Missile defense isn’t going to save us from North Korea. In the top June 1, 2009, photo, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, center, gets briefed on interceptor missiles at Ft. Greely, Alaska. The missiles carry a nonexplosive “kill vehicle” that is supposed to intercept and destroy enemy ballistic missiles in space. (John Wagner / Associated Press)
We are not “running out of time” on North Korea, as National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster likes to say. Here’s why.
This has additional salience now that we know that special counsel Robert Mueller is indeed investigating Donald Trump. If Trump fires Mueller (or orders his firing). Julia Ioffe summarizes what we know about Jeff Sessions’s meetings with Sergey Kislyak and what we don’t know.
The president’s delegation of determining troop levels in Afghanistan to the Pentagon is unprecedented and dangerous. Read More
Lessons from Reykjavik for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Even though the meeting failed to produce agreement on a treaty, it was the basis for later progress.
The state of Trump’s State Department. Where is Rex Tillerson? Does Trump think he can “make deals” just by sitting down with foreign leaders?
Trump’s ‘bromance’ with Russia’s Putin appears to be cooling. Read More
It’s hard to know how to deal with every day’s tsunami of Trump news. On the one hand, much of it affects US foreign relations and some the nuclear part of that. On the other, the administration lies and backtracks so much that it’s tempting to blow off much of it. The sheer volume of leaks, much of it on gossipy trivia, is tempting as a focus. The leaks themselves, as well as much of their content, indicate that White House operations are chaotic, and the bureaucracy is mostly resisting the crazier demands. Steve Bannon is much too influential, and President Trump isn’t reading what he signs.
There are hundreds of articles that I might link by the standards I’ve used in the past. But I don’t have that kind of time, and neither do you. It’s not a bad idea to check the New York Times or the Washington Post daily; both are doing a good job of covering the chaos. (Yes, I would complain about their campaign coverage too, but there are too many other things to do now.) I’ll try to present articles that help with thinking out how to deal with a presidency gone wrong, and foreign policy news that may be getting lost in the furor. Maybe some fun, too. Read More
Donald Trump continues to insist that hacking before the election could not have been by Russia. Germany, with an election in the near future, is seeing a similar pattern of hacking. Republicans in Congress are asking for an investigation. Republicans!
This is a good explanation of what the problem may be with Mike Flynn, Trump’s designated National Security Advisor. But the National Security Advisor is supposed to help in distinguishing bad information from good. Read More
Nuclear Diner 