Officials concede that the plans are in an early stage, but President
Trump has ordered them to start preparing a new push to try to establish
a new round of arms control treaties with both Russia and China.
Part of the plan is related to Trump’s concerns about how much all the
proposals to create new nuclear weapons are going to cost, though it
seems that the main goal is to place new limits on the Russian nuclear
arsenal.
Getting a new round of talks going may be difficult after the US
unilaterally withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
That move is likely to raise concerns, particularly in Russia, that the
US is only looking for a very one-sided deal.
Trump’s talk of broader limits on military spending across the three
nations is even more ambitious, but it also has both Russian and Chinese
officials expressing interest. The US, after all, spends vastly more
than the other two nations, and this is the first indication Trump has
given that he’s given any consideration to not just growing spending
annually.
It would be awesome with all this Russia-gate nonsense behind us if a real push like this could be made.
Yes, it would, but it wont. See, you are putting your faith behind a man who doesn’t understand the gift of life, in fact, believes all those gifts, and your trust, belong to him alone. Koolaid?
Who do you put your trust behind?
He said faith behind a man. Not Trust.
Why would anyone trust the lout?
Russia-gate has paralyzed people who never did much good for these things anyway. Though I liked the Iran deal, that was a stark exception to the standard of blundering along that helps prove the uselessness of those pursuing Russia-gate more generally.
I can see that, without seeing that Trump is or can be successful. We just don’t see a lot, and those around him like Bolton are truly evil. Still, Russia-gate only hides the whole problem in a fog.
Spanky has already destroyed every disarmament deal he can find. What’s left is what exists in trumpU brochures. Cheeseburgers, do your work.
If you combine Russia and China’s defense budget it’s not even half of our own. So are we going to be willing to go down to a measly $300 to $400 billion or so? Or are we hoping we can limit the talks to nukes while maintaining the bloated budget that Trump has increased since taking office?
The latter would be the the correct assessment.
The evidence suggests the momentum is towards world war, not nuclear arms reduction, motivated by rival interests and mutual mistrust. The pattern of history does not bode well.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
I seem to have wandered into The Onion.
Who in their right mind would ever again make a deal, agreements or a treaty with the US.
The list is endless of broken agreements, treaties and promises by the US
UPDATE!!! Just in.
Here is another US beauty.
Trump announces US withdrawing from UN Arms Trade Treaty.
The UN will soon receive “formal notice that America is rejecting this treaty,” Trump said on Friday, speaking at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Indianapolis, Indiana.
https://www.rt.com/usa/457645-international-arms-trade-treaty/
Remember how Trump “killed” NAFTA and came up with substantially the same deal under his brand? He is doing the same thing with Arms control.
Whatever Trump is doing, good or bad, it isn’t what he claims, and it isn’t what his opponents allege either.
It is messy, but then what we had before was a static failure. It is hard to tell how this is going in the moment, with limited information on our side and even less about the other side.
These are the most relevant things to be talking about… along with the bad faith frequently exhibited by the US govt for sure, but any bad actor starting to act a little better is a positive step. On foreign policy, the US govt ignores Congress, polls of the voters, but diplomacy with nations seen as top rivals may be the only venue where the Trump admin might make concessions in everyone’s interest.
Diplomacy? that is not a word in the vocabulary of any recent US presidents.
So POTUSTRUMP cares only about money and nothing for peace or harmony. I think we knew that, and his selection of advisers demonstrates it clearly.
Who in the US can be trusted? It certainly is not this President and every body from the Pentagon to congress to the courts is afraid to take him on. The mighty US afraid of a sadistic spoiled brat tyrant. Who would have believed?
Now that the Mueller business is over, Trump feels empowered to reach out to Russia and China, freed from the accusations that he’s some sort of Manchurian Candidate. The fact that this outreach takes a form that is in explicit disagreement with his warmongering National Security team, once again points to Trump’s ***REAL*** views, as contrasted with — in fact, in opposition to — the position of his Neocon ***bad cop*** advisors.
Do you think Bolton, Pompeo, or Abrams would approve of Trump’s dialing down the “Imperial Bully” approach, and adopting a statesmanlike attitude towards Russia and China? Not likely! You just watch, in the end those guys will be made out to be the mouthy-but-toothless stooges they are. Placeholder tools to mollify and neuter his warfare state political adversaries.
“Friends close enemies closer.”
Yes, that’s working out so well. Sounds good when Trump blurts out something that makes sense but the only thing we can judge him on are his actions. And in most cases thus far, the good cop has been non-existent.
Wait for it, wars. Timing is everything as we move toward 2020. The “arc of the story” as they say. And Trump is an accomplished showman.
The story opens with the evil entrenched and confident. The world is unhappy, and it looks grim for “the little people”, with no way out. Then the hero arrives on the scene, displays hero attitude, and gets slapped down hard by the evil, crawls off to lick his wounds and develop a little “hero attitude”, while the evil celebrates its easy victory, and promptly dismisses and forgets about the hero. Then the hero returns, up-armored, and gives the evil’s minions a good thrashing. Evil recognizes that it’s got a fight on its hands, and girds for the climactic battle. In the climactic battle, the evil throws everything it has at the hero, who seems to face an impossible, Herculean challenge. And then of course, though seeming at times to be touch and go, the hero shows his stuff, ***dramatically*** sweeps away the forces of evil, until finally it’s just the hero and evil face to face in the final showdown.
Now we all know how this ends in the movies, and how it almost always goes the other way in real life. So I’m conflicted … and worried. I’m old, and cynical. Throughout my entire life evil has always won, good, never. So to my grotesque and ridiculous optimism, my cynical self screams from the back of my consciousness that I’m an idiot and a fool. But “hope springs eternal”, and so I cling to it.
Will I be disappointed in the end, and horribly embarrassed, furious, and crushed with despair? Probably. But truth is stranger than fiction, 2016 was very “strange”, and the last two years a veritable spectacle of “strange”, so the whole deal is one helluva nail-biter, I’m clinging desperately to my ridiculous hope, on the edge of my seat, waiting to see the ending.
Good luck and the Blessings of the Deity to us all.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-speaks-to-republican-jewish-coalition-in-las-vegas-2019-04-06-live-stream/
I am all for arms control so lets get talking. I find it doubtful that the Cheeto Benito will succeed but still we need to try.
Set up a “train wreck” situation, and then make a deal to save everyone from that self inflicted train wreck. It is a tactic.
It does not work against a sophisticated opponent.
It works very well against the unsophisticated who panic.
However, it also works well against an institutional opponent. It can suffer a special inability to act or react because nobody inside wants to be the one to make the call on bad news; the momentum can lead to disaster, and everyone can see it coming, but everyone wants the other guy to take the fall for it. I often saw that with insurance companies, especially layers of companies on big claims. Nobody can make a decision, until disaster threatens tomorrow.
We often hear that Trump is a fool who is using such tactics against the sophisticated. However, we are not told in any reliable way what is going on inside the US government, much less inside the other government. Nobody at Foggy Bottom can force a decision, and nobody wants to deliver bad news to Kim Jong Un, as two examples. And nobody really knows what goes on inside the Chinese leadership.
We hear shrieks, but that is a good thing, part of the tactic. Is it working? Compared to what? Were we getting good results before?