… I remember when we only had a few years to save ourselves from the next Ice Age.
Meanwhile, the UN has a new report out reminding us we have a few years (less than a decade this time, I think) to keep the world from—checks report—”catastrophic climate change.” That apparently still means global warming.
President Trump spent a good part of this week focusing on foreign policy. He spent a couple of days at the UN, speaking to the General Assembly and chairing a meeting of the Security Council.
We were told at the start of the Trump administration that we were headed for a massive foreign policy disaster. I haven’t seen it yet. Neither has Savatore Babones who has a post up over at The National Interest titled Trump’s Foreign Policy Successes Show Principled Realism in Action. He notes that Trump has defied the resistance of Our Betters in the expert class and delivered significant results.
Yet Trump has overcome internal resistance and external pressure to deliver an as yet uninterrupted string of foreign-policy successes : North Korea’s “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un hasn’t launched a rocket in ten months; America’s NATO allies are finally starting to deliver on pledges to increase defense spending toward the 2 percent of GDP target agreed in 2006 ; Mexico has seemingly come to terms on long-overdue NAFTA reforms; the United States has stayed out of the Arab world’s interminable wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen; and the U.S. embassy in Israel moved to Jerusalem in May without sparking the Third Intifada predicted by Trump’s opponents.
Perhaps just as important (from a U.S. perspective), America’s long-term enemies are nearly all on the run. The Russian economy is crumbling. The Venezuelan economy has crumbled. The Iranian economy, which boomed after the nuclear deal was signed in 2015, has come back down to earth since Trump took office, and stagnated since he pulled the United States out of the deal in May.
Trump’s success comes from his understanding of the true nature of America’s power. Yes, it’s true that we have have the strongest military force in the world, but the real power behind it comes from the infrastructure and the people and society supporting it. There’s much more to American power than armed force.
The secret to the Trump team’s success is its embrace of principled realism: in its simplest terms, the faith that America’s goals are just and American power should be exercised to support those goals. Since taking office a year and a half ago, Trump has forcefully applied American power—while avoiding his predecessors’ equation of power with military force. As a result, America is getting its way on the world stage, generally without putting American lives at risk to get it. That’s about as win-win as things come in international relations.
Read the whole thing.
Our Betters were wrong. Trump may not be doing everything right, but his track record in foreign policy is the best we’ve seen in decades.
President Trump spoke at the UN yesterday. The usual suspects—The Washington Post, the New York Times, Senator Feinstein, Venezuela—have all expressed their disapproval of his remarks, but Claudia Rosett has a more favorable assessment over at PJ Media. Venezuela’s foreign minister compared Trump to Ronald Reagan. He said that is if it were a bad thing.
But the bottom line is that for the first time in years, an American president went before the UN and in plain words spelled out some vital truths about America, the UN, and the world. Whatever the UN General Assembly might make of it, once it recovers from the shock, that’s a good thing for the world, and a very good thing for America.
Read the whole thing.
Reuters reports that
The U.N. racism watchdog urged the United States on Friday to halt the excessive use of force by police after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman touched off riots in Ferguson, Missouri.
Minorities, particularly African Americans, are victims of disparities, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said after examining the U.S. record.
None of the victims of sexual assault by UN “peace keepers” in Zaire, Mali, or Haiti were available for comment.
Neither were the Israeli victims of rockets fired from UN schools in Gaza.
Neither were …
Breitbart reports that the UN’s top human rights official has condemned Israel for not sharing its Iron Dome missile defense with Hamas.
The UN has named Robert Mugabe, Chief Thug President of Zimbabwe, as international envoy for … wait for it … tourism.
So the UN wants the US to return land to the Indians.
OK, but fair is fair.
Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and all the other countries in the Americas should be part of the deal. Those of us whose ancestors came from Europe, Africa, and Asia should be resettled. Let’s see … I’m descended from a Scot who came in 1680, and all my other known ancestors came from the British Isles except for a German great-grandmother, so I guess I’d go to the UK. My wife is descended from English immigrants who came around 1630, but most of her ancestors that we know of came from Switzerland and Norway. Where would they send her? Could she come with me?
And our “Native Americans” aren’t the only ancient people displaced by more recent invaders. Australia should go back to the Aboriginals. The Palestinians should leave Israel to the Jews. Wait a second … This is getting too complicated. Why don’t we leave well enough alone?
UPDATE—The BBC has coverage here. They do not say if the Queen will be restoring Anglo-Saxon lands seized by her ancestor William in 1066.
UPDATE 2—Amused comments that the UN report is not as extreme is I make it seem. Fair enough. The point that only the United States would be held to such standard of behavior with respect to a minority population still stands. Does anyone believe that China or Congo or Saudi Arabia (all members of the UN Human Rights Council that chartered the report) would be held to account for how they treat their minorities? Tibetans in China or Christians in Saudi Arabia?
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech at the UN was well crafted and marked him as the real statesman in the General Assembly. (H/T, Roger Simon) Read the whole thing.