Trump Takes Ingrate UCLA Father to Task

Trump Gunning to Increase America's Nuclear Stockpile

NBC News is reporting about a July 20th meeting between President Trump and Pentagon officials in which he  expressed an interest in greatly increasing America's nuclear stockpile.  This exhortation was prompted by a slide which showed that America's nuclear arsenal was at its peak in the late 1960s, which Mr. Trump approved.  

Rather than interpret this approval as a desire for a ten fold increase from today's nuclear levels, military officials appreciated it as the Commander-in-Chief wanting to increase America's military strength. This is consistent with Mr. Trump's pre-inaugural predilection to increase and expand America's nuclear capabilities. 

But the episode revived questions about President Trump's familiarity with America's nuclear triad. 

At one of the early Republican primary debates in late 2015, Hugh Hewitt questioned Mr. Trump's knowledge about the nuclear triad. Candidate Trump fumbled through the answer but insisted that while it is key to be careful about nukes, he would be well informed once in office and would concentrate on American strength not climate change and global warming.

This impetus to increase America's nuclear arsenal comes in the midst of a prospective conflict with a nascent rogue nuclear North Korea as well as the prospect of finding Iran being declared out of compliance with the Obama Iran Nuclear Deal. 

Several concerns come from this National Security leak.  Allegedly, after this July meeting, Secretary of State Tillerson was heard to call President Trump a "moron".  Aside from the insult, this episode illustrates how far Rex Tillerson is out of step with the West Wing.  It is reasonable to believe that once the crisis with North Korea cools down, Tillerson will no longer be at Foggy Bottom. There has been serious talk of a Trump Cabinet shuffle which CIA Director Mike Pompeo would move over to the State Department. 

Some arms control experts vex that increasing America's nuclear stockpile would spur an arms race with the Russia Federation as well as the Peoples' Republic of China.   Moreover, increases would challenge America's international treaty obligations.

As news about President Trump gunning to increase America's nuclear stockpile leaked out, Trump National Security Adviser Lt. General H.R.  McMaster stated: 

"But in recent years, in particular, the problem with leaks has become a real challenge to national security and so I think what is very important is that everyone who is involved in these sort of policy discussions understand the sacred trust that is placed in them, and they realize that speaking to the media about government deliberations is treasonous when it involves national security." 

Those are bold words, meant to quell an alluvia of embarrassing leaks meant to damage the Trump Administration. But Lt. Gen. McMaster upped the ante by intimating treason.  The question is whether the Trump Justice Department will be all talk and no action.  Attorney General Sessions has allegedly demurred from seeking prosecutions of Democrats concerning  Hillary Clinton's repeated mishandling of classified emails. Treason is a much more serious charge and more challenging to prosecute. 

Solipcism, Strategery or Stupidity? : Steve Bannon on the North Korea Threat

After several weeks of increasing tension over the prospect of resumed hostilities between the United States and North Korea, Kim Jong Un's regime backed down when their erstwhile ally China indicated it would participate in the severe new UN sanctions which included coal.  Chinese pressure on Pyongyang was a triumph for President Donald Trump's puglistic posturing.  Nevertheless, Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, gave an unfiltered interview which undercut this foreign policy achievement.

Bannon's wide ranging interview with the liberal American Prospect magazine admitted that America did not have good military options if hostilities broke out with the DPRK, because of North Korea's array of conventional missiles pointed at Seoul, which is only 35 miles away from the Demilitarized Zone. This may be true but it is an admission against interest from a high ranking Trump Administration official.  Such a statement could well be misconstrued by Kim Jong Un as a signal that the US might not back the "fire and fury" rhetoric and stoke further provocations from Pyongyang.  If Bannon's brief reflects the Trump White House perspective, it validates DPRK dominance with conventional missiles and encourages further ICBM and nuclear pursuits.

Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur

One of the factors which sparked the Korean War (1950-53) was that South Korea was easy pickings.  The United States withdrew most of its post World War II peacekeeping forces from the Korean peninsula in June 1949, leaving only a small advisory group.  Compounding this perception of weakness South of the 38th parallel occurred in March 1949 when US Pacific Commander General Douglas Mac Arthur's articulated the American defense perimeter in the Far East.  Mac Arthur's sphere of US interests in the Far East  did not include China nor Korea. This weltanschauung was echoed by Truman Secretary of State Dean Acheson during a National Press Club speech in January 1950.  These subtle signals on US intentions towards Korea gave the green light for the Soviet backed North Korean Communist regime of Kim Il-Sung to launch an invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950.

Current North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (the grandson of Kim Il-Sung) seemingly backed away from nuclear brinksmanship when the Trump Administration talked tough, had overwhelming conventional and strategic forced arrayed against the DPRK and it mustered together a convincing coalition, including China, against Pyongyang's provocations. Bannon's blurting out that the US did not have good military options because of the targeting of Seoul could well be seen as a green light for more aggressive actions by the DPRK.

One wonders why Steve Bannon would make this woeful quotation. Was it a solipicism, strategery or stupidity.  From a conventional military perspective, Bannon's analysis is correct. Hostilities with North Korea could result in catastrophic casualties in Seoul  That is why war would be a last resort.  No one needs a philosopher king's right hand to perceive that.



Why did Bannon give such a wide ranging interview with a liberal magazine like American Prospect?  There are rumblings that he thought things were "off-the-record".  Really? In a media environment which spends 92% of nightly news air time reporting anti-Trump news, will an insider interview be cast more sympathetically?  How did that work for "The Mooch", a.k.a. short time Trump Communication Chief Anthony Scaramucci. Before joining the Trump Train, Bannon took over Breitbart News and proudly made it into a polemic platform.  He should know better about today's media environment.




Maybe it was strategery (sic)?  Bannon has been quoted as saying that he did not expect to last more than eight months in the Trump White House. This interview might have been an attempt to make it a self fulfilling prophecy.  It is dubious that an anti-establishment populist like Bannon would intentionally sabotage himself just to be right, he may have seen writing on the wall, and this interview could allow him to leave on his own terms and advance his ideological cause.

What might be overlooked from Bannon's American Prospect interview was an attempt to undercut  the National Security Council Chair Gary Cohen's approach to work with the People's Republic of  China.  The North Korean's backed down after China stepped in and voiced a willingness to apply severe sanctions against the DPRK.  The Chinese might not be willing to remove a thorn from America's political side if there is a trade war.  

In 2013, Bannon revealed that he was a Leninist who wanted to destroy the political landscape which took down the political establishment and the press to reset it towards American economic nationalism  It seems Bannon's preferred method is a trade war rather than a shooting war with a proto-nuclear nation like North Korea.

h/t: American Prospect

Sen. Schumer Berates President Trump as Diplomatic 98 Lb. Weakling

Senator Schumer's contemptuous snap  seemed  well positioned for President Trump's meeting with President Xi at Mar-a-Lago.  

However, after the Tomahawk missile attack in Syria in response to the gassing of civilians, the Senate Democrat Minority Leaders Charles Atlas insult seems pretty weak.

John McCain on Diplomacy with North Korea

China's War on Golf

Last week, the Chinese Central government began a crackdown on golf by shutting down 66 "illegal" golf courses, which is 10% of the nation's fairways.  While  Beijing has be officially forbidden the construction of new golf courses since 1984, they have proliferated in the PRC. Between 2004 and 2009, 400 new golf courses were created despite the ban (tripling the number of links). But as the Chinese maxim goes, the mountain is high and the emperor is far away.

Aside from being good for generating yuan for their communities by catering to elites, foreign tourism and sparking ancillary business opportunities, golf courses were a great way to gain graft.
The local officials would line their pockets from the construction (as they expropriate peasants' land and profit from the sale to the golf industry) and they are can be surreptitiously sanctioned as being "ecological restorations".  How conveniently corrupt.

The day after the golf course crackdown occurred, a Commerce Ministry official was investigated (effectively being found guilty) for participating in a golf event, which violated one of Chinese President Xi Jinping's eight rules against extravagance by government officials. From a political perspective, it makes sense for a fledgling government to embrace the game.

Despite the burgeoning number of golf courses in China, it is considered "the millionaires game". Mao Zedong banned golf in 1949 as bourgeois "green opium".  Today, a round of golf can cost $150, in a nation where the average daily salary is $5. So it still remains "the rich man's game".

From a political perspective, it makes sense for a fledgling government not to be seen embracing the game of golf.  Gordon Chang has been warning for years that the Chinese economy is on a precipice and a severe world financial downturn which results in a weak demand for cheap Chinese labor could spark a downfall in the current polity in Beijing.  So a public crackdown from the Beijing government  on golf appeals to the have nots to  quell any clamoring for revolution while President Xi Jinping re-establishes central control over wayward provincial politicos engaged in crony capitalism.

Yet it is unlikely that China's War on Golf will actually forbid the game.  Beijing has been spending serious capital on grooming a team to qualify for the Rio de Jainero Olympics in 2016.  It's a tension between domestic tranquility and international glory.

Dan Washburn, the author of  "The Forbidden Game" (2014) considers Chinese Golf to be apt allegory for the corruption, land grabs, environmental issues and escalating economic disparity that have become hallmarks of New China.



Washburn is ambivalent as to what will result from the war on golf.  Washburn's metric is how the seized fairways are used in five years. Considering China's dismal track record on environmental issues, it is dubious if the seized courses will end up as actual "ecological restorations".

Will they be re-appropriated like the Shanghai Golf and Country Club in Hongqoai Park, which was converted into the Shanghai Zoo in 1954?  Or will the seized courses go the way of Wonderland, a Chinese rip off of Disneyland, which is rotting away due to lack of business and uncertain legalities.  China has a series of ghost cities, which are colossal waste of investment that temporarily pump up the GDP and esteem of a local official while saddling the area with a white elephant and a mountain of debt.

h/t: Dan Washburn