Wednesday, May 9, 2018

EXPLAINED: How Trump Just Made the World a Much More Dangerous Place


President Trump makes Susan E. Rice, national security adviser from 2013 to 2017 for President Obama and a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, look lile a peacenik. She writes in The New York Times:
President Trump’s reckless decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal will not force Iran back to the negotiating table, nor will it address serious concerns about Iran’s behavior in the Middle East. But it will leave Iran’s nuclear program unconstrained, and an inconstant America isolated from its allies and far less safe...

This agreement was never about trust. It is about
stringent verification — in perpetuity. The deal effectively cut off all potential pathways for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Now President Trump has ceded the moral high ground and freed Iran from all those constraints. Iran will be able to resume its nuclear activities without being blamed for violating the agreement...

Iran could stay in the deal for now, if the remaining signatories can provide sufficient trade and investment benefits. Yet this outcome is far from assured and likely unsustainable, given the ability of the United States to impose painful sanctions against foreign entities doing business with Iran...

With Iran unconstrained, Saudi Arabia and others in the region may push to obtain a nuclear capacity. The hard-liners in Iran who never liked the nuclear deal will be strengthened in their bid to destabilize the region, leaving relative moderates like President Hassan Rouhani sidelined. In light of America’s abrogation of its commitments, Russia and China’s position in the region will be bolstered at our expense. Israel may now rush into conflict with Iran, betting it can draw in the United States. Under any scenario, America will be less safe; and in the worst case, we could face the choice of going to war or acquiescing to a nuclear-armed Iran...

If Mr. Trump thinks he is sending a strong message of resolve to North Korea, he is again mistaken. Instead, he is demonstrating to a far more advanced and unpredictable adversary on the eve of negotiations that the United States cannot be trusted. He has provided proximate proof that any deal the United States makes, even a successful one, may be tossed aside on the whim of this or any other president....

The president has just made the most foolish and consequential national security decision of his tenure.
  -Robert Wenzel  

5 comments:

  1. Too bad she didn't critique herself and Obama with similarly sensible arguments when they were in power.

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  2. To be fair, candidate Trump promised many times he would withdraw the US from the nuclear deal with Iran and he kept that promise, because he was the anti-war candidate every paleoconservative supported. And support him they did. Despite his promises.

    Which is why I believe it was all BS and that the paleoconservatives supported Trump after he said that more than half of immigrants from Mexico are rapists and drug dealers and promised a useless boondoggle to garner the support of collectivist xenophobes, his supposed anti-war stance being a complete fabrication, an obvious one to boot.

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    1. I'm thankful that Trump would like to kick out illegal immigrants. But you are not much of an American are you Torres, or he who likes to be cucked by black males.

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  3. So far the pundits and experts have been wrong at every turn on Trumps foreign policy. Remember when we were going to Nuclear war?

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  4. Further proof that Israel calls the shots for American foreign policy.

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