The Trump administration has taken steps to speed up the move of the US embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Instead of building new, the administration

has decided to modify an existing property to accommodate the new mission that will open next year, US officials said.

Good.  This illustrates that President Donald Trump is not just engaging in Obamatalk about any move, he’s actually suiting action to his words.

The execution of the move also is consistent with past behavior.  The original plan was that brand, spanking new building that would have cost a billion dollars and years of time to get done.  Instead, by retrofitting an existing consular building, a more than adequate (if not ridden with lots of bells and whistles and froo-froo) building can be had for considerably less (the retrofit still won’t be cheap: think security and cyber protections) and be open for business next year.

Jonathan Cheng had a piece in the Wall Street Journal that talked about differences in policy held by RoK President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump, especially concerning northern Korea.  He seemed surprised that friends or allies could disagree with each other rather than one simply being a satrap of the other.

Withal, though, I want to comment on one remark he had at the end of his piece.

[Moon suggested that] the end goal of international pressure and sanctions is to “find a way for North Korea to live together in peace with the international community”—a comment that appears at odds with the US goal of denuclearization.

Cheng is wrong; there is no contradiction. If northern Korea truly is interested in “living together in peace and harmony with the international community,” it has no need of nuclear weapons. No one is interested in attacking northern Korea, except in self defense, perhaps preemptively.

Northern Korea doesn’t have very much that anyone else wants, and what it does have is more easily and more cheaply obtainable through free trade than through conquest. Baby Kim knows this.

Maybe German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel is figuring a couple of things out.  Here are a couple of his remarks in an interview with Spiegel Online:

In the past, we could rely on the French, the British and, especially, the Americans, to assert our interests in the world. We have always criticized the US for being the global police, and it was often appropriate to do so. But we are now seeing what happens when the US pulls back. There is no such thing as a vacuum in international politics. If the US leaves the room, other powers immediately walk in. In Syria, it’s Russia and Iran. In trade policy, it’s China. These examples show that, ultimately, we are no longer achieving…the dissemination of our European values nor the advancement of our interests.

And

[Should Europe be feared?] No, not feared. On the contrary. Countries that work with us should feel safer than they would if they worked with non-democratic regimes. Why isn’t Europe building infrastructure in Africa instead of leaving it to the Chinese? Why haven’t we succeeded in promoting the economic development of our neighbors in the Balkans, instead conceding these countries to growing Russian influence? In an uncomfortable world, we Europeans can no longer sit back and wait for the USA.

Maybe the US being the world’s policeman wasn’t—isn’t—such a bad thing, after all.  For all that, maybe Europe—if it can reach actual and durable consensus—and in particular Germany, stepping up more and taking on more of their own global security responsibilities isn’t such a bad thing, either.