Trump’s Foreign Policy Philosophy Hard to Pin Down
Masood Farivar, Voice of America
Is President-elect Donald Trump a foreign policy realist or idealist? Is he bringing Richard Nixon’s hard-edged realpolitik to his foreign policy or following in the footsteps of the more idealistic Ronald Reagan?
The question has become a parlor game among Washington's policy pundits.
Trump’s frequent invocation of Reagan’s “peace through strength” mantra and campaign pledge to rebuild America’s “depleted” military has invited comparisons to the Republican icon credited with winning the Cold War.
His advocacy of a foreign policy based on America’s national interests has led some to liken it to Nixonian realism, while his aversion to foreign interventions has won him the label of a non-interventionist and even isolationist.
Don’t Fence Trump In
Trump has professed no great power doctrine and his advisers discourage applying labels to his vision of the world.
“I’m not going to be put into the little academic, graduate school box because I think it doesn’t suit, and it doesn’t apply in a rapidly changing world,” said K.T. McFarland, Trump’s incoming deputy national security adviser, when asked to describe the Trump doctrine.
While Trump’s call for “peace through strength” reflects Reagan’s view of deterrence, “there are parts of Nixon and (Henry) Kissinger that Donald Trump has also advocated,” McFarland said at the U.S. Institute of Peace, alluding to Trump’s interest-based approach to world affairs.
Trump’s Speeches
A foreign policy neophyte, Trump has shied away from declaring any grand foreign strategy during the campaign, though he did give two major speeches devoted to foreign policy and national security.
In the first speech, delivered at the realist-leaning Center for the National Interest in Washington in April, Trump outlined what he called a “coherent foreign policy based on American interests” and called for “getting out of nation building,” creating stability and quashing “radical Islam.”
“Containing the spread of radical Islam must be a major foreign policy goal of the United States and indeed the world,” Trump said. “Events may require the use of military force, but it’s also a philosophical struggle, like our long struggle in the Cold War.”
In the second speech, at Youngstown University in Ohio in August, Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric about terror, warning countries around the world that they’d be judged based on their commitment to the U.S. goal of fighting terrorism.
“All actions should be oriented around this goal, and any country which shares this goal will be our ally,” Trump told a rally of supporters.
‘Strategic Surprise’
It was a theme that Trump would repeat, in one iteration or another, throughout the campaign, but his advisers say Trump’s pre- and post-election pronouncements on foreign policy, often delivered off the cuff, should not be read as policy prescriptions.
“Actually, he didn’t say a lot about foreign policy and national security on the campaign trail, and what he did say really doesn’t add up to a policy,” said James Carafano, director of foreign policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation who advises the Trump transition team on foreign affairs. “That’s very frustrating because the people want to know what’s this guy going to do.”
With the new administration yet to take office, McFarland, too, cautioned that Trump’s foreign policy is in an early stage of development.
“That’s what a new administration does: It takes time to rethink things and to come up with policies,” she said.
If history is any guide, Trump could quickly find himself facing a set of foreign policy crises different from the issues he campaigned on. Political scientists have a term for an unexpected world event that drives a new president into uncharted territory: “strategic surprise.”
For former President George W. Bush, who campaigned on pursuing a “humble foreign policy,” the strategic surprise came September 11, 2001.
For President Barack Obama, who vowed to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the “Arab Spring” protests in North Africa and the Middle East marked a strategic surprise, leaving his administration more deeply mired in the region than he’d hoped.
What international crisis might alter the trajectory of the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda has become a guessing game, with the number of scenarios exceeded only by the variety of foreign policy labels attributed to Trump.
A game-changing terrorist attack on American interests is one possible candidate. Another contender: an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch by North Korea.
“I think the world is not necessarily going to allow President Trump to do everything he’s planned on,” said Blaise Misztal, director of the national security program at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “I think you’re going to see a triangulation between what he’s said, what he’s advised to do, and what is actually feasible on the world stage.”
Flip Flopping on Issues
While Trump has flip flopped on some issues, NATO and torturing terrorists, for example, he’s held steady on others. Among them: terrorism, trade, China and Russia.
In the weeks since his election, he’s reiterated his pledge to make terrorism a focus of his foreign policy, talked tough on trade, challenged the “One China” policy, and iterated again a desire to reset relations with Russia even as he embraced intelligence findings that Moscow interfered in last year’s presidential election.
Brian Katulis of Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank, said the “most radical shift” Trump will likely undertake will be “engagement and involvement” with Russia, something Obama unsuccessfully attempted during his first term in office.
But former CIA director Michael Hayden said Trump is likely to reconsider his approach to Russia once he learns from intelligence agencies and allies that Russia and Syria are not committed to fighting IS.
“I’m personally very, very skeptical of any convergence between American and Russian interests in this part of the world,” Hayden said. “In fact, I’d offer the view that American and Russian interests are actually heading in different directions.”
Another major change: downplaying a postwar American foreign policy tradition of promoting democracy and freedom around the world.
“Trump has signaled as a candidate and in the transition a proclivity to appreciate authoritarian and repressive leaders around the world,” Katulis said. “And this may be the biggest departure that is historic, that there really won’t be as much of a values-based approach that focuses on human rights democracy and freedom in other countries. And that I think puts the United States itself on shaky territory.”
But McFarland played down those concerns, saying “the three bedrocks of (postwar) American foreign policy” — American leadership, American values and international alliances — will remain under the Trump administration.
Unpredictability
There is usually some continuity between administrations on foreign policy, but “that rule actually may not apply under Trump,” Katulis said.
“We’re dealing with something here that is just fundamentally different and off the charts,” Katulis explained.
That 'something' is Trump’s well-known unpredictability. Trump has criticized President Obama for telegraphing his policy moves and has vowed to remain unpredictable. But experts say unpredictability can be dangerous in the international arena where both allies and adversaries expect a certain degree of predictability from the United States.
"Predictability is the cornerstone of deterrence," said Clarke. "You need to be predictable if you’re the United states, both in what your allies know you’ll do and in what your adversaries know you’ll do and how you’ll respond."
Comments
So did the Trump comment that "NATO is obsolete" also assist the Russians????
Karaganov: “We are not interested in any kind of unity in the trans-Atlantic alliance ... The weaker the better.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/putin-has-some-lesso…
“We have at most a year to defend American democracy, perhaps less“ — Professor @TimothyDSnyder
@SZ:
http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/157058066
625/we-have-at-most-a-year-to-defend-american
.@BernieSanders: Stay focused.
Trump's got Americans wondering who to hate more–Muslims or immigrants?
Meanwhile he breaks economic promises
White House adviser Stephen Miller would not say on @MeetThePress that Mike Flynn has the confidence of the president
The horses are running from the burning barn......
THERE still are major unanswered Russian intelligence and security questions and Russian black money connections between Russia and Trump.....
Senior DoD intel official: “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM"
Our spy agencies are withholding TOPSECRET intel from the White House, fearing it's going straight to Moscow.
"Whether Flynn is monumentally stupid or monumentally arrogant is the big question..."
EXCLUSIVE ===> IC pushes back against a White House it considers leaky, untruthful and penetrated by the Kremlin
http://observer.com/2017/02/donald-trump-administration-mike-flynn-russ…
The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins
In a recent column, I explained how the still-forming Trump administration is already doing serious harm to America’s longstanding global intelligence partnerships. In particular, fears that the White House is too friendly to Moscow are causing close allies to curtail some of their espionage relationships with Washington—a development with grave implications for international security, particularly in the all-important realm of counterterrorism.
Now those concerns are causing problems much closer to home—in fact, inside the Beltway itself. Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration—not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump—that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust.
That the IC has ample grounds for concern is demonstrated by almost daily revelations of major problems inside the White House, a mere three weeks after the inauguration. The president has repeatedly gone out of his way to antagonize our spies, mocking them and demeaning their work, and Trump’s personal national security guru can’t seem to keep his story straight on vital issues.
That’s Mike Flynn, the retired Army three-star general who now heads the National Security Council. Widely disliked in Washington for his brash personality and preference for conspiracy-theorizing over intelligence facts, Flynn was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for managerial incompetence and poor judgment—flaws he has brought to the far more powerful and political NSC.
Flynn’s problems with the truth have been laid bare by the growing scandal about his dealings with Moscow. Strange ties to the Kremlin, including Vladimir Putin himself, have dogged Flynn since he left DIA, and concerns about his judgment have risen considerably since it was revealed that after the November 8 election, Flynn repeatedly called the Russian embassy in Washington to discuss the transition. The White House has denied that anything substantive came up in conversations between Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.
That was a lie, as confirmed by an extensively sourced bombshell report in The Washington Post, which makes clear that Flynn grossly misrepresented his numerous conversations with Kislyak—which turn out to have happened before the election too, part of a regular dialogue with the Russian embassy. To call such an arrangement highly unusual in American politics would be very charitable.
In particular, Flynn and Kislyak discussed the possible lifting of the sanctions President Obama placed on Russia and its intelligence services late last year in retaliation for the Kremlin’s meddling in our 2016 election. In public, Flynn repeatedly denied that any talk of sanctions occurred during his conversations with Russia’s ambassador.
Worse, he apparently lied in private too, including to Vice President Mike Pence, who when this scandal broke last month publicly denied that Flynn conducted any sanctions talk with Kislyak. Pence and his staff are reported to be very upset with the national security adviser, who played the vice president for a fool.
It’s debatable whether Flynn broke any laws by conducting unofficial diplomacy with Moscow, then lying about it, and he has now adopted the customary Beltway dodge about the affair, ditching his previous denials in favor of professing he has “no recollection of discussing sanctions,” adding that he “couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.” That’s not good enough anymore, since the IC knows exactly what Flynn and Kislyak discussed.
In pretty much every capital worldwide, embassies that provide sanctuary to hostile intelligence services are subject to counterintelligence surveillance, including monitoring phone calls. Our spy services conduct signals intelligence—SIGINT for short—against the Russian embassy in Washington, just as the Russians do against our embassy in Moscow. Ambassadors’ calls are always monitored: that’s how the SpyWar works, everywhere.
Ambassador Kislyak surely knew his conversations with Flynn were being intercepted, and it’s incomprehensible that a career military intelligence officer who once headed a major intelligence agency didn’t realize the same. Whether Flynn is monumentally stupid or monumentally arrogant is the big question that hangs over this increasingly strange affair.
Prominent Democrats in Congress are already calling for Flynn to be relieved over this scandal, which at best shows him to be dishonest about important issues. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has bluntly asked for the national security adviser’s ouster. Republicans on the Hill who would prefer that the White House stop lying to the public about its Kremlin links ought to get behind Schiff’s initiative before the scandal gets worse.
In truth, it may already be too late. A new report by CNN indicates that important parts of the infamous spy dossier that professed to shed light on President Trump’s shady Moscow ties have been corroborated by communications intercepts. In other words, SIGINT strikes again, providing key evidence that backs up some of the claims made in that 35-page report compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official with extensive Russia experience.
As I’ve previously explained, that salacious dossier is raw intelligence, an explosive amalgam of fact and fantasy, including some disinformation planted by the Kremlin to obscure this already murky case. Now SIGINT confirms that some of the non-salacious parts of what Steele reported, in particular how senior Russian officials conspired to assist Trump in last year’s election, are substantially based in fact.
This is bad news for the White House, which has already lashed out in angry panic, with Press Secretary Sean Spicer stating, “We continue to be disgusted by CNN’s fake news reporting.”
That is hardly a denial, of course, and I can confirm from my friends still serving in the IC that the SIGINT, which corroborates some of the Steele dossier, is damning for the administration. Our spies have had enough of these shady Russian connections—and they are starting to push back.
There are pervasive concerns that the president simply isn’t paying attention to intelligence.
How things are heating up between the White House and the spooks is evidenced by a new report that the CIA has denied a security clearance to one of Flynn’s acolytes.
Rob Townley, a former Marine intelligence officer selected to head up the NSC’s Africa desk, was denied a clearance to see Sensitive Compartmented Information (which is required to have access to SIGINT in particular).
Why Townley’s SCI was turned down isn’t clear—it could be over personal problems or foreign ties—but the CIA’s stand has been privately denounced by the White House, which views this as a vendetta against Flynn. That the
Townley SCI denial was reportedly endorsed by Mike Pompeo, the new CIA director selected by Trump himself, only adds to the pain.
There is more consequential IC pushback happening, too. Our spies have never liked Trump’s lackadaisical attitude toward the President’s Daily
Brief, the most sensitive of all IC documents, which the new commander-in-chief has received haphazardly. The president has frequently blown off the PDB altogether, tasking Flynn with condensing it into a one-page summary with no more than nine bullet-points. Some in the IC are relieved by this, but there are pervasive concerns that the president simply isn’t paying attention to intelligence.
In light of this, and out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move.
For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.
Since NSA provides something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in our government, what’s being kept from the White House may be very significant indeed. However, such concerns are widely shared across the IC, and NSA doesn’t appear to be the only agency withholding intelligence from the administration out of security fears.
What’s going on was explained lucidly by a senior Pentagon intelligence official, who stated that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room, the 5,500 square-foot conference room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings. “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point,” the official added in wry frustration.
None of this has happened in Washington before. A White House with unsettling links to Moscow wasn’t something anybody in the Pentagon or the Intelligence Community even considered a possibility until a few months ago. Until Team Trump clarifies its strange relationship with the Kremlin, and starts working on its professional honesty, the IC will approach the administration with caution and concern.
I previously warned the Trump administration not to go to war with the nation’s spies, and here’s why. This is a risky situation, particularly since President Trump is prone to creating crises foreign and domestic with his incautious tweets.
In the event of a serious international crisis of the sort which eventually befalls almost every administration, the White House will need the best intelligence possible to prevent war, possibly even nuclear war. It may not get the information it needs in that hour of crisis, and for that it has nobody to blame but itself.
Robert Costa
Verified account
@costareports
Pres. Trump is well aware of the Flynn story and has spoken about it with advisers and friends in recent days, per several ppl close to him
SO in fact Trump lied to reporters on AF1...WHEN he stated he had not heard about it.....
Jake Tapper
✔
@jaketapper
Trump yesterday: "I don't know about that. I haven't seen it. What report is that?...I haven't seen that. I'll look into that."
THUS he lied to the US public via this statement....
THINK about it....90% of all the worlds nuclear weapons are under the control of two famous lairs.....
REMMBER Trump dodged the VN draft FOUR times...using a so called bone spur as his excuse.....
He claims he fought off the women and left college with 200,000 USDs when many Americans were killed and wounded in VN...
So he must have fallen asleep during the entire college timeframe and thus this would explain his being absolutely unknowledgeable when it comes to everyday normal things ...........in my 70 odd years of watching US Presidents he has to be the least informed and or just simply dumb there is no other excuse anymore.
BLATANT lie.....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 31m
31 minutes ago
While on FAKE NEWS @CNN, Bernie Sanders was cut off for using the term fake news to describe the network. They said technical difficulties!
Bernie Sanders was mocking Trump's use of the term to describe CNN
Untrue. Sanders was *criticizing Trump* for calling CNN "fake news." You can see for yourself, all 11 minutes,
here:
http://cnn.it/2lEkSwD
Trump is still bashing the US federal court system...the guarantor of the rule of law and checks and balances......
So is Trump really a true believer of democracy...?????????
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 47m
47 minutes ago
72% of refugees admitted into U.S. (2/3 -2/11) during COURT BREAKDOWN are from 7 countries: SYRIA, IRAQ, SOMALIA, IRAN, SUDAN, LIBYA & YEMEN
BUT WAIT...TEAM TRUMP still as not provided a singular figure on exactly how many from the countries he tweeted on have actually carried out as US immigrants attacks on US citizens inside the US......
SO it is just a US President lying to Americans it seems.....
Trump in his attacks on the US judiciary claims he is protecting the US via his Muslim Ban from terrorists.....
BUT THEN he allows the opening on US soil an office of a US named terrorist group PKK which PYD is part and parcel of .....which has been responsible for ethnic cleansing and genocide of Syrian Sunni's......
BUT it is just again Trump hypocrisy hard at work...
QUOTE
A month after senior #PYD visit by US government official, it's announced that a PYD office will soon be opened in #Washington DC, headed by former Afrin chief.
To fully and completely understand Trump's FP you must fully understand Trump's hypocrisy
On 18 NOV 2013
Trump tweeted "President Obama played golf yesterday"
On 13 OCT 2014
"Can you believe with the difficulties facing the US...Obama is outplaying golf?"
NOW REMEMBER this same individual has now played golf two weekends out of the LAST four weekends...
NOTE:
Actually Obama did not play his first round of golf until the fifth month in office....
AND that other great Trump declared internal policy.....that is going nowhere fast.....
Fully repealing Obamacare will cost $350 billion. Who's going to pay it?
So 25B for the Wall Trump promised Mexico is going to pay for and now 350M for the Obamacare repeal
Rebuilding the US military BILLIONS.....
Rebuilding the US Navy per Trump's wishes....BILLIONS.....
1T for infrastructure construction
BILLIONS of lost revenue on the tax cuts targeting corporations and the higher 1% of Americans
NOW tell me just how the average American tax payer will cover this????
REMEMBER in order to drive an effective superpower FP...the said superpower must be an economic superpower as well....
Breaking: North Korea fires ballistic missile.
Meanwhile, @realDonaldTrump is on vacation for the second time in two weeks.
Wasn't entirely surprising that the first real test of Trump more robust foreign policy was going to come here.
Now let's see how it acts.
Predict it will not respond as Trump does not in fact any known and defined NK FP...outside of words...and tweets....
Brilliant interview by Garry Kasparov on the necessity of stopping autocrats like Trump early.
http://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/2/11/14577834/garry-kasparov-puti…
Remember Kasparov fully understands Putin and Trump.....and he was talking about both long before the election....
Bizarre and embarrassing that Japanese PM feels he has to play golf with the US president in order to keep US security umbrella in place........
Rumored that the Japanese reread a 1999 Playboy interview with Trump that in order to try to understand his FP which actually is close to what we have seen now.....not much has changed with Trump FP views from 1999 to now...
The President of the United States isn't welcome in Great Britain. Try and get your head around that.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-11/trump-u-k-visit-dela…
1.4M petitioned the Queen to not accept a Trump visit...although sent to Queen it was directed at PM May....
This is the Trump nominee for the US ambassador to the EU...appears his choice had overinflated badly his work experiences and career.....
Trump supporter Ted Malloch accuses the FT of "political assassination".
Please read this and judge for yourself.
https://www.ft.com/content/ce317948-efbb-11e6-930f-061b01e23655 …
Pres Trump should spend some time getting smart about New START Treaty and what it means for US security interests.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/02/10/the-problem-…
BEFORE he bashes it in front of Putin as a bad/failed treaty harming the US AND done under Obama thus bad to begin with........WHEN Putin indicated he wanted to extend the length of the treaty....
Russia Considers Returning Snowden to U.S. to ‘Curry Favor’ With Trump: Official
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/10/russia-eyes-sending-snowden-to-us-as-gif…
Russia is getting desperate since Trump turned down their offer to extend NEW Start nuclear treaty.....
Trump's lies about the 3-5M voting fraud is now being called out......NOTICE he has gone largely silent after it was pointed out he was using a fraudulent source.....
Federal Election Commissioner demands Trump show proof of voter fraud claims
http://hill.cm/gR4nj5e
Sometimes it is interesting to thoroughly read an article professing to be supporting of someone and or something in the Trump WH.....AND notice the article has holes in it large enough to drive three tanks through side by side.
Do notice that the article totally fails to mention the long Flynn ongoing contacts to Russian officials and government propaganda agencies that he has failed to publicly state how much he has received from them...does not mention that he in fact lied about his calls to the US Russian Ambassador....and he did not officially register as a foreign agent for his work as a consultant for Turkey......
That alone is enough for the Security Clearance Adjudicator to suspend Flynn's clearance if he had failed to indicate any of the above to the clearance investigator....
Has nothing to do with the media and everything to do with how TS/SCI clearances are granted and adjudicated....
TOTALLY missed by the author........
BTW....it took the leaking by NINE former intel officers to get Flynn to "suddenly remember" he had far more calls to the ambassador than he publicly acknowledged and that those talks did include the Obama spy sanctions....strange response is it not????
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-medias-war-against-michael-flyn…
The Media’s War against Michael Flynn
The Logan Act of 1799, which most Americans have never heard about and which has never been enforced, has suddenly become a big topic in Washington. It would be funny if it weren’t serious.
The target is national security adviser Michael Flynn. There are plenty of reasons to wonder about Flynn’s policies, most notably on Iran. But in Washington, political differences have become war by other means. What Flynn’s views are isn’t even the main issue. Instead, it’s what can be used to take him down only a few weeks into his new post.
That is why a concerted campaign appears to be taking place to tar Flynn as a cat’s-paw of Moscow. Everyone from Rep. Adam B Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, to the media is going on the warpath against him. The latest salvo came in the Washington Post, which focused on Flynn’s conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December. The Obama administration had expelled thirty-five Russian diplomats to punish Russia for alleged hacking during the presidential campaign.
In a February 10 article, the Post quoted nameless “current and former U.S. officials” claiming to be privy to conversations between then-private citizen Michael Flynn and Kislyak in December of last year. The FBI is reportedly studying Flynn’s conversation. The Post—and the anonymous leakers—then accused Flynn, who is now President Trump’s national security advisor, of attempting to disrupt the Obama administration’s foreign policy by “signaling” that the Trump administration might revisit the issue of diplomatic sanctions regarding alleged Russian efforts to “influence campaigns to upend the 2016 presidential race and help to elect Donald Trump.” (So botched is much of the reporting that the Post and other outlets continue to report that at Trump’s major foreign-policy speech in March he seated Kislyak in the front row. In fact, several ambassadors also attended the event. The media is seeing ghosts where there are none.)
The discussion, according to the Post, took place “at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies were concluding” that Russia may have played such a role. In other words, the discussion took place before any official findings had been signed off and delivered.
Private citizen Flynn, according to the Post, “urged Moscow to show restraint in its response to punitive sanctions,” which sounds more like a sensible observation than an attempt to undermine U.S. foreign policy. Initially, Flynn said on Wednesday that he did not discuss sanctions. On Thursday, a spokesman indicated that Flynn believes that “while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be sure that the topic never came up.” Vice President Mike Pence, among others, is reportedly unhappy with Flynn’s shift because he, Pence, defended Flynn on this issue.
But let’s step back for a moment. There doesn’t appear to be anything out of line with Pence’s moves. In effect, the Washington Post, in its ongoing barrage of anonymously sourced stories aimed at undercutting the current administration’s ability to conduct foreign policy, is accusing Michael Flynn of—guess what? Undercutting the previous administration’s ability to conduct foreign policy . . . if you can call urging “restraint” an attempt to undermine anything at all.
And even these flimsy allegations are based solely on hearsay, what anonymous “present and former officials” claim to be privy to, and choose to characterize to suit their own attempts to influence foreign policy. The question needs to be asked: what are their true motives? Is it to discover nefarious actions by Flynn or, rather, an attempt to undermine and destroy him? The answer pretty much answers itself.
If Flynn did, indeed, suggest that Russia exercise “restraint” last December, he broke no law and did no damage. He was guilty of nothing but urging calmness and common sense at a time when many partisan politicians on the Left were trying to delegitimize the legal election results and destabilize an orderly transfer of power, sometimes with street violence—an approach that they are continuing to cultivate, as far as possible.
In a free country, Flynn’s sober actions do not amount to a firing offence. Nor, for that matter, are they a cause for shame. Quite the contrary.
Aram Bakshian Jr. served as an aide to presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan. His writing on politics, history, gastronomy and the arts has been widely published here and abroad.
Flynn tries to contain damage in talks with Pence. Lawmakers want to see transcript of his Russia calls:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/flynn-holds-call…
Flynn holds call with Pence amid calls for probes of contacts with Russian ambassador
National security adviser Michael Flynn spoke privately with Vice President Pence on Friday in an apparent attempt to contain the fallout from the disclosure that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with that country’s ambassador and then allowed Pence and other White House officials to publicly deny that he had done so, an administration official said.
The conversations took place as senior Democrats in Congress called for existing investigations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to expand in scope to scrutinize Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak weeks before the Trump administration took office.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that if the allegations are proved, Flynn should step down.
"If the now national security adviser was undermining U.S. national security interests, he’s unfit to hold that office,” Schiff said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Compounding the issue is whether he then misled the country about the nature of his contacts.”
BUT WAIT...........
CBS News
Verified account
@CBSNews
Pres. Trump expresses “full confidence” in adviser Mike Flynn amid reports Flynn discussed US sanctions with Russia
http://cbsn.ws/2keDE0T
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
Our legal system is broken! "77% of refugees allowed into U.S. since travel reprieve hail from seven suspect countries." (WT) SO DANGEROUS!
BUT WAIT...there is not a single recorded case of any immigrant from these majority Muslim nation states that have committed an act of terrorism against an American inside the US....
AND Trump denying this is what is a total lie on his part
"SO DANGEROUS!"
MORE detailed evidence that Russia is basically supporting Islamic State....
Ahrar al-Sham fights JFS & JaA in southern #Idlib province.
So #Russia bombed ... the Ahrar HQ in the area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzPYxjQ0W2U
SO Russian bombs the Syrian rebels who are attacking AQ....ie JFS and JaA.....
AND these are the "friends" who Trump wants to fight IS with??????
WHAT Trump has not told the American public and he will not tell them....
THAT so called 600M reduction in F35 cots that he so loudly trumpets as his "success"...WAS already built into the coming contract as the savings seen with the last series of F35........
So LM got so publicity for the already calculated reduction and Trump then took credit for something that was done already under Obama WH....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 1h
1 hour ago
I am reading that the great border WALL will cost more than the government originally thought, but I have not gotten involved in the.....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 1h
1 hour ago
...design or negotiations yet. When I do, just like with the F-35 FighterJet or the Air Force One Program, price will come WAY DOWN!
BUT WAIT..........
1. all federal construction orders must be cleared by the US Army Corp of engineers and the competitive bidding process falls under the GAO....
SO is Trump thinking he can run around federal bidding and break a large
number of government contracting laws and regulations leading to countless contested bids...
2.Trump announces he'll be negotiating on behalf of the Mexican government to keep down the price of the wall they'll be paying for.
THAT is not the total court challenges from border land owners who must be asked for their approvals....
Amazon signaling potential loss of US jobs......
Amazon warns that trade protectionism could hurt business
http://reut.rs/2kCMDXZ
Appears Trump thinks he is on a playground and he is 11 again......
This particular playground has teeth and can in fact damage the US if it wants to...
Trump to Iran's Rouhani: Better be careful
http://reut.rs/2kSzsRo
WHEN will he fully understand that Iran controls of the flow of global oil...out of the ME..not the US.....
Trump is now apparently abandoning his voters and his campaign rhetoric with every passing day....basically his FP is now a chaos of constantly changing positions depending on who has his ear on what day and time.
First it is his China One policy after bashing China for years over their stealing of US jobs....
THEN it was the Mexicans are going to pay for the Trump wall.....
THEN his 1T USD border tax which will crash the economy costing jobs....
THEN his massive jobs push that has created media hype BUT basically not a single job....
NOW after stating his full and complete support to Israel...NOW this.....
Trump adopts a harder line on Israeli settlements, is rethinking his promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
The first true Trump FP mistake is costly to the US in the end game of nuclear weapons.....
Sober analysis of why NewSTART is in our interest: Abandoning it would Make America Less Secure Again.
http://brook.gs/2l1aOAc
In the Steel report there is a portion dedicated to the fact that Rosneft the Russian oil company in conversations with Page indicated that if sanctions could be lifted against Russian Page and his friends could in fact nearly 12B USD or what was exactly 19.2% of the Rosneft privatization shares....
In fact the 12B USDs actually exists...in the form of exactly 19.2% of the Rosneft shares which have been traced to a holding company in Singapore but both the owners of the shares and who actually is behind the Singapore Holding Company is not clear as of yet....
WHAT is clear is that this transaction has the signature of someone attempting to hide black money....and hide who actually is the owner of the shares......
BUT it is worth mentioning the Steele report concerning this specific transaction.....happened before the creation of the holding company...it would have been impossible for Steele to have known about the Singapore Holding Company having exactly the same percentage he mentioned in his report 19.2%....
Thus in fact confirming that the Steele information source was accurate....
REMEMBER when the Trump WH stated that the Steel Dossier was "a fake" and then the series of trump bashing tweets on this subject?????
WELL now CCN is reporting that an interesting number of the Russian's mentioned in the report and their conversations have been now to a degree confirmed.....WHICH in intel terms means the report is now starting to be viewed as highly credible.....
NOW they are attempting to confirm those Russian individual ties to the main US citizens Stone...Page...Manafort..Cohnan... and Flynn that the US IC/FBI are investigating with their FISA warrant....
CNN confirms also that the Trump sex tapes mentioned in the report have not yet been confirmed....
SIDE comment...if this Steel report islooking more and more to be actually accurate confirmed by SIGINT then the sex tape validation is not far behind....
IMPORTANT TO FULLY UNDERSTAND:
Kaspersky Lab Staffer, 3 Russian FSB Agents Said to Leak Info about Hacking; Charged with 'Treason on Behalf of US'
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-update-february-1-2017/#16039
One of the arrested Russians was a MAJOR in the Russian State Security Service FSB....
AND considered to be the FSB top internet security officer....
SO in fact the CIA now has the evidence necessary to confirm now Trump Russian connections....arrested Russian spies are prove that evidence is in fact serious and valid....
WHY is there a far closer personal connection between Trump and Murdoch and Fox....especially since Fox is the Trump cheering section....
Murdoch owns Fox and he owns The Wall Street Journal.......
Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal fires top editorial page editor for not being sufficiently pro-Trump.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/conflict-over-trum…
So the so called MSM that the Trump WH calls fakes news is actually to a degree owned by a Trump foreign supporter....Murdoch....
Flynn the Trump NSA is now in direct violation of Federal law by his lying to the TS/SCI Clearance Center concerning his "foreign national" connections.....
NOW we are hearing the Trump WH state that Flynn had in fact constant contacts with the US Russian Ambassador DURING the campaign SOMETHING that even Flynn did not reveal...
A normal human being holding a TS/SCI clearance having done this would immediately have their clearance suspended and federal charges about the lying filed...
We now have THREE distinct different lies coming out of the Trump WH about Flynn's contacts to the Russian Embassy....
WHAT we do not have is simply called..."the truth".....
One should read the federal definition of what is "treason"....
Someone inside the Trump WH needs urgently to disarm Trump...take away that unsecured smartphone....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 4h
4 hours ago
LAWFARE: "Remarkably, in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother even to cite this (the) statute." A disgraceful decision!
APPEARS that Trump did not truly read the 29 pages of the federal appeals court decision....IF he had he would not be tweeting this....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 4h
4 hours ago
The failing @nytimes does major FAKE NEWS China story saying "Mr.Xi has not spoken to Mr. Trump since Nov.14." We spoke at length yesterday!
"Failing NYTs" has tripled their subscriptions since Trump blasts them......
APPEARS he did not fully read the entire article....so who is falsely briefing him???????
BLUF..."at length" was barely one hour.....
Steve Bannon knows Julius (too-far-right-for-Fascism) Evola. You should too. Meet the Alt Right's favorite Italian
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-ev…
AND Bannon now sits in the NSC.....and Evola??????
Asked about Trump's comments on federal judge in #travelban case, @PressSec says POTUS "has no regrets"
Asked about Reuters report POTUS panned 2010 nuclear arms treaty on call with Putin, @PressSec calls the conversation "private"
At least the spokesperson did not deny that Trump has needed some help in understanding nuclear treaties.....so the leak stands as being accurate....