NationofChange
Peace-washing the anti-war movement and limiting criticism of Biden and Dems.
This article by Dave Lindorff and appearing in Salon magazine, was researched and written with the assistance of a
grant from the ExposeFacts program of the Institute for Public Accuracy
During the four years of the Trump
administration, resistance and even revolutionary talk were in the air
as organizations with names like The Resistance and Our Revolution brought together liberals, Democrats of all stripes and Sandernistas, all
opposed to President Donald Trump and to Trumpism in all its
manifestations.
When it came to matters of war and peace,
Who’s next?
Experts worry about East Asia and the Middle East
I
N MARCH 1963 President John Kennedy lamented his failure to negotiate a ban on nuclear tests. “Personally,” he warned, “I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful, there may be ten nuclear powers instead of four and by 1975, 15 or 20.”
Listen to this story
Enjoy more audio and podcasts oniOSorAndroid.
Kennedy was wrong. While many countries explored the idea of nuclear weapons from the 1950s to the 1990s, comparatively few took the next step of actually trying to develop the ability to build them (see chart). Of those few some stopped because the country itself dissolved (Yugoslavia), some because of changes to domestic politics (Brazil), some because of pressure from allies (South Korea) and some through force of arms (Iraq).
well, as i ve said many times, the effect of a foreign policy being conducted without professionals is you get an amateur foreign policy. the trends that are described in the transcript and that mr. tillerson described continue to this day. a deliberate effort to keep professional advice out of the formulation of foreign policy. a lack of preparation for key meetings such as those between president trump and president putin. another one will occur tomorrow. and you expect it to be similarly unprepared and unproductive. and finally, a commingling of the trump family s private financial interests with national security questions. these were problems then. they are problems today even under secretary pompeo. and they continue to lead to the lowest level of respect and trust for the united states among our allies around the world. tom brings up an interesting
east policy to mr. trump s 2017 meeting with russian president vladimir putin in hamburg as well as election interference by russia. and tillerson s frustrations as well with the president s difficulty focusing on complex issues. let s bring in cnn national security reporter kylie atwood, who has reviewed these transcripts, and we have tom countryman who is a former senior state department official whose career in diplomat has spanned more than 30 years. so kylie, these lawmakers, they met with tillerson last month, and what he said about jared kushner is pretty astonishing. tell us about this. we always knew that there was tension between jared kushner and former secretary of state rex tillerson. but what these transcripts do is give us a little more evidence of how that played out. some examples in how secretary tillerson didn t really know what kushner was doing all the time. he was sort of freelancing as secretary of state. and we get an example of it when tillerson talks about g
big gap in the u.s. being able to express directly to president putin the fact that we don t appreciate the direct interference in our political system that the russians have perpetrated, continue to perpetrate, described in detail in the mueller report, and yet the president of the united states will not stand up and defend american democracy. so if i were vladimir putin, i would laugh all the way to the bank saying i got away with it and president trump has shown no interest and no willingness to counter it, so i m going to continue doing it. thomas, thank you so much. thomas countryman with us. kylie atwood. thank you nfor your reporting o this. and coming up the supreme court issuing two major rulings on gerrymandering and also the citizenship question that trump wanted on the census. what they decided and the key role played by the chief