Trump pre Republican candidacy: **** China

Trump Republican Candidate: **** China

Trump Republican Nominee: **** China

Trump President Elect: **** China



He's officially gone too far!! Accepting a call from a democratically elected leader! Nukes!! This totally unanticipated FICKLE move is complete proof he is not fit for President.


You can freak out every day for better reasons without trying this hard. The dude accepted a phone call from a President.

Not directed at me, but I hope so and yes would be my answers to those questions.

Saw this posted by another 2+2er the other day:

"The threats we live with also stem from the weapons industry itself, from the arms trade, and indeed from the culture of violence - often perpetuated by the media - which encourages the delusion that violence is a viable approach to resolving human conflict. Really what we need is a fundamental shift in human awareness. For in all but the most exceptional circumstances, violence only begets further violence. To suppose that we can achieve peace through violence is therefore altogether misguided." - Dalai Lama

We need a fundamental rethinking of what the purpose of the military is in this country. We shouldn't be drawn into violent engagements willy-nilly, as we have seen time and time again that this only leads to future violence. There have been very few truly justified wars in our history, and are likely to be even fewer if any in the future. But our current military action disincentivizes the idea of military service as many people don't want to sign up to be sent all over the world to carry out a violent mission for little to no reason and that will likely only result in further violence. Instead I would like to see our military used at home. Put people who sign up for the military to work on strengthening our infrastructure, protecting our electric grids and communication networks, and only being called into violent warfare in the most extreme circumstances where it is the only possible outcome. If the military was reformed in this way, I believe you would see a lot greater signup and we could use the huge amount of resources we currently dump into our defense budget to actually improve the country and the world as a whole.

some combination of having no idea and surrounding himself with the worst people. 70/30 maybe

thayer,

again i dont think the particular issue is of the utmost. its the fact that - realistically best case scenario imo - one of his advisors manipulated him into changing US foreign policy re taiwan without him even realising until after the fact

worst case, a foreign country was able to manipulate your foreign policy without him realising until after the fact

regardless of specifics, i wouldn't be comfortable with either of these things happening if i were you

Meb,

Then Mattis appears to be a fine choice, no? He values troops lives and doesn't view the military as an industry. He's also appropriately criticized Trump's more ignorant positions.

BAIDS,

He's campaigned forever on needing to get tougher on China and this is one of his first moves as President Elect. You can criticize his actions and methods but it seems wanting to assume he has 0 clue on the matter.

Congratulations, Mr Trump!

He repeatedly mentioned us get ripped off on trade, but he explicitly campaigned against getting involved with other country's internal affairs.

And why did he send out those weird defensive tweets followed by aggro tweets a couple of days later?

He is getting wound up and having his cluelessness/refusal to admit a mistake played by someone, pretty obvious.

I don't think they're contributing much to our prosperity. Third world cheap labor supply is a lot more replaceable to us than the massive amount of demand we provide is to them.

Thayer,

I don't know enough about Mattis or what his positions would be to comment on him specifically. What you say about him certainly sounds like a step towards what I'm advocating for from an idea standpoint.

I truly believe that our goal should be to shift the military towards an idea of national service and national defense in every way rather than mainly being viewed as a combat force. I realize that goes against the definition of the word military, so we may need to call it something different. My vision is having a single unified force whose main purpose is securing the nation's infrastructure, working for the greater good of the nation and the world through peaceful methods, and also being trained to carry out warfare in what would truly be the rarest of instances where no other option remains available to us. Violence begets violence, and if we are truly world leaders then we can lead by taking a more peaceful leadership role in the world.

Another great quote:

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Maybe I'm waaaay off base but China's oppressive government and the country's human rights issues, while bad, seems better than many many countries, including much of the Muslim world, most of Africa, likely Russia and maybe even India.

This touches on why trade is so important. Trade is likely a far superior peace tool than politics and military.

i witnessed no oppressivenessessess's on my trips to Shanghai. was far more NYC then Stalingrad.

You have to be feigning this.

The whole point is whether or not we recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. Just like the North threatened war against foreign nations if they recognized the South as it's own country.

I get it, we should recognize them according to you. You not understanding the above, I don't buy.

First of all, he campaigned on getting tougher with China on trade. The Taiwan issue is not a trade issue. That is a domestic governance issue. Trump "getting tough on China," whether wise or not as to trade, is not supposed to involve motivating China to take military action to demonstrate territorial control of Taiwan, which is an issue that was supposed to be dead and buried on the international scale for decades.

The issue is not that this one issue is a crippling misstep. The issue is that it is a misstep of potentially historical proportions that was taken on accident because the President-Elect is so dumb, and his team so without the ability to control him, that all another world leader had to do to manipulate him for her and her country's own gain, at our expense, was call him and flatter him. There's nothing "tough" about this idiotic situation. He's a moron. He did a moron thing. He's such a moron that he can't even remedy it - he has to save face by acting like he comprehended what happened.

He obviously didn't. There's no intelligent way to argue that he did comprehend what happened.

Also, to whoever posted that no one in this forum has the education, background, or percipient knowledge to comment meaningfully on such matters, two things. First, lol at that. Two, THAT IS TRUE OF THE PRESIDENT-ELECT WHICH HAS BEEN A PROBLEM (and only one of the myriad problems) ALL ALONG. In fact, that is far more true of Trump and his entire team than it is of ANY of the well-informed posters on 2+2.

Which is a sad, sad state of affairs.

This is basically an oxymoron. The alt-right and the neocon wing of the Republican party weren't exactly seeing eye-to-eye this election cycle.

Hoya, are you saying that I would make a better President than Trump? If so, well then...I don't disagree.

This is a much sadder state of affairs tbh

Right, it's like he shot Franz Ferdinand while quail hunting.

None of this is surprising. Despite nearly a YEAR to get up to speed he still showed zero command of issues beyond talking points during three separate debates. He has zero inclination to actually put in the effort to learn. That he is blowing off national security updates isn't a surprise, it's standard and reinforcement of just how dangerous he is likely to be and how vulnerable he is to the whispers of his far more capable, and generally ill-intentioned team.

For those who haven't seen it, I highly highly recommend the below article. Not only as an interesting piece on our current president's thoughts on foreign policy, but a window into how intricate and nuanced these issues are and how woefully unprepared and ill-equipped the PEOTUS is to deal with them.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ctrine/471525/

There's a difference between commenting meaningfully and suggesting specific course of actions.

This was also in the context of "getting more involved in politics".

I just think it's a very poor use of one's time to try getting acquainted enough with China / Taiwan relations to actually know the best course of action, and far better to try something where you actually get to make a difference.

Walter Scott case the second worse ever (Tamir Rice). Cop, on film, shoots unarmed man running away in back, also on film plants gun, somehow one dude just refuses to convict and hung jury.

ITS LIT

People putting quotation marks around things that aren't actually quotes seems like poor writing.

Biden just needs to fade the apocalypse. He's awesome.