Jennifer Rubin, WaPo: Trump's not winning anything, anywhere

[highplainsdem]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/12/03/trumps-not-winning-anything-anywhere/

Let’s be blunt: The only significant foreign policy “achievements” Trump can claim are eviscerating our reputation as a reliable ally that defends human rights and giving autocrats the impression that they can get away with murder (and dismemberment and more) without paying any significant price.

This is an administration that can claim not a single substantial foreign policy achievement. We are arguably less influential and more isolated than we were when Trump took office. (The irony is that we presently mourn the death of President George H.W. Bush, who masterminded the transition from the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, the ouster of Panamanian thug Manuel Antonio Noriega and the construction of a broad coalition that achieved victory in a Middle East war without getting bogged down in a long-term occupation.)

-snip-

This is what comes from nationalistic know-nothingism, from deploring the very institutions and relationships that have kept us from world war and spread prosperity since the end of the WWII. It’s what flows from a foreign policy that amounts to a series of discrete gestures to please his base (move the embassy to Jerusalem, get out of the JCPOA and Paris accord) but lacks an answer to the question that follows each of these moves: What next?

Trump doesn’t know or care. A vision of American leadership? A road map to combat threats from illiberal regimes? Please. All Trump has ever wanted is a red carpet and praise. And even the latter is in short supply these days outside Saudi Arabia and Israel.

[empedocles]

1. Media getting more to the point.

[Martin Eden]

2. "eviscerating our reputation as a reliable ally"

That's a resounding foreign policy "win" for Putin, which was no doubt a major motivation behind Russian efforts to get him elected.

The question is whether Trump's intent is to damage America's alliances, or if Putin knew that would inevitably be the consequence of a Trump presidency.

It's the difference between treason and incompetence.

[Gothmog]

3. Has trump accomplished anything yet?

[CaptYossarian]

11. His cabinet is destroying the planet and Trump is inciting violence among Americans.

There's also diminishing the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, and people of color--and singlehandedly imploding the economy while claiming to be a stable genius.

In other words, they're all doing what we expected.

[C Moon]

17. Yep.

[bdamomma]

4. Again Jennifer Rubin

makes an excellent analysis.

[smirkymonkey]

5. K&R

[GusBob]

6. No policies, no strategies, no plans

unfilled positions, decrees issued without regard to the constitution (i.e. Muslim ban,) ideas that are against the law, threats that are empty ( eliminating subsidies for GM where there are none), corruption, empty promises, constant lying, pathetic whining ( so unfair!) tweeting, golfing, spending all day watching TV

and somehow this is all the fault of the press...

A domestic and foreign policy failure of a president

[notdarkyet]

12. And spending his day thinking of more ways to hurt people. Kill the wolves and grizzlies and

Whales. Detroyy, hurt our national parks and coast lines. Whatever he can think of to ruin people’s lives and the quality there in. He is evil personified.

[NewJeffCT]

7. I'd make one change

from this:

This is an administration that can claim not a single substantial foreign policy achievement. We are arguably less influential and more isolated than we were when Trump took office.

to this:

This is an administration that can claim not a single substantial foreign policy achievement. We are INarguably less influential and more isolated than we were when Trump took office.

[BamaRefugee]

10. Yes this

[moondust]

8. "masterminded" all that?

I wouldn't give him nearly that much credit, although I would say he deserved a second term much more than his inept boy and his Secretary of Defense, Darth Cheney the Oil Seizer. A lot of things happen around the world that Americans cannot take credit for no matter how desperately they want to.

[geardaddy]

15. My thoughts exactly.

It's like people think the end of the Soviet Union, the re-unification of Germany and the end of the Cold War were all done unilaterally by the U.S.

[Eric J in MN]

9. Starting wars in Panama and Kuwait

...isn’t something Bush should be praised for.

[trev]

13. Especially since

if I remember correctly, Noriega was an ally at the time, working with American Intelligence services.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Iraq stole Kuwait. They started it. Panama was probably unnecessary. . . . nt

[trev]

18. Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi territory,

which is why Hussein sent his army there. Bush's ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Hussein the US had no interest in his quarrel with the country. She all but gave him permission to invade.

Hussein was an American ally. Donald Rumsfeld and Ronald Reagan supported his use of chemical weapons, and gave him materiel for the development of them, during the Iraq-Iran War.

It's good to know all the background to a situation.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Exactly. Hussein could have stopped at the oil fields, but he didn't. . . . nt

[geardaddy]

16. While she is right on Trump...

She's still an American exceptionalist conservative.