Water From Air. Trump Approaching The Grey Hair Time. Easternization - Has Their Time Come?

Arabs constantly remind us that Israeli's are all wet
and full of hot air.

Water Gen: Israeli company creates drinkable water out of air

Israeli Company Water Gen signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hanoi Province in Vietnam and India to provide them with new technology capable of turning water vapor in the air into drinking water. According to the document, the company will earn 150 million dollars from the deal. 
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Yes, the mess Obama left for Trump is heating up and could begin to boil over.

First, he must do something regarding Syria beyond more empty threats and that risks challenging Russia/Iran.  Obama drew red lines and did not follow through and now Trump much deal with the consequences.

Second, N Korea continues to seek attention by launching missiles and when Trump meets with China's leader he must lay a rational case in front of him and seek a positive/legitimate response to restrain their friend. Failing that, Trump must follow through and do what must be done - eliminate this dangerous fat boy before he launches a real "fat boy."  (I see nothing on the horizon suggesting China will do anything unless they are truly convinced Trump will seek to destroy N Korea.)

Third, Obama created a vacuum when he pre-emptively vacated Iraq, which ISIS subsequently filled.  Now it is way past the time to decimate their influence and ability.

Fourth, Trump has chosen to get involved in The Middle East. (See 1 below.)

And then, there are those pesky domestic issues on Trump's plate.

Those who cannot stand Trump will have plenty more to be angered by when, and if, he takes actions that entail "uge" risks.  Trump is moving towards a no win situation most of which is not of his making. He can duck, as Obama did, but that is not in his nature nor is it why he was elected. We have had enough feckless Obama type ducking.

Trump is facing the period when all president's begin turning grey!

The Trump haters will, no doubt, be on the attack and gleeful for the opportunity justifying their stance as the actions of patriotic and loyal Americans. Questioning Trump's policies is one thing. Doing so because you hate Trump is another matter.

This review of Author Auslin's book suggests China is on the ascendancy (Easternization) . I have made much the same point in many past memos.

The only question for me is whether China can make the transition and remain a Communist type dictatorship or will its effort to transform its economy slip from the control of leadership and the entire effort causes an unraveling? Stay tuned. (See 2 below.)
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I am leaving for a week and will return Tuesday.
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Dick
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1) A New Realignment in the Middle East??
Written by Alan Bergstein

The reaching out to al-Sisi by President Trump is such a momentous move because it signals to Iran that we are ready and able to support militarily those IN THE Middle East who would stand up to that terrorist nation with force. The meeting this past Monday at the White House between President Trump and Egypt's President, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi may have signaled a new realignment of the Middle East. We may now contemplate a vital military coalition consisting of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and....Israel. Who'd have ever thought of that just a couple of years ago? This new possible partnership would be a direct result of  Obama's incredible push for his Iranian nuclear deal that encouraged that terrorist nation to scare the you-know-what out of all the nations in the region. They now realize that for their own benefit and protection they have to join in an alliance with the Jewish state in order to survive. Iran is moving into their territory very quickly and they have to be stopped. Without the aid of Israel they are doomed. Reality may have set in.

Let's look at how Iranian forces are now entrenched in Syria. They will soon be in a position to walk right into Jordan once they have conquered Syria. Jordan has minimal military might to oppose them. It was no secret that Israel has protected Jordan against Syria for years.  Iran's Houthi allies in Yemen have practically taken over that primitive but strategically significant country in recent years. Saudi attempts to intervene have resulted in failure. Yemen borders Saudi Arabia on the south and controls the vital southern entrance to the Red Sea. The Saudis haven't ever fought a battle on their own and would quickly crumble were they attacked by the forces of Iran and its terrorist allies. The loss of Yemen and as a result Arabia as well, could sway the balance of power in the Middle East and were Iran to rule that area they could cut off the current Saudi flow of oil to Europe and much of the world. Terrifying truth. Actually this should be a wake up call to the Arab nations in the region and to the rest of the world as well that Israel can be a terrific ally.

The only nations in the area capable of defeating Iran's invasion of the Middle East and defending their surrounding neighbors are Egypt and Israel. And they must combine forces to do so. Under the rule of its president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt has already undergone a transformation away from radical Islam. It now realizes that Israel can be a very vital and reliable partner against the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) which has partnered with Hamas and ISIS in the Sinai to threaten Egypt whose military fears to enter that region handed back to them by Israel in 1979. Iran has seized the opportunity to support these groups to destabilize both Israel and Egypt to create another Iranian power base in a Sunni dominated area and to further its goal of regional dominance.

President Obama, having sided with former Egyptian President and Muslim Brotherhood chief, Muhammed Morsi, gave impetus to Iran and its foot-soldiers to grab a foothold in that region. They have become viral, operating throughout the region. That's why the reaching out to al-Sisi by President Trump is such a positive, momentous move. It signals to Iran that we are ready and able to support militarily those who would stand up to that terrorist nation, with force. Obama's obvious cold shouldering and disdain for both Israel and the new anti-Islamic regime in Egypt sent a heads-up to the world that Iran's plans for supremacy in this vital region had his support. But with President Trump at the helm of the free world, this is no longer the case. The critical area of the Middle East will now see the union of forces once hostile to one another join together to stem the spread of the Iranian product of Radical Islam. May G-d give them the strength to defeat this evil.

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2) Remaking Our World Order

When Xi Jinping sits down with Trump this week at Mar-a-Lago, he’ll be looking to finally overcome China’s “century of humiliation.” Michael Auslin reviews “Easternization: Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline” by Gideon Rachman.

By MICHAEL AUSLIN

When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping sit down this week at Mar-a-Lago, the Chinese leader will have the wind at his back. In the face of the president’s “America First” rhetoric, Mr. Xi has emerged as an unlikely champion of free trade and a voice urging restraint on the Korean peninsula. According to Gideon Rachman, all this is emblematic of “Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline,” as the subtitle of his book proclaims. If a new world order was in the making before Mr. Trump took office, his policies may well ensure the continued diminution of American power that began in earnest during Barack Obama’s presidency.

The domination of the Atlantic rim nations over the rest of the globe may seem like it is fated, since it has been the power dynamic for nearly half a millennium. But the truth, as Mr. Rachman points out, is that it is an anomaly in the longer-run pattern of history. For thousands of years, non-European empires controlled the ancient world; it was only beginning in the 16th century that smaller Western states were vaulted to global supremacy thanks to their technological and economic prowess.

Now we are witnessing the resurgence of the great Eurasian powers, particularly China, Russia, Turkey and Iran. Is this shift the inevitable result of globalization, as conventional wisdom seems to have it, or the outgrowth of specific failures by the Euro-Atlantic West? Mr. Rachman thinks it is the former—and believes that the shift is “theoretically attractive,” correcting the relatively recent imbalance of power resulting from Western imperialism. Unfortunately, “such a multipolar world is already emerging and proving to be unstable and dangerous.”

In “Easternization,” Mr. Rachman, the foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, offers a birds-eye view of the transformation—some would say collapse—of the post-World War II global order. In brisk, engaging prose, he takes us around the world in 14 chapters, beginning with Asia, then moving to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and what he calls the “borderlands” between East and West, including Ukraine, Turkey and Hungary. Vast amounts of territory are dealt with, often in a few paragraphs. Though largely geographically structured, the book centers on China’s challenge to the West and America’s response to that challenge.

There are a dizzyingly complex set of global changes that compromise easternization, but Mr. Rachman identifies two trends at its core: the end of U.S. dominance and an intensifying contest between America and China. As such, “Easternization” fits squarely into the burgeoning literature on the end of the Pax Americana, but makes a bold, if implicit, claim that the “globalization” of the future is not the harmonizing of economic and political interests, but instead the spread of Sino-American economic and political competition across the globe.

Asia’s new predominance—which essentially means China’s increasing power—is taken as the starting point of Mr. Rachman’s narrative. He makes the convincing, chilling case that the military gap between the United States and China is rapidly narrowing and that the “focal point of Chinese-American military rivalry is the control of the Western Pacific,” which is now “disputed territory.” Reviewing China’s challenge to America’s decadeslong predominance in Asia’s waters, Mr. Rachman links it to a broader Chinese goal, led by Mr. Xi, of finally overcoming China’s so-called “century of humiliation.”

This is a fascinating story. The trouble is that easternization, in Mr. Rachman’s telling, isn’t simply about China’s rise; he also uses it as a catchall description of our global woes, which ultimately dilutes his message about the Chinese threat. An interesting chapter on Chinese inroads into Africa, for example, is countered by a discussion of Europe where Asia plays very little role. Beijing certainly didn’t have much of an impact on the dramas of Brexit, the Eurozone crisis or the Middle Eastern migrant wave rolling over Germany and other nations. Yet all those subjects are taken up here. Similarly, Turkey’s easternization is really about creeping Islamism, and has little in common with trends in Asia, other than a growing authoritarianism that may resemble China’s.

Mr. Rachman’s book is reportorial, and, as he freely admits, it is largely informed by the elites he encounters in his journeys. Those who attend cocktail parties in London or Washington, D.C., will already know many of those quoted in the book. Davos regulars may be well-read, but their views are divorced from the daily experience of billions of people in Asia and elsewhere dealing with the realities of easternization. The voices of ordinary Asians, especially those living outside of major cities, would have added a crucial perspective.

If easternization depends on the continued growth of Asia, then it may prove to be a shorter era than the author expects. Mr. Rachman leaves largely unaddressed mounting evidence of Asia’s problems, including China’s continuing macroeconomic slowdown, regionwide demographic pressures (there are too few people in Japan and South Korea and too many in India and Indonesia), and the risk of armed clash between China and its neighbors, such as Vietnam and Japan. If easternization is knocked off course because of timid economic reform, public uprisings against corrupt elites or territorial disputes, a poorer, more fragmented Asia may not be able to continue to pull the balance of global power eastward. Just as importantly, as Mr. Rachman notes in his final chapter, the West retains powerful institutional advances in the “hidden wiring” of the global and economic and political system, further limiting the ultimate effects of easternization.

No one can deny the extraordinary rise of Asia over the past half-century. But even if the West is losing power and wealth on a comparative basis, in absolute terms the global economic pie is still growing, and American absolute wealth continues to rise, if unevenly. Easternization might be better understood as a much more fluid process that has elements of fragmentation as well as integration, and one in which America will remain dominant for a long time to come.

Mr. Auslin is the author of “The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region.”