Things Trump Is Doing Right

[Eric the Green]

(09-19-2017, 11:11 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Fair is fair.

Overall, Trump's UN speech aligned well with my own world view.

For once, he risked the ire of the SCO and was willing to bite the hand that fed him during the campaign. So, from the SCO perspective, he is no longer a reliable asset.

The only real negatives in the speech were the gratuitous sliming of Obama's Iran Deal and his statement of the normal naive view that it's somehow in the SCO's interest to restrain or even topple the Norks.

But the general theme reminded me of the better foreign policy moments of previous administrations.

I would not under-estimate the need of the SCO countries to restrain North Korea; it is not in China's interest for the USA and "Nork" to have a nuclear war. They want stability in their region. Their interests are not the same as those of the USA, but they might coincide to some extent.

His speech did not align with my world view, of course, but then I'm not a "nationalist." But saying that countries look after their own interests first is not terribly wrong. Nations cannot allow themselves to be run over by other nations.

The fact, as I see it though, is that nations are not separate, and what's good for one in many cases is probably good for all, and especially vice versa. In other words, nations don't prosper and have security at the expense of others; things work out for all when nations cooperate and consider the others' interests as well as their own. Simple golden rule principle applies to nations as well as people. We don't live in the age of Mars anymore (the Bronze Age up to the classical-era Iron Age; i.e. Sargon and Thutmose to Rome), when there were no nations but only conquests and empires fighting each other all the time. The goal in international affairs is not to get more than we give in deal-making, although that is Trump's approach. Nations are not baseball franchises at the trading deadline. Even to get the best deal for itself, a nation is wise to be able to perceive and consider the interests of other nations, and appeal to them. I'm not so sure that the so-called expert at the Art of the Deal even understands this basic fact. It may be that he thinks bullying works.

And he had an outdated view of Cuba and of socialism, as if he were living in the early 1960s. And is it our business to attack Venezuela in some way "if it becomes an authoritarian state" (which is probably already is?)? How many authoritarian states are there in the world? Do we attack them all? How about Turkey and The Philippines? How much authoritarian rule exists in the USA?

The USA is also culpable in the standoff with NK. USA leaders are still refusing what could be at least a temporary fix; to stop USA/allied military exercizes near NK in exchange for NK to stop nuc and rocket testing. The USA is often the belligerent and bellicose one in international disputes. We are not the idealistic nation that we claim to be. That is also "naive" to think so.