Tag Archives: foreign policy

Norway Gets It

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Norway is asking us to double the number of troops we have stationed there and to move them closer to its border with Russia.  It’s a pittance—700 Marines vs the 330 we have there now—but we need to work with Norway very seriously to figure out how to do this.

Norway said the invitation was about NATO training and improving winter fighting capability.

“Allies get better at training together,” Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen told reporters.

Yewbetcha.  And joint training is especially important in the face of demonstrated Russian aggression and its stationing of nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.

Gauntlet Thrown Down

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The members of the Group of Seven, just met in Canada last week, were invited to form a tariff-free trade zone by President Donald Trump.

no tariffs, no barriers…and no subsidies.

International trade doesn’t get much freer than that.

Will anyone in the G-7 have the courage to take Trump up on his offer—or to call his bluff, if that’s what they think it is?

Anyone?  Beuller?

What Hurts

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German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas thinks President Donald Trump is “consciously accepting” that things like our withdrawal from Iran’s nuclear weapons deal is hurting our allies in Europe and the Middle East.  Deutsche Welle cited him as saying that

We cannot look away.  He knows that what he is doing is of direct detriment to Europe.

No, what is acting to the direct detriment of Europe (and to our Middle East allies and friends) is Europe’s insistence on preserving a nuclear weapons deal that allows Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.  The extent to which European nations are consciously accepting of this destructive deal is the extent to which we have to act unilaterally.

A Thought on Nationhood

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Germany has one, and it centers on immigrants assimilating into German culture rather than holding themselves apart while taking advantage of the German benefits that drew the immigrants in the first place.  It’s articulated by Joachim Gauck, President of Germany from 2012-2017.  He told Bild

“I find it unacceptable that people who have been living in Germany for decades cannot hold a conversation in German, do not attend parent-teacher conferences or keep their children from going to classes or sports.”

He said people should not shy away from standing up for German values out of fear of being seen as a racist or xenophobe and that there should be “something like binding rules for living together and not several societies alongside one another.”

Absolutely.  A nation’s culture, its ability to rule itself, its very existence are at risk when immigrants as large groups don’t assimilate, and the receiving nation allows that to occur.  The nation ceases to be; it devolves into a collection of disparate groupings who happen to occupy a geographic area.

Brexit Failure in the Offing?

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Great Britain’s Labour Party is about to offer legislation that looks a great deal like it [emphasis added].

It shall be a negotiating objective of Her Majesty’s Government to ensure the United Kingdom has full access to the internal market of the European Union, underpinned by shared institutions and regulations, with no new impediments to trade and common rights, standards and protections as a minimum.

There’s very little difference between this and Remain.  Labour is suggesting Britain’s abject surrender in the Brexit negotiations with the Moghuls of Brussels.

Maybe not failure.  Maybe this is Labour’s betrayal of the British people, who voted to leave the EU because they wanted out of the EU.