Foreign Policy

Will brinksmanship lead to a renewed Korean war?

by

North Korea has yet another anniversary on Tuesday, the founding of its military, and the world appears to be on edge today in anticipation that North Korea will test a nuclear weapon on Tuesday and Donald Trump, who opted for a brinksmanship foreign policy, will be forced to respond with a military strike as he said he would in order to to save face and to demonstrate ‘resolve” — renewing the Korean war, with massive civilian casualties as a predictable consequence.

There are some troubling headlines today. President Trump to host unusual meeting with UN Security Council:

President Trump will host members of the United Nations Security Council at the White House Monday, a highly unusual meeting made even more startling because of his harsh criticism of the international institution during the campaign and since taking office.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is serving this month as the President of the Security Council, a role that rotates each month among the five permanent members: the U.S., Great Britain, France, China and Russia.

* * *

Haley will be attending before the group returns to New York for scheduled Security Council meetings on Tuesday.

Read more

American Bridge 21st Century radio ad against Rep. Martha McSally

by

The Democratic Super-PAC American Bridge 21st Century has released radio ads against three vulnerable Republican members of Congress, focusing on Donald Trump’s dangerous ties to Russia. American Bridge Releases Radio Ads on Trump’s Dangerous Ties to Russia:

The 60-second spots will run for the next seven days against Rep. Martha McSally (AZ-02), Rep. John Katko (NY-24), and Rep. Will Hurd (TX-23).

Here is a YouTube link to the radio ad airing against Rep. Martha McSally. Bridge Project | Martha McSally Radio Ad.

Screen Shot 2017-04-21 at 12.54.42 PM

With new revelations in the growing scandal surfacing weekly, the American people deserve the kind of answers that can only come from a truly independent investigation operating free of politics. That’s why Americans overwhelmingly support creating an independent commission to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. But Republicans in Congress are standing in the way, instead putting their party ahead of the country.

Statement by American Bridge President Jessica Mackler:

“The country overwhelmingly wants an independent commission investigating the growing scandal surrounding Donald Trump’s ties to Russia and we’re going to hold Republicans accountable for standing in the way. Republicans who refuse to put country ahead of party are doing so at their own peril.”

Read more

Latest in the Putin-Trump campaign investigation

by

There are several new reports on the Trump-Putin campaign investigation front.

The New York Times reports that Trump Adviser’s Visit to Moscow Got the F.B.I.’s Attention:

Ever since F.B.I. investigators discovered in 2013 that a Russian spy was trying to recruit an American businessman named Carter Page, the bureau maintained an occasional interest in Mr. Page. So when he became a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign last year and gave a Russia-friendly speech at a prestigious Moscow institute, it soon caught the bureau’s attention.

That trip last July was a catalyst for the F.B.I. investigation into connections between Russia and President Trump’s campaign, according to current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials.

It is unclear exactly what about Mr. Page’s visit drew the F.B.I.’s interest: meetings he had during his three days in Moscow, intercepted communications of Russian officials speaking about him, or something else.

After Mr. Page, 45 — a Navy veteran and businessman who had lived in Moscow for three years — stepped down from the Trump campaign in September, the F.B.I. obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing the authorities to monitor his communications on the suspicion that he was a Russian agent.

From the Russia trip of the once-obscure Mr. Page grew a wide-ranging investigation, now accompanied by two congressional inquiries, that has cast a shadow over the early months of the Trump administration.

Read more

Trump’s phantom ‘armada’ leads to mockery and distrust in South Korea

by

The Trump White House and the Pentagon were either deliberately deceiving the American people last week, or they were so incompetent that they just didn’t know what they were doing. It’s likely a combination of both. Amy Davidson of the New Yorker reports, Donald Trump, North Korea, and the case of the phantom armada:

Some degree of delusion always has to be factored in with Donald Trump: when he referred to “the aircraft carriers” and, in another interview, with Fox Business, said that “we are sending an armada, very powerful,” he was widely understood to be referring to a single aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, and its support ships. In fairness, the Vinson would have been powerful and provocative enough—if it had, in fact, been speeding toward the Korean Peninsula, or the Sea of Japan, or even just the Pacific Ocean, which it was not. It was in the Indian Ocean, headed in the opposite direction, for exercises with what might be described as the Australian Armada. Just when you think you see the contours of Trump’s phantom menace, he comes up with a Phantom Fleet.

[T]he movements of a carrier group can’t be so hard to conceal, except, perhaps, from the people in charge of America’s foreign policy. Trump wasn’t alone on this one; it’s not a case of him just causing trouble with his phone and Twitter account, rambling about bad hombres. As the timeline makes clear, it’s even worse. (The Wall Street Journal and the Times have good versions.) On April 9th, three days before Trump’s Wall Street Journal interview, the Navy had said that it had ordered the Vinson “to sail north”; H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser, reiterated that news on the same day, framing it as a response to North Korea’s own provocative moves. Secretary of Defense James Mattis followed that up on April 11th by saying that the Indian Ocean exercises were off, and said that the Vinson was “just on her way up there.” That was false. The next day, the Navy said again that the Vinson had been “ordered north”; it added that the effects of that deployment on “other previously scheduled activities are still being assessed during the transit.” The Pentagon is now trying to sell that last bit as a quiet correction of Mattis, which the press mysteriously missed—but that is, simply put, ridiculous. For one thing, there’s the phrase “during the transit,” which assumes that transit had begun. Or is the idea that the Vinson was on its way to the Sea of Japan, in the sense that we are all on our way from cradle to grave, or that Trump is in transit from the Oval Office to choosing items for the gift shop in his Presidential library? A lot can happen in between.

Read more

The GOP to smear Susan Rice to distract from Trump lies

by

I’ve posted about this previously, but it bears repeating: A review of the surveillance material flagged by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes shows no inappropriate action by Susan Rice or any other Obama administration official, Republican and Democratic Congressional aides who have been briefed on the matter told NBC News. Susan Rice Did Nothing Wrong, Say Both Dems and Republicans:

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees from both parties have traveled to NSA headquarters to review the relevant intelligence reports.

“I saw no evidence of any wrongdoing,” said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents, who would not agree to be identified further. “It was all completely normal.”

His assessment was shared by a senior Republican aide who had been briefed on the matter but declined to speak on the record.

The finding by lawmakers of both parties was first reported by CNN.

It was a fake “scandal” manufactured by the Trump White House to create a distraction in which House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes was a complicit participant. Ryan Lizza writes at the New Yorker, The Continuing Fallout From Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal:

Recently, several members and staffers on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s role in the Presidential election, visited the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland. Inside the enormous black glass headquarters of America’s largest spy agency, the congressmen and their aides were shown a binder of two to three dozen pages of highly classified intercepts, mostly transcripts of conversations between foreign government officials that took place during the Presidential transition. These intercepts were not related to the heart of the committee’s Russia investigation. In fact, only one of the documents had anything to do with Russia, according to an official who reviewed them.

Read more