Is Trump embracing aggressive withdrawal?

[David Horn]

(02-05-2017, 05:01 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:The US must know this, so it seems curious that Trump shows so much more deference to the weaker of the two.

This was already addressed.  Why did the US ally with the Soviet Union against the Nazis?  Why did Britain ally with its long-time rivals France and Russia versus Germany?  Why did Nixon/Kissinger pursue rapprochement with Maoist China to balance the Soviet Union?

This is basic balance-of-power.  The British did this for centuries.  If you're number 1, you're most concerned about number 2 (and vice versa), and so you pursue relations with numbers 3 & 4, especially if they're neighbors with number 2.  If you are concerned with a rising China becoming a major maritime power and pursuing a bid to displace you from the Western Pacific, you prop up Japan, you back Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and if you're really smart, you try and pick of major flank powers like Russia.  Russia doesn't have the means to threaten to displace the US anymore, China does.  We're already threatening China's naval supply lines, and China is responding by bumping up its investment into overland rail and pipelines, and threatening to displace Russian influence in Central Asia.  

It's smart, sensible policy.  I doubt Trump could or would formulate it like that, but he obviously has good instincts to have won the way he did, and I don't think all of his advisers are stupid, either.

OK, except for the blowback.  Is leveraging Russia important enough to us that we can thumb our communal nose at NATO, because Trump has done some of that too.  No, I think there is something else at play here than global chess.  I don't claim to know what it is, but Trump's refusal to show his tax returns may be indicative.