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Response to link about Russian spying posted in previous memo: "Russia is a big mafia run by a few very rich people who are worried about their existence. I think Russian meddling is a problem but probably no worse than what the CIA does. I think radical Muslims, the deep state and China are a bigger threat. Russia plays at the edges. The deep state threatens our liberties and presses toward socialism. The Muslims just want to kill us. China is waking up and who knows what their plans are. Ever seen a Russian suicide bomber? So I agree with much of the article, but I think we have bigger problems. G--"
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Peggy Noonan touches all the bases and, as usual, is brilliant in her analysis of the clashing forces defending and opposing Trump.
I too struggle with defending Trump when there is so much that I find un-appealing. On the other hand, what we have had by way of political parties and presidents has left us in debt, vulnerable to nations like China, that are on the ascendancy, while our allies are in decline and unwilling to meet their obligations, leaving us to bear the load.
She touches all the bases and concludes the parade business is stupid and, with that I totally agree.(See 1 below.)
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Breaking your neck to justify wrong behaviour - Is that the FBI today? Has it become just another agency destroyed by Obama's top echelon picks who betray their role in our free and constitutional society?
I fear what has happened is we have allowed too much manipulated cronyism to rise to the top of our government and it began with the Clinton's and accelerated with Obama. It is a dangerous and unhealthy pattern.
A government must be run by those with character , integrity and selfless goals.
Truman had his share of cronies too and I understand presidents want/need to be surrounded by loyalists. That is why Kennedy selected his brother for Atty. General. However, loyalist friends must be play a dual role. They must be capable of shifting their loyalty to the nation while retaining loyalty to the president they serve. This means remaining objective, retaining the ability to tell the president, they serve, the unvarnished truth and, most importantly, not engage in practices that are embarrassing and worst of all illegal.
We have become a nation where cronyism is entrenched. In Trump's case that certainly was true of the performance of The Oval Office in the first six months and then matters changed. Now Trump is having to deal with a question of competence. (See 2 below.)
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Is China ascending while America is declining? I fear that is the case. (See 3 below.)
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When it comes to America's burgeoning deficit I am reminded of a phrase I always told my children - there is always a price to be paid and you cannot take candy from a baby without them crying.
Government has a legitimate role in serving the underprivileged but it needs to be balanced against the first responsibility of government - to defend and protect.
Democrats hold the military hostage to welfare funding and Republicans cave because they too are whores when it comes to dispensing candy. When it is not your money and candy gets you elected it takes discipline and sacrifice to do the right thing and politicians can always justify their actions as being politically correct and/or compassionate. The problem is that most of the time it is irresponsible and dangerous and the bigger and more distant government becomes the less voters seem to care and /or believe they have any leverage.
Most likely nothing external will destroy America. We will be destroyed from within because The Real Enemy Is Us!!
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Dick
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1)I Love a Parade, but Not This One
Trump’s supporters and opponents alike are decent and patriotic. If only he lived up to their standard.
By Peggy Noonan
Traveling this week in California and Texas, I was struck again by how every political discussion is about Donald Trump. People who used to bring up state races—“We’ve got a hot election for governor going on here”—rarely mention them, and immediately revert to the national. Like no other president in my lifetime, he obsesses the nation.
I heard two things that stuck with me and reminded me of what a lot of us know is the special tragedy of this moment—that most people on both sides of the pro- and anti- Trump divide are trying to be constructive, to think seriously and help the country. That is what makes our division so poignant.
A rock-solid Republican, a veteran of the Reagan wars who knows what it is to have all forces arrayed against you, spoke of opposing Mr. Trump. It isn’t a matter of style or snobbery, isn’t knee-jerk. The veteran said: People who are for Trump always say “Look, he’s got an unfortunate character and temperament, but he’s good on regulation, good on the courts.” The problem, the veteran said, is the but. Once you get to the but, you are normalizing him—you are making him normal, which means you are guaranteeing a future of President Trumps. That means you have lowered the presidency forever, changed it forever, just when the world’s problems are more dangerous, and thoughtfulness and wisdom more needed.
The veteran is trying to be protective, and a patriot.
Trump supporters, on the other hand, chose him and back him because he isn’t normal. They’d tried normal! It didn’t work! Of course he’s a brute, but his brutishness was the only thing that could surprise Washington, scare it, make it reform. Both parties are corrupt and look out only for themselves; he’s the one who wouldn’t be in hock to them and their donors. Is he weird? Yes. But it’s a weird country now. He’s the only one big enough to push back against what’s pushing us.
They were trying to be patriotic, too.
It is a central belief of Trump supporters that of course he’ll make mistakes—he’s not a politician, he’s new, he’ll learn. An underestimated aspect of Trump support is sheer human sympathy. They see him taking a pounding each day in the press and feel for him as a human being. The press misses this, but Mr. Trump doesn’t. He uses it.
The second thing I heard was from an executive in a large American company. He was frustrated. It was clear to me he wants Mr. Trump to succeed, and wants to support him, because in setting in place a deregulatory spirit in the government the president is helping his industry. And his industry employs a lot of people, pays well, and makes possible the building, expansion and peace of a lot of families.
His criticism went right at the Trump supporters’ faith that he will learn in the job. The executive said: He doesn’t learn! He’s not able to. He doesn’t have that mechanism inside that allows people to analyze problems and see their part in them. And without that you can’t improve.
I left thinking again it’s such a great country, filled with such thoughtful people. And pro- and anti-Trump not only is a division between two big groups but an inevitable collision between two good groups. And somebody’s going to win.
On three of the week’s events:
The Rob Porter story reminds us in part that life is mysterious, we are mysterious. He is by all accounts an impeccable public servant—correct in his bearing, helpful, modest, sound in judgment. A professional and a patriot. In his private sphere he was apparently a shambles—violent, unstable, an abuser of women. If his two former wives are speaking truthfully, he betrayed the classic pattern of the abuser: He roughs you up, is contrite, vows to change, roughs you up. But I keep thinking of something not directly related. “It’s hard to know another person’s motives,” a friend once said. “But then it’s almost impossible to know your own.” We are often mysteries to ourselves. The area between your true self and the mystery—that’s where trouble happens.
Trump foes find the story exciting. It is tragic. Wasted gifts are a terrible thing to see.
Scrutiny of the White House’s FBI clearance operation is legitimate. Those who work for presidents are subject to a full field investigation, and it’s a scary thing. They try to interview everyone you ever knew—and it’s the FBI, so you better play it straight. If Mr. Porter was working for a president after the FBI reported this, it is concerning.
You can’t really blackmail Donald Trump on personal conduct because nothing said about him would surprise or shock. Mr. Porter, however, was blackmailable. Why did they let him stay on? Maybe because they were desperate: He was a respected establishment pro who could do the job. The administration struggled to attract such people. Without them it was all Omarosa.
The stock market wobbled in a way that seemed dramatic. The president has perhaps learned he should not constantly brag about the Dow Jones Industrial Average as proof of his good economic stewardship. I am sure there is truth in what market analysts say: It was an inevitable correction after a strong rise, and driven by inflation fears and algorithms. I would add the big secret everyone knows both here and abroad and that occasionally springs to the forefront of the mind: A fundamental is unsound. Compared with other countries we look good, but compared with ourselves we do not. Our ratio of total debt to gross domestic product has grown to more than 100% and can’t keep growing forever. Because of it, no matter how high the market goes it will never feel sound. There is no congressional appetite for spending control because there is no public appetite for it.
No one in Washington is forging a plausible solution to the problem. So the markets may continue on an upward trajectory, but mood, fear and data will keep the economy unsteady.
The Journal’s Julie Bykowicz reported this week that the Pentagon is beginning to plan the big military parade ordered up by the president. He saw one in France during his state visit in July and liked it a lot. So we should have one too, perhaps on July 4, to honor the military.
It is a ridiculous and embarrassing idea. If you want to show respect for the military make the Veterans Affairs Department work. A big, pointless, militarist display with gleaming weapons and shining tanks is so . . . Soviet. What do you gain from showing off your weaponry? What are we celebrating—that we have nukes? That we have to have them is a tragedy.
“The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”
I see a line of thinking among those normally critical of the president that the idea’s a ten-strike: The people will love it, what’s wrong with it, who doesn’t like a parade?
But I think people will see right through it.
If there’s a parade that purports to honor our military men and women, they will go. But they’re not stupid, they’ll know what it is. It is Trump being Trump, and obsessing the nation. It’s bread and circuses.
And it is not like us, at least the old and honored us.
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2) The FBI Was Desperate for Somebody to Spy On
The Steele dossier served up an improbable tale about Carter Page, but it would have to do
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Now we have it ostensibly from then-FBI Director James Comey as well as former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that there might have been no surveillance of Carter Page without the Steele dossier. If so, that’s probably because the dossier provided the one thing the FBI lacked and was unlikely to find (because it didn’t exist): a reason to believe Mr. Page was important.
In the dossier accumulated by former British spy Christopher Steele, Mr. Page is a player. He meets secretly with Vladimir Putin’s No. 1 capo, Igor Sechin. Dangled in front of him is a gobsmacking bribe—a brokerage fee on the forthcoming privatization of a 19.5% stake in the giant Russian state oil firm Rosneft. All he has to do is arrange the lifting of U.S. sanctions, as if this were in the power of the elfin Mr. Page to deliver.
The story is implausible. Mr. Page has denied it under oath. Nothing has emerged to suggest the FBI confirmed it. Only Luke Harding, a British journalist who has written a book alleging Trump -Russia collusion, finds it inherently self-crediting. Why? Because Mr. Steele’s Russian “mole” apparently correctly anticipated the Rosneft deal that would finally be consummated in the closing hours of 2016. Even the Russian cabinet and Rosneft’s own board, Mr. Harding wrote last week at Politico.com, “only discovered the deal on December 7, hours after Sechin had already recorded his TV meeting with Putin revealing it.”
This nonsense actually points to why somebody might pluck out of the pending Rosneft deal and attach Mr. Page’s name to it. The partial sale, aimed at reducing the Russian government’s stake to 50% plus one share, had actually been conspicuously on the agenda for years. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree in 2014, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov started touting the expected proceeds in 2015, and Mr. Putin formally included them in the state budget in February 2016.
In other words, the deal was a topic of fervent press speculation for more than a year by the time Mr. Steele or his sources put it at the center of their story about Mr. Page.
That the FBI was buying is the puzzling part. One possibility is that the agency was under strong pressure from fellow Obama administration officials to surveil somebody, anybody associated with the Trump campaign. Recall that the effervescent Mr. Page, by this time, was already known to the FBI and U.S. intelligence for several years, after he’d fallen afoul of a goofy Russian spy recruitment attempt in 2013.
OK, the press obviously needs our help. Reporters, it’s time to employ the kind of intelligent imagination that good novelists and historians bring to their work. The Trump-Russia story is not the layered drama of your dreams, but a black comedy. When the movie version is made, it won’t be the 2006 version of “Casino Royale.” It will be the 1967 version.
First, the run-up to the Nunes memo reminds us that claims about protecting government secrets are often cover for bureaucratic privilege and avoiding accountability. Hillary Clinton was wrong to ignore information-security rules imposed on lesser government-unemployed mortals, but the value of government secrets is grossly exaggerated.
Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn, in a piece in the Hill newspaper last week, properly mocked the mainstream press, usually so eager to traffic in leaked government secrets, for suddenly developing a fondness for prior restraint in the case of Mr. Nunes’s duly vetted memo.
Also in need of mocking is the media’s self-fulfilling overreliance on the trope of the “dueling partisan narratives.” Listen closely to what responsible partisans on either side say and it isn’t nearly as over-the-top as the press generalizations about what they say (Republicans declare war on the FBI!).
Alas, the easiest column to write is the one that treats the most hyperbolic, unnuanced claims by one side or the other (or Mr. Trump ) as representative for the purpose of knocking them down. Such columns, we hasten to add, are as much products of creative desperation as they are of partisan water-carrying. And they only spawn more of the same. Peter Thiel last week wisely suggested that pundits should try focusing on the “steel man” rather than the straw man versions of their opponent’s arguments.
The most important takeaway from the Nunes memo is this: Worries about “sources and methods” (often exaggerated) should not be a deterrent to clearing the air when something as important as the up-and-upness of a U.S. presidential election is in question.
Whatever his complaints, Mr. Trump managed to win. Hillary Clinton is the one publicly contending that improper FBI actions cost her the election. Her friend Lanny Davis has published a plausible book on the subject. Mrs. Clinton and her fellow Democrats should be insisting most loudly on a comprehensive and unflinching examination of the FBI’s role in the 2016 race.
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3)Will China Impose a New World Order?
When Pax Britannica gave way to Pax Americana, the transition was peaceful. A repeat is unlikely, says the author of ‘Safe Passage.’
By Tunku Varadarajan
When Kori Schake was a senior at Stanford in 1984, she enrolled in a seminar on Soviet politics taught by Condoleezza Rice, then 29. The two young women hit it off. “I was a dreamy, impractical kid, and didn’t have a plan for what I was going to do after I graduated,” says Ms. Schake (pronounced “shocky”). “Condi saw me at loose ends and offered me a job as her research assistant.” They worked together for a year on a book about “elite selection in the military that Condi never ended up writing. But I read everything about what makes the American military tick. Everything.”
Thirty-four years later, Ms. Schake has written a book—her fourth—whose jacket carries a glowing blurb from her illustrious former professor. The book, “Safe Passage,” traces the international order’s transition from British to American hegemony. With all of the talk of China’s rise and what it will mean for the U.S., Ms. Schake says, she “got curious about the history of transitions between a rising power and an established global hegemon. The only peaceful transition in all of history, I found, is the one between Britain and the United States.” (Ms. Schake has made that transition in reverse. She moved earlier this month from Stanford to London, where she is an executive at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a defense think tank.)
The U.S. did not fully supplant Britain until 1945. But the American challenge began in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine, under which the U.S. declared the Western Hemisphere to be its own exclusive zone of influence. “It was the first opportunity the United States had to assert a different calculus for the rules of international order,” Ms. Schake says. “A hegemon isn’t just a country that’s powerful or wealthy, but one that aspires to set the rules and is willing to enforce them.”
Is China the next hegemon? President Xi Jinping appears to challenge the U.S. frequently and deliberately. Ms. Schake agrees that Mr. Xi is “clearly telegraphing that China wants different rules.” She points to the “One Belt, One Road” initiative—a plan to establish a China-centered global trading network that would extend to Western Europe, Northern Africa and Australia, under which Beijing would make loans to countries that need to expand their infrastructure. She also cites Beijing’s aggressive maritime claims, most prominently in the South China Sea, to which “Chinese scholars make comparisons with the Monroe Doctrine. It’s a legitimation device, by which they say, ‘You had your sphere of influence when you were a rising power. Now we have our sphere.’ ”
ILLUSTRATION: TERRY SHOFFNER
Not that Ms. Schake thinks the U.S. should accede. “There’s no reason for us to accept that Chinese assertion,” she says, because China’s neighbors—over whom Beijing seeks to impose its will—are “friends and partners and allies of the United States. We aren’t a modern parallel of European states seeking to colonize Latin America.”
Most states in the Asia-Pacific region seem content with the existing order, and “by being so brazen and uncooperative during its rise, China has actually activated the antibodies that will help prevent its success.” The exception is the Philippines, which has cozied up to Mr. Xi, “but that has less to do with China and more to do with the leadership in Manila”—a reference to the maverick Filipino president, Rodrigo Duterte.
In her book, however, she warns that “America is making the same strategic choice with China that Great Britain did with a rising America,” in assuming that the rising power “can be induced to comply with extant rules.” Does that mean that the Pax Americana must someday give way to a Pax Sinica? After all, that British tactic of accommodation helped pave the way for the U.S. to take over world leadership.
Ms. Schake demurs. “What the U.S. is saying to China,” she says, “is that if you behave as a liberal political and economic power in the international order, we’ll help you succeed in the existing global order.” The U.S. expects China to understand that “our allies will be protected, even if China is the challenger. If the autonomy or security of South Korea and Japan, Australia or Taiwan, is challenged, we’ll defend them.”
The U.S. has also made clear that disputes over territories and waters need to be resolved by peaceful negotiation. China, says Ms. Schake, will not be allowed to “use force to impose its will on weaker states in the region.”
Ms. Schake worries about the Trump administration’s protectionist inclinations: “I do think that President Trump is calling into question some of the fundamental rules of the liberal international order that the hard men who won World War II created in its aftermath.” Free trade, she says, “undergirds political relationships. Prosperity gives states reasons to cooperate, and to broaden participation in a liberal order.”
She fears that Mr. Trump “does not seem persuaded by those fundamental American arguments,” and she laments his withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ms. Schake invokes the late Nobel economics laureate who supervised her doctoral dissertation: “ Tom Schelling would be shaking his head if he were here, saying that Trump gave that enormous strategic advantage to China without even getting anything in return.”
The good news is that the other 11 members of the trade deal “have determined to continue to try to bring the TPP into effect without the United States. So it’s an example of the liberal international order being sustained without American leadership.”
And Ms. Schake’s overall view of the administration’s foreign policy is favorable. Trade, she says, is “the only area in which Trump has, so far, been demonstrably damaging to the liberal international order.” In other areas, she thinks the administration “has actually made policy decisions consistent with the existing order,” even if Mr. Trump is an “outlier” regarding the philosophy on which it rests.
She points to Mr. Trump’s “continuing to assist Afghanistan until it has the ability to secure its own territory from threats to itself and to us.” She also cites U.S. assistance to the government of Iraq, “to secure it against malign external and internal influence,” as well as support for the security of “our stalwart Asian allies.” Besides, she says, Mr. Trump’s predecessor was hardly a champion of the Pax Americana: “I think you could make a strong case that President Obama’s foreign policy was one of retrenchment, shifting burdens onto allies and off America’s shoulders.”
As for China, Ms. Schake says she is “less convinced than many other people” that its rise will continue. But if Beijing does seriously challenge the U.S., she is “deeply skeptical that a hegemonic transition would happen peacefully.” A fundamental difference between the two countries is that even when the U.S. acts in ways that many would regard as globally unpopular, it does so while sincerely proclaiming universal values.
What values might a hegemonic China impart on the world? “Their leadership is groping to come up with something,” Ms. Schake says. “Xi has talked about the Chinese Dream, but it’s of a prosperous China where people don’t agitate for political control, where they trust the leadership to do the right thing for them.”
The unwillingness of major Western leaders to endorse One Belt, One Road illustrates for Ms. Schake “how much concern the established powers—the U.S., France, Britain—have about China attempting to change the rules.” She cites with evident pleasure Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s remark last year: that in a globalized world “there are many belts and many roads.” Mr. Mattis and Ms. Schake are close friends and longtime colleagues, and have edited a book together.
The Chinese initiative has also served, unintentionally, to highlight the attractions of the American-led international order: “The rules we established are advantageous not only to us, but also foster prosperity and peace for other countries.” The rest of the world sees its interests advanced by sustaining the current system, and the U.S. rarely has to enforce the rules. As Ms. Schake puts it, “we get the advantage of playing team sports because of the nature of the rules we’ve established.” That isn’t true for China. It claims One Belt, One Road is mutually advantageous, “but other countries’ concerns about sovereignty and what happens if loan terms aren’t met may yet stall China’s ambitions.”
In other words, unless China can come up with a more attractive narrative about itself and its ambitions, most countries will continue to favor the American-led order. “We have been a clumsy hegemon, certainly,” Ms. Schake says, “but we have also been a largely beneficent one.”
Mr. Varadarajan is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
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