Is Trump bluffing overseas?

Perhaps he is.  The number of his veiled or unveiled threats against foreign actors seems to multiply every day.

1.  The president said at his presser with the Italian that Iran has not lived up to the "spirit" of JCPOA.  What does that mean?  As I recall the agreement's finalization was immediately followed by cries from Congress that the Iranians should expect no lessening in hostility from the US.  Was that in the "spirit" of JCPOA?  This is ridiculous.  The bi-partisan warhawk nationalists in Washington want Iran on its knees begging for forgiveness,  The question asked should be - Or what?  US air strikes designed to fight a war that Israel wants but cannot accomplish?  A naval war in the Gulf?  Or what?

2.  The president has said that North Korea "should behave."  Or what?  Some military gesture to demonstrate US disapproval of their nuclear weapons/ballistic missile programs?  Or a full blown war to the death on the peninsula?  Really?  Does Trump or the evidently mad duo of Mattis/McMaster fully grasp the scale of the destruction and people losses that would ensue?  Some of the people of SST have suggested that maybe NOKO could actually be bargained with if we adopted a different attitude toward the little bastards.  Really?  What a thought!

3.  Tillerson went to Moscow to bring the Russians to heel on various matters and left with nothing to show for his trouble   NATO keeps moving assets into Eastern Europe to confront the Russian menace.  The prevailing idea in the Borgist foreign policy establishment in Washington and London seems to be that the US (with UK advice) must guide human events and any thought of national independence anywhere in the world must be stamped out.  Really?  How is that to be enforced?  With war? With yet more economic sanctions that drive Russia toward China?

4.  Mattis (without producing evidence) insists that Syria has retained some indeterminate number of tons of chemical weapon materials.  This is a transparent effort to justify further aggressive action against Syria.  At the same time AQ connected guerrillas, heavily armed with US TOW are attacking to re-capture the southern Syrian border city of Deraa from government forces.  these forces are heavily supplied with US material support from sources in Jordan just to the south of the city.    Will Mattis/McMaster justify direct US intervention there to create a "safe zone" in preparation for partition of the country or as a base for a drive on Damascus to unseat the government and install the jihadis?

All of this raises the question of why the Trump Administration is placing itself in position in which if we are defied we will have to fight a number of bloody wars simultaneously  Why?  pl

Comments

[Alaric]

Trump is playing reality TV President. His actions overseas are all theater which is designed to force certain actions. At a minimum, someone will call his bluff but maybe not quite yet. I suspect the Chinese, Koreans, Iranians and Russians understand his domestic problems.

[turcopolier]

old aukuu

whatever that is, you must be new here. This is a sophisticated crowd and we don't like being lectured. The US bombed the German, Japanese, Koreans, Iraqis unmercifully? Do you really think we don't know that? My opposition to strategic bombing is well known. We know all about the Manila, Tokyo and Nuremberg trials. Grow up! Winning counts. Only people who lose are tried for war crimes. Get with it or get lost. pl

[turcopolier]

NancyK

Yes, well you backed the pathological ubermommy so you have nothing to brag about. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Being disliked by Europeans does not mean much; they loved Hitler and Mussolini, admired Mao and Stalin, liked JFK, hated Ayatollah Khoemini and had warm feelings for the "Modernizing Shah", all the while hating Franco.

It is like the old story told of Aristotle; an idiot warmly greeted him on the street and immediately Aristotle became depressed: "What stupid thing have I done that causes this man to like me?"

[Babak Makkinejad]

On your number 1; I think that the planet cannot be dominated; 2/3 of it is water.

On your number 2, I think it is the most plausible.

Please also note that Europeans, like their Gulfie counterparts (or Israelis, for that matter), constantly have to create and maintain crisis in order to keep the United State engaged on that continent.

Imagine: France and Germany settle with Russia and resolve all outstanding problems between EU and the Russian Federation.

US would say, "Great! I can go home now."

Do you think EU would want such an eventuality?

I think not.

[Jack]

OM

Apparently the least probable outcome for the first round is Macron and Fillon. If that happens then the Euro should rise as populism in Europe will be considered dead for now. The polls show both Macron and Fillon winning the second round by double digits. It seems Le Pen has a ceiling in terms of vote percentage. A competitive second round will require Melenchon and Le Pen.

As far as equities are concerned the central banks will print more if there is a break. They need financial assets to remain levitated. Only the bond market running away despite their ministrations will discredit them.

[Alaric]

While I believe that Trump is bluffing, I suspect others within his cabinet are pushing for war in Syria at least but they are doing it in a very clumsy fashion.

[Jack]

OM

The ECB and BoJ are on a tear this year.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-21/why-nothing-matters-central-banks-have-bought-record-1-trillion-assets-2017

[different clue]

Nancy K,

Many years ago I read the book Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson. Early in the book he wrote a sentence I still remember. " Richard Nixon is back from the dead, running wild in the power vacuum of Lyndon's hopeless bullsh*t."

I will paraphrase that sentence for today. " Trump won by running wild in the power vacuum of Hillary's hopeless bullsh*t." The Democratic Inner-Party elites produced the Trump win by assuring Sanders's primary "loss" through various kinds of fraudulent manipulation and sometimes outright sabotage of the primary process. So Trump is very much the Clintocrats' gift to the nation.

As to Trump's current actions, they are very much Clintastic and very much not what I voted for. He certainly appears to be carrying out the Wall Street ClintoBorg agenda. That is of course his choice and he is to be blamed for making that choice.

[C L]

From personal experience the 'great negotiator' has one tactic for disputes: Full frontal attack with an army of lawyers.
Unfortunately in the international arena this tactic is useless, yet worse his army of lawyers has become a real army controlled by his misadministration of yes men. All is laid out in the ghostwritten art of the deal.

We poor souls side-stepped the lawyerly onslaught by laying our claim for pay, to a trump org supplier, the supplier paid our claims, charged the trump org for them + handling fees and we walked away with the money due us to feed our families, as did the army of lawyers who cost the trump org 10x our initial claim.

'Tact' for this administration is twitter shorthand for 'Attack'

Heres hoping the many political advisors around the globe figure this tactic out quickly and adapt - Avoiding a charging bull is easier when one tries not to harm it, it leaves the bull winded and standing in its own bullshit.

[wisedupearly]

Judging just from the actions taken so far (our continuing presence in Afghanistan is but one example) PNAC is either insane or malevolent. Certainly the PNAC actions always yield the worst possible results for the US. The limitless nature of the military adventures, the failure to set any termination conditions, are extremely destructive to any organism/country. The results can be seen as a near perfect balance of costs sufficient to punish and eventually destabilize but not so heavy so as to cause immediate collapse.

[Nancy K]

Yes you are right but ubbermommy looks better than ubberdaddy.

[Mark Logan]

All,

I'll opine Trump is fundamentally insecure and about the only approval he has garnered to date was from his "toughness" in Syria. Enablers ready to pounce wasted no time.

A ray of hope, if there is one, may be in the hard-to-summon image of Trump getting a "trust me" AUMF from Congress ala George W. for Iraq. His credibility is not of the best. The sort of deployments which Mattis is likely to recommend prior to an attempt to take out NOKO's nuclear program would seem to require something like that. Emphasis on seem. Lacking proper preparedness, Mattis, Dunford, McMaster, at least seem, to me (a BIG caveat), capable of balking. They would their oaths to defend them.

[ToivoS]

Nancy, please stop telling us how we feel. I voted for Trump but I never loved him. I saw that vote as an opportunity to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the borg state in general and the Democratic Party in particular. In the 20 years prior to that vote I was an activist inside the Party but last year finally came to the conclusion that it was so corrupt that it could not be reformed from within. Blowing it up was simply a pragmatic decision.

[TonyL]

I agreed with Mr FB Ali

"(3) When the collective mind of a group is infected with such crazy ideas, it cannot view matters rationally."

I think Mr Trump meant everything he said. So I'll take the "imbeciles" explanation.

[SQuinn]

This is not what I voted for. We've got a monkey with a machine gun.

[turcopolier]

richardstevenshack

It WAS a rhetorical question, but the MIC business is just wrong in the way people think of it as dictating policy. Industry exerts pressure on Congress which responds to lobbyists to seek purchase of things made in their districts but the actual formulation of foreign policy has nothing to do with procurement. That is why we often end up ill equipped for policy driven demands on the military. Foreign policy decisions are derived from complex political factors having to do with group identity, rubbish learned in graduate schools, personal ambition, foreign pressures exerted through the American political system. Are you familiar with the PPBS process? I will explain it if you like. This system is so "wired" as to make it virtually incomprehensible to those who do not operate inside it full time. Its very complexity is so great that the idea of General Dynamics or some similar company driving the system is funny. Israel? Yes, of course. Israel is the 2000 lb elephant in the room both through the baleful direct influence of AIPAC on policy and the long term corrosion on governmental process that Zionist interests have inflicted on the US government. Without Israel's wishes in the matter we would not give a damn about Syria or Iran. pl

[Outrage Beyond]

It appears Trump has been captured by the Clintonistas, the Zionists, the Neocons, and the Borg. Or to put it another way, Trump has morphed himself into a simulacrum of what we expected from Clinton: warmongering foreign policy and a variety of shitty domestic policies.

It's possible it's all a big bluff; a big show; a feint to sucker the Borg. But the deeper Trump commits to the Zionist/Neocon/Borg program, the harder it is to think it's some masterful maskirovka stratagem.

The question I want to raise is this: how did it happen? How did the Borg capture Trump? Did he give in because he is a narcissist who wants to be loved? Did he give in because the Borg has some serious kompromat on him? Is he so uninterested in details that he's willing to outsource policy decisions to Ivanka and his Zionist douchebag son-in-law?

Recall if you will Trump's appearance before the RJC where where he told an assortment of rich Jews that their money couldn't control him. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/donald-trump-gives-non-kosher-speech-to-gop-jews.html But then it turns out he took big money from Adelson. Did Adelson buy control? Contrast Trump's recent actions with his final campaign commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8

I pose these questions in somewhat rhetorical fashion as to some degree the answers seem obvious. Someday in the future we may learn the details of the exact machinations that led to Trump's betrayal of his base and his apparent merger with the Borg.

Some months before the election, I predicted several times on this site that Trump would likely be impeached if elected. It could still happen, but it appears one benefit of Trump's capitulation is that impeachment is "off the table" (as Pelosi put it, regarding Bush Junior) for now.

[Mikey]

That Trump could wind up defeating HRC is, IMO, the ultimate in rejection. As Michael Moore said: It was the big FU in Human History.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxDRqeuLNag

[Doug Colwell]

Nancy,
In all sincerity I wish that were so. If anything I think Hillary would have been a bit quicker to use force. She would not have been coerced or convinced, as I think Donald might well have been. She already had plenty of experience, and never showed any reluctance using force in my memory.
But perhaps you are right, there might have been less pressure on her to move so quickly. I suspect she and her coterie would have fallen prey the the "I have to show how tough I am because I a girl" sort of thinking.
If you could provide quotes of her quotes of her opposition to war(s) I would welcome them. Thank you.

[Mikey]

In terms of military adventures, the destruction of the Syrian state, and the carnage that would follow has the greatest likelihood of success with the least political risk. If you choose to call it that. Along with it comes the side benefit of bloodying Russia's and the Iranian's nose without significant US military commitment or domestic opposition.
War with N. Korea is risky, they have mastered unpredictability. It won't be popular on the home front when Hyundai's become hard to get. Also, it is not in Israel's short term interest.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think you are underestimating the corrosive effort that the Protestant Churches in the United States and the United Kingdom have exerted on the behalf of the state of Israel.

They are the ones who bear responsibility, a very major one in my opinion, for bringing the United States to this situation.

Of course Israelis would take advantage of any damned fool anywhere in the world to advance their agenda.

[Babak Makkinejad]

In your fine list: "Clintonistas, the Zionists, the Neocons, and the Borg.." you forgot to include the American Electorate.

[ked]

& now, getting blown up may be the consequence of such pragmatism. it was far more obvious that Trump was, well, exactly what he has confirmed himself to be, than that Hillary was intolerable as a president. hate for Hillary was a powerfully blinding force, wasn't it?
look, I realize there are real & fundamental problems with our nation. but to be so impatient for a quick fix that supposedly wise people would go for Trump is really a self-indictment. and those now surprised over anything that issues from his regime could really use some self-examination. I think his avid supporters who weren't simply simple are no better at selecting leaders (& certainly as lousy at playing the long game) than those they so righteously opposed.
I have news for you - it's going to get a lot worse... his family circle isn't big enough, or skilled enough, to save us.

[Lemur]

the US might already be at war if she was in charge.