[The following is a guest post from political scientist Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, who served in the Obama administration.]
On December 16, 2016, President Obama, speaking at his last White House press conference, suggested to Donald Trump that, “Since there’s only one president at a time,” the president-elect should wait “before he starts having a lot of interactions with foreign governments other than the usual courtesy calls.”
At that time I was in Beijing discussing ideas for U.S.-China cooperation in Afghanistan. Two days earlier, on December 14, 2016, the spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs office warned of the consequences of trying to reopen the One China” policy, three days after Donald Trump had announced in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that he would do just that. If so, the spokesman said, “the healthy, stable development of China-US relations is out of the question, and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait will be seriously impacted.” In private my Chinese interlocutors parsed that general statement: China could work with the U.S. on areas of common interest such as Afghanistan despite conflicts over the South China Sea, North Korea, or trade, but questioning the unity of China would end such coordination. If Trump carried out such a policy as president, they claimed, China could not rule out taking Taiwan by force.
Years ago I was heavily involved in national security reporting. I learned to be almost infinitely skeptical of what I read in the British press. To some extent, this is just an imperfect familiarity with a foreign country, which affects all foreign reporting to some degree. But let’s say also that the standards are just different. With that said, here are some choice nuggets from the latest report from The Independent …
Why does Secretary of Labor Tom Perez want to be DNC Chair? Episode #12 of The Josh Marshall Show is out and in this episode I talk to Tom Perez about why he wants the job and what he’ll do if he gets it. As we did with our interview last week with Rep. Ellison, we’re making this episode available to all readers, whether you’re a Prime member or not. Click here to listen or download.
There’s a new Pew study out which covers a lot of different questions about Americans’ views of key foreign policy questions and major countries around the world. One finding that is getting perhaps the most attention is about Democrats’ views about Israel – specifically whether Democrats say they are more likely to sympathize with Israel or with the Palestinians. For the first time in the history of the Pew poll, “Democrats are about as likely to say they sympathize more with the Palestinians (31%) than with Israel (33%); 11% say they sympathize with neither, while 8% sympathize with both and 17% do not offer an opinion.”
The Post’s David Ignatius has a column out tonight with a number of observations. But the big news is this …
According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. Was its spirit violated? The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is, at a minimum, highly irregular and inappropriate. We don’t know if it is more than that. It would be good to find out.
C-Span was temporarily interrupted this afternoon and replaced with the feed of RT (formerly, Russia Today), the Russian government owned propaganda channel.
Sometimes, the general public is completely unaware of very important decisions government makes because they are shrouded in technicalities. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that could crippled the ability of government to regulate private industry.
Our piece on how NOT NORMAL Trump’s presser was today is excellent, and you should read it! But if you’re going to read just one thing today, make it the speech this afternoon by the director of the Office of Government Ethics. It’s well worth your time for a deeper understanding of the norms Trump is violating by refusing to divest, by failing to engage with the OGE and by not holding himself to the standards of his predecessors – or of his own appointees. Go read it!
In response to questions about whether Putin tried to help Trump win the election, Trump said that if Putin likes him, that’s an asset for America. Video after the jump.