O que nenhum ditador comunista conseguiu fazer, foi feito por Trump: silenciar a Voice of America - Dana Milbank The Washington Post

From the Washington Post, March 18, 2025 

From Dana Milbank’s column on Trump’s silencing of the government-funded broadcaster, which had been a continuous “voice of freedom” since it first went on the air eight weeks after Pearl Harbor. The president this week put virtually all VOA staff on administrative leave. As Dana points out, Hitler never managed to silence VOA. Neither did Stalin, Putin or anyone in between. Mao or the ayatollahs, neither. And they all certainly tried. It is unconscionable that America’s own leader is the one to silence the country’s message abroad. Of course, Dana writes, “the world’s autocrats are doing somersaults.” ADVERTISEMENT   That’s because, as the Editorial Board points out, no one is going to suffer more than those autocrats’ subjects. So much of VOA’s audience came from within closed societies, and for many of those people, VOA was the only source of non-propagandized truth that could reach them.

Under Trump, a U.S. that once united Europe now divides it - Michael Birnbaum, Sammy Westfall (The Washington Post)

 Under Trump, a U.S. that once united Europe now divides it

Michael Birnbaum with Sammy Westfall 

The Washington Post, Feb 17, 2025

 

MUNICH — When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, the United States helped whip Europe into a staunchly unified response. Now, U.S. leaders may be splitting Europe into pieces as President Donald Trump seeks to end the war, European leaders and policymakers say.

Vice President JD Vance and other top administration officials made their European debut last week, slashing their way through a continent of allies as they embraced far-right leaders, demanded access to mineral wealth and offered sympathy to the views of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

By the end of the week, European leaders found themselves potentially cut out of peace talks with Russia, facing down a trade warwith Washington and scrambling to answer U.S. requests about how many troops they can marshal to Ukraine to guarantee a truce negotiated without their input.

Europeans already had four years of a Trump presidency. But many policymakers say that this time feels different, with four head-snapping weeks of Trump already recasting the attitudes of leaders who had vowed to make the best of his new term in office.

“The view was a little bit more optimistic” just four weeks ago as Trump entered office, Finnish President Alexander Stubb told reporters Saturday.

“Of course, the developments that we’ve seen in the past few days give us a little bit more pause for pessimism. But as I’ve always said, pessimism is usually inaction. Optimism is action, and realism is a solution,” he continued. “So let’s be realistic and try to look at a good pathway forward.”

Many Europeans are looking at the situation “with nervousness, frustration and even alarm,” said Jeffrey Rathke, the president of the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a former U.S. diplomat.

European foreign ministers who were in Munich this weekend for an annual gathering of the transatlantic security elite sat for an impromptu breakfast on Sunday to discuss what to do. French President Emmanuel Macron invited some of Europe’s leaders to Paris on Monday to discuss European security and Ukraine.

Advocates of Washington’s generations-long partnership with European democracies say that Trump’s team has quickly become a force for chaos. The United States helped rebuild Europe after World War II and fostered the economic cooperation of the European Union to try to put an end to nationalist clashes on the continent. Critics say Trump is trying to pull Europe apart, emboldening the Kremlin and raising the risk of borders being redrawn again by force.

“We had a century of American leadership where we’ve been able to be seen as a force toward stability. And that is not just vanishing, but it’s actually moving in the opposite direction,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey), who worked for the State Department before going into politics and spent the weekend talking to European policymakers in Munich.

“We are becoming a source of instability and a source of concern, even among our own allies,” he said. “What’s the value of the American handshake? And right now here in Munich, it doesn’t have value. People don’t think they can count on it, even if they get an agreement.”

‘Whiplash’

Europeans have been shocked by the speed at which Trump and his lieutenants have taken aim at pillars of their continent’s security and moved to cut a deal with Russia. Many NATO allies left a meeting of defense ministers last week convinced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth planned to pull tens of thousands of troops from Europe in the coming years, three officials said, though they cautioned that the effort still appears nascent.

Trump also spoke for nearly 90 minutes on Wednesday to Putin without consulting with Ukraine or Europeans beforehand, then emerged from the conversation appearing to embrace the Kremlin’s viewpoint that NATO expansion justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Until now, it has been a tenet of U.S. policy that European countries have the right to seek their own alliances free from Russian military pushback.

Some on Trump’s team dismiss the idea that he is trying to sow divisions inside Europe. Tough, frank talk between friends is the best way to spark European defense spending and rebuild a partnership, they say.

“You look at triage as a medic, what’s the first thing you do? Stop the bleeding, then you treat for shock. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to stop the bleeding,” said Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

“You cannot restrict this conflict intellectually to just Europe,” he said. “This is a global fight. And if you don’t think it’s a global fight, you’re wrong.”

But Europeans say that Trump’s policies are unraveling efforts to cooperate against common foes. Even good-faith attempts to build ties to his administration have been undercut by his shifting decisions, some of them said, noting that they were told to talk to Kellogg about Ukraine and Russia when he was appointed the envoy and have invested months in the relationship.

Trump last week appeared to cut Kellogg out of the key dialogue with Russia, announcing that his Mideast envoy and personal friend, Steve Witkoff, would handle talks with the Kremlin instead. Kellogg won’t be in Saudi Arabia this week when the Trump administration sits down with Russian counterparts for the highest-level dialogue since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“We need to work together against dictators and not fight among each other about democracy,” Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said in an interview. “And we should project unity and strength.”

One former U.S. official in Munich summed up attitudes succinctly: “Whiplash,” the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

 

‘The old days are over’

Many policymakers were especially taken aback by Vance’s Friday speech in Munich, where he blasted “fire walls” that Germany’s centrist parties have built against including the anti-immigrant, nationalist Alternative for Germany party in coalitions. Some of the party’s leaders have embraced Nazi-era slogans and declared that new generations should be freed from apologizing for the sins of their grandparents. Vance also met party leader Alice Weidel, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to do so.

Vance was trying “to pick a fight with us, and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends,” E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Friday after the speech.

Some leaders noted that Vance delivered the speech a day after laying a wreath for the victims of the Dachau concentration camp — a physical embodiment of what can happen when nationalism steers toward extremes.

The threat is not just theoretical, they said: Russia has designs on full control of Ukraine and potentially biting into other neighbors too.

“I’m not saying that we are at war, but we cannot claim that we are in peacetime anymore, and a hybrid car is still a car, right? Hybrid war,” said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who has already clashed with Trump over his demands to take over Greenland.

“For me, I mean, there is a big risk that something that will look nice on the paper will give Russia the possibility to mobilize, to rearm and to continue, maybe in Ukraine or somewhere else,” she said.

Ukraine’s leader also noted the new attitude from Trump, pushing Europe to unite in the face of the challenge and build the strongest possible relationship with Washington.

“A few days ago, President Trump told me about his conversation with Putin. Not once did he mention that America needs Europe at the table,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday. “That says a lot. The old days are over when America supported Europe just because it always had.”

Elements of the common U.S. and European effort to help Ukraine have fallen victim to Trump’s targeting of the U.S. Agency for International Development and freeze on foreign aid. Key parts of the challenging work to keep Ukraine’s lights on were paid by USAID, with the aid halt freezing the production of key replacement parts for the power grid and generation, one Ukrainian energy official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security topic.

With no clarity about when or if U.S. funding might be restored, Ukrainians likely will shiver in the dark this winter for more hours every day than if USAID were paying the contracts it signed, the official said.

“If there’s not any kind of underlying trust and alliance, and everything is [a] jump ball because it’s a negotiating tactic,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), “will people then rightfully feel everything with America is now transactional, rather than based upon the normal rule of shared values and shared history, shared defense against authoritarians in the past?”

Ellen Francis contributed to this report

 

 

Trump sabotages his own idea for lasting peace in Ukraine - Lee Hockstader (The Washington Post)

Trump sabotages his own idea for lasting peace in Ukraine

If this is the president’s art of the deal, it’s artless — and extremely unlikely to work.
Lee Hockstader
The Washington Post, January 30, 2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/30/trump-ukraine-europe-musk-troops-war/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=wp_opinions

BERLIN — Winston Churchill is said to have quipped that all he needed to ensure Europe’s defense was one American soldier, “preferably dead.”
Donald Trump would be unpersuaded.
The president is reluctant to send more aid to Ukraine, let alone U.S. troops; nor does he want Ukraine admitted to NATO. As for overseeing an eventual ceasefire and guaranteeing Ukraine’s security — without which an armistice would be meaningless, given Moscow’s neo-imperialist ambitions — he sees that as Europe’s problem.
Fair enough: Many Europeans regard Russia’s war in Ukraine as an existential threat; far fewer Americans do. So it made sense when, according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump suggested European boots on the ground in Ukraine, once a ceasefire is agreed upon, to protect Ukrainian sovereignty by deterring future Russian attacks.
But Trump might be sabotaging his own goal of ending a cataclysmal war now nearing its third anniversary: “He doesn’t connect the dots,” Jan Techau, a German security analyst, told me.
Trump is rightly pushing Europeans to boost spending on their militaries and take far more responsibility for their own security. But what he’s demanding now goes much further. Persuading Europeans to risk direct confrontation with Russian forces would be the biggest ask a U.S. president has made of America’s allies in living memory.
How big? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says at least 200,000 European soldiers, in addition to Kyiv’s own forces, would be necessary to deter future Russian attacks. That would be almost an impossibly large force for Europe to muster, at least now. Even low-end estimates — 40,000 to 50,000 European ground troops — would severely strain countries, including Britain, whose forces have dwindled to or near historic lows.
Many Europeans would be reluctant to send troops into Ukrainian territory. But what’s the choice if the goal is to deter further Russian attacks?
Washington and key allies, including Germany, oppose granting Ukraine NATO membership. U.N. peacekeepers could be deployed only with the agreement of Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and no one seriously expects President Vladimir Putin to sign off on blue helmets in Ukraine that would face down his own forces. Besides, U.N. forces elsewhere have a long track record of failing to keep peace (see: Lebanon).
European officials have started talks on mustering a force to protect Ukraine. It could involve some combination of British, French, Dutch, Nordic and Baltic troops, among others.
A crucial precondition would be muscular U.S. backup, perhaps based in Poland, providing what military types call “C4ISR” — command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Put simply, Europe cannot halt the war in Ukraine on its own. And the United States can’t successfully end it without European troops. Cooperation and codependence are the key — if or when a negotiated ceasefire is achieved.
Plenty of obstacles to a European force would present themselves, not least the certainty that Putin would vehemently object, painting it as an advance of NATO troops toward Russia’s borders.
But instead of encouraging European allies and signaling that Washington will have their back, Trump is targeting them with aggression and abuse. That has left Europe reeling just days into his presidency.
If that’s the art of the deal, it’s artless. And it’s extremely unlikely to work.
The issue is not just the threat of tariffs on European goods, though those would sap nations already struggling with anemic economies (Britain) and unsustainable debt (France) even as they would struggle to afford a hugely expensive deployment.
Nor is it only Trump’s snarling over Greenland, which he wants to wrest away from Denmark, although his bullying has shaken NATO allies.
It’s also the brazen interference and contempt for key allies by Elon Musk, who is understandably regarded by European officials as a Trump proxy.
Musk has been loudly promoting radical European political parties that would be most opposed to any force that would safeguard a ceasefire and protect Ukraine. In both Britain and Germany, he has thrown his support behind Russia-sympathizer parties — Reform UK and Alternative for Germany.
Would anyone blame French officials for concluding that Musk would also back France’s populist party National Rally, which, with its own history of swooning over Putin, would be very unlikely to back a European force to deter Russian aggression?
Of course, Trump does have another option. Instead of seeking a negotiated ceasefire safeguarded by European forces, he could simply abandon Ukraine by cutting off military aid.
But that could make Ukraine Trump’s Afghanistan, multiplying the carnage, chaos and refugees. It would signal to China and other adversaries that Washington is weak. It could even prompt U.S. allies, fearing Washington has washed its hands of Europe’s security, to develop their own nuclear arms programs. If you think Europe is unstable now, think of Poland or Turkey with nukes — or Germany.
Trump was smart to push Europe to step up. We’ll see if he’s smart enough to stop undercutting his own idea.

Foreign Policy of Donald Trump: comments of a connoisseur: David Kramer - By Meryl Kornfield and Patrick Svitek (The Washington Post)

 

Foreign Policy of Donald Trump: comments of a connoisseur, David Kramer By Meryl Kornfield and Patrick Svitek The Washington Post Early Brief, Jan 17, 2025 Six questions for … David Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute. You may not think of “Bush” when you think of President-elect Donald Trump — especially when it comes to foreign policy — but Kramer sees some common ground with the incoming administration. He’s encouraged in particular by some of Trump’s planned nominees, such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for secretary of state. We spoke with Kramer twice, including after Wednesday’s announcement of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. There has since been a partisan debate over who deserves credit for the breakthrough, but Kramer told us the deal was more broadly a reminder of the vital role the United States can play on the world stage. It’s a role that Trump has put up for debate as he prepares to take office Monday, vowing to put “America first” in foreign policy. The Bush Institute has released a range of policy recommendations for the next administration and the new Congress, in an effort to “stake out what is the right way” on the most pressing issues, as Kramer put it. Here’s what he had to say about other foreign policy issues awaiting Trump. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. Your policy recommendations for the Russia-Ukraine war, which include NATO membership for Ukraine, are more friendly to Ukraine than at least Trump’s campaign rhetoric would suggest he supports. What gives you hope he’ll see things differently in office? I think one of the realities that will hit the new administration is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s lack of interest in a negotiated settlement. You just had … the former minister of Russia reiterating opposition to the initial positions that they think the Trump team will be staking out. And basically what Putin wants is Ukraine’s surrender. He wants a change in government, he wants Ukraine to remain permanently neutral and he wants recognition of Russian territories, including land that Russia doesn’t even currently occupy. And so I think this reality … will hit the new administration and might well lead them to recognizing the importance of continuing to support Ukraine militarily as well as politically. I think [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky has been rather skillful in his approach indicating a readiness to negotiate, but based on a just outcome … an outcome that does not consign in a permanent way — not just Ukrainian land, but millions of Ukrainians who live on that land. And of course NATO has become a central issue in President Zelensky’s willingness to talk about an end to the war. He feels that solid security guarantees are critical to any Ukrainian effort in ending this war, and for the Ukrainians, the best guarantees come from NATO membership. How do you evaluate Trump’s appointments so far? Some are more conventional GOP voices on foreign policy — such as Rubio — some less so — such as Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. The secretary of state and the national security adviser [Michael Waltz], you have two figures with significant experience in foreign policy, people who I think have a good understanding of present challenges that are posed from our adversaries, stressing the importance of U.S. leadership in many ways. I think John Ratcliffealso falls into this category based on his experience not just on the Hill but his previous role as the [director of national intelligence]. The other ones are a little harder to judge because there’s not a lot of background on what their positions are, and I think that will come out through their confirmation hearings. On countering China, Trump seems to be entering office sending mixed signals — perhaps most notably by trying to save TikTok. What can he do to signal seriousness about the threat of China? [Rubio and Waltz] are two individuals who do have a track record of recognizing the challenge and threat that China poses under the Communist Party leadership. I think with the two of them there, we’re likely to see a push for a harder line, but also a recognition that trade with China is also important. The big question mark … will be the issue of tariffs. But we also … want to emphasize more the importance of human rights when it comes to China, and this gets at, I think, a common thread in what we call CRINK, the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea alliance, which are authoritarian regimes that are trying to undermine the West and the United States. And at the root of their commonality are gross abuses of human rights. When we tie these threats together, how we respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I think, will have an impact on the Chinese Communist Party’s thinking toward Taiwan. If we stand firm, if we maintain support for Ukraine, I think that we could get the Chinese leadership to think twice before they might move against Taiwan. How confident are you that Trump and his GOP allies understand this interconnectedness? I think increasingly [they do], and I think when you look at the early stages of the full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine, we saw the Iranians provide critical support in the form of the Shahed drones. I think what’s also highlighted this connection is the decision by North Korea to send 12,000 or so of its troops to join Russian forces in its fight against Ukraine. So we are seeing quite explicitly and openly these regimes helping each other out … and in the process, they pose a great threat. On an issue closer to home, your immigration policy briefsays Congress should “lift or eliminate caps on temporary worker visa programs like the H-2B and H-1B.” Have you been pleasantly surprised that Trump has been recently sticking up for H-1B visas amid some in his party bashing them? We think those are important, and it’s important that we recognize that if there is a roundup and deportation of a number of people who are here illegally, that will have an impact on the labor force … on companies’ ability to produce what they have been so far with those laborers. And so we certainly support an improvement and reform of the legal immigration system here to ensure that our economy can continue to grow, and we think that H-2B and the H-1B are important parts of that. On the ceasefire deal, how does this tee up Trump’s policy toward Israel going forward? There’ll be a lot of work for the United States to do with the various phases of this deal to ensure that it moves forward and that Hamas in particular lives up to what it has agreed to. And so, I think, while hopefully the fighting has ended, there’ll still be a lot of work to do. We all have to remember this would not have happened if Hamas did not launch the worst attack against Israel and Jews since the Holocaust.

Trump team says Canada, Greenland, Panama comments are part of a broader plan - Jacqueline Alemany, Cat Zakrzewski (The Washington Post)

 Trump team says Canada, Greenland, Panama comments are part of a broader plan

Not everyone is convinced.

By Jacqueline Alemany and Cat Zakrzewski

The Washington Post, December 28, 2024 

 

President-elect Donald Trump's comments about Greenland, Panama and Canada are part of his “America First” foreign policy approach. 

In the past several weeks — and before he has been sworn in for his second term — President-elect Donald Trump has threatened trade wars with both of the United States’ closest neighbors, mused about taking over Greenland, blustered about bringing the Panama Canal back under American control and suggested making Canada the 51st state.

Less than a month before his inauguration, Trump — who vowed to end foreign wars and made “peace through strength” a rallying cry of his 2024 presidential campaign — is crafting an “America First” foreign policy defined by antagonism toward U.S. allies and adversaries alike, centered around dreams of territorial expansionism, and channeled through the president-elect’s braggadocio.

Trump’s pre-presidency tactics regarding Greenland, the Panama Canal and the United States’ closest neighbors aren’t likely to result in massive change. Canadians and their political leaders are unlikely to prove receptive to dissolving their country, and U.S. lawmakers have not broadly expressed willingness to absorb Canada as a new state. Greenland’s prime minister has said the island is not for sale, and Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino has said that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zone belongs to Panama and will remain so.”

For any other modern president — especially one who campaigned on ending wars, not starting them — threatening to encroach on allies’ sovereignty would be extremely unusual. But U.S. foreign policy during Trump’s first term was marked by near-constant departures from diplomatic conventions and prior international commitments and defined by unpredictable and at times hostile political and economic brinkmanship with traditional partners and enemies across the globe. For Trump, training his imperial instincts on some of the United States’ closest partners advances a version of that same scattershot foreign policy he pursued during his first term, when he sought to forcefully promote American interests on the global stage with little regard for borders or delicate international relationships.

 

Trump’s team insists that his recent comments are part of a broader strategy.

“World leaders are flocking to the table because President Trump is already delivering on his promise to Make America Strong Again,” Trump transition spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “When he officially takes office, foreign nations will think twice before ripping off our country, America will be respected again, and the whole world will be safer.”

An overarching mission of countering Russia and China is the common thread tying together Trump’s comments about Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Panama, a Trump transition official argued. Trump himself has not explicitly made that argument.

“This isn’t just slapdash, there’s a coherent connective tissue to all of this,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. “Trump knows what levers to pull and what guardrails there are, and he’s in a position of power to utilize those levers.”

Earlier this month, Canadian officials announced a plan to increase spending on border security and use canine teams and artificial intelligence to intercept illegal drugs. The transition team has pointed to that announcement as an early indication of the success of Trump’s strategy.

Not everyone is convinced. Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Florida) told MSNBC this week that Trump’s messages could “deteriorate” relationships between the United States and other countries, which could make it more difficult to build international alliances in the future. “These kinds of insults could provoke them into a confrontation with the United States,” Curbelo said, noting it’s unlikely that it would be a military conflict. “There is a risk here even if it is a negotiating tactic.”

Trump’s focus on the Western Hemisphere, as opposed to Russia and China directly, indicates that he is “less convinced we can determine national security outcomes in other theaters of the world,” where the U.S. has less influence, according to Ryan Berg, the director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan Washington-based nonprofit group that specializes in national security issues.

On Sunday, while announcing Ken Howery, a co-founder of PayPal and former U.S. ambassador to Sweden, as his pick for ambassador to Denmark, Trump emphasized his desire to take ownership of Greenland, the semiautonomous Danish territory where the United States maintains its northernmost air base.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote on his social media network, Truth Social.

Trump has actively pursued the idea of buying Greenland since at least 2019, when the then-president pushed his top aides to look into the process of acquiring the world’s largest island, whether buying it would be legal and where money to purchase the vast, icy landmass might come from. The idea came from an old friend of Trump, Ronald Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, who pitched him on the plan at the outset of his first term.

Although it sounds “a bit hilarious,” the island’s strategic importance has been a long-standing issue in U.S. foreign policy, and Trump’s announcement was “not unexpected” based on his past positions, said a former Danish diplomat who dealt with the issue during the first Trump administration, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive international issue. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s second secretary of state, visited the region in June 2020 shortly after the U.S. reopened its first consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, for the first time since 1953. Pompeo highlighted America’s presence in the Arctic, and took aim at Chinese and Russian efforts to gain a foothold in the resource-rich island.

“Something is probably going to happen with Greenland over the next 10 to 15 years,” the former diplomat added. “They might go independent which is why the U.S. is hedging for all futures. They are moving in the direction that the U.S. sees as a part of its zone of influence.”

In a separate series of social media posts last weekend, Trump escalated his threats to retake control of the Panama Canal, accusing Panama of “ripping off” the United States with high shipping rates and allowing Chinese soldiers to operate the waterway — claims that Mulino denied.

“There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal, for the love of God,” Mulino said during a briefing last week, addressing Trump’s post directly. “It’s nonsense. There is not a single Chinese soldier in the canal.”

But Berg said there is some validity to the idea that China’s global-port influence — including on both sides of the Panama Canal — is expanding.

“There is worry about Chinese influence of the canal and the reliability of U.S. operations,” Berg said. “It could be one of the main routes to deploy U.S. naval vessels from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a contingency situation where we have national security interests — such as Taiwan.”

Trump’s obsession with the Panama Canal is long-standing, according to John Feeley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Panama. Trump felt that President Jimmy Carter made a “historic mistake” by signing two treaties that relinquished American control over the canal, Feeley said — an echo of Ronald Reagan’s position that the U.S. was the “rightful owner” of the canal. When Trump raised the matter during his first meeting with then-president Juan Carlos Varela in 2017, Varela responded with a non sequitur about Syria, managing to avoid an escalation of the topic, according to Feeley.

“The tiger doesn’t change its stripes. He’s got history with these ideas — these are not coming out of nowhere,” Feeley said. “And Donald Trump thrives on chaos. He loves to be the agent of chaos. He feels that this kind of disruptive approach to international affairs makes him and the United States strong.”

“It’s very much the Richard M. Nixon uncontrollable madman theory,” Feeley continued, referring to the Nixon administration’s strategy of cultivating an image of a volatile and unpredictable president to intimidate and destabilize adversaries.

Trump’s expansionist rhetoric harks back to a time when a state’s power was defined by the land it controlled, rather than the more diffuse forms of influence — military, economic, cultural and diplomatic — that U.S. presidents have pursued since the conclusion of World War II, said Daniel Immerwahr, a Northwestern University history professor and author of “How to Hide an Empire,” a history of American imperialism.

“None of this would have sounded weird in the 19th century,” Immerwahr said, adding that Trump has embraced a more forceful approach to U.S. diplomacy, appearing to lack the patience for the “sinuous blend of cooperation and consent” that has defined U.S. diplomacy for much of the last century.

Trump’s focus on the Panama Canal is ironic because the passageway historically was the focal point of a shift in U.S. policy away from territorial expansionism toward a more “informal empire,” said Jonathan Katz, a foreign correspondent and author of “Gangsters of Capitalism,” a biography of Smedley Butler, a decorated Marine and veteran of America’s foreign wars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“It’s really in Panama where America makes this turn to ‘we’re not going to formally colonize this place, but we’re going to create a de facto colony and control the strip in the middle,’ ” Katz said.

Trump’s expansionist visions may appear to contradict the anti-interventionist promises he made on the campaign trail, as he argued the United States should limit spending to defend Ukraine and bashed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But his positions echo the early foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson, one of the first politicians to run on the catchphrase “America First.”

Wilson is largely remembered for his efforts to advance international order through the creation of the League of Nations. But he ran for office on the slogan, “He kept us out of war,” as he vowed to keep the United States out of World War I. Katz noted that the people of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico would have disagreed with that motto, given U.S. intervention in those countries during Wilson’s first term.

“When we’re talking about what is retrospectively looked at as isolationism, we’re really talking about staying out of European wars while then doing war and effectively annexation everywhere else,” Katz said. “In a lot of ways it’s not that different.”

Although many of Trump’s allies brush off Trump’s threats as part of his normal negotiating playbook, some in his orbit have real concerns about whether he will cross the line from harsh rhetoric and economic warfare to military intervention. Trump has threatened a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports to stop the flow of illegal drugs, and privately discussed the idea of firing missiles into Mexico to try to take out cartels. Instead of ruling out the idea, which Mexican officials have warned would destroy all security cooperation between the two countries, several Republican presidential candidates during the 2024 GOP primary indicated support for using military force to stop fentanyl trafficking.

A conservative foreign policy adviser with insight into the president-elect’s transition process said that while he believed that Trump’s position was “mostly posturing,” that the unanimous agreement during the Republican primary to make war on the cartels was troubling and a “hazardous approach.”

“Given the fact that this has already been through the ideas machine and spit out the other end, articulated by everybody from [Vivek] Ramaswamy and [Ron] DeSantis, as something they are all willing to do Day 1, it makes me a little more concerned,” said the foreign policy adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be more candid.

Trump’s early appointments of Latin American experts to high-ranking positions could signal his intent to focus on the Western Hemisphere. Trump tapped Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), a foreign policy hawk, for secretary of state; Christopher Landau, his first-term ambassador to Mexico, for deputy secretary of state; and Mauricio Claver-Carone, who served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council under Trump and is known for his hard-line policy preferences, as special envoy to Latin America.

Some of Trump’s picks, such as Rubio and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), who has been tapped to serve as Trump’s national security adviser, would not be out of place in any Republican presidential administration. But other Trump choices, such as Claver-Carone and Richard Grenell, whom Trump named as presidential envoy for special missions, are more controversial figures, even within conservative circles, the conservative foreign policy adviser said.

“You have a cast of characters that runs the gamut on what sort of advice they’ll be proffering,” the conservative foreign policy adviser added. “Trump goes beyond ‘Team of Rivals,’ to welcoming the thunder dome in some ways. … A lot of this seems paradoxical by design.”

 

Putin pode destruir o que quiser; os ucranianos só podem se defender, não atacar?

 As democracias ocidentais que apoiam a Ucrânia agonizam em torno das “linhas vermelhas” de Putin, que não tem nenhuma restrição em matar civis e destruir o país e acha que ninguém tem o direito de responder à altura:

Debate over Ukraine weapons restrictions divides allies, administration

By Isabelle Khurshudyan, Siobhán O'Grady, Michael Birnbaum and Ellen Francis (WP)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/24/ukraine-weapons-limits-biden-permission-atacms/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3f15e0c%2F66f28dcce1d3e04a6f610643%2F596b79f3ade4e24119b43ed3%2F11%2F70%2F66f28dcce1d3e04a6f610643

KYIV — The United States’ lingering refusal to relax restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western missiles for deeper strikes on Russian territory has exacerbated a growing divide between the allies — with Kyiv angry over yet another setback in slowing Russia’s assault across the country while its biggest backer considers the possibility of Moscow’s backlash. (…)

A Libia afunda no caos - Ishaan Tharoor (The Washington Post)

 

By Ishaan Tharoor with Sammy Westfall  Email A new crisis may plunge Libya back into chaos Libyan Ministry of Interior personnel stand guard in front of the Central Bank of Libya in Tripoli on Aug. 27. (Ayman Sahely/Reuters) The news out of Libya that tends to grab international attention often involves stark tragedy and disaster. If it’s not the harrowing civil war that has convulsed the oil-rich North Africa nation for years and split it in two, then it’s the drowning of migrants motoring out from Libya’s poorly patrolled coasts or the epochal flood that killed thousands in the city of Derna a year ago. In recent months, though, the considerable drama gripping the country has been far more shadowy, shaped by backroom deals, black market transfers and illicit smuggling. But it’s equally important and fraught. A rolling crisis over control of Libya’s central bank has paralyzed the economy and sparked new fears of conflict. Oil exports have dropped precipitously in recent weeks, while ordinary Libyans are facing long lines at gas stations, restrictions on their ability to withdraw cash from banks and a collapsing electricity grid. The upheaval is the consequence of a spat that flared in August but was long in the works, experts say. A move by forces close to Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, who leads the government in western Libya, centered in the capital Tripoli, saw officials in the Central Bank kidnapped and led the bank’s longtime governor, Sadiq al-Kabir, to flee into self-imposed exile in Turkey. The Central Bank, which is the sole legal repository of Libya’s oil-generated wealth, ceased functioning. Oil exports were quickly shut down. Kabir, in Istanbul, said Thursday that Libya was essentially cut off from the world financial system. “All international banks that we deal with, more than 30 major international institutions, have suspended all transactions,” he told Reuters. “All work has been suspended at the international level. Therefore, there is no access to balances or deposits outside Libya.” At its root, the dispute is about rival power brokers’ designs on oil revenue in a country with Africa’s largest oil reserves. Dbeibah’s faction is at odds with that of Khalifa Hifter, which holds sway in eastern Libya and has cultivated deep ties with foreign powers such as Russia and the United Arab Emirates. In the tail end of the country’s ruinous civil war, Haftar attempted an offensive to capture Tripoli that ultimately failed when Turkey rushed military aid and support to the government in Tripoli. The internationally brokered cease-fire in 2020 that followed has settled into an uneasy peace, with Dbeibah and Haftar fighting their battles through other means — for now. U.N.-led efforts to resolve the dispute are underway. But the situation is a reminder of the perilous state of affairs in Libya, which has lurched from crisis to calamity since the bloody revolution and NATO-backed campaign that overthrew Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011. The country has not experienced stable governance since and is now torn apart by two rival political entities and a patchwork of armed groups. The Dbeibahs and the Haftars have emerged as powerful, quasi-dynastic clans, vying for influence over the key institutions like the Central Bank and the National Oil Corporation, through which most of Libya’s oil revenue flows. Analysts say Dbeibah’s manipulation of the bank for his corrupt ends saw Kabir warm to Haftar, who is simultaneously alleged to also be presiding over vast networks of illicit smuggling. “Kabir had sown the seeds of his own demise,” the Economist explained. “At first he bought off his chief challengers: the people who had risen against dictatorship. After Gaddafi the state payroll almost doubled to 2.4 million in a country of 7 million. It is claimed the bank funded the warlords, paying fighters who both besieged and defended Tripoli.” ADVERTISEMENT   The British newsweekly added: “When the fighting ended in 2020, Kabir financed their ever-more grandiose schemes for hiving off Libya’s vast oil revenue. He paid billions to import fuel at market prices, subsidized it to make it the world’s cheapest, then let it be smuggled overland and increasingly by tanker to Europe. The more lucre and power the recipients amassed, the weaker he grew. When he tried to rein in the purse strings, it was too late.” A general drone view shows the Nafoora oil field in Jakharrah, Libya, on Aug. 27. (Jawhar Deehoum/Reuters) Deeper strains are showing. “The arrangements bridging east and west appear to be nearing a breaking point,” Libya scholar Wolfram Lacher wrote in a lengthy essay for New Lines magazine, pointing to a growing body of evidence regarding the state plunder carried out by both parties, but especially the Haftars. He added: “In the meantime, the Haftars’ greatly improved access to funds threatens to destabilize the balance of power. [Khalifa Hifter’s son] Saddam has told close associates that he is seeking to turn western Libyan factions against each other and buy the support of selected militia leaders — a task made easier by the money he now has at his disposal. His father has informed Western diplomats that he intends to make another attempt to seize Tripoli.” Over the past week, a flurry of top regional officials, including Turkey’s spy chief, have visited the country. The tensions have threatened a rapprochement between Egypt and Turkey, which find themselves at different sides of Libya’s divide. “Egypt and the UAE have backed Haftar in part because of his staunch anti-Islamist ideology that opposes the reliance of the Tripoli government on militias linked to the Muslim Brotherhood movement,” noted the Soufan Center, an independent global security think tank, in a memoearlier this month. “Turkey, by contrast, has engaged regional Muslim Brotherhood-inspired movements and views Haftar as a right-wing figure dedicated to reducing Ankara’s regional influence. Russia, for its part, sees Haftar’s control of most of Libya’s oil fields as a tool in Moscow’s global competition with the United States and its European partners, all of which are backing Ukraine.” The tangled geopolitics belies the frustrations of many Libyans who simply want a degree of political stability. “If you ask any normal Libyan, they’ll say we need one government, we need elections,” a former adviser to the Libyan government, speaking on the condition of anonymity over fears to their safety, told me. But, they added, the country’s power brokers aren’t interested in such an outcome. “Why would Haftar want one government?” the former official said. “He can print money as he pleases, now, and smuggle oil.” ADVERTISEMENT   A lack of Western attention here may be dangerous, especially at a moment when foreign powers could exert some pressure on Libya’s factions to get in line. “Diplomats may be busy stopping other wars in Ukraine and Gaza from growing into monstrous regional conflicts,” wrote Tarek Megerisi of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “But if they’re too consumed to take this brief opportunity, then they may well end up with a third before too long.”