Washington Post (September 8)
“Washington feels like the capital of an occupied country,” filled with “institutional and administrative chaos; our military chain of command is compromised; people around the elected president feel impelled to act above the law and remove papers from his desk. The mechanisms meant to protect the state from an incompetent or dictatorial president are not being used because people in power no longer believe in them, or are afraid to use them. Washington feels like the capital of a state where the legal order has collapsed.”
Tags: Administrative, Chain of command, Chaos, Collapsed, Dictatorial, Elected, Incompetent, Institutional, Law, Legal order, Military, Occupied, Power, President, Protect, Washington
Washington Post (August 14)
“Even in a world where the United States’ military and diplomatic power seems to be in retreat, there is an element of the U.S.-led order that’s as strong as ever — our dominance of the global economy.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey “may think he can bluff his way through the Brunson crisis, but Turkish banks, construction companies and bondholders know better. In the still-global economy, going it alone really isn’t an option… This summer, as ever, we sink or swim together.”
Tags: Banks, Bondholders, Brunson, Construction, Crisis, Diplomatic, Dominance, Erdogan, Global economy, Military, Power, Retreat, Turkey, U.S.
Newsweek (June 13)
Kim was the “undisputed winner” and rather “sadly, this isn’t really up for debate.” Kim successfully “appealed to Trump’s vanity…. On its own, putting the suspension of our defensive joint military exercises on the table in exchange for nothing concrete is a jaw-dropping concession from both a diplomatic and a military readiness perspective. In addition, it seems the Defense Department was not consulted, nor were our South Korean allies.”
Tags: Allies, Concession, Defense Dept., Diplomatic, Jaw-dropping, Joint military exercises, Kim, Military, Nothing concrete, Readiness, South Korea, Trump, Undisputed, Vanity, Winner
LA Times (March 13)
“Myanmar has lost its luster for U.S. investors, who say the military has relinquished little power and Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government has failed to loosen the grip that army generals and their cronies retain over key industries.”
Tags: Aung San Suu Kyi, Cronies, Elected, Generals, Government, Key industries, Luster, Military, Myanmar, U.S. investors
Los Angeles Times (August 16)
“America’s top business executives may have bristled over President Trump’s ban on refugees, his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and his decision to bar transgender Americans from the military.” Still, “it wasn’t until the embattled president all but defended white supremacists in the aftermath of the deadly clashes over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., that the country’s corporate elite decided they had had enough.”And, “by Wednesday, so many executives had resigned from Trump’s economic advisory and manufacturing councils, including the heads of General Electric Co., Intel Corp. and Campbell Soup Co., that the president announced on Twitter that he was disbanding the panels.”
Tags: Advisory councils, Ban, Business, Campbell Soup, Charlottesville, Clashes, Deadly, Economic, Embattled, Executives, GE, Intel, Manufacturing, Military, Paris accord, Refugees, Transgender, Trump, U.S., White supremacists
New York Times (June 26)
“Mr. Trump’s demonizing of Iran, and his unwillingness to engage its government, could result in a broadening of the American military mission from defeating ISIS to preventing Iranian influence from expanding. This would be dangerous. Iran is a vexing state to be smartly managed, not assumed to be an implacable enemy.”
Tags: Broadening, Dangerous, Demonizing, Enemy, Influence, Iran, ISIS, Military, Mission, Trump, U.S., Vexing
Los Angeles Times (March 16)
With his proposed budget, President Trump “would slash education, research, foreign aid and many domestic programs to make room for one of the biggest military buildups in history.” The proposal is unlikely to gain traction. “It’s such a Draconian approach and would inflict so much pain on lawmakers’ constituents — especially in Red State America — that Congress is expected to ignore most of Trump’s proposal.”
Tags: Budget, Buildup, Congress, Draconian, Education, Foreign aid, Military, Pain, Research, Trump, U.S.
Chicago Tribune (January 17)
“No one in Europe should ever be induced to wonder if America is on the side of Europe’s free and democratic nations or the menacing, corrupt autocrat in the Kremlin. The military partnerships and economic connections between the United States and Europe deserve a great deal of the credit for the relative peace and prosperity of the postwar era.”
Tags: Autocrat, Corrupt, Democratic, Europe, Free, Kremlin, Military, Partnership, Peace, Prosperity, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (March 22)
“Europe seems determined to keep treating this as a policing problem, or at least as anything other than a call to bolster military efforts in Syria…. There’s a role for policing in a counterterror strategy, but also a limit. Brussels…can’t live in perpetual lockdown. Until the West is prepared to fight this terrorist threat at the source, Tuesday’s victims in Brussels won’t be the last.”
Tags: Brussels, Counterterror, Europe, Lockdown, Military, Policing, Strategy, Syria, Terrorist threat, Victims
The Economist (August 2)
Israel is “winning the battle, losing the war. For all its military might, Israel faces a grim future unless it can secure peace” and it is slipping in the international court of public opinion.
