The British Ambassador Resigns

By Glenn N. Holliman

David Collingwood, British educator and keen observer of the human race, emailed the following from his holiday villa in southern France with permission to post.   

"If you feel that you’d like to publish this, you have my full authority.  Here, in la Vaucluse, it is a comfortable 30 degrees Celsius: I write in the shade of olive trees at the table in our Provençal garden; ahead is the unmistakeable outline of Mont Ventoux; around, thousands of cicada chirrup merrily; above is the cornflower-blue sky beloved of Cézanne; and by my right arm is a glass of chilled rosé. What could be better? No wonder I wax lyrical today.  Warmest good wishes and bisous." - David

The high profile story here, as, one would hope it is over there, is the maliciously-leaked (confidential) correspondence of Kim Darroch, the British Ambassador to the USA.

Left, David, wordsmith and 
intellectual of the Midlands, shares an insight.

He did what all ambassadors do: he assessed state and actions of foreign governments and advised his government accordingly. As an ambassador quite rightly expects his correspondence with his government to be confidential, he must be blunt and honest, rather than diplomatic.

Right, Ambassador Kim Darroch. 

That a potential British Prime Minister - Boris Johnson - would refuse to give his full support to a British ambassador, beggars belief. 

Right, the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson?

That a nation’s leader - President Trump - would lower himself by resorting to social media to question the judgement of any ambassador is shocking. 

No gentleman would admit to reading another’s correspondence: he would distance himself from such behaviour. Thus, the best, and correct, response to Sir Kim’s (leaked) reports would have been not to respond at all. The alternative would have been for Mr Trump to have condemned the criminal and treacherous behaviour of the perpetrator of the leak.

Without naming specific prime ministers and presidents, I look back with nostalgia to times when the leaders of both our nations at least made a pretense of dignity and courtesy, behaving in a manner befitting their high office. - David Collingwood

Two Views of American Foreign Policy

by Glenn N. Holliman

Two intriguing takes on the course USA foreign policy should be taking.  Like it or not (and I do not) Mr. Trump is upending the world order that the United States and Western Europe has sought to offer the world since World War II.   Both articles below are worth a good read over your morning coffee.   -GNH

Judd Gregg: Has Trump wandered into a foreign policy for this century? (from the Hill newsletter, March 6, 2018)

In the late nineteenth century, there was a famous adage that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” 

Today the claim could be adjusted to say: “The sun never sets on American troops.”

Below, an over extended US Army, 1969 in Viet Nam, photo by the author with the 1st Infantry Division.

This is a legacy of the place the United States found itself in at the end of the Second World War. 

We were then the only democracy capable of standing up to the threat of the Soviet Union. We carried the flame of freedom for the world. We had the ability, strength and wealth to do this.

The Soviet Union, of course, no longer exists. It was run into the ground by the determination of President Reagan, the resilience of our market economy, and the cause of liberty.

We still assume the burdens that arose out of our role as the only world power dedicated to promoting peace, democracy and freedom, however. 

It is an appropriate cause. But the process and means of its execution need to be reconsidered.

Ironically, as with some of his other basic impulses, President Trump has wandered into this arena and suggested potentially appropriate approaches.

Having America soldiers in every corner of the globe may no longer be the best manner of pursuing our purpose.

Trump has suggested, for example, that we withdraw totally from Afghanistan. His national security team seems to have tempered this policy.

The president’s impulses here are right.

There is no question but that in the wake of September 11, 2001, we needed to go into Afghanistan and deliver, with significant force, an important message: that we would not tolerate the Taliban allowing the country to be a sanctuary for terrorists.

But the time has come to leave. The effort at nation-building in Afghanistan, just as earlier in Iraq, has not worked well. 

There are many reasons for this. But it is a fact. We should admit it and not compound the failure by staying there.

In departing, we should leave behind a very clear message.

This message should state bluntly to whoever takes over Afghanistan that if they allow it to become a terrorist haven again, we will be back with devastating force — not to build up the country, but to destroy those who allow terrorism to fester there.

In fact, this should be the message that we send to all parts of the Middle East. Our focus should not be nation-building, but rather lethal retaliation against those leaders whose nations assist terrorist intent on harming us.

We do not need troops stationed all over the world to execute this policy. We have the technical and tactical ability to do it without such a commitment.

We should also appreciate the fact that China is not inherently an expansive military power. It wishes to have its sphere of influence, particularly in the South China Sea. It intends to have a massive military capability to make the point that it is a rising superpower. 

China should be a nation we work with at a variety of levels, recognizing that it is also our most capable competitor in many arenas, especially trade. 

This should not lead to confrontation.

China is the only power that can resolve the North Korean issue in a manner that does not involve force. Our policies should be directed at encouraging Beijing to do so for its own sake. 

We should not allow our concerns about China gaming our trade relations to dominate our relationship in a manner that diminishes the chances of solving the North Korean issue.

If China fails to act on North Korea, then we need to make it clear we will turn to Japan for help.   

This would involve encouraging Japan to change its constitution — written largely by General Douglas McArthur when he led the occupation — to allow Japan to rearm. 

It seems probable that if China needs to choose between having a rearmed Japan or a disarmed North Korea, they will choose the latter — and take action to make it happen.

There is also the major issue of how to manage the disastrous deterioration in the Middle East caused by the collapse of Syria and underwritten by Iran.

If there is a lesson from our engagement in Iraq, it is that massive use of American troops on the ground does not necessarily improve things in the region.

Our strategic interest there has been dramatically altered now that we are producing enough oil and gas domestically to take care of our needs.

The endless religious conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites, the Israelis and Palestinians, and numerous other subgroups have been only marginally affected by U.S. engagement.

We should rethink our purposes there.

The need to stifle the growth of terrorists who threaten us should again be our main objective.

The score-settling by nations such as Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran is not something that requires our direct involvement.

The fear that Russia will replace us as power in the region should hardly be the motivator that sets our course. We should send Moscow our condolences and move on.

The fact remains that we are not in a position to cure the causes of these conflicts or significantly impact them.

Times have changed.

We need to change our role in the world.

We need to recognize the new reality of a competitive China and an intractable Middle East that is no longer critical to our energy supply. 

We need to understand that there are limits on our ability to draw people of very different cultures and experience into forms of government they do not accept.

Trump may be on to something when he suggests that, essentially, we should carry a big stick to enforce our rights to protect ourselves.

He may also be on to something when he essentially suggests we should stop there. 

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.

A Response to Senator Gregg by Terry Field, Englishman and Insightful Observer of the Human Race 

An interesting justification of a changed posture. Of course, the idea of using devastating, previously unavailable military capacity to project force allows you to leave a region - indeed all regions - and subsequently target an area infected with potentially non-compliant opposition groups and forces and destroy them will be cost -effective for you.

However, imagine the relationship you have with the world. You will sit there, with immense power, deliverable from an immense naval capacity, from homeland bases equipped with projectiles able to destroy anywhere in earth in much less than an hour after the decision is made, and from strategic bases able to deliver low blast high yield tactical nuclear weapons on the heads of any locally resurgent enemy.

You would have no relationship with the struggling governments of those regions. Yes, they would hate and fear such as the Muslin death-cults, the Taliban, etc, yet all you offer for your 'partners' is the reality of your comfortable dis-engagement, their eternal misery, and the prospect of a significant part of their territory being turned into a charnel house at a moment's notice.

Since 1945 America has been able to tie the world up in a web of obviously mutually beneficial economic, cultural, social and political relationships. All have benefited.

Sit in your castle and lob large lumps of stone onto the heads of the cottage dwellers all around, and you will be surprised at how little they will want to know you.

Add to this the uncomfortable reality that you can never effectively subdue from the air - to smash powerful local opposition you must BE THERE. If you are not there, gathering your gigantic military power on the way but only threatening devastation from afar, then you absolutely guarantee that the opposition to you will be total.

Why? Because you no longer offer the world anything at all.

HUBRIS

There is no conceivable condition where any level of potential force will subdue an enraged world. You can dream of such a thing; but you cannot ever achieve it. At least not by leaving the rest of the world alive.

There are now in existence weapons that can utterly destroy all mammalian life and leave the physical infrastructure completely intact. This is new. It does allow for new thinking but imagine the reality the thinking must accept.

If a large region of the world moved to a state where its population entirely opposes you, then you will cause chaos there by attacking it, and that will force others not into your orbit, but away from you (visa Kim in North Korea after your actions in Libya and Iraq).

You will not be able to dissuade others from opposing you unless you act with a new power and force. You will, for this new and truly Imperial global posture to work, have to utterly destroy a region - perhaps a number of regions - to ensure that all others comprehend the risk of disengagement with you is one of total annihilation. The widespread use of neutron bombs - tactically sized ones - is the cornerstone of this new thinking as described in this article.

This allows you now to control events on the ground entirely from the air.

And how have you done this? By ensuring that from the moment the air bursts happen and henceforth, there are NO events on the ground of any kind. All life there dies in hours. Then Pax Americana reigns.

The following day, of course, you have no friends anywhere. You have vassals. The American dream becomes the American nightmare.

LESSON  1 Hide behind a wall of death, and do not use it, and the world will get on with its business without you.

LESSON  2 Use the weaponry and you have no relationship with the world. And it WILL arm itself and one day do to you what you have done to it.

As for China, it is not a passive regional power. It is what it can become, as it grows and grows. In the 16th century, Britain was a little island in thrall to the Holy Roman Emperor, run by brutish warlords. It grew and grew and grew. And as a baby grows to an adult it became another thing. It is doing the same now but in reverse and very quickly indeed. 

The Chinese and Japans are, and they know it, the most intelligent people on earth. China has your population plus 1000,000,000 people. OF COURSE it will become an immense power. With no dysfunctional effete 18th century romanticism, it will deploy it forces and be willing to lose enormous numbers to defeat the West - you in effect - if the prize is big enough. IN a century, if you hem it in, then the prize will certainly be big enough.

This article is a reflection of all that is wrong. (President Jimmy) Carter said, at the end of his term, that America needs to become a humble partner nation. No arrogance, no excess, no violence, no destructiveness on a whim.

 And the response to this in America? Hatred and contempt. Yet he was correct. If America really wants to maintain its influence, protect its life, be loved as well as respected, then it must become the secular reflection of Christianity. That religion captured hearts by the offering of a weak, defenseless God, who was willing to destroy part of himself for the recovery - the redemption - of his creation.

To willingly suffer and die for others. Moral heroism is an overwhelming force. Nothing can stand against it.

If you are loved and admired for sharing the way you deploy your wealth, together with rational kindness then you will hold sway in the hearts of people. That is your insurance policy.

Not tactical neutron bombs, rail guns and hyper-sonic delivery systems. You cannot do any of that good stuff by hiding and periodically slaughtering. Neutron bombs are the things, together with digital control systems that give you a dangerous illusion.

You cannot be as free of the rest of us as you wish to be. And you are not as powerful as the article suggests you are.

Your only chance of long term success is to become responsible, slow to act, possessed of immense material power yet rational in your use of those assets, and morally upright.

The conundrum is the same as we had in India. We had military force but only when we used it at Amritsar did we lose all authority.

As a preference I much prefer the American to other powers. It is the place I really care for 

most, and yet am debarred from living in. But the cold reality is that other great powers will appear. You will become weaker. 

And an article that comes from out of Star Trek and the ghost of the Rand Corporation reflects hubristic ego, not reality. It is Trumpian, not Christian.

Comments?

The greatest threat facing the United States is its own president

By David Rothkopf July 4  Reprinted from the Washington Post

David Rothkopf is the author of “The Great Questions of Tomorrow.” He is a visiting professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Last week, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, I moderated a panel on U.S. national security in the Trump era. On the panel, former CIA director David H. Petraeus offered the most robust defense of President Trump’s foreign policy that I have heard. Central to his premise were two facts. First, he argued that Trump’s national security team was the strongest he had ever seen. Next, he argued that whereas President Barack Obama was indecisive to the point of paralysis, such as in the case of Syria, Trump is decisive.

Toward the end of the conversation, we turned to Trump’s erratic behavior and I noted that for the first time in three decades in the world of foreign policy, I was getting regular questions about the mental health of the president.

I asked Petraeus, a man I respect, if he thought 

the president was fit to serve. His response 

was, “It’s immaterial.”  

He argued that because the team around Trump 

was so good, they  could offset whatever deficits 

he might have. I was floored. It was a stunningly weak defense.

That is where we are now. The president’s tweeting hysterically at the 

media is just an element of this. So too is his malignant and ever-visible narcissism. The 

president has demonstrated himself to have zero impulse control and a tendency to damage 

vital international relationships with ill-considered outbursts, to trust very few of the people

in his own government, and to reportedly rant and shout at staff and the television sets 

he obsessively watches.

Whether he is actually clinically ill is a matter for psychiatric professionals to consider. But when you take the above behaviors and combine them with his resistance to doing the work needed to be president, to sitting down for briefings, to reading background materials, to familiarizing himself with details enough to manage his staff, there is clearly a problem. Compound it with his deliberate reluctance to fill key positions in government and his wild flip-flopping on critical issues from relations with China to trade, and you come to a conclusion that it may be that Trump’s fitness to serve as president is our nation’s core national security issue.

                                                                                                     

Not only does the president diminish the office with his pettiness; he also shows disregard for constitutional principles including free speech, freedom of religion and separation of powers, and he operates as though he were above ethics laws. Daily he shows he lacks the character, discipline, intellect, judgment or respect for the office to be president of the United States. In normal times, this would be worrying. But look at the news.

North Korea is moving closer to having the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to the United States. A confrontation is coming that will be a test of character pitting North Korea’s unhinged leader, Kim Jong Un, against our leader.

 Later this week, he will sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hamburg, Germany, during the Group of 20 meeting. Quite apart from the political optics of rewarding a man who attacked the United States with to help get Trump elected with such a meeting, the summit reveals why it is so dangerous to have an erratic president. 

Much of U.S. foreign policy comes down to personal diplomacy conducted by the president and his actions in the wake of such meetings. If a dedicated enemy of the United States and opportunist such as Putin determines to take advantage of Trump’s narcissism, ignorance, paranoia, business interests or brewing scandals, he will do just that. If he sees Trump’s behavior as a tacit endorsement of his own thuggishness, he will seize the opportunity. Could Trump enter the meeting with good advice from the team that Petraeus and others admire so much? Yes. 

But they can’t undo Trump’s record, nor can they, we have learned, always shape the behavior of a man who has shown repeated propensity for ignoring the advice of his best allies. That is one reason, according to reports, that European officials are deeply concerned about the outcomes of the meeting that will take place in Hamburg this week.

  

The United States has had a wide variety of presidents; we have as often been victimized by their errors of judgment as we have benefited from their leadership. But the stark reality is that objective analysis reveals that we have never before seen a president so unfit for office.

Even President Richard Nixon at his moments of darkest paranoia was a professional public servant who understood the office and the stakes associated with it. 

One might, on this Independence Day week, have to go back to King George III to find a head of state who so threatened America. But there is no precedent for one whose character is so obviously ill-suited to the presidency.

At the end of the Aspen session, a gentleman approached me and asked why I had made the conversation so ad hominem by questioning Trump’s fitness. I explained that when we have a system in which the chief executive is endowed with so much power, we regularly find that our fate in crises turns on the character of the president. For that reason, it is not the incivility of modern politics that drives us to question Trump’s fitness; it is a respect for the lessons of history and for the national interests his profound deficits put at risk.

Comments?

From a retired English teacher in Tennessee
What are we to do????  Wait for North Korea to bomb us? I fear we are frozen in place unless "happenings' are taking place behind closed doors.  Also frightening are the base of people who still believe this president to be the savior of the USA.

From a published law professor in Pennsylvania

Thanks.  Very good but depressing.

From a Librarian in Virginia

Well, that's a tremendously depressing article, especially in light of current events on the Korean Peninsula.

May thoughtful, cooler heads prevail.

From a scientist in England

We must hope that this kind of opinion spreads - quickly.

From a published author in Australia

Very interesting reading, and we agree 100% with David R. 

From the president of a prominent ladies club in Texas

I used to enjoy watching the news but it is too depressing now.

From David Lott, frequent contributor from England

Factless, base, rude and hysterical. Pot calling the kettle black .

An Evening of Lunacy

by Glenn N. Holliman

Terry Field is no stranger to this space.  His insightful and pithy articles often make for challenging reading.  In this tome he moves into a different writing mode, describing the neighbors who drop by for a visit.  Terry and wife, Fina, spend their winters in a semi-gated, semi-retirement community along the Gulf Coast of Florida.  

Terry Field, a Brit wintering in Florida USA

Yesterday afternoon, pleasant neighbours agreed to visit our humble home for a return match of drinks and dips. Dips – American culture – with the promise of ‘cocktails’, to be made by yours truly.

Fina and Terry incognito on another occasion.

Both wearing MI6 inspired shades.

The neighbours are great folk – one couple includes a retired lady police commander from the hell of northern US rust-belt cities. This gentle lady, then armed to the teeth, broke up drug-houses, patrolled streets whilst dodging happy little teenagers spraying sub-machine gun bullets for fun and kicks. Her husband, also a serving police officer as well as ex-military, was also in attendance.

Wearing combat fatigues. (Probably planning to fight off the local alligators).

In some ways it reminded me of Tonbridge Wells. Anyway, back to the plot.

These pleasantly cocktail-dressed ex-warriors arrived with a brand new pair of neighbours in tow, to share hospitality. These wore in no way military; they had had physiques once, but not anything to speak of.

The additional pair were quiet, with roaming eyes, and thin bodies. Booze I thought. They want booze.

I offered a ‘martini’ as a starter to our arrived guests.

“We make a real dry Martini’, said the thin man.

‘Aah’ said I; ‘the expertise in cocktails is American rather than British – so you

mix your own’.

He did.

It was dry as a bone; it was a massive slug of vodka, ice, nothing else.

His thin female companion did the same.

Right, the Florida room with a southern exposure, 

the scene of the conversation.

All moved to the Florida Room for the ‘dips’; the ladies grouped together and us

men coagulated at the other end of the room.

I sat down; the thin man together with the husband of one of the police

commanders both joined me.

I sipped my martini. The vodka drained and the thin man refilled and returned.

He turned to me, announcing ‘I am pissed that my taxes go to these immigrants,

lefties, commies and tattooed scum’ followed by ‘Trump will put an end to this’

‘That Muslim bastard Obama wrecked America, screwed us over. What do you

British think of Trump?’

By now, he had become coloured around the neck; you know, the way a grouper

is on a fishmonger’s slab. Purple with pink lines.

The eyes rolled as they tried to bore into me.

I took my courage in my hands, and ventured

‘Well, since you ask, I think Trump is a liar, an idiot, and an irrelevance’.

The pressure cooker that had been the thin man’s head whistled; steam poured forth; ‘You think that our president is a liar! That he is an idiot! He is leading us out of the crazy mess the liberals and that Muslim Obama left us’.

‘Our young people are brainwashed by our teachers, and by the time they go to

college that are all God-damned communists. AND they are tattooed!’.

Fearing apoplexy (his, not mine), I back peddled a touch, smiled and nodded, all

the while sporting a rictus smile. I looked like a corpse; I felt I may soon be a real

one if this thin neighbour was ‘packing heat’.

‘It’s gone too far; that Obama wanted to ruin America!!!!!’ ‘He does NOT

represent American values’

He launched into a long tirade of hatred about the idle scum who were draining

his tax-dollars.

‘Can I offer you a celery stick and some avocado dip?’ I ventured. That was the catalyst that made Vesuvius emit a mini pyroclastic flow.

‘Lazy bastard liberals have ruined this country. This president is going to stop all

that! He’s bringing back factories and jobs.’

‘But factories don’t need people any more’ I said.

‘I earned two hundred thousand a year in the seventies’ Thin Man said.

Well done! I responded.

Silence.

I broke the ice. With a little flame-thrower.

‘I know some very nice people – friends actually, from Pennsylvania. They are

educated, responsible, hard working types, kind, pay their taxes, have no tattoos,

have always worked creatively – and are Democrats who loath your Trump and

love and respect Obama. As do I.’

The Thin Man mixed another massive vodka on the rocks, sank into the chair,

rolled his eyes to heaven and said ‘impossible’. They must be AARP!!

“What is that?’ I asked. ‘Being British, I am unfamiliar with American medical terms, I ventured.

‘AARP’ he said. ‘It’s not a disease. It’s the Association of Retired Persons’ he said.

His even thinner and equally vodka-filled lady-wife enquired what the first ‘A’ in

‘AARP’ stood for.

‘I dunno’ the sozzled spouse responded.

‘I think I know what it stands for’ I purred, now trying to ingratiate myself.  ‘It stands for ‘America’.

‘No it can’t be that’ they both said. ‘But anyway, AARP is all communistical’.

“Really’ said I.

At this stage in the progress to a full-blown asylum status for my little condo. I

had visions of other entities, such as the ‘Salvation Army’ as being responsible for

a contemporary ‘Manchurian Candidate’ type attack, or the American

Automobile Association’ planting IEDs along the National Mall.

Clearly I was loosing it. But my companions had already done that.

Brightbartic paranoia was hovering about proximate to my frontal lobes. I reached for a comforting piece of carrot and plunged it, with uncharacteristic force, into the Maine Lobster dip. I retrieved a tasty piece of crab-leg. Munched; relaxed. The danger seemed to pass. I spoke too soon.

Left, Terry relaxes and keyboards his latest thoughts on the human condition

“Them Mooslyms want to kill the world, then each other, then get at the virgins!’.

This helpful interjection entered the fray from the direction of the gentleman

husband of a police commander. He had been in Iraq. He was packing heat. I

smiled at him, nodded sagely, offered a slice of desert with marinaded

strawberries – he declined because that would ‘contaminate his blood’.

‘Excellent decision’ I said. Much better to remain pure!

NOW I was entering a dark world of Dr Strangelove; My condo had become

Burbleson Airforce Base. I identified with Peter Sellars in an entirely new way.

Now the Thin Woman extracted herself from the gaggle of ladies, approached her

subsided ‘principle other’ and said ‘Let’s Go!’

Joy unconfined. Oh wonderful Day’.

I rose unbidden. ‘Thank you SO much for coming and welcome to the

neighborhood.’

The thin man rose, stared at me for a long moment and asked ’Am I an

irrelevance’.

‘It’s possible’, I replied.

Quietly, all left. The packed heat left.

I made a strong coffee.

‘Welcome to America’ I thought.