Mattis, “that he needed a deputy who wouldn’t be struggling every other day about whether they could be part of some of the policies that were likely to take shape.”
“I hope we are not in the world of the alpha males, because they have made an awful lot of mistakes” —Madeleine Albright
I was struck throughout the wide-ranging conversation by how difficult it still is to analyze Trump’s foreign policy by any of the standard Washington measures; Flournoy in particular kept struggling to offer rational, academic even, arguments about why an Alpha Male foreign policy wouldn’t work, citing studies about the benefits of diversity and the like. In explaining the Alpha Maleness of the new administration, Sherman looked to the politics of anger Trump has stirred up and, interestingly, connected the president’s disdain for the regular order of the interagency process that generally helps shape national security policy for an administration to his desire to play the strongman. That interagency process, developed over time by administrations of both parties, she argues, is “the difference between a democrat and an autocrat.”
Albright, meanwhile, articulated the case against Trump’s machismo in more explicitly political terms. I had asked whether Trump had a point in any of his critiques of current American foreign policy after eight years of Obama, and whether and how much they were doing soul-searching as Democrats about the state of the world.
“This is not President Obama’s fault,” Albright responded. “I could more likely blame President Bush and the Iraq War that I think was one of the really discontinuous activities that made the American people tired” of foreign policy adventures abroad that seemed to bring only expenditures of blood and treasure without achieving their stated aims.
As for the prospects of a Trump reset for foreign policy, Albright brought it back around to the lack of women at the table, pointing out that of the major Cabinet posts, women now hold only two, secretary of education and secretary of transportation—neither with Situation Room responsibilities. There are, she insisted, real-world consequences of having a national security team with too many Y chromosomes.
“I hope we are not in the world of the alpha males, because they have made an awful lot of mistakes,” Albright said. “And they prod each other onto more alphaness.”
 * * *
One of the signature photographs of Barack Obama’s presidency is the Situation Room picture of the president and his top advisers watching the jaw-dropping Special Forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden, with Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, hand over mouth in perhaps the photo’s most recognizable gesture.
Contrast that with an image from the early Trump days: It shows Trump on his first weekend in office, calling Putin on the phone, surrounded by five burly advisers, all of them men.
The truth is, there were only two women visible in the Obama picture. In Trump’s Oval Office, in the room where it happens, there were none.
So when Sebastian Gorka says, “the alpha males are back,” pay attention. He’s not wrong.

There are those in the EU on the internet privacy side that simply do not trust the Trump WH to hold to this two critical Data Safe Harbor Acts..especially since daily reports are coming into Europe of INs and CBP overreach in questioning foreign travelers entering the US WHO are not Muslims.....they now fully understand the whims of Trump and how he suddenly changes course...thus in their eyes no treaty can be trusted with the US....

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-dataprotection-usa-idUSKBN1661G7?f…

U.S. says Trump order will not undermine data transfer deals with EU

An executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration will not undermine two data transfer agreements between the United States and the EU, Washington wrote in a letter to allay European concerns.
An executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 25 aiming to toughen enforcement of U.S. immigration law rattled the European Union as it appeared to suggest Europeans would not be given the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens.
The order directs U.S. agencies to "exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information."
Securing equal treatment of EU citizens was key to agreeing the Umbrella Agreement which protects law enforcement data shared between the United States and the EU.
And the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield - which makes possible about $260 billion of trade in digital services - was only clinched after Washington agreed to protect the data from excessive surveillance and misuse by companies.
In the first written confirmation since the executive order stoked uncertainty over transatlantic data flows, the U.S. Department of Justice said the executive order did not affect either the Umbrella Agreement or the Privacy Shield.
"Section 14 of the Executive Order does not affect the privacy rights extended by the Judicial Redress Act to Europeans. Nor does Section 14 affect the commitments the United States has made under the DPPA (Umbrella Agreement) or the Privacy Shield," Bruce Swartz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, wrote to the European Commission in a letter seen by Reuters.
EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, who will travel to the United States at the end of March, said she was "not worried" but remained vigilant.
Also In Politics
The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is used by almost 2,000 companies including Google (GOOGL.O), Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) to store data about EU citizens on U.S. servers.
Its predecessor was struck down in 2015 by the EU's top court for allowing U.S. agents unfettered access to Europeans' data, forcing an acceleration of difficult talks to find a replacement.

Again this statement came from a Deputy AG not the current new AG...until then and it is provided in legal binding writing all bets are off....

Scowcroft Center
✔
@ACScowcroft

"Portrait of a Botnet" → @DFRLab uncovers a network of fake Trump supporters set up to make money from clicks:

https://medium.com/@DFRLab/portrait-of-a-botnet-12fa9d5d6b3#.t3cy86xte 

Those that follow Trump via the internet do not even realize they are getting fleeced along the way.....

Dear America,

Stop stupidly asking IF Russia interfered in your election. They are doing it everywhere.

Really.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/russia-soft-warfare-cy… 

Exclusive: Spicer arranged CIA, GOP intelligence push-back

https://www.axios.com/exclusive-spicer-arranged-sat-in-on-cia-gop-intel… 

Interesting article on the question of ...does Trump fully understand the meaning of the words that he uses???...if he does in fact understand their historical meaning THEN we are all in serious trouble....

“Formulas of insult, humiliation, domination, branding, enemy-forming and name calling are always the same.”
https://nyti.ms/2msYDKv

Interesting correlation.....

There's a pattern to Trump's attacks on the media. They repeatedly happen directly after reporting on Russia happens by one of the MSM outlets...

The EU is so doomed that every one of its 28 economies is growing simultaneously
http://bit.ly/2lSWV7l

REMEMBER the Trump WH proposed EU Ambassador which the EU has basically stated they will not accept his credentials....stated he predicted the Euro not lasting longer than 18 months and the EU breaking up....

Same thinking as Bannon/Miller/Gorka in the WH...

BUT WAIT...best overall economic development for the EU as a block of 28 since 2008....

AND how hard is it to get 28 separate and culturally different economies to preform as one....vs the US centrally led economic concept.

Another blunt and direct article concerning the poorly qualified Trump Deputy Asst to the President Gorka who came from Beitbart.com .......

The Islamophobic Huckster in the White House

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/opinion/the-islamophobic-huckster-in…

Here is actually the true US citizen who wants to destroy US MSM.....not the Trump WH tweets stating the same thing...

Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbar… 

WHY did it take a UK MSM to dig this up and not the US MSM????

Those pesky US right wingers are at it again.....

http://huff.to/2lpMBRg

An Iranian Won An Oscar And Right-Wingers Had A Twitter Meltdown

QUOTE
Right-wingers on social media flipped out over the message an Iranian filmmaker had read on his behalf at the Academy Awards on Sunday night. 
Asghar Farhadi won the Oscar for best foreign film for “The Salesman,” but didn’t attend the ceremony as a protest against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, and halting the nation’s immigrant program. 
Instead, Iranian-American engineer Anousheh Ansari read a message on Farhadi’s behalf thanking the Academy and his crew, but blasting the travel ban as “inhumane.” 
Farhadi wrote:
“Dividing the world into the us and our enemies categories creates fear. A deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression.”
Farhadi also called on his fellow filmmakers to use their craft “to capture shared human qualities” to “create empathy between us and others.” 
That sent conservatives over the edge. Here are some of their messages: 

Is in fact Trump in full and complete violation of the Emolument Clause of the Constitution....a very valid question......

Top Senate Dems demand answers on Trump's China trademark from Rex Tillerson—a decision they say could violate the Constitution.

The Office of Government ethnic has in fact stated Trump has not truly separated himself from his companies as he has controlling rights to fire the current manager and partakes in any profits earned even as President...

Was this Chinese trademark decision behind the sudden and complete Trump reversal of his two China policy stated before and after his election and reinforced by his tweets???

Reference the sudden interrogation of the WH Staff by Spicer and WH lawyers...under the guise of stopping leaks WHICH was then "leaked".....

Irony is the phone check plan was itself leaked, became known to select few, including us, and some who were in that interro--er, meeting.

Seems Spicer and the WH lawyers do not understand Federal laws....

Also, the Fed Records Act applies to official comms, not personal comms from personal devices.

And it doesn't cover leaking, either.

Something that is distinctly missing from the Trump WH FP.....knowledge of the world around them.

Cast of La La Land were once starving artists & cast of Moonlight faced great adversity, but @SyriaCivilDef have died to get their Oscar.

AND it was the Obama WH INS that sent home their Director when he landed in JFK in order to picked up a highly sought after humanitarian award....BECAUSE a well know US white nationalist complained in emails to DHS that the individual was a member of AQ...which was a total lie but it worked.

AND it was the Trump WH INS that refused to allow the cameraman behind the SCD documentary to enter the US even though he had a valid US issued visa....

So no wonder the Sunni's in the entire ME distrust any US ME FP right now...

WHY does the Trump WH have so much fear from the US MSM...could it be they demand answers to some serious questions and could it be they are pointing out the lies that come daily out of the Trump WH???

Whatever the reason is..they do in fact fear the MSM...could it be they simply cannot provide a factual and honest answer for anything????

Jake Tapper
✔
@jaketapper
We invited the @WhiteHouse to provide us with a guest to discuss the week's news and the president's agenda; they declined our offer.

BTW...while Trump loves to bash the New York Times..he is single handily driving the NYTs subscription rates into the stratosphere....even people who have never had a newspaper subscription are applying for the online version....

Revisiting the Trump Swedish lies he put out during a public statement...THAT when challenged he stated he had learned from watching a FOX News segment on Sweden done by a right wing filmmaker...

Within a day of this Trump climb down suddenly there appeared in the new cycles a massive article with photos of burning cars etc...claiming race riots in Malmo Sweden...claiming police "no go areas" and constant confrontations between the locals and Muslim immigrants....WHICH BTW the Swedish National Police and the Swedish government immediately stated was fake news...

BTW the fake news story was designed to reinforce the Trump statements and resulting Trump tweets....in order to prove Trump had not been wrong in his statement and tweets...

If one then tracks that fake story and fake photos it originated out of Russia and was placed in a number of European right nationalist blog sites BEFORE making it across the Atlantic to US right wing blog sites and white nationalist sites as well...

This morning a major privately owned TV and radio corporation RTL fished out of their FB postings a German neo right winger from the German nationalist party AfD for his comments supporting that Swedish fake news story.

They then paid his way to Malmo Sweden and spent the day walking around the areas mentioned in the article..talking to the local police who stated NOTHING had ever happened and then went to the so called "no go area" and amazingly no one living in that area and who the TV crew just who picked out a number of those walking by the interview....ALL stated in front of the German right winger that the story was a total fake and though the area has 20K residents and is mixed ethnically there has never been any trouble and the story was a total and complete fake....

EVEN in the face of total truth and in talking with the Swedes who lived in the so called "no go area"....the right winger was undeterred in his believe.....

His statement was...."you the media are controlled by higher ups and you must say and do what they tell you to do"...

The journalist replied she was under no instructions from her management other than going to Sweden and letting the story go where it goes....

WHAT is both interesting and dangerous is that this German right winger stated as have any number of US voters who voted for Trump that they get a majority of their information from the internet and they do not trust MSM as it lies...

EVER notice just how "fake news" coming from the US right wing and white nationalist blog sites like Breitbart.com....or Infowars...or Right Side Broadcasting play what they assume their listeners want to hear as it just reinforces what they already are thinking???

EVER notice that much of the Russian disinformation and fake news being released into Europe is designed to make it to the US and reinforce the US right wing and white nationalist blog sites?

AND when confronted literally face to face with "truth" that individual is no longer capable of discerning what is and or is not the "truth"....

THAT is exactly what Trump and his tweets play to...we have never had a US President so wrapped into disinformation and pure propaganda as we have in Trump....

As the Russian connections to members of the Trump campaign and now in the WH become firmer and firmer....and now that Trump's own personal lawyer Cohen is wrapped in true contradictions about the proRussian peace plan....BTW he is at version FIVE now.....the angrier the Trump tweets are are becoming....

Donald J. Trump
Verified account
‏@realDonaldTrump 2h
2 hours ago
Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!

BUT WAIT....the Steele dossier that Trump deemed to be totally fake news had listed a visit by his personal lawyer Cohen in Prague...and Cohen stated he had never been there.... but wait there is a rather strange story about plane spotting's of a number of aircraft making a number of strange transponders/registration number shifts during the exact timeframe Cohen has major contradictions also on....

An interesting read....
https://patribotics.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/planespotting-michael-cohe…
…

Trump now has his own version of a Benghazi mom. The father of the Navy Seal killed in Yemen wants answers.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article135064074.ht… 

Russia's state TV: U.S. broadcasters, described by Trump as enemies of the people, are preparing his impeachment for no reason whatsoever.

NOTICE that Trump blasts Merkel and Germany for taking in a large number of Muslim immigrants.....

BUT have you noticed than when Muslims are attacked by right wing radicals Trump goes extremely silent....

NOTICE it is strange that ultra right wing violence against Muslims is totally overlooked.....

Reference Germany.......

Germany sees nearly 10 attacks against refugees and migrants each day
http://read.bi/2lTVeqm

Berlin (AFP) - Germany saw more than 3,500 attacks against refugees and asylum shelters last year, interior ministry data showed, amounting to nearly 10 acts of anti-migrant violence a day as the country grapples with a record influx of newcomers.
The assaults left 560 people injured, including 43 children, the ministry said in a written response to a parliamentary question seen by AFP Sunday.
The government "strongly condemns" the violence, the letter said.
"People who have fled their home country and seek protection in Germany have the right to expect safe shelter," it read.
A total of 2,545 attacks against individual refugees were reported last year, the ministry wrote, citing police statistics.

There was no immediate comparison with previous years as it was only introduced as a separate category under politically motivated crimes in 2016.
Additionally, there were 988 instances of housing for refugees and asylum seekers being targeted last year, the ministry said, including arson attacks.
That was slightly down on 2015 when there were just over 1,000 criminal acts against refugee shelters. In 2014, there were only 199 such cases.
The sharp rise in hate crimes came after Germany took in some 890,000 asylum seekers in 2015 at the height of Europe's refugee crisis. 
Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open the doors to those fleeing conflict and persecution polarised the country and fuelled support for the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The number of arrivals fell sharply in 2016 to 280,000, mainly thanks to border closures on the Balkan overland route and an EU deal with Turkey to stem the inflow.
A lawmaker for Germany's far-left Die Linke party, Ulla Jelpke, blamed the anti-migrant violence on far-right extremists and urged the government to take stronger action.
"We're seeing nearly 10 (criminal) acts a day," she told the Funke Mediengruppe, a German regional newspaper group.
"Do people have to die before the rightwing violence is considered a central domestic security problem and makes it to the top of the national policy agenda?" she asked.
A German neo-Nazi was sentenced to eight years in jail this month for burning down a sports hall set to house refugees, causing damage worth 3.5 million euros ($3.7 million).
In another case that shocked Germany, a crowd of onlookers cheered and applauded as an asylum shelter went up in flames in the country's former communist east last February.

Inventor of nonsense theory that inspired Bannon explains that he has been deeply misunderstood
https://wpo.st/Hm0e2