Trump47 Foreign Policy Catch-All | Vance in Munich

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“In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down.

In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers.

In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already feeling President Trump’s sudden cutoff of billions of dollars in American aid that helps fend off starvation, treats diseases and provides shelter for the displaced. …

“It feels like one easy decision by the U.S. president is quietly killing so many lives,” said Saw Nah Pha, a tuberculosis patient who said he was told to leave a U.S.-funded hospital in the Mae La refugee camp, the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Mr. Nah Pha, who fled Myanmar in 2007 to escape the fighting there, said the staff gave him a week’s supply of medicine and told him that was all they could provide. “Once my medicine runs out, I have nowhere else to get it,” he added. …”

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Trump’s inability to understand soft power is maddening. He doesn’t even have to have empathy to merely cynically grasp the value of these U.S. programs.
 
“… In Cambodia, which had been on the cusp of eradicating malaria with the help of the United States, officials now worry that a halt in funding will set them back. In Nepal, a $72 million program to reduce malnutrition has been suspended. In South Africa and Haiti, officials and aid workers worry that hundreds of thousands of people could die if the Trump administration withdraws support for a signature American program to fight H.I.V. and AIDS.

Some programs that don’t fit the category of lifesaving aid remain frozen, while others are explicitly barred because they fall outside of the administration’s ideological bounds, including any help with abortions, gender or diversity issues.

The United Nations Population Fund, the U.N.’s sexual and reproductive health agency, said that because of the funding freeze, maternal and mental health services to millions of women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, Ukraine, and other places had been disrupted or eliminated. In Afghanistan, where the Taliban has banned women from working, 1,700 Afghan women who worked for the agency would no longer be employed.

At stake is not just the good will that the United States has built internationally, but also its work to promote America’s security interests. In Ivory Coast, an American-sponsored program collecting sensitive intelligence on Al Qaeda-related incidents has been interrupted.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, some of the funding to United Nations agencies supporting more than 4.5 million people displaced by a rapidly growing conflict in the country’s east has been frozen, according to a U.S. humanitarian official on the continent.

Even with Mr. Rubio’s announcements that lifesaving efforts could resume, much of the American aid system in Africa remained paralyzed by the confusion and disruptions, including in conflict-hit areas where every day counts. …”
 
nycfan said:

Marco Rubio: An Americas First Foreign Policy​

U.S. diplomats have neglected the Western Hemisphere for too long.​


GIFT LINK 🎁—> https://www.wsj.com/opinion/an-amer...b0?st=zB9e1a&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
Click to expand...
“… President Trump’s foreign-policy agenda begins close to home. Among his top priorities is securing our borders and reversing the disastrous invasion abetted by the last administration. Diplomacy’s role in this effort is central. We need to work with countries of origin to halt and deter further migrant flows, and to accept the return of their citizens present in the U.S. illegally.

Some countries are cooperating with us enthusiastically—others, less so. The former will be rewarded. As for the latter, Mr. Trump has already shown that he is more than willing to use America’s considerable leverage to protect our interests. Just ask Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.

Yet even when circumstances demand toughness, the president’s vision for the hemisphere remains positive. We see a prosperous region rife with opportunities. We can strengthen trade ties, create partnerships to control migration, and enhance our hemisphere’s security. …”

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As an aside, “… rife with opportunities …” is odd phrasing, especially for our chief diplomat. The term “rife” is generally understood and used as a negative — meaning out of control, unchecked and/or overwhelming

A small matter, I concede. For some reason it jumped out at me.
 
“… Closer relationships with the U.S. lead to more jobs and higher growth in these countries. This reduces incentives for emigration from these countries while providing governments with revenue to fight crime and invest at home. As our regional partners build themselves up, they can more easily resist countries such as China that promise much but deliver little.

Mass migration has destabilized our entire region. Drug cartels—now correctly categorized, thanks to the president, as foreign terrorist organizations—are taking over our communities, sowing violence and poisoning our families with fentanyl. Illegitimate regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are intentionally amplifying the chaos. All the while, the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage—such as at the Panama Canal—to oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.

I am confident that the countries I will soon visit will be ready partners. Like President Trump, their leaders are pragmatists who put their citizens first. And because they are pragmatists, they also know that there is much more to be gained from working with the U.S. than not. …”

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Chicken/egg issue — a lot of investment fled Central America due to political instability there (a significant amount of which destabilization had US/CIA fingerprints all over it); how do you get investors to return without first establishing stability? How do you establish stability without jobs for people?

@donbosco — would be interested in your take on this policy announcement. Writ large, I agree that stabilizing the political and Economic status of Central America would go a long way to curbing our own immigration influx of people understandably desperate for a better life.
 
nycfan said:


“In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down.

In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers.

In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already feeling President Trump’s sudden cutoff of billions of dollars in American aid that helps fend off starvation, treats diseases and provides shelter for the displaced. …

“It feels like one easy decision by the U.S. president is quietly killing so many lives,” said Saw Nah Pha, a tuberculosis patient who said he was told to leave a U.S.-funded hospital in the Mae La refugee camp, the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Mr. Nah Pha, who fled Myanmar in 2007 to escape the fighting there, said the staff gave him a week’s supply of medicine and told him that was all they could provide. “Once my medicine runs out, I have nowhere else to get it,” he added. …”

——
Trump’s inability to understand soft power is maddening. He doesn’t even have to have empathy to merely cynically grasp the value of these U.S. programs.
Click to expand...

Xi Jinping understands, and in the next 4 years he’s probably going to lockdown a few decades of access to significant resources in Africa at the cost of American businesses.
 
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