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D. J. Trump Administration Geopolitics Pt. 3

For discussions of events and conditions not necessarily related to Peak Oil.

Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 27 Dec 2018, 16:56:30

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all.
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 28 Dec 2018, 12:51:33

As US troops align, Kurds in Syria make peace with the Syrian government.

us-troops-out-syrian-army-manbij-handed-back-damascus-turkey-poised-invade

If the Turks invade Syria to attack the Kurds now, they'll be fighting both the Kurds AND the Syrian government forces.

This move by Trump is turning out to be brilliant. By reversing Obama's idiotic policy of trying to topple the Syrian regime, Trump has created the conditions for PEACE in Syria with the ongoing reconciliation between the Kurds and Syrian regime.

Turkey already has troops in Syria, and they may try to expand the area they hold. But now they'll have to face both Kurds AND the Syrian regime, and the US can still help out with air support if Trump decides it is in our own best interests to do so.

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The reconciliation between the Kurds and the Syrian regime engineered by Trump should largely end the civil war in Syria.

Cheers!
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 12 Jan 2019, 19:18:08

Salon article, if you can stomach the adds.

https://www.salon.com/2019/01/09/god-he ... something/
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Donald Trump - like John Walker and Vladimir Lenin?

Unread postby lpetrich » Wed 16 Jan 2019, 17:41:37

In the early decades of the Soviet Union, some people spied for it because they believed in its system. Spies like Klaus Fuchs, for instance. But some more recent spies did it because they needed the money. Spies like John Anthony Walker - Wikipedia:
While stationed on the nuclear-powered Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) submarine USS Andrew Jackson in Charleston, South Carolina, Walker opened a bar, which failed to turn a profit and immediately plunged him into debt.[1]

Walker began spying for the Soviets in late 1967,[8][9] when, distraught over his financial difficulties, he walked into the old Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., sold a top secret document (a radio cipher card) for several thousand dollars, and negotiated an ongoing salary of $500 to $1,000 a week.[1]

He was eventually caught and found guilty, and he died in prison.

Looking at Donald Trump, in the 1990's, his business failures made it hard for him to get loans to start new businesses. But he then got bailed out by rich people from Russia and other ex-Soviet nations (How Russian Money Helped Save Trump’s Business – Foreign Policy).

That raises a very serious question. Did that bailout include some quid pro quo? Given the numerous contacts with Russian officials by his associates, one has to suspect that. Contacts documented in The Moscow Project and Links between Trump associates and Russian officials - Wikipedia. This Russian support for him apparently extended to electioneering that helped get him elected: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections - Wikipedia
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Re: Donald Trump - like John Walker and Vladimir Lenin?

Unread postby lpetrich » Wed 16 Jan 2019, 17:49:09

I recently found a possible missing piece of the puzzle. Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia - The New York Times
Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

It would be a great payoff for Vladimir Putin, something great for him in return for those bailouts and that electioneering.

It is not just NATO.
he president has repeatedly and publicly challenged or withdrawn from a number of military and economic partnerships, from the Paris climate accord to an Asia-Pacific trade pact. He has questioned the United States’ military alliance with South Korea and Japan, and he has announced a withdrawal of American troops from Syria without first consulting allies in the American-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State.

By doing that, the US would become more internationally isolated, and thus weaker. Something that Putin would be very happy to see.

Trump gets along with Putin much better than he does with fellow leaders of democratic nations. By contrast, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are good friends.
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Re: Donald Trump - like John Walker and Vladimir Lenin?

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 16 Jan 2019, 18:09:23

The NATO issue is that of the 28 members, only 5 countries have met the NATO funding target of 2% of GDP:
Image
The chart is deceptive in the sense that it conceals the fact that the US funding is the major portion of the NATO budget, since our GDP is very large compared to the other member nations.

Then there is the fact that the only nation that ever invoked the NATO mutual defense treaty was the U.S., in the wake of the 9/11/2001 attacks. NATO countries with a very few exceptions declined to participate in the Gulf War 2.

The U.S. clearly gains nothing by being in NATO. Let them get along without us.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001

Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
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Re: Donald Trump - like John Walker and Vladimir Lenin?

Unread postby Cog » Wed 16 Jan 2019, 18:13:59

lpetrich wrote:I recently found a possible missing piece of the puzzle. Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia - The New York Times
Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

It would be a great payoff for Vladimir Putin, something great for him in return for those bailouts and that electioneering.

It is not just NATO.
he president has repeatedly and publicly challenged or withdrawn from a number of military and economic partnerships, from the Paris climate accord to an Asia-Pacific trade pact. He has questioned the United States’ military alliance with South Korea and Japan, and he has announced a withdrawal of American troops from Syria without first consulting allies in the American-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State.

By doing that, the US would become more internationally isolated, and thus weaker. Something that Putin would be very happy to see.

Trump gets along with Putin much better than he does with fellow leaders of democratic nations. By contrast, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are good friends.



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Re: Donald Trump - like John Walker and Vladimir Lenin?

Unread postby lpetrich » Wed 16 Jan 2019, 18:15:34

Now for the Vladimir Lenin analogy. Lenin had been a Russian revolutionary activist who fled into exile in western Europe after being exiled in Siberia for a few years. Early in 1917, he was living in Zürich, Switzerland. Russia entered World War I to help Serbia by attacking Germany and Austria-Hungary. But Germany beat Russia rather badly, and Russia's economy started to falter rather badly. Ordinary people were starving, and many soldiers deserted and mutinied. By early 1917, it seemed like a full-scale revolution. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on March 15, and he was succeeded by the Provisional Government.

Lenin wanted to join the revolution, but getting to Russia was difficult. A colleague made a deal for him to cross Germany in a sealed train. German officials were already distributing propaganda to Russian troops, and they were happy at the thought of further destabilization that a big-name revolutionary would likely cause.

So he and 31 associates departed Zürich on April 3, and they changed trains to a commandeered military train on the German border. That train was diplomatically sealed but not physically sealed. The train made its way across Germany to Sassnitz on the Baltic Sea. They then took a ferry to Sweden, went north to the Finnish border, crossed over into Finland, and eventually arrived at Finland Station in St. Petersburg / Petrograd on April 15.

He got to work, promising among other things, peace with Germany, unlike the Provisional Government keeping the war going. Late that year, he and his fellow Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government, and they soon ended up fighting their opponents in the Russian Civil War, which ended in 1921.

But they did not forget about peace with Germany, and on March 3, 1918, they signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Germany and Austria-Hungary got the westernmost parts of the Russian Empire -- the most industrialized parts. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Russian parts of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.

To Germany's leaders, it was a big triumph, I'm sure, since it was a lot more than what they might reasonably have expected when they sent Lenin in a sealed train through their territory.


It seems to me that Vladimir Putin had supported Donald Trump for much the same reason, with a similar hoped-for outcome.
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Re: Donald Trump - like John Walker and Vladimir Lenin?

Unread postby Cog » Wed 16 Jan 2019, 18:22:00

Not long ago the left loved Russia and all things Russia. Said America should adopt their communist ways. But where did the love go? LOL

You have went full retard with the Trump hate Ipetrich. Never go full retard. Have you overdosed on CNN or something?
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 17 Jan 2019, 03:10:28

Plantagenet wrote:This move by Trump is turning out to be brilliant.


Um, yeah. Mission accomplished.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/politics ... index.html

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 17 Jan 2019, 15:20:07

Newfie wrote:Salon article, if you can stomach the adds.

https://www.salon.com/2019/01/09/god-he ... something/


Salon is right on this one. Even Trump does something right once in a while.

Meanwhile the Ds, in their haste to oppose and resist everything Trump does, have transmogrified themselves back into NeoCons who think the solution to every problem in the world is sending in the troops.

Cheers!
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 18 Jan 2019, 18:19:37

P - I have to chuckle at both sides of the debate over our "massive" deployment in Syria. From a purely practical standpoint I don't consider the US to have a military presence in the country The US has more then 3X the number of troops deployed at Fort Wainwright as in Syria. How many here have any idea what country where Fort Wainwright is located without searching google? LOL. BTW Russia has 30X as many combat troops on the ground in Syria not counting logistical support, mercenaries or the naval base.

Not so funny is the reason for the troops being their: bait. Same reason the US put small base camps in "Indian country" in Viet Nam: to draw in the VC/NVA to concentrate them for US air power. Our military was useless against them when they were disbursed around the country side. From the NYT last Oct:

WASHINGTON — The artillery barrage was so intense that the American commandos dived into foxholes for protection, emerging covered in flying dirt and debris to fire back at a column of tanks advancing under the heavy shelling. It was the opening salvo in a nearly four-hour assault in February by around 500 pro-Syrian government forces — including Russian mercenaries — that threatened to inflame already-simmering tensions between Washington and Moscow.

In the end, 200 to 300 of the attacking fighters were killed. The others retreated under merciless airstrikes from the United States, returning later to retrieve their battlefield dead. None of the Americans at the small outpost in eastern Syria — about 40 by the end of the firefight — were harmed.

The details of the Feb. 7 firefight were gleaned from interviews and documents newly obtained by The New York Times. They provide the Pentagon’s first public on-the-ground accounting of one of the single bloodiest battles the American military has faced in Syria since deploying to fight the Islamic State.

The firefight was described by the Pentagon as an act of self-defense against a unit of pro-Syrian government forces. In interviews, United States military officials said they had watched — with dread — hundreds of approaching rival troops, vehicles and artillery pieces in the week leading up to the attack.
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 18 Jan 2019, 18:38:45

Rock,

That’s a tactical answer as to why we are there. What is the STRATEGIC answer? How does it unambiguously answer our presence? Even if not troops, why are we taking sides in this cluster? (As if one could define with any certainty which side is what.).

People are all in a tizzy because we don’t have 100% access to, transcripts and video of, discussions between Trump and Putin. What access does the American public have to our logic to being in Syria or about 10@ other countries.
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Cog » Fri 18 Jan 2019, 20:39:20

I know where Fort Wainwright is since I spent the coldest month in my life there once learning the many ways the Arctic can kill you. When we left sunny Fort Ord California is was 70 F. We arrived in Fort Wainwright for our cold weather training it was -30F. Delightful time was had by all.
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 18 Jan 2019, 20:52:18

ROCKMAN wrote:P - I have to chuckle at both sides of the debate over our "massive" deployment in Syria. From a purely practical standpoint I don't consider the US to have a military presence in the country


???????

Cleary the US has troops in Syria, along with CIA agents, contractors, etc. ISIS just targeted the Americans in Syria for a martyrdom operation, killing four Americans.

The Neocon Ds reaction to the ISIS attack is to call for even greater US involvement in Syria. Senator Duckworth said we need to INCREASE our troop numbers there and begin to build democratic institutions in Syria.

Gosh...where have I heard that before?? AND How well has that strategy worked in Afghanistan? Or in Iraq? And now the Ds want to do it all over again in Syria??
'
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 18 Jan 2019, 21:24:00

April 15, 2018
PALATINE, Ill. ― Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) challenged President Donald Trump to state his administration’s “endgame” for military involvement in Syria following the U.S. military’s missile strike on a Syrian air field last week.

Speaking to a full house of constituents at a town hall in the Chicago suburb of Palatine on Tuesday night, Duckworth was asked what was accomplished with the first direct assault on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and what the long-term strategy would be.

Duckworth said that she wants to know, too ― and that Trump needs to provide those answers quickly.

“The Trump administration needs to come forward and [state] its goal. Come forward and tell us the truth,” Duckworth responded.


Which is all pretty interesting since it was Obama who got us in there.

Jan18, 2019. http://www.wjbc.com/2018/04/15/durbin-s ... -approval/

Bottom line, I was appalled," she tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson of the attack. "[Trump's] unilateral decision against his military commanders and his then-secretary of defense, Secretary [James Mattis] to decide to withdraw, pull U.S. troops without any type of a plan out of Syria contributed to ISIS' increased boldness."


Aug 20, 2012. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authori ... al_Weapons

In his speech, Obama also said that, "while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective."[35] Introduction of S.J. Res. 21 in the Senate soon followed.



April 27, 2015. https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2015 ... ng-islami/

U.S. forces have now surpassed 2,800 strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria under President Obama’s war against the Islamic State, all as part of a conflict Congress has yet to specifically authorize — and amid worries lawmakers won’t ever act.

Under intense pressure from Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama finally submitted a draft authorization for the use of military force against the Islamic State in February, but it’s since languished, caught in the stalemate between those who want tighter restrictions and those who want the president to have as free a hand as possible.
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Cog » Fri 18 Jan 2019, 21:49:59

Its seems one's support for one issue or the other depends on what party is in power.
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Zarquon » Sat 19 Jan 2019, 00:26:25

Let's see.

"National Security Advisor John Bolton has in effect overruled President Donald Trump’s troop withdrawal decision. This will have fateful consequences for America’s national interests, and none of them are good. Speaking in Israel, Bolton stated that two conditions must be met before a withdrawal of U.S. troops, and the conditions amount to a recipe for indefinitely prolonging the deployment. One is that the United States must “make sure ISIS is defeated and is not able to revive itself and become a threat again”—an objective that is impossible for the two thousand U.S. troops in Syria to achieve. With the mini-state of ISIS largely gone, whatever threat the group poses is a matter not of military control of a patch of Syria—a patch of “sand and death”, as Trump put it —but instead of ideology, politics, fear, and hatred that cannot be described on a battle map.
[...]
Bolton’s other condition is to obtain some sort of guarantee from Turkey not to attack the Kurdish forces in northeast Syria that have functioned as clients of the United States but that Ankara sees as auxiliaries of an anti-Turkish terrorist group. Again, this is not a box likely to be checked no matter how long U.S. troops stay in Syria. A U.S. withdrawal would give the Kurds incentive to move in the direction least damaging to their interests: striking a deal with the Assad regime in which the Kurds give up any hope for independence in return for some form of limited autonomy. But as long as the United States keeps promising protection to the Kurds and offers its own troops as a tripwire to guarantee such protection, that incentive is missing.
[...]
Bolton in effect added a third condition when, speaking at a joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he stated that any withdrawal would have to “ensure the security of Israel and other friends in the region.” So any complaining by Netanyahu’s government will be grounds for not proceeding with the withdrawal.
[...]
The episode involving withdrawal and non-withdrawal of U.S. troops in Syria should be a lesson for those who mistakenly placed hopes in Trump for a more restrained and less militaristic U.S. foreign policy. Applause lines on the campaign trail have been mistaken for deeper thought. Behind the candidate’s rhetoric there never was enough strategic sense, necessary knowledge, or even caring about foreign affairs to ward off the maneuvers of a determined hawk like Bolton once he was in position to do damage."

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul- ... rump-41017
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Zarquon » Sat 19 Jan 2019, 01:55:36

And while we're at it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/worl ... e=Homepage

"As Afghanistan Frays, Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Is Everywhere
Oct. 4, 2018
A new crop of senior American officials in Afghanistan has been racing to contain a dual crisis on the battlefield and in a potentially explosive election dispute. But it is a different American figure — the mercenary executive Erik D. Prince — who has been the talk of Kabul these days.

More than a year after first laying out his plan to President Trump to privatize the American war in Afghanistan with a cadre of contractors — and a private air force — Mr. Prince, the founder of the Blackwater security firm that became infamous for killing civilians in Iraq, has seemingly been everywhere.

And as he has made his sales pitch directly to a host of influential Afghans, he has frequently been introduced as an adviser to Mr. Trump himself.
[...]
He contends that his proposal can achieve what more than 140,000 American and NATO troops at the heart of the troop surge in 2009 and 2010 could not. He compares the current mission, which is reduced to about 15,000 American troops supported on their bases by more than 20,000 private contractors, to the failures of the Soviet Union.

In the interview, Mr. Prince laid out what he called a “rationalization” of private contracting already happening: a leaner mission of 6,000 private contractors providing “skeletal structure support” and training for Afghan forces. Small teams of Special Forces veterans embedded with Afghan battalions for about three years, he said, would ensure the continuity lacking now with American soldiers rotating out every year.

They would be supported by air through a fleet of contracted aircraft flown by joint teams of Afghans and contractors. About 2,500 American Special Operations forces would remain in the country for counterterrorism missions. All of this, Mr. Prince said, would bring down the annual cost of the war to roughly a fifth of the current amount.
[...]
His business has since gone through several reincarnations. His latest venture, the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group, has contracts in Africa and Asia, and is backed by Citic Group, a large state-owned Chinese investment company.

Mr. Prince’s initial push last year to privatize the Afghan war was quashed by two of the most senior members of Mr. Trump’s national security team: H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser at the time, and Jim Mattis, the defense secretary. They persuaded Mr. Trump to increase the number of troops and resources in Afghanistan.

Mr. Prince now gauges the winds in Washington as shifting in his favor, with Mr. McMaster gone and Mr. Mattis often at odds with Mr. Trump.
[...]
In the letter Mr. Prince sent to Mr. Ghani in spring 2017 seeking a meeting, he mentioned that his sister, Betsy Devos, was a member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, one Afghan official said."

That was in October. Any bets when the US war in Afghanistan will be privatized now?
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Re: Trump pulls US troops out of Syria

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 19 Jan 2019, 09:10:32

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
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