Had to check twice to make sure this article came from Bloomberg.
Remember this:
They listened to their boss. So instead, for the most part, this article is heaping praise on a Republican... Trump no less! I love it. Although you would barely know Bloomberg was running for president, he has spent $166 million of his own money on his campaign and thus far impacted the Dem race about as much as the NY mayor Warren Wilhelm Jr.
He must have flipped his lid after reading this.
He must have flipped his lid after reading this.
By David Waine
Three years into Donald Trump’s presidency, U.S. allies
That all changed Thursday with Trump’s decision to kill a key Iranian commander in the biggest foreign policy gamble of his time in office.
With the high-stakes drone strike against General Qassem Soleimani, one of Iran’s most venerated leaders, Trump caught Tehran -- and the rest of the world -- by surprise, restoring a sense of unpredictability that could play to his advantage as world leaders are left wondering what his endgame is in the Middle East and beyond.
“The Americans are now totally unpredictable,” Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to the U.S. and drone
The drone strike shatters an assumption -- often repeated by Western officials in anonymous briefings -- that Trump would do his utmost to avoid war during an election year. Yet the move may only reinforce the determination of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un
Since entering the White House in 2017 without previous experience in government, Trump built mired
After almost three years of Trump badgering NATO allies on matters such as defense spending and praising autocrats like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kim -- who the president said he “fell in love” with -- world leaders started to think they knew how to read the former New York real estate developer.
That’s gone now, probably permanently.
Holding Back
Even as the U.S. blamed sanctions
At the same time, he sought to pull some troops from Afghanistan and withdraw most forces from northern Syria. Since then, though, Trump has actually sent more forces to the Mideast -- more than 17,000 since May, including about 3,500 this week alone.
The strike at the Baghdad airport late on Thursday came together swiftly after the death of an American contractor in a Dec. 27 rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia against a U.S. base
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif quickly vowed payback for the killing of Soleimani, saying the Islamic Republic’s response to America’s “cowardly terrorism” will come “at any time and by any means.”
Yet Trump’s willingness to risk an escalation in an already volatile region gives foes red
Risk Tolerance
“What we have seen over the course of the past 24 hours, or, more arguably, over the course of the past week, is a newfound tolerance which
Trump defended his strike on Friday, arguing that Soleimani was planning “imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.”
“We caught him in the act and terminated him,” he said, adding that the U.S. doesn’t
“We take comfort in knowing that his reign of terror is over.”—
In remarks made at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said that the drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani is something that “should’ve been done long ago” pic.twitter.com/nQD6tc79TXby Bloomberg (@QuickTake) January 3, 2020 QuickTake
Trump’s move catches Iran at its weakest point in years, with the regime’s economy crushed under the weight of U.S. sanctions with interests Araud
“The Islamic Republic is a battered regime, beset by protests at home and abroad,” he wrote. Since Trump “withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions, Iran’s economy has essentially collapsed,” he said, adding that “Iran is not in a position to go to war with the United States, and is likely not capable of mounting effective asymmetric attacks on U.S. positions
That doesn’t mean Iran will back down. Allies largely sided with the U.S. on maximum campaign they
Juergen Hardt, foreign policy spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political bloc, said the targeted strike won’t cow Iran, risking an “asymmetric Iranian retaliation and a new wave of violence.” U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab joined other world leaders in calling for de-escalation.
“Frankly, the Europeans haven’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be,” Secretary of State Michael Pompeo told Sean Hannity of Fox News on Friday. “The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well.”
How the conflict evolves will depend as much on the credibility of the U.S.’s threats as it will on its ability to leverage economic and military superiority to achieve diplomatic results, the diplomats and analysts said. Yet Trump’s previous unpredictability cost him in the diplomatic sphere, angering allies such as France with his abrupt plan to pull out of Syria and undermining support for a U. .
“One problem the United States has had in the Middle East is that it’s often acted in disregard for allies, snubbed allies, and that could be quite costly as the United States is upping the confrontation with Iran,” said Dan Byman, vice dean for undergraduate affairs at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and a professor in its Security Studies Program.
