As America's influence & prestige declines worldwide…

[KTJ]

from the print edition of the Los Angeles Times....

Foreign leaders say U.S. losing stature

Trump claims he's boosting American influence, but many policy experts see a country in retreat.

By TRACY WILKINSON, ALEXANDRA ZAVIS and SHASHANK BENGALI | 3:00AM PST - Tuesday, December 26, 2017


President Trump visits Saudi Arabia in May. Some leaders worry about Trump's unpredictability. — Photograph: Evan Vucci/Associated Press.

WASHINGTON D.C. — China has now assumed the mantle of fighting climate change, a global crusade that the United States once led. Russia has taken over Syrian peace talks, also once the purview of the American administration, whose officials Moscow recently deigned to invite to negotiations only as observers.

France and Germany are often now the countries that fellow members of NATO look to, after President Trump wavered on how supportive his administration would be toward the North Atlantic alliance.

And in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S., once the only mediator all sides would accept, has found itself isolated after Trump’s decision to declare that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In his wide-ranging speech on national security last week, Trump highlighted what he called the broadening of U.S. influence throughout the world.

But one year into his presidency, many international leaders, diplomats and foreign policy experts argue that he has reduced U.S. influence or altered it in ways that are less constructive. On a range of policy issues, Trump has taken positions that disqualified the United States from the debate or rendered it irrelevant, these critics say.

Even in countries that have earned Trump's praise, such as India, there is concern about Trump's unpredictability — will he be a reliable partner? — and what many overseas view as his isolationism.

“The president can and does turn things inside out,” said Manoj Joshi, a scholar at a New Delhi think tank, the Observer Research Foundation. “So the chances that the U.S. works along a coherent and credible national security strategy are not very high.”

As the U.S. recedes, other powers including China, Russia and Iran are eagerly stepping into the void.

One significant issue is the visible gap between the president and many of his top national security advisors.

Trump's national security speech was intended to explain to the public a 70-page strategy document that the administration developed. But on key issues, Trump's speech and the document diverged. The speech, for example, included generally favorable rhetoric about Russia and China. The strategy document listed the two governments as competitors, accused the Russians of using “subversion” as a tactic and said that countering both rival powers was necessary.

Russia reacted angrily: America continues to evince “its aversion to a multipolar world,” said President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov.

At the same time, Trump's refusal to overtly criticize Russia, some diplomats say, has emboldened Putin in his military actions in Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebels are battling a pro-West government in Kiev. Kurt Volker, the administration's special envoy for Ukraine, said that some of the worst fighting since February took place over the last two weeks, with numerous civilian casualties. Volker accused Russia of “massive” cease-fire violations.

Nicholas Burns, who served as a senior American diplomat under Republican and Democratic administrations, said the administration's strategy was riddled with contradictions that have left the U.S. ineffective.

Trump “needs a strong State Department to implement” its strategy, he said. “Instead, State and the foreign service are being weakened and often sidelined.”

Trump's “policy of the last 12 months is a radical departure from every president since WWII,” Burns said in an interview. “Trump is weak on NATO, Russia, trade, climate, diplomacy. The U.S. is declining as a global leader.”

The most recent example of U.S. isolation came with Trump's decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, delighting many Israelis, but angering Palestinians and reversing decades of international consensus.

On Thursday, an overwhelming majority of the U.N. General Assembly, including many U.S. allies, voted to demand the U.S. rescind the decision.

For the last quarter-century, successive U.S. governments have held themselves up as an “honest broker” in mediating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Trump insisted he is not giving up on a peace deal, but most parties involved interpreted his announcement as clearly siding with Israel.

“From now on, it is out of the question for a biased United States to be a mediator between Israel and Palestine,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a summit of more than 50 Muslim countries that he hosted in Istanbul. “That period is over.”

Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, said that if a peace deal is to be made now, “it won't be from American policy.”

“Trump took himself and the administration out of the peace process for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Trump had boasted of his ability to convene Muslim leaders during his trip to Saudi Arabia in May, but that would seem far less possible today. In Jordan, arguably Washington's closest Arab ally in the Middle East, government-controlled television has started 24-hour broadcasts of invitations to follow a Twitter account whose hashtag roughly translates as “Jerusalem is ours … our Arabness.”

Regional leaders and analysts also say that for all of Trump's tough rhetoric, they see few concrete steps by the U.S. to counter Iran's steady expansion of its military, economic and political influence, a perception that Iranian leaders are happy to exploit.

“Trump is ranting and making empty threats,” said Hamid Reza Taraghi, a conservative Iranian politician with close ties to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Russia, China and Iran are gaining ground in the Middle East, and America is losing ground and influence.”

That view is also shared by Iranian moderates, with whom the Obama administration thought it could work.

“The reality on the ground in the Middle East is that the American administration has failed to form an efficient coalition against its self-proclaimed enemies,” said Nader Karimi Juni, an independent Iranian analyst who writes for reformist dailies and magazines.

“Now Russia is celebrating its victory in Syria, and America is watching as an onlooker,” Juni said.

In Syria and Iraq, the U.S. under Trump has succeeded in helping its allies drive Islamic State militants out of their strongholds. But Washington has opted to take a back seat in the other conflicts roiling the two countries.

Another round of recent U.N.-mediated and U.S.-backed peace talks on Syria wrapped up in Geneva without any progress. Instead, a Russia-led process is gaining traction.

Even some longtime opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad quietly acknowledge that Sochi, the Black Sea resort where Russia aims to convene a “Syrian people's congress” next year, and not Geneva, will be the focus of efforts to bring an end to the war.

Trump has won praise in parts of South Asia, a region his team has re-dubbed the “Indo-Pacific” and where it is favoring India and Afghanistan over Pakistan. The administration has asked Congress for $350 million in aid to Pakistan for 2018, not quite one-tenth the amount Washington provided five years ago.

Afghan officials say they are encouraged by Trump's renewed pressure on neighboring Pakistan to take “decisive action” to stop militant groups operating from its soil.

“Our partnership, which reflects a renewed U.S. commitment, will set the conditions to end the war and finally bringing peace to Afghanistan,” Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office said in a statement.

But even there, officials say they worry that Trump's bellicose rhetoric will strengthen China's status as a power broker.

China has also benefited from Trump's refusal to join other nations to work against climate change. Even as Trump removed climate change from the list of threats menacing the United States, China announced it would begin phasing in an ambitious program to curb carbon emissions by establishing the world's largest market for trading emissions permits.

Trump was not invited to an international climate summit hosted earlier this month by French President Emmanuel Macron because of his decision to pull the United States out of 2015 international climate deal.

“You cannot pretend to be the guarantor of international order and get out of [an accord] as soon as it suits you,” Macron told France 2 TV.

__________________________________________________________________________

• Los Angeles Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson, Alexandra Zavis Zavis and Shashank Bengali Bengali reported from Washington D.C., Beirut and Mumbai, India, respectively. Special correspondents Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran, Omar Medhat in Cairo and Samir Zedan in Bethlehem, West Bank, contributed to this report.

• Tracy Wilkinson has covered wars, crises and daily life on three continents. Her career began with United Press International, where she covered the Contra war in Nicaragua. She moved to the Los Angeles Times in 1987, first as a writer on the Metro staff, then as a foreign correspondent based in San Salvador. In 1995, she moved to Vienna, where she covered the war in the Balkans, winning the George Polk Award in 1999, and then to Jerusalem. From there, she went to Rome, where she covered two popes and did several stints in Iraq. In 2008, she became Mexico bureau chief, where her coverage was part of a team Overseas Press Club Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Wilkinson was also the 2014 winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Award for coverage of Latin America. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University. Her book “The Vatican's Exorcists: Driving Out the Devil in the 21st Century” has been translated into a dozen languages. She joined the L.A. Times' Washington, D.C., bureau in 2015 to cover foreign affairs.

• Alexandra Zavis is a writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times' Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. Since joining the L.A. Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy's Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME's International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.

• Shashank Bengali is the Los Angeles Times' South Asia correspondent, covering a stretch of countries from Iran to Myanmar. He joined the L.A. Times in 2012 as a national security reporter in the Washington bureau. He has reported from more than 50 countries since beginning his career with McClatchy Newspapers, where he served as a foreign correspondent in Africa and the Middle East. In 2016, he shared in the Pulitzer Prize awarded to the L.A. Times staff for coverage of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Originally from Cerritos, California, Shashank holds degrees in journalism and French from USC and a master's in public policy from Harvard. He lives with his wife in Mumbai, India.

enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=fcf8de93-b191-434a-b706-da1315616bbd

[KTJ]

As I mentioned in another thread a few hours ago, the above article was published on the front page of the print edition of the Los Angeles Times.

One day, Donald J. Trump may work out that America has lost most of its influence & prestige in the world, and I guess that will be when the Thucydides Trap will be sprung and the world could potentially suddenly become an extremely dangerous place as the Jesuslanders (with a maniac residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) react to the new reality.

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post....

The decline of U.S. influence is the great global story of our age

Trump's administration is foolishly withdrawing the country into self-centered isolation.

By ZAREED ZAKARIA | 7:51PM EST - Thursday, Deember 28, 2017


President Trump turns to talk to the media during a Christmas Eve video teleconference with members of the mIlitary at his Mar-a-Lago estate
in Palm Beach, Florida. — Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press.

DANIEL KAHNEMAN, who won a Nobel Prize in economics for reshaping our understanding of human motivation, once said: “No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.” That's as true for nations as for individuals. Countries have always oriented themselves within a larger international story. But what is today's global story?

For decades, the great overarching narrative was the Cold War. Almost every nation acted or reacted in the context of that ideological, political and military struggle. Then came 1989 and the collapse of communism. For the next 20 years or so, the opening up of the world — globalization — became the dominant thread, as countries jostled to become hot new markets and Western democratic capitalism seemed inevitable, undergirded by U.S. power and prestige. The attacks of 9/11 dealt a sharp blow to this benign narrative and, for a while, Islamist terrorism seemed to be steering the course of history. But terrorism has proved too weak and limited a force to be the big global story.

So what is it now? I would argue that the largest trend today is the decline of American influence. Not the decline of American power — the country remains economically and militarily in a league of its own — but a decline of its desire and capacity to use that power to shape the world. The current administration seems intent on dismantling the United States' great achievements — as it is doing with the World Trade Organization — or to simply be uninterested in setting the global agenda. Donald Trump will be the first president in nearly a century to end his first year in office without having held a state dinner for a foreign head of state.

And this erosion of U.S. global leadership is already causing other countries to adjust.

This month, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel declared that “the most important changes affecting our Western world and, indeed, the world as a whole” stem from “the United States' current withdrawal under Trump from its role as a reliable guarantor of Western-influenced multilateralism.” That shift, he noted, “is accelerating the transformation of the global order … and the risk of trade wars, arms races and armed conflicts is increasing.”

For Europe, Gabriel argued, the situation is almost existential. Since the end of World War II, he said, “Europe had been an American project in the United States' clearly understood interests. However, the current U.S. administration now perceives Europe in a very distanced way, regarding previous partners as competitors and sometimes even as at the very least economic opponents.” He urged Europe to take its fate into its own hands and decouple itself from U.S. foreign policy.

Consider also the speech in June by Canada's foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, in which she thanked the United States for its seven-decade-long stewardship of the international system and strongly implied that, under the Trump administration, American leadership of that system had reached its end.

Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a speech to the 19th Communist Party Congress in October that reflected his recognition of these new realities. “China’s international standing has risen as never before,” he noted, and the nation is “blazing a new trail for other developing countries to achieve modernization.” Xi announced “a new era … that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind.” In previous speeches, he suggested boldly that China would become the new guarantor of the global trading order.

This, then, is the global story of our times. The creator, upholder and enforcer of the existing international system is withdrawing into self-centered isolation. The other great supporter and advocate of the open, rule-based world, Europe, has not been able to act assertively on the world stage with any clear vision or purpose and remains obsessed with the fate of its own continental project. Filling the power vacuum, a host of smaller, illiberal powers — Turkey, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia — are surging forward in their respective regions. But only China truly has the wherewithal and strategic prowess to potentially shape the next chapter of the story of our age.

A decade ago, I described a “post-American world”, brought on not by the decline of the United States, but by the “rise of the rest.” That world is indeed coming to fruition because other countries are prospering, but the changes are being dramatically accelerated by the Trump administration's foolish and self-defeating decision to abdicate the United States' global influence — something that has taken more than 70 years to build. As the president might tweet, “Sad!”

• Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. He is also the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for The Atlantic.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

• VIDEO: What we learned from the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress

• Trump's national security strategy ignores the lessons of Europe's bloody history

• Glimpse of a post-American world

• Is war between a rising China and a dominant America inevitable? A thought experiment.

• How Trump could avoid the Thucydides Trap

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-decline-of-us-influence-is-the-great-global-story-of-our-times/2017/12/28/bfe48262-ebf6-11e7-9f92-10a2203f6c8d_story.html

[KTJ]

from The New York Times....

The U.S. Wanted to Discuss Iran. Russia Brought Up Black Lives Matter.

The United Nations Security Council discussed the recent protests in Iran over economic conditions there.

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ | Friday, January 05, 2018


Javad Safaei of the Iranian delegation and the American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, during a Security Council meeting on Friday.
— Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

UNITED NATIONS — Efforts by the Trump administration to marshal a muscular international response to Iran's crackdown on anti-government protesters appeared to backfire on Friday, as members of the United Nations Security Council instead used a special session called by the United States to lecture the American ambassador on the proper purpose of the body and to reaffirm support for the Iran nuclear agreement.

It was an afternoon of high diplomatic theater that began with a passionate denunciation of Iran's “oppressive government” by the American ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, and ended with the Iranian ambassador delivering a lengthy history of popular revolt in the United States — from the violent demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 to the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.

In the interim, Council members did, one by one, condemn the Iranian government's response during more than a week of protests. As of Friday, more than 20 people had been killed and hundreds had been arrested. The authorities have blocked access to social media and have blamed foreign “enemies” for instigating the unrest, a common refrain at times of upheaval that in this case the government has provided no evidence to support.

In her remarks, Ms. Haley said that the United States would remain steadfastly behind the Iranian protesters.

“Let there be no doubt whatsoever,” she said, “the United States stands unapologetically with those in Iran who seek freedom for themselves.”

But there was evidence of a mini-revolt brewing within the Security Council chamber, not only among traditional adversaries like Russia and China, but also among close allies like France and Sweden. Many seemed to fear that the outspoken criticism by the Americans was simply a pretext to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump has long desired to scrap.

It is not precisely clear what Ms. Haley hoped to achieve by convening the session on Friday, which was not previously scheduled. Until the meeting began at 3 p.m., it was not even certain whether Ms. Haley would be able to secure the votes needed to call the session to order.

But even before the session began, France's ambassador, François Delattre, warned against “instrumentalization” of the protests “from the outside.”

Speaking before the Council, he went further.

“We must be wary of any attempt to exploit this crisis for personal ends, which would have a diametrically opposed outcome to that which is wished,” Mr. Delattre said.

The Russian ambassador, Vasily A. Nebenzya, was more blunt. He asked rhetorically why the Security Council had not taken up the issue of Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, which were at times also met with a violent police response.

“The real reason for convening today's meeting is not an attempt to protect human rights or promote the interests of the Iranian people, but rather as a veiled attempt to use the current moment to continue to undermine” the Iranian deal, Mr. Nebenzya said.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly excoriated the deal, which was a signature diplomatic achievement of his predecessor, Barack Obama. In October, he refused to recertify the deal, though he left it to Congress to legislate changes to it. (None of the other world powers that signed the deal believes that renegotiation is possible.)

Later this month, Mr. Trump will again have to choose whether to continue to waive sanctions, as the deal requires, or chart a more confrontational approach that would further antagonize European allies.

Mr. Trump himself conflated the protests with the Iran nuclear deal this week, arguing that financial benefits received by the Iranian authorities as part of the accord had fueled the corruption that the country's people were now protesting.

At the Security Council on Friday, most members insisted that these two issues were separate.

“It needs to be crystal clear to the international community that the situation in Iran does not belong on the agenda of the Security Council,” said Sacha Sergio Llorenty Solíz, the Bolivian ambassador.

Sweden's representative, Irina Schoulgin Nyoni, concurred: “We have our reservations on the format and timing of this session.”

Such reticence to support the American position is the latest evidence of growing international resistance to the Trump administration's foreign policy priorities, particularly at the United Nations. Last month, a large majority of United Nations members voted for a resolution denouncing the United States' decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the American Embassy there.

Ms. Haley had to use her veto to block a similar resolution in the Security Council that was supported by every other member.

On Wednesday, the United States Mission to the United Nations held a cocktail reception for the nine countries that voted against the resolution in the General Assembly, which, aside from Israel, were Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru and Palau.

In a video message played at the reception, Mr. Trump thanked the attendees for “standing with the United States.”

He said that the vote would “go down as a very important date,” and that their support was “noted and greatly appreciated.”

• Michael Schwirtz is a reporter with The New York Times. Since 2014 he has been a member of the metro desk's investigative team, reporting about brutality and corruption in the New York State prison system and at Rikers Island in New York City. He has covered the New York City Police Department for the metro desk, and from 2006 to 2012 he was a correspondent with The N.Y. Times Moscow bureau.

www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/world/middleeast/un-iran-protests-debate.html

[matte]

I believe the United States has its best days ahead.

The alternative is China, it is a human rights abuser and is not even a democracy.

Most Asian nations want the United States to be more active and involved in Asia, as a counterweight to China.

[KTJ]

I think it's hilarious that Trump's government convened a special session of the U.N. Security Council to have a go at Iran, but Russia brought up Black Lives Matter and American Pigs shooting Black Americans. Kinda turned the tables, don't you think?

America is a has-been power which is in decline. They are too dumb to learn from the past when other great powers waned until they eventually ended up insignificant.

Donald J. Trump is accelerating the decline of American influence around the world, and the subsequent decline.

Hallelujah and Praise the Lord, eh?

[matte]

The United States remains the shining light of freedom and democracy around the world.

[matte]

God bless the USA:

If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life 

And I had to start again with just my children and my wife 

I'd thank my lucky stars to be livin' here today 

'Cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can't take that away 

And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free 

And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me 

And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today 

'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land 

God bless the USA 

From the lakes of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee 

Across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea 

From Detroit down to Houston and New York to LA 

Well, there's pride in every American heart 

And it's time we stand and say that 

[2x] 

I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free 

And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me 

And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today 

'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land 

God bless the USA

[jody]

Matte stop you're shit stirring.

[Deleted]

America has the ability to be a great nation in many areas but it also has the ability to be the worst at the same time.

[KTJ]

A recent example of America's waning prestige & influence in the world....





....long may the decline continue.

[KTJ]

from The New York Times....

At Davos, the Real Star May Have Been China, Not Trump

While President Trump reassured business leaders that he wanted trade to continue,
Beijing extended its economic reach to Latin America and the Arctic.

By KEITH BRADSHER | Sunday, January 28, 2018


Liu He, a top economic policy advisor to Chinese President Xi Jinping, drew a full house to his presentation during a meeting of global business
and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland. — Photograph: Gian Ehrenzeller/European Pressphoto Agency.

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — President Trump used the World Economic Forum meeting to woo investors and business leaders by reassuring them that “America first does not mean America alone”. But it was clear in Davos, Switzerland, this past week that geopolitical momentum lay with Beijing, not Washington.

At one end of town, President Michel Temer of Brazil welcomed an unexpected offer from Beijing for Latin American nations to work closely with a Chinese initiative, known as the Belt and Road, intended to spread its economic and diplomatic influence abroad.

At the other end of town, a senior Chinese diplomat helped introduce the prime minister of Pakistan at a breakfast meeting. Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi used his talk to praise the rapidly expanding Chinese investments in his country, including to build power stations and a large port.

One of the best-attended speeches at the forum was that of Liu He, a member of China's ruling Politburo, who promoted the Belt and Road initiative, also known as One Belt, One Road. Participants here said the Chinese initiative was already rivaling more established, traditionally American-led, international institutions.

“The China One Belt, One Road is going to be the new W.T.O. — like it or not,” said Joe Kaeser, chief executive of Siemens, the German industrial giant, referring to the World Trade Organization.

Belt and Road takes its name from the idea that Beijing is spreading its influence along the ancient Silk Road that once linked imperial China to the Roman Empire and to the medieval Europe of Marco Polo. But that was not the only push to extend its presence abroad that Beijing was trying to showcase.

On Friday, the Chinese government used a policy document issued in Beijing to call for a “Polar Silk Road” that would link China to Europe and the Atlantic via a shipping route past the melting Arctic ice cap.

Belt and Road has been a centerpiece of the foreign policy of President Xi Jinping, and his promises of a “China Dream” of restoring his nation to past greatness. Unveiled in Kazakhstan in 2013, Belt and Road started as a plan to revive economic, investment and diplomatic links across Central Asia.

The plan gradually extended to include the Mideast, Europe and eastern Africa, with Beijing promising hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in highways, rail lines, ports, power stations and other infrastructure, much of it through loans from Chinese state-owned banks.

Critics have been skeptical, arguing that projects bankrolled through the initiative will bury the recipients in debt and cause environmental damage. The initiative has also been criticized as an easy line of financing for authoritarian regimes. China says its projects will be environmentally and financially sound, and that it does not seek a say in how other countries are governed.


The foreign minister of Uruguay, Rodolfo Nin Novoa, right, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week in Montevideo, Uruguay.
— Photograph: Andres Stapff/Reuters.

While Davos was underway, China was making other efforts to stretch the geographical ambitions of its Belt and Road initiative even further. At a summit meeting for Latin American and Caribbean foreign ministers in Santiago, Chile, Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China called for close cooperation and participation by the region's countries, although he stopped short of formally including them in the initiative.

In Davos, President Temer of Brazil said that he was not concerned about the rising influence in South America of China, which has increased investments in his country and extended enormous loans to Venezuela and Ecuador.

Venezuela has already proved unable to repay its creditors, which include Moscow and Beijing. The Russian government has used Venezuela's overdue debts as a bargaining chip to win the right for Russian warships to visit Venezuelan ports.

Mr. Temer said the debts should be seen as a financial issue, not a geopolitical one. “The major concern they have is to recover the loans they gave Venezuela, they want their payment,” he said in an interview. “This was actually quite explained in the meetings we have.”

He also said that he was not worried by the strong Chinese interest in acquiring stakes in Brazil's electrical distribution and other industries. “The U.S. invests as well in Brazil,” he said.

National leaders seemed to vie with one another in Davos in calling for closer cooperation with China. Mr. Abbasi of Pakistan dismissed recent controversy in his country over whether China's giant construction projects were compromising Pakistan's sovereignty, its environment or its financial stability.

“There is no major challenge we have not been able to resolve, and the sovereignty issues are very clear,” he said at a breakfast for business executives and the news media. He added that on financial and environmental issues relating to Belt and Road projects, “So far, I can tell you we are winning on both counts.”

Chinese officials used Davos as another opportunity to speak out against protectionism, in what analysts have described as an effort to take advantage of global concerns about the Trump administration and its warnings that it would pursue a more aggressive trade policy.

Beijing's rhetoric comes despite China's steep tariffs on a broad range of manufactured goods, including shoes and cars. China's average tariffs on imports are actually triple those of the United States and double those of the European Union.

However, China has zero tariffs on many raw materials that it has in only limited quantities at home, like iron ore. As a result, its stance has been particularly welcomed by countries like Chile that produce a lot of raw materials but relatively few factory goods.

“In this, we see a very big difference with the United States,” Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz of Chile said, calling China's “vision of openness and its rejection of protectionism very welcome.”

__________________________________________________________________________

• Ernesto Londoño contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

• Keith Bradsher is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Shanghai bureau chief for The New York Times, having reopened the Shanghai bureau on November 14th, 2016. He has previously served as the Hong Kong bureau chief and the Detroit bureau chief for The Times. Before those postings, he was a Washington correspondent for The Times covering the Federal Reserve and international trade, and a New York-based business reporter covering transportation and telecommunications for The Times. Born in 1964, Mr. Bradsher received a degree in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar. He received a master's degree in public policy with a concentration in economics from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Prior to joining The New York Times, Mr. Bradsher wrote for the Los Angeles Times from 1987 until 1989.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

• China Reaches Into the Heart of Europe

• A Sober Trump Reassures the Davos Elite

• Trump Arrived in Davos as a Party Wrecker. He Leaves Praised as a Pragmatist.

• Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/business/davos-trump-china.html

[KTJ]

[KTJ]

from The Washington Pot…

Trump is robbing America of what makes it great

The anti-government rants have gotten dangerously out of hand.

By JEFFREY SACHS | 2:22PM EDT — Wednesday, July 25, 2018


President Trump at a “Made in America Product Showcase” event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. on July 23, 2018.
— Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.

AMERICAN PROSPERITY since World War II has been built upon science and technology breakthroughs spurred by a powerful innovation system linking the federal government, business, academia and venture capital. U.S. innovation policy has been successfully emulated in Europe and Asia, most recently by China. President Trump's trade war against China aims to slow China's technology ascent but is misguided and doomed to fail; instead, American prosperity should be assured by doing what America does best: innovating at home and trading with the rest of the world.

The founding text of U.S. postwar prosperity was Vannevar Bush's report “Science: The Endless Frontier”. In an act of brilliance, America's greatest president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, asked his science advisor how the great scientific advances spurred by the military during World War II (semiconductors, radar, servomechanisms, computers, cryptography, aeronautics, nuclear science, new medicines and more) should be made public for postwar civilian use. A lesser president would have asked the opposite: how to keep military advances secret after the war.

Bush's answer was inspired. Out of his thinking, directly and indirectly, emerged the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and federal aid to education. A new science-based industrial policy was born, one that also benefited dramatically from the arrival of Europe's greatest scientific minds, chased to America by Hitler and the war.

The U.S. government, wrote Bush, should now take this further and launch a coordinated, large-scale program of scientific education, support for university research, public laboratories and funding for basic science and government-academia-business partnerships for technological advancement.

Postwar military and civilian research and development were intertwined. Great universities such as MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard and others engaged in federally funded research, and innovations first pioneered with defense spending were encouraged to find civilian outlets. The achievements were perhaps most remarkable in the emerging digital sciences and information and communications technologies, including computer science, transistors and integrated circuits, microprocessors, the Internet, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The Cold War spurred the innovation machine in ways best exemplified by the “Sputnik moment” that followed the Soviet launch of Sputnik and then former President John F. Kennedy's 1961 call for a moonshot. American math and science education was greatly boosted. (I myself was a lucky beneficiary of the “new math” of primary and secondary education in the 1960s.) The moonshot, successfully achieved within JFK's timeline (“before this decade is out”), yielded massive and lasting benefits in countless technologies including computation, telecommunications, space sciences, materials science, energy systems, medical sciences and more.

Few argued during World War II, the moonshot or the advent of the Internet that the federal government was incompetent and a drag on technology. That great lie emerged first with the demonization of government by the Ronald Reagan administration and enabled the private sector to harvest the profits from government-led innovation. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, for example, carried out their pathbreaking work on National Science Foundation funding and then became mega-billionaires as they privatized the results. In an earlier era, polio-vaccine developer Jonas Salk and others thought it natural to turn their inventions over to the public without private patents attached.

The anti-government rants have now gotten dangerously out-of-hand, causing Trump and know-nothings in the Republican Party to denounce science itself. They attack government scientists who present findings that deviate from Republican lobbies (such as the coal, oil and gas industry). They undermine public support for government investments in research and development. All of this now gravely threatens the U.S. innovation system itself.

In the meantime, American technology successes have been noted by other governments. Silicon Valley became the place to emulate, and there are now many science-and-technology zones in university towns across Europe and Asia churning out breakthroughs. The U.S. no longer stands head-and-shoulders above the rest.

Global growth is now spurred by three major poles of “endogenous” (tech-led) growth: the United States, the European Union and Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea), plus various smaller dynamic locations including Singapore, Israel and others. We should expect still others to join in global innovation. There is no American monopoly on brainpower, excellent training and cutting-edge scientific know-how.

China's rapid technological advance has stunned U.S. policymakers, especially in the national security apparatus. The “Made in China 2025” program is a brash, confident and yet utterly realistic statement of China's intention to develop the key technologies of the 21st century in advanced computation, robotics, renewable energy, precision medicine, agriculture and low-carbon transport. One of the most significant is China's ambitious plan to pioneer a worldwide renewable electricity grid — the first of its kind and scale. Trump's trade war aims to scuttle China's impertinence.

Yet Trump's approach is profoundly misguided. There are three truths about China's technological vision. First, China is filled with brilliant young people who are equipped with excellent universities, ample government funding and private-market outlets for their energies. China's technological verve will not be stopped by Trump. Second, China's advances will benefit, not harm, the world, including the United States, by bringing forward new and highly beneficial technologies like zero-carbon energy, smart vehicles and more powerful computers.

Third, and most importantly, China's inevitable advances will in no way prevent the United States from making similar progress, but only if Trump and the Republicans drop their anti-science stance, support the American system of government-business-academic innovation and direct efforts toward the true needs of the 21st century, notably zero-carbon energy and non-polluting industries. There is no future in trade wars, hot war or the polluting industries of the past.

__________________________________________________________________________

• Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. His forthcoming book, “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism”, will be published in October.

__________________________________________________________________________

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• A Chinese world order

• Trump is not the leader of the U.S. — just of his base

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• Trump just gave Putin complete free rein

www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/07/25/us-china-2

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post…

China is laying the groundwork for a post-American world order

A China-led world order would be based on interests, not values.

By NATHAN GARDELS | 11:32AM EDT — Friday, July 27, 2018


A map of the new Silk Road, connecting Asia to Europe. — Illustration: Maxiphoto/Getty Images.

AS the United States abandons the postwar multilateral system it once led, China is stepping into the breach, laying the groundwork for a post-American world order.

We are already getting a glimpse of what is to come through China's various initiatives, ranging from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to the Belt and Road project and the 16+1 group, which is developing Chinese-financed projects in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. China is also seeking to connect a global electricity grid powered by wind and solar as a means to sustain development while fighting climate change.

This new order will not be like the old. At least for now, it is not multilateral but comprised of multiple bilateral relationships linked to the Chinese core. And given China's “one world, many systems” perspective, it is based not on a convergence of values, but of interests.

President Xi Jinping has cast these initiatives with a positive spin as building “a community of shared future for mankind.” The most cynical critics regard them as a thin fig leaf disguising China's quest for global dominance and merely a means to find markets for over-production as its domestic economy slows. Xi's vision is also clouded by manifold reports of debt overload and kickbacks for corrupt leaders. In Sri Lanka, China has taken over a port it built because Sri Lanka couldn't afford the debt. The same dynamic seems to be developing in Pakistan and Laos; the new Malaysian government, meanwhile, has put its Chinese-financed rail project on hold, citing corruption and disadvantageous terms negotiated by the previous regime.

There is no mileage in being naive about China's ambitions and its self-interested motives. But lining up with hostility against China's initiatives the way Joseph Stalin and his minions did toward the Marshall Plan after World War II — which did wonders for a devastated Europe while also benefiting the United States through purchases of imports from American companies that were required to cross the Atlantic on American merchant ships — is a mistaken course for the West. And let's not forget that the American expansion of railroads westward in the 19th century also led to a crisis of corruption and over-indebtedness. Despite the turmoil and losses, when it was all sorted out, the result in the end was a connected continent that became a foundation of American prosperity.

Twenty years from now, the same will likely be true of Eurasia and Africa as a result of China's initiatives, even with all of their faults. That is why, to diminish the down-sides, the proper stance would be for the West to join with China's efforts at global development so that the process is more transparent and less corrupt, with terms that don't foster debt traps and amount to creditor imperialism. The experience of the “clean, lean and green” AIIB, which many Western nations — though not the United States — have joined, shows that high standards can be imposed if the West is a participant instead of an outsider as the new order is being built.

After all, it is not as if Western nations on their own are going to finance and construct infrastructure around the world. No one needs reminding that the United States has been unable to build a single high-speed rail project anywhere on its vast territory. By and large, it can't even manage to finance the repair of old infrastructure, much less invest in anything new. The European Union remains mired in deep disagreements about how to manage its own internal finances.

While critics carp from the sidelines, those in need of help are grateful. “When we were faced with financial crisis, amidst the wider challenges of the E.U., China helped us,” Greece's former prime minister George Papandreou recalled in a recent conversation with me. “China was one of the few nations to buy our sovereign bonds. This was an important vote of confidence. Then China began its investment in the Port of Piraeus, an early investment that is now one of the major components of the new maritime Silk Road. These investments showed great trust in my country's capacity to overcome the crisis, where few others would.”

In The WorldPost this week, we address these issues of a growing vacuum in the world order and China's attempt to fill it, for good and for ill.

Ali Wyne sees the demise of the American-led postwar order as less a consequence of President Trump's wrecking ball and more a victim of its own success. That order, built to avoid another devastating world war among major powers, achieved its goal. Along with an open trading regime, it was this stable absence of global conflict that enabled China's peaceful rise.

The result of success, Wyne contends, has been a complacency that has eroded the founding urgency that sustained a broad and deep commitment of states and their publics. That makes revitalizing the order a challenge. “The modernization of the world order would ideally result from farsighted diplomacy,” writes Wyne. “It is more likely, though, that policymakers will do little more than push for incremental improvements to an inadequate system” thereby allowing “forces — ranging from external challenges to populist uprisings — to continue testing its foundations. The potential result of indefinite erosion — a vacuum in order, without a coherent alternative to replace it — is unpalatable.”

Noting that the creation of new orders has historically followed upon cataclysmic events like the world wars, Wyne concludes: “In a nuclear age, though, it is terrifying to consider what might have to occur for a new order to emerge.”

To the extent that China is fostering an alternative to the vacuum, Jonathan Hillman doesn't like what he sees. “The Belt and Road is a masterstroke in geopolitical advertising. Wrapping the effort in Silk Road mythology, Xi is effectively selling a Sino-centric order to the world,” he writes from Budapest. “In practice, the Belt and Road is a sea of bilateral deals between China and participating countries, including many markets where few others dare to go. More than half of the countries participating in the Belt and Road have sovereign debt ratings that are either junk or not graded. China's emphasis on building big-ticket infrastructure projects resonates with foreign leaders looking to impress at home and establish a legacy.”

For Hillman, this mix of a debt trap with the megalomania of corrupt local autocrats will not spell stability and progress but a costly waste of resources as nations become tributaries beholden to Chinese largesse.

As China extends its influence globally, it will inexorably be drawn into local conflicts, just as the United States was in its period of dominance. “For decades, Beijing refrained from meddling with sovereign nations' internal affairs,” Denise Hruby writes from Juba, South Sudan, where the China National Petroleum Company owns a 40 percent share of the country's largest oil fields. “As long as economic ties flourished, it would turn a blind eye toward human rights abuses and corruption. But with increasing investments abroad comes more clout, and as the United States scales back its international commitments, China is emerging as an obvious development partner.”

Hruby reports that while China initially sought a direct role in ending the South Sudan conflict, which threatens its investments, it was soon overwhelmed by the complexity of militia and tribal politics. China fields its largest contingent of U.N. peacekeeping forces there, but it has reverted to a stance that “African problems must have African solutions” and looks to the African Union and other local mediators to resolve the crisis while it stands on the sidelines.

Jeffrey Sachs sees Trump's effort to staunch China's newfound influence while abandoning America's own successful model of development as achieving the opposite of its intent. “American prosperity since World War II has been built upon science and technology breakthroughs spurred by a powerful innovation system linking the federal government, business, academia and venture capital,” he writes. “U.S. innovation policy has been successfully emulated in Europe and Asia, most recently by China. President Trump's trade war against China aims to slow China's technology ascent but is misguided and doomed to fail; instead, American prosperity should be assured by doing what America does best: innovating at home and trading with the rest of the world.”

__________________________________________________________________________

• Nathan Gardels is editor in chief of The WorldPost, a joint venture between the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

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• George F. Will: The American president is no longer the most powerful leader in the world

• VIDEO: The American president is no longer the most powerful person in the world

www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/07/27/america-china

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post…

The Chinese threat that an aircraft carrier can't stop

This is a Sputnik moment for modernizing our military.

By DAVID IGNATIUS | 4:50PM EDT — Tuesday, August 07, 2018


An F/A-18F Super Hornet lands on the U.S. Navy's super carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Mediterranean Sea in 2016.
— Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

ASPEN, COLORADO — Will the Pentagon, with its 30-year planning cycle for building ships, still be launching aircraft carriers in 2048 — even though they're highly vulnerable to attack today?

That's an example of the military-modernization questions that kept nagging participants at last weekend's gathering of the Aspen Strategy Group, which annually brings together top-level current and former national security officials, along with a few journalists, to discuss defense and foreign policy. This year's focus was on “Maintaining America's Edge” in the dawning era of high-tech combat, and the big takeaway was this: The future of warfare is now, and China is poised to dominate it.

Speakers at the conference described a new generation of combat systems, powered by artificial intelligence, cyber-weapons and robots that can operate on land, sea and air. But America is still largely wedded to legacy weapons of the past — superbly engineered (but super-expensive) aircraft carriers, bombers, fighter jets and submarines.

“We have a small number of exquisite, expensive, manned, hard-to-replace systems that would have been familiar to Dwight D. Eisenhower. They are being overtaken by advanced technology,” argued Christian Brose, staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Instead, he said, the Pentagon needs a large number of inexpensive, unmanned, expendable, autonomous systems that can survive in the new electronic battlespace and overwhelm any potential adversary.

“It is not that we lack money. It is that we are playing a losing game,” Brose contended in a paper presented to the group. “Our competitors are now using advanced technologies to erode our military edge. This situation is becoming increasingly dire.”

Future needs are being drowned out by past practices, because of what Brose's boss, Armed Services Committee Chairman Senator John McCain (Republican-Arizona), has called the “military-industrial-congressional complex.” Brose calculates that in the Pentagon's initial request for $74 billion in new defense spending in fiscal 2019, only 0.006 percent was targeted for science and technology. The National Science Foundation estimates that in fiscal 2015, only 18 percent of the Pentagon's research and development budget went to basic, applied and advanced research. Major systems claimed 81 percent.

Even when the Pentagon tries to push innovation, it often stumbles. When Ashton B. Carter was defense secretary under President Barack Obama, he created the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, with offices in Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin. That operation thrived initially, negotiating 60 defense contracts with start-ups. The program has slowed under the Trump administration, despite support from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, because it lacks funds and bureaucratic support, warned Christopher Kirchhoff, a former DIUx partner. If Mattis can appoint a strong new DIUx leader soon, maybe he can revive this innovation hub.

The biggest technological challenge discussed here was artificial intelligence. In a few years, these systems have taught themselves to play complex games such as chess and Go better than humans, and to recognize voices and objects better, too. And soon, they will be driving the weapons of combat.

China appears determined to seize this AI “high ground” of future conflict. For the past two years, Chinese companies have won an AI competition for detecting objects. The Chinese are happy for the United States to keep building carriers and bombers, so long as they deploy the more advanced technologies that can disable these systems.

Richard Danzig, a former Navy secretary, published a brilliant paper discussed at the conference warning that as AI systems dominate warfare, they will “introduce important new risks of loss of control.” Humans must be “maximally thoughtful and creative” during design (and plan for failure), because these AI-driven weapons will have accidents and unintended consequences. Wise policymakers must avoid a “Dr. Strangelove” world of unsafe killer robots and doomsday machines.

America's vulnerability to information warfare was a special topic of concern. One participant recalled a conversation several years ago with a Russian general who taunted him: “You have a cyber-command but no information operations. Don't you know that information operations are how you take countries down?”

The Aspen Strategy Group is a devoutly bipartisan forum. But there was an intense discussion here of the issue that's vexing America this summer: the growing political polarization that's creating so much discord that it's becoming a national security problem.

As the gathering concluded on Monday, Republicans and Democrats were equally passionate about spreading the message that this is a Sputnik moment for modernizing our military. Competing with a rising China begins at home, with a more nimble Pentagon and a country that’s more united to face the big problems ahead.

__________________________________________________________________________

• David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. Ignatius has also written eight spy novels: “Bloodmoney” (2011), “The Increment” (2009), “Body of Lies” (2007), “The Sun King” (1999), “A Firing Offense” (1997), “The Bank of Fear” (1994), “SIRO: A Novel” (1991), and “Agents of Innocence” (1987). Body of Lies was made into a 2008 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Ignatius joined The Washington Post in 1986 as editor of its Sunday Outlook section. In 1990 he became foreign editor, and in 1993, assistant managing editor for business news. He began writing his column in 1998 and continued even during a three-year stint as executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Earlier in his career, Ignatius was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering at various times the steel industry, the Justice Department, the CIA, the Senate, the Middle East and the State Department. His numerous honours and awards include the 2000 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary; the 2004 Edward Weintal Prize; the 2010 Urbino International Press Award; the 2013 Overseas Press Club Award for Foreign Affairs Commentary; a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Committee for Foreign Journalists; a Legion D'Honneur awarded by the French government; and as The Washington Post's foreign editor, Ignatius supervised the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwai. David Ignatius grew up in Washington, D.C., and studied political theory at Harvard College and economics at Kings College, Cambridge. His numerous He lives in Washington with his wife and has three daughters.

__________________________________________________________________________

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www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-chinese-threat-that-an-aircraft-carrier-cant-stop/2018/08/07/0d3426d4-9a58-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post…

Trump feels angry, unprotected amid mounting crises

The president’s latest attack on his attorney general underscores
his lack of trust in many of his subordinates and appointees

By ASHLEY PARKER and PHILIP RUCKER | 9:18PM EDT — Wednesday, September 19, 2018


President Donald J. Trump listens to Polish President Andrzej Duda speak during a joint press conference in the East Room
of the White House on September 18, 2018. — Photograph: Calla Kessler/The Washington Post.

PRESIDENT TRUMP's declaration that “I don't have an attorney general” was not merely the cry of an executive feeling betrayed by a subordinate.

It was also a raw expression of vulnerability and anger from a president who associates say increasingly believes he is unprotected — with the Russia investigation steamrolling ahead, anonymous administration officials seeking to undermine him and the specter of impeachment proceedings, should the Democrats retake the House on November 6.

In a freewheeling and friendly interview published on Wednesday, Trump savaged Attorney General Jeff Sessions, mocking the nation's top law enforcement official for coming off as “mixed up and confused” during his Senate confirmation hearing and for his “sad” performance on the job.

Though Trump has long railed against Sessions, both publicly and privately, for recusing himself from overseeing the Justice Department's Russia probe, the president's comments to Hill TV brought his criticism to a new level.

“I don't have an attorney general,” Trump said. “It's very sad.”

Publicly, at least, Trump is going through the ordinary motions of being president. He met with the visiting president of Poland and on Wednesday toured the flood-ravaged Carolinas to survey damage from Hurricane Florence. He also prepared to hit the campaign trail with rallies in Nevada on Thursday and in Missouri on Friday, and next week he will host scores of foreign dignitaries at the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan.

Behind the scenes, however, Trump is confronting broadsides from every direction — legal, political and personal.

The president, as well as family members and long-time loyalists, fret about whom in the administration they can trust, people close to them said, rattled by a pair of devastating, unauthorized insider accounts this month from inside the White House. A senior administration official penned an anonymous column in The New York Times describing a “resistance” within to guard against the president's impulses, while Bob Woodward's new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House”, offers an alarming portrait of a president seemingly unfit for the office.

“Everybody in the White House now has to look around and ask, ‘Who's taping? Who's leaking? And who's on their way out the door?’ It's becoming a game of survival,” said a Republican strategist who works in close coordination with the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Some of Trump's allies believe he has legitimate cause for worry.

“The president should feel vulnerable because he is vulnerable — to those that fight him daily on implementing his agenda,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former chief White House strategist, wrote in a text message.

“The Woodward book is the typed up meeting notes from ‘The Committee to Save America’,” he added, referring dismissively to a loose alliance of advisers who saw themselves as protecting the country from Trump. “The anonymous op-ed is the declaration of an administrative coup by the Republican establishment.”

In some respects, Trump has maintained a sanguine outlook. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort last week became the latest former member of the president's inner circle to agree to cooperate with federal prosecutors. But Trump has been uncharacteristically calm about the plea deal for Manafort, whom he had praised only a month ago for refusing to “break” under pressure from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Asked if he was worried about Manafort's cooperation agreement, Trump told reporters on Wednesday: “No, I'm not…. I believe that he will tell the truth. And if he tells the truth, no problem.”

Trump has been similarly restrained this week as federal judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, his pick for the Supreme Court, fights to save his nomination amid an accusation of sexual assault, which Kavanaugh denies. Trump has publicly defended Kavanaugh, though he has refrained from attacking the judge's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

White House officials, who began this week reeling from the assault allegation, said by mid-week that they have concluded Kavanaugh would probably still win confirmation, especially given Ford's reluctance to testify at a public Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled by Republicans for Monday.

Nonetheless, Trump's screed against Sessions underscored the president's sense of anger and what he considers to be a betrayal by his attorney general, who, despite executing much of the president's hard-line, law-and-order agenda, has never been able to recover from what Trump views as an unforgivable sin: his recusal from the Russia investigation for a conflict of interest, which ultimately led to Mueller's appointment.

Trump told Hill TV that he appointed Sessions out of blind loyalty, a decision he now regrets. Sessions's aggressive and controversial immigration actions — including emphasizing “zero tolerance” for those who come to the country illegally and defending the administration policy of separating families — have been cheered by Trump allies. But the president criticized his attorney general even on this front, in a striking expression of his deep dissatisfaction.

“I'm not happy at the border, I'm not happy with numerous things, not just this,” Trump said, referring to the Russia probe.


Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during an event at the Department of Justice in Washington earlier this month.
— Photograph: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

The president's attack on Sessions raised concern in the law enforcement community and also prompted reactions ranging from exasperation to outright dismay.

“Trump doesn't just blur the lines, he flat out tries to eradicate those lines,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama nominated by President Barack Obama. “He wants a consigliere, not an attorney general. On the one hand, it's a pitiful thing to watch, but it's also deadly serious, because the attorney general does not protect the president. The attorney general protects the American people. And the fact that we have a president who doesn't understand that is alarming.”

A former White House official was similarly disturbed. “It is a complete disgrace the way that Trump is acting like a schoolyard bully against Sessions,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a critical opinion. “I understand his frustration. I understand why he feels the way that he does. But what a child. What an absolute baby. He's disgracing himself.”

In the interview, Trump belittled Sessions, whom he has previously dubbed “Mr. Magoo” and, according to Woodward's book, dismissed as “mentally retarded.”

“He went through the nominating process and he did very poorly,” Trump said of Sessions's Senate confirmation hearing. “He was giving very confusing answers, answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him, and he won by one vote, I believe. You know, he won by just one vote.”

Trump went on to question Sessions's self-recusal from the Russia investigation.

“He said, ‘I recuse myself, I recuse myself’,” Trump told Hill TV. “And now it turned out he didn't have to recuse himself. Actually, the FBI reported shortly thereafter any reason for him to recuse himself. And it's very sad what happened.”

It was not clear what Trump meant.

Career Justice Department ethics officials had told Sessions he had to step aside from any campaign-related investigations because he had been a top campaign surrogate and met with the Russian ambassador.

FBI officials would not have been among those providing advice. Then-FBI Director James B. Comey said at a congressional hearing that he was aware of nonpublic information that he believed would force the attorney general to step aside before Sessions did so, though he declined to specify what those facts were.

After taking yet another public tongue-lashing from the president, Sessions gave a speech on Wednesday to law enforcement officials in Waukegan, Illinois, in which he effusively praised Trump.

“Under his strong leadership, we are respecting police again and enforcing our laws,” Sessions said, according to his prepared remarks, which a DOJ spokesman said he delivered. “Based on my experience meeting with officers like you across the country, I believe that morale has already improved under President Trump. I can feel the difference.”

Even as Sessions was dutifully showering compliments upon his boss, Trump was unwilling to throw him a lifeline.

“I'm disappointed in the attorney general for many reasons,” Trump told reporters before leaving for North Carolina. “You understand that.”

__________________________________________________________________________

• Devlin Barrett, John Wagner and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.

• Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at The New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things.

• Philip Rucker is the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. He previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Rucker also is a Political Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

• VIDEO: Trump: ‘I'm disappointed in the attorney general for many reasons’

• ‘I don't have an attorney general’: Trump escalates his attacks on Jeff Sessions

• You only need a one-question test to identify a narcissist

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/he-is-vulnerable-trump-feels-angry-unprotected-amid-mounting-crises/2018/09/19/e33ca996-bc26-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html

[matte]

I don't believe this for a minute.

I actually believe this will be the defining century for the United States.

[pim]

"I believe this will be the defining ship for the 20th century" said the captain of the Titanic.

[Yassir Rebob]

Jan 7, 2018 21:47:20 GMT 10 jody said:

Matte stop you're shit stirring.

You can say the same thing about KJT, at least Matte isn't here 24/7 posting the same crap over and over again.

Unlike this mornings bowel movement AKA KTJ

[Deleted]

If China wins the innovation and technology race .....then the US will be fucked..

[KTJ]

Sept 22, 2018 5:22:32 GMT 10 @pontodaheretic said:

If China wins the innovation and technology race .....then the US will be fucked..

from Aerospace Daily & Defense Report…

U.S. Hypersonics Face Uphill Struggle
To Match China, Russia

The U.S. faces an uphill battle for hypersonic supremacy,
warns Michael Griffin, the Pentagon's new undersecretary
of defense for research and engineering.

By GUY NORRIS | Friday, September 21, 2018


Chinese hypersonic missile. — Illustration: Wikipedia.

ORLANDO — While the U.S. may have woken to the emerging threat of Chinese and Russian hyper velocity weapons, the nation still faces an uphill battle for hypersonic supremacy, warns Michael Griffin, the Pentagon's new undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.

Citing technical hurdles, infrastructure neglect and the legacy of “taking a decade-long holiday from the exigencies of great power competition”, Griffin says the tally of critical challenges confronting U.S. hypersonic developers is “a surprisingly longer list than you might think.”

A staunch advocate of hypersonics, Griffin says the issues go well beyond the traditional technical challenges of aerodynamics and propulsion normally associated with high-speed flight. His broad line-up ranges from concerns over the robustness of the supply chain for key technologies like thermal protection systems (TPS) to the poor state of the underfunded U.S. national test infrastructure.

Having “ceded ground” to potential adversaries Griffin says the U.S. also “needs an overarching national strategy, which I cannot honestly say is in place yet. We need to know what the time phasing is, what we are going to deploy early, what we are going to be working on mid-term and to have in place by 2030.”

Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics International Space Planes and Hypersonics conference here, Griffin says the need for improved TPS capability is highlighted by limits to the performance of the U.S. Navy's recently tested Intermediate Range Conventional Prompt Strike Flight Experiment-1 (CPS FE-1). Fired from a submarine on October 30, 2017, from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii, FE-1 collected data on hypersonic boost-glide technologies and test-range performance for long-range atmospheric flight.

Managed by the Navy, this Office of the Under Secretary of Defense program is paving the way for a potential range of hypersonic CPS concepts, and will fully transition to the Navy in 2019. “It is a really critical program and the range with which we can project our will with it is pretty impressive — it's 1000s of kilometres. But it could be more if we did not feel we were limited by TPS technologies,” says Griffin.

Although the U.S. pioneered TPS developments for re-entry vehicles and the space program, the challenges of boost-glide and air-breathing hypersonic vehicle thermal protection are even greater because they must sustain thermal peak loads that are higher and longer than either re-entering spacecraft or ICBMs. “Our industrial base for TPS technologies and the development of new such systems has waned,” says Griffin. “We have national labs capable of producing one-offs, but our industrial base capable of producing this sort of thing for a living I'm told is two small companies.”

Other key challenge areas include guidance and navigation without GPS. “You need to think about how your hypersonic systems will get from where they start to where they need to be without GPS. I have suggested things like landmark tracking, terrain databases and star trackers, but they've got to stare through the plasma sheath,” he adds, referring to the blocking barrier of ionized particles that can build up around a vehicle in the upper atmosphere at high Mach numbers. “It's a problem we have to solve.”

Terminal guidance and updating the vehicle about last minute targeting data en-route is also critical. “Suppose the target moves. We need to be able to go after mobile launchers and mobile assets. The final element of terminal navigation needs some kind of seeker capability. But what wavelengths do I want to use when to look outside, and do I need more than one? Can I analytically correct for atmospheric distortion? How are we going to marry conventional seeker technologies with long range hypersonic systems to put power assets right where they need to be? These are systems problems.”

Griffin says deployment of hypersonic weapons will also require better integrated systems of command and control (C3), and datalink technologies better than todays. Techniques using laser and optical systems “could be critical in this area,” he adds. “If we ever use hypersonic weapons we will be fighting with them as a fleet in waves, and we don’t want to attack targets that have been nullified. So successive waves take advantage of things they learn from the earlier waves.”

“The integration of computational power with the C3 challenge will be critical. These vehicles will fly 10-15 minutes towards targets with information provided by — where? A host of nodes of low-flying low earth orbit constellations, ships, aircraft and unmanned air vehicles. If I have my way our future fire control systems will not be in one spot. We have to fight as a fleet and present no single target. We need them [adversaries] to know there is no single target they can take out which will render us deaf, dumb and blind. That challenge is a natural marriage with artificial intelligence and machine earning. We need to adapt some of that for our needs — targeting is an AI challenge,” says Griffin.

On the Issue of the test and development infrastructure, Griffin notes “it is no secret we have allowed our hypersonic and aeronautics facilities around the country broadly speaking to degenerate. They are not in good shape. I was told recently we have tests stacked up at NASA Langley to be executed because for this [speed] regime it is THE remaining wind tunnel.”

Allied to this is the challenge of ramping up the pace of flight testing. Describing the present tempo of flight test as “appalling”, Griffin says “we have over the last decade or so done five flight tests or maybe half a dozen. Over the same period the Chinese have done several dozen. I don't care how smart we are and how much we learn in any one test, but the operational tempo — the pace of testing — is itself important. We need a lot more flight testing at a more rapid pace to get the culture in place,” he adds.

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• Guy Norris is a Senior Editor for Aviation Week, based in Los Angeles. Before joining Aviation Week in 2007, Guy was with Flight International, first as technical editor based in the U.K. and most recently as U.S. West Coast editor. Before joining Flight, he was London correspondent for Interavia, part of Jane's Information Group. In 2013 the Jesse H. Neal award for Best Technical Content was awarded to Guy Norris and Graham Warwick for their Advanced Propulsion feature. He received the 2015 Lauren D. Lyman Award for outstanding achievement in aerospace communications. And in 2018 he was awarded Technology Writer of the Year by the judges of the Aerospace Media Awards. Guy is also a multiple winner of the Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year Award in the Air Transport, Propulsion and Systems/Technology categories, and in 2006 he received the Royal Aeronautical Society Decade of Excellence Award for sustained achievement in aerospace journalism. Amongst other works Guy has authored the aerospace section of a science encyclopedia and co-authored, and produced an educational aviation CD-ROM. Guy has also authored more than a dozen books on the histories of Airbus, Boeing and other airframe manufacturers.

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Related to this topic:

• Can U.S. Match New Chinese And Russian Nuclear Weapon Technology?

• Classified Report On Hypersonics Says U.S. Lacking Urgency

• How F-22 Is Deconflicting U.S.-Russia Operations Over Syria

• Iran, North Korea's Missile Tech Changing Threat Calculus

• Rafale Fighters Make Inroads Against U.S. Makers

aviationweek.com/defense/us-hypersonics-face-uphill-struggle-match-china-russia

[Deleted]

USA is leading the way in wall building.....and Roger Ram Jets.

[KTJ]

from the print edition of the Los Angeles Times…

‘America first’ isolates it at U.N.

Trump fails to win over nations, and many are poised to forge on without U.S.

By TRACY WILKINSON | Saturday, September 29, 2018


President Trump, speaking on Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly, gained little global support for his hard-line policy proposals.
— Photograph: Richard Drew/Associated Press.

WASHINGTON D.C. — President Trump's second appearance at the U.N. General Assembly did not get the response he probably sought from the 193 countries gathered in New York this week.

Some leaders and diplomats openly laughed at his boasts. He failed to win support for his hard-line policies on Iran, Venezuela, an international war crimes court, climate change and migration.

French President Emmanuel Macron scolded him, accusing him of abandoning the foundation of today's world order and global cooperation enshrined by the U.N. itself.

In the end, Trump's “America first” agenda meant America was mostly alone during his four days at the U.N. this week.

Leaders who once courted Trump, attempted to gain his ear, or tried to persuade him to support global institutions that long were U.S. foreign policy priorities, made clear they would forge on without him on multiple issues of concern.

When Trump and his aides sought to unify the world against Iran, for example, European allies disagreed with his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. They even joined Russia and China to announce a payments system intended to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

And when Trump chaired a Security Council meeting that he initially had wanted to focus on threats from Iran, he sat in silence as leader after leader praised the landmark disarmament deal he had quit, and the need for global cooperation.

In his General Assembly address, Trump similarly criticized a new U.N. pact aimed at easing the global refugee and migration crisis, saying “migration should not be governed by an international body” but by individual countries.

That drew almost no support. Officials noted that virtually every nation had signed the accord except the United States and Hungary.

Some pushed back against Trump's exhortation of patriotism and national sovereignty over globalism and multilateral efforts to combat the world's ills.

“This path of unilateralism leads us directly to withdrawal and conflict, to widespread confrontation between everyone, to the detriment of all — even, eventually, of those who believe they are the strongest,” Macron told the General Assembly.

The White House said on Friday that Trump had advanced U.S. interests at the U.N., including signing a trade agreement with South Korea, the first such pact since he entered office.

“He pressed world leaders on counter-proliferation in places like Iran, North Korea and Syria; rallied them to do more to counter the opioid crisis; and made his case for peace through strength in his address to the General Assembly,” said Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Trump ruffled more than a few feathers in New York.

He accused China — not Russia — of interfering in America's upcoming mid-term election. As evidence he cited a supplement in an Iowa newspaper that was clearly identified as sponsored by China Daily, a state-run media organ.

Chinese officials were quick to note that many countries buy ads in U.S. newspapers to promote goods or policies, and they denied improper activities aimed at the November 6 election.

Trump won praise from numerous leaders for his willingness to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a bold, if yet unsuccessful, effort to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and production facilities.

The president said he expected to hold his second summit with Kim “quite soon,” and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo is expected to return to North Korea in coming weeks to make arrangements.

Trump had nothing but warm words for Kim, a sharp contrast to last year, when the president derided the youthful dictator as “Rocket Man” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea.

What some leaders see as a double standard in Trump's treatment of Iran and North Korea complicates their ability to trust Washington as a consistent partner.

Since pulling out of Iran deal in May, Trump has revived harsh economic sanctions on Tehran — and plans to impose more in November — that will make it difficult for countries to buy its oil or engage in business there.

“Trump's impetuous decision to violate the [Iran deal] — an agreement that has effectively worked to verifiably constrain Iran's nuclear weapons potential — has isolated Washington [and] angered our European allies,” said Daryl Kimball, a weapons expert who heads the Arms Control Association, a Washington policy group.

“Non-proliferation is a global challenge that requires global cooperation, dialogue and constructive U.S. leadership,” he added. “Unfortunately, Trump's non-proliferation and nuclear risk reduction policies are, so far, a dangerous mess.”

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• Los Angeles Times staff writer Eli Stokols in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.

• Tracy Wilkinson has covered wars, crises and daily life on three continents. Her career began with United Press International, where she covered the Contra war in Nicaragua. She moved to the Los Angeles Times in 1987, first as a writer on the Metro staff, then as a foreign correspondent based in San Salvador. In 1995, she moved to Vienna, where she covered the war in the Balkans, winning the George Polk Award in 1999, and then to Jerusalem. From there, she went to Rome, where she covered two popes and did several stints in Iraq. In 2008, she became Mexico bureau chief, where her coverage was part of a team Overseas Press Club Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Wilkinson was also the 2014 winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Award for coverage of Latin America. She earned her bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University. Her book “TheVatican's Exorcists: Driving Out the Devil in the 21st Century” has been translated into a dozen languages. She joined the L.A. Times' Washington, D.C., bureau in 2015 to cover foreign affairs.

enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=6f51efef-9349-4437-85b1-f25c70da07f8