Our security, our allies’ security, are being stripped naked. The stripper is Donald J. Trump. Exhibit A: With the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and its strike group sailing out of the South China Sea to take up station in waters near Iran, the United States is left with no overwhelming naval force in the Pacific, nothing to deter, let alone defend against China. This is not lost on China, which has never wavered in its overt ideological goal of conquering and subjugating the democratic nation of Taiwan. Taiwan is a vital supplier, especially with its microchips, for American corporations. Exhibit B: With our stockpiles of major weapons systems, offensive and defensive, dwindling because more are being fired in the Iran war than are being built, America’s potential adversaries know that if they want to attack an ally— not just China striking Taiwan but Russia expanding its war into other Western-leaning nations near its borders— they know there might never be a better time. Right now the United States is drawing down missiles and bombs from stockpiles in other parts of the world, thinning out whatever protective walls it has built. Exhibit C: The newest dereliction of duty by our president: his post yesterday, bragging of his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” the dictator of North Korea, saying, “I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises” with South Korea. His reason? “These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.” All I can say is “Yeah, right.” As if he can’t avoid stepping on his own foot, Saturday he put up this preposterous post that said, “Despite the unfriendly look on this picture, there are many where we’re smiling, Kim Jong Un and I get along GREAT!” He might as well have just written, “Sorry, I couldn’t find any photos that actually confirm our ‘very good relationship’ but trust me, it is unshakable.” It reminds me of his announcement after his first summit with Kim in Singapore in 2018 where he told a crowd at a rally, “He wrote me beautiful letters, and we fell in love.” The way Kim shows his love is, with the U.S.-South Korean exercises coming up, he called them an “obvious _expression_ of their will to provoke war,” a “clear _expression_ of…. their intention to remain most hostile and confrontational.” He said North Korea will “rapidly expand” its nuclear arsenal. As a warning that it can, it fired two ballistic missiles off its coast, which its foreign ministry called a response “to a new level of a threat with a new level of a deterrent.” And by the way, North Korean soldiers are fighting in Ukraine, on Russia’s side. Apparently that is what it looks like when Kim Jong Un is “unthreatening and respectful.” Is Donald Trump out of his mind? Neither North Korea nor Iran can be trusted, but North Korea already is a nuclear power and threatens to build more weapons and use them against us, yet Trump trusts them. Iran isn’t, at least not yet, but he puts everything on the line, including our security, to put them down. Many analysts believe that in the long term, China is the biggest threat to American supremacy and global dominance. South Korea is a key lynchpin in our strategy to contain it, but we are drawing down on the military relationship. We are leaving the South Pacific without a single aircraft carrier to project American power. We are jeopardizing our ability to fight a new war with enough weapons to win. Leave a comment People sometimes say to me, “Trump is just stupid.“ I always dispute that. He is poorly read, uninformed, and reportedly during long briefings he needs to hear, he doesn’t have the attention span of a flea. And his ego is so tied up in his decisions that he believes he knows more than anyone else. It is increasingly obvious he doesn’t. But stupid? Having covered several presidential campaigns and several presidents, I always have been firmly convinced that you can’t be stupid and win the White House. Now I’m beginning to wonder. Share |