Which allies has Trump insulted and alienated?

Let's start a list, shall we? I think so far, we can count Mexico and Australia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/no-gday-mate-on-call-with...

Iraq.

Ooh, this nice person has made a map:

Check out @BCAppelbaum's Tweet: https://twitter.com/BCAppelbaum/status/826986298191802369?s=09

>1 sturlington: While it mentions the call with Mexico in the article, it would seem that not mentioned is that Trump reportedly threatened to send US troops into Mexico to go after drug traffickers.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/i-dont-need-the-mexicans-report-claims-trump-thr...

While I'm pretty sure there would be lots of people who'd back him doing that, it's not something that'd go over very well on the world stage.

Edited to add that it's now being said by Mexico that reports of the threats are false.

In the NY Times, Ross Douthat pondered whether Trump would go the way of Egypt's Mohamed Morsi. One can only hope.

I'm wondering when we're going to be banned from other countries.

>6 lriley: I would say some countries are already moving in that direction. My son has been working in China for the last three years. This past week he was suddenly told he had to provide a lot more detail concerning his education, citizenship, and other details. We've been scrambling on our end to get the necessary documents to him - the key thing is this isn't just a matter of getting copies of degrees from his alma mater - the documents have to receive multiple notarizations and confirmations of authenticity at multiple levels and each level charges quite a bit just to put their particular stamp on the paperwork. The total cost is going to be 2-300 dollars. If he didn't have us over here to do this for him he would have had to fly home and do it himself.

>7 alco261:

On that note...

Steve Bannon: 'We're going to war in the South China Sea ... no doubt'

The United States and China will fight a war within the next 10 years over islands in the South China Sea, and “there’s no doubt about that”. At the same time, the US will be in another “major” war in the Middle East.

Those are the views – nine months ago at least – of one of the most powerful men in Donald Trump’s administration, Steve Bannon, the former head of far-right news website Breitbart who is now chief strategist at the White House.

Exit strategies are important...

Hope Rex, "the generals", etc., can trump Honey Badger the heck out of the White House.
(Can't believe it's come to putting hope in these guys!)

>8 LolaWalser: Yes, we know. We've told our son it is time to start moving his savings out of China because if it gets ugly he could be shipped out of the country and his savings would just go away.

Well, I can't believe the US could go to war with China and Iran simultaneously, but what do I know...

One thing I find interesting is that Bannon's prediction (promise?) extends past Trump's first term.

And the prime minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi

on Trump's ‘Take the oil.’

“Iraq’s oil is for Iraqis, and any statement contradicting that is unacceptable,” Abadi countered at a press conference in Baghdad, last Tuesday. Another Iraqi official said that Trump’s suggestion amounted to “looting,” and questioned how the new Administration might do it.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-pirate-in-chief

John McCain had to call Australia to apologize for our toddler-in-chief today. https://twitter.com/aterkel/status/827186457626497024

Meanwhile, Trump is at the National Prayer Breakfast asking faith leaders to pray for good ratings on Celebrity Apprentice.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/02/politics/donald-trump-national-prayer-breakfast/

If you read these things in a novel, would you believe this is reality? I wouldn't.

Shall we add Norway to our list? http://wjla.com/news/local/former-norwegian-prime-minister-held-for-questioning-...

Does this qualify under a different definition of "ally"?

https://extranewsfeed.com/2-big-things-just-happened-in-corporate-americas-relat...

>15 Marissa_Doyle: Oh, I would think so. Aren't the Republicans supposed to be the business-friendly party?

Amazing to contrast Trump's treatment of allies and neighbors with his kindness to Putin!

Republicans denounce Trump's defense of 'killer' Putin
The president's remark downplaying the Russian president's violent history reopens a foreign policy rift with conservatives.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/republicans-denounce-trumps-defense-of-kil...

>17 margd: In light of what we have been witness to since 20 January I would say there's nothing amazing about it - rather it would appear to be nothing more than the business as usual.

Not only Senator McCain reached out to Australia,

Senators introduce (bipartisan) resolution in support of Australia after Trump call
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/318183-senators-introduce-resolutio...

>17 margd: The thing is (and I know this is not going to be a popular thing for me to say): on this one, Trump (intentionally or not) has a point.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/07/castigating-trump-for-truth-telling/

....In this context, the fact that the urbane Barack Obama scheduled time one day a week to check off people for targeted assassinations isn’t relevant. Nor is the reality that Donald Trump has joined this elite club of official killers by approving a botched and bloody raid in Yemen that slaughtered a number of women and children (and left one U.S. soldier dead, too).

You have to understand that “our killings” are always good or at least justifiable (innocent mistakes do happen from time to time), but Russian killings are always bad. Indeed, Official Washington has so demonized Putin that any untoward death in Russia can be blamed on him whether there is any evidence or not. To suggest that evidence is needed shows that you must be a “Moscow stooge.”

To violate these inviolable norms of Official Washington, in which participants must intuitively grasp the value of such “group think” and the truism of “American exceptionalism,” marks you as a dangerous outsider who must be marginalized or broken.
...
Though Trump is justly criticized for often making claims that aren’t true, here he was saying something that clearly was true. But it has drawn fierce condemnation from across Official Washington, not only from Democrats but from Trump’s fellow Republicans, too. Neoconservative Washington Post opinion writer Charles Krauthammer objected fiercely to Trump’s “moral equivalence,” and CNN’s Anderson Cooper chimed in. lamenting Trump’s deviation into “equivalence,” i.e. holding the U.S. government to the same ethical standards as the Russian government.

This “moral equivalence” argument has been with us at least since the Reagan administration when human rights groups objected to President Reagan’s support for right-wing governments in Central America that engaged in “death squad” tactics against political dissidents, including the murders of priests and nuns and genocide against disaffected Indian tribes. To suggest that Reagan and his friends should be subjected to the same standards that he applied to left-wing authoritarian governments earned you the accusation of “moral equivalence.”

Declassified documents from Reagan’s White House show that this P.R. strategy was refined at National Security Council meetings led by U.S. intelligence propaganda experts. Now the “moral equivalence” theme is being revived to discredit a new Republican president who dares challenge this particular Official Washington “group think.”
...
Other U.S. presidents have had more or less blood on their hands than these recent chief executives, but it is hard to identify any modern U.S. president who has not been a “killer” in some form, inflicting death upon innocents whether as part of some “justifiable” mission or not.

But the mainstream U.S. press corps routinely adopts double standards when assessing acts by a U.S. president and those of an “enemy.” When the U.S. kills people, the mainstream media bends over backwards to rationalize the violence, but does the opposite if the killing is authorized by some demonized foreign leader.

That is now the case with Putin. Any accusation against Putin – no matter how lacking in evidence – is treated as credible and any evidence of Putin’s innocence is ridiculed or suppressed.
...
...(T)he ease with which Putin is called a murderer – based on “mysterious deaths” inside Russia – is reminiscent of how American right-wing groups suggested that Bill and Hillary Clinton were murderers by distributing a long list of “mysterious deaths” somehow related to the Clinton “scandals” from their Arkansas days. While there was no specific evidence connecting the Clintons to any of these deaths, the sheer number created suspicions that were hard to knock down without making you a “Clinton apologist.” Similarly, a demand for actual evidence proving Putin’s guilt in a specific case makes you a “Putin apologist.”

However, as a leader of a powerful nation facing threats from terrorism and other national security dangers, Putin is surely a “killer,” much as U.S. presidents are killers. That appears to have been President Trump’s point, that the United States doesn’t have clean hands when it comes to shedding innocent blood.

But telling such an unpleasant albeit obvious truth is not the way to gain entrance into the inner sanctum of Official Washington’s Deep State. The passwords for admission require you to say a lot of things that are patently false. Any inconvenient truth-telling earns you the bum’s rush out into the alley, even if you’re President of the United States.

The problem is the suggestion that it is therefore ok.

>21 RickHarsch: There we certainly agree.

France. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-foreign-leaders-phone-calls-234770

I'm glad we don't have another doormat president.

Russia might be ticked by Flynn departure, Trump's linking sanction removal to behavior in Crimea?

It cruised the US coast, fired a missile, buzzed a destroyer in the Black Sea--everything but show its hand (if it has stuff) on The Donald.

>25 margd: most of that is very old hat. The Russians have been cruising the U.S. coast with spy ships since forever. They were a constant companion any time we sailed from Norfolk back in the 1970's. Indeed they would crowd so close that on more than one occasion we almost collided. Same deal with regard to buzzing destroyers in the Black Sea. My destroyer was up in the Black Sea on Silver Fox ops a number of times and I have some great shots of Russian planes coming in right on the deck and just clearing out masts. We did the same thing to them when they visited "our pond" - the Med. We also crowded them as close as we could get. I have pictures of the Russian ships and you can make out the faces of their crew members - in other words - just business as usual.

Let's add Sweden to the list

https://twitter.com/SwedeninUSA/status/833462568257732612

At least, Trump has some friends abroad. The dictator's club? Robert Mugabe: Give Donald Trump a chance.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39027611?ocid=socialflow_twitter

"America for Americans" and "Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans".

An alphabet book for fascist nurseries waiting to happen.

Mugabe's wife is a peach too:

"Anyone who was with Mugabe in 1980 has no right to tell him he is old. If you want Mugabe to go, then you leave together. You also have to leave. Then we take over because we were not there in 1980," she said, pointing to herself.

Mugabe could run for election 'as a corpse' and still win votes, says his wife

>29 LolaWalser: LOL

Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom | 10:43 PM · Oct 4, 2019:
This is a level of discord between the Western allies the leaders of the old Soviet Union could only dream of achieving.
And all because the US President is not only ignorant and uneducable, but also, very likely,
because he fears what Russian intelligence might know about him.

Quote Tweet Bill Kristol @BillKristol · 13h
Putting Russia First: “In a summer 2018 call with Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump...disputed her intelligence community’s conclusion that Putin’s government had orchestrated the attempted murder and poisoning of a former Russian spy on British soil.”
https://washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-calls-with-foreign-leaders-have-long-...

Donald threw Kurds under the bus, as Erdogan requested. Kurds fought beside and for the US in Iraq and Syria.
In Turkey, Kurds have the misfortune of living in oil lands and wanting to escape rule of Turks, who, for example, banned Kurdish language, etc.
Why would anyone want to ally themselves with the US in future? (Putin smiles.)

NBC News @NBCNews | 11:09 PM · Oct 6, 2019:

BREAKING: In an extraordinary Sunday night statement, the White House announces that the US "will no longer be in the immediate area" of Northern Syria, allow Turkey to launch an invasion in the region and give Turkey responsibility for captured ISIS fighters in the area.

Statement from the Press Secretary (two paragraphs)
Oct 6, 2019
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1181043719497293824/photo/1

______________________________________________________________

Trump makes way for Turkish operation in Syria
10/7/2019

The US will play no role in an imminent Turkish military operation against US-backed Kurdish forces in north-eastern Syria, the White House says.

Turkey would become responsible for all Islamic State group prisoners in the area, the US statement said.

Turkey wants to clear Kurdish fighters - whom it regards as terrorists - away from its border with Syria.

It also says it wants to resettle up to two million Syrian refugees in a safe zone along the border.

It follows a phone call between President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

..."The United States government has pressed France, Germany, and other European nations, from which many captured ISIS fighters came, to take them back but they did not want them and refused.

"The United States will not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer."

...During his phone call with Mr Trump, Mr Erdogan expressed frustration at a lack of progress in establishing a "safe zone" in north-eastern Syria along the border with Turkey, which the Nato allies had agreed in August.

...the Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey considers a terrorist organisation...was a major part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the US-supported force that defeated IS in Syria.

Turkey also wants to move up to two million Syrian refugees from its territory into the zone. Turkey currently hosts 3.6 million Syrians sheltering from the conflict.

Turkey considers the YPG an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for three decades. The YPG denies any direct organisational links to the PKK. Ankara has previously condemned the US for supporting the YPG.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49956698

#33--it should be pointed out in walking away form the Kurds who have been fighting alongside the American military for almost two decades that by no means means that the next POTUS is going to be able to rectify that relationship that they as an ally in the region will be gone to us forever and these were maybe the most westernized people in the region and there is a very good probability that they will be either subsumed, destroyed or dispersed by the Turkish state. But really autocrats like Erdogan around the world can see that Trump can't be bought away from alliances. He has a knack for treason.

Annoyed Norwegian #TIR #FBIR @norwegian76
I'm sorry, USA.

We can no longer consider you an ally. This treaty is paramount to European security.

Trump is fulfilling his promises to Putin. No longer trying to hide anything.

Quote Tweet Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews · 11h 6:50 PM · Oct 7, 2019
The Trump administration is pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, which allows the United States and our allies and partners in Europe to monitor Russian military deployments. Withdrawal risks dividing the transatlantic alliance.
#Russia

(Letter from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Engel to National Security Advisor O'Brien) https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/_cache/files/4/6/46136e03-1d92-431b-aa31-7d20d2...

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT
Fintan O’Toole (Irish Times) | April 25, 2020

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

...this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.
Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

via https://www.facebook.com/daniel.j.dahms

Justin Trudeau -- gobsmacking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVEwNOInktY

It’s Not Just Trump. The World Worries America Is Broken.
Protests against police brutality and systemic racism highlight what is seen as the United States’ accelerated decline.
Colum Lynch | June 18, 2020

...Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador to Syria and special advisor to the Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne,...said the United States has been able to rebuild its diplomatic standing. “So in a way American already went through this kind of situation and was always able to rebound. There is this idea that if Trump is not reelected there should be a rebound.”

The difference this time around, he said, is that U.S. allies are questioning the extent to which there may be “something broken in the fabric of American society itself. You have at the same time a broken society and a broken political system.”

(Michael Fullilove, the executive director of Australia’s Lowy Institute) has not lost hope that a Democratic victory in the November elections could begin to restore America’s standing.

“The world will always remember America elected Donald Trump president, but I think you can make up a lot of the ground you lost,” he said. The United States, he added, has a long history of “sinning, falling, and picking yourself up and redeeming yourselves.”

But for overseas observers, that means making sure that Trump’s election really was an aberration.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/18/america-broken-trump-racism-protests-united...

________________________________________________________

A musical palate cleanser :)

1:25 https://twitter.com/Portland_State/status/1272223526896861184

In Germany they have a joke,

"What is bordering on insanity?"
Mexico and Canada.

Trump called May and Merkel 'losers' after their political setbacks, ex-officials say (Guardian)

Donald Trump described Theresa May and Angela Merkel as “losers” after they suffered political setbacks, and was repeatedly rude to them, without any of the deference he showed to authoritarian rulers, according to former officials and diplomats...

European Council on Foreign Relations:
How has your view of the US changed during the Coronavirus?

https://twitter.com/ClaireBerlinski/status/1278696326335774725/photo/1

Canada court rules US 'not safe' for asylum seekers
BBC | 22 July 2020

Canada's federal court has ruled that an asylum agreement the country has with the US is invalid because America violates the human rights of refugees.

The Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), in place since 2004, requires refugee claimants to request protection in the first safe country they reach.

But on Wednesday, a judge declared the deal unconstitutional due to the chance that the US will imprison the migrants.

The ruling marks a major victory for Canadian immigration activists.

...Federal court judge Ann Marie McDonald ruled that the deal was in violation of a section of Canada's Charter of Rights that bans the government from interfering in the right to life, liberty and security.

"It is my conclusion, based upon the evidence, that ineligible STCA claimants are returned to the US by Canadian officials where they are immediately and automatically imprisoned by US authorities," Judge McDonald said in her ruling.

"I have concluded that imprisonment and the attendant consequences are inconsistent with the spirit and objective of the STCA and are a violation of the rights guaranteed by section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms," she continued.

But the judge delayed the ruling for six months to allow Canada's parliament and the US Congress to respond. The ruling can also be appealed...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53494561

'Beyond the pale': antics of Trump ambassadors highlight crisis in US diplomacy (Guardian)

A record share of Donald Trump’s ambassadorial appointments have been political, mostly rewards for big-money donors, and his nominees have frequently stood out for their lack of qualifications or aptitude.

A report to be published on Tuesday by Senate Democrats on the current situation at the state department, titled Diplomacy in Crisis, said: “While it is true that every administration has its share of questionable appointments, the Trump administration’s choices have gone beyond the pale, jeopardizing the department’s ability to safeguard our nation’s interests”...

US to pull 12,000 troops out of Germany as Trump blasts 'delinquent' Berlin

The US is planning to pull nearly 12,000 troops out of Germany in a move the Pentagon insisted was about long-term strategy but which Donald Trump said was to punish Berlin for low defence spending...

Iran arms sales: US struggles to win support for extension of UN ban

The US may be forced to accept a UN code of conduct restricting conventional arms sales to Iran, since it is struggling to win unanimous support at the UN security council for a formal extension of the existing UN ban, which expires in October.

European nations fear a formal extension of the ban would result in Iran leaving the nuclear deal.

The three European signatories to the nuclear deal – Germany, France and the UK – are caught in a vice in that they do not wish to see the resumption of conventional arms sales to Tehran, but unlike the US, they do want to keep the 2015 nuclear deal alive. The Europeans are especially conscious of the fact that a Democratic win in November’s election would probably lead to the US rejoining the deal, and more positive relations between Tehran and the west...

Both from the Guardian

Embattled at Home, Trump Finds Himself Isolated Abroad, Too
Steven Erlanger | June 2, 2020

...In Europe, after years of snubs and American unilateralism, America’s traditional allies have stopped looking to him for leadership, no longer trust that this president will offer them much, and are turning their backs on him.

That was evidenced most obviously this week by the decision of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, not to attend the Group of 7 meeting Mr. Trump wanted so badly in Washington this month to show that the virus was behind him and the world was returning to normal.

Ms. Merkel cited the lingering threat of the virus, but a senior German official who spoke on the condition of anonymity made clear that she had other reasons to decline: She believed that proper diplomatic preparations had not been made; she did not want to be part of an anti-China display; she opposed Mr. Trump’s idea of inviting the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin; she did not want to be seen as interfering in American domestic politics.

And she was shocked by Mr. Trump’s sudden, unilateral decision to pull out of the World Health Organization.

The divide between Mr. Trump and European allies was widening even before American cities were convulsed by rioting. But the chaos on American streets, viewed from abroad, has only reinforced a sense that the conflicts Mr. Trump seems to sow have caught up with him...

...(Merkel) was so uncomfortable...that she told Mr. Macron, “Be my guest, be the interlocutor, I don’t want to be in the room with the guy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/world/europe/trump-merkel-allies.html

China sentences another Canadian to death on drugs charges
8/7/2020

A Chinese court has sentenced a second Canadian citizen to death on charges of producing illegal drugs.

A court notice in the province of Guangdong said Ye Jianhui was sentenced on Friday, a day after another court sentenced Xu Weihong.

They are the third and fourth Canadians to be sentenced to death in China recently.

Relations between the countries have been tense since the arrest of a Huawei executive in Vancouver in late 2018.

Meng Wanzhou's detention following a request from the United States angered China and soured relations with both Canada and the US...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53700474

How much does America’s missing diplomatic leadership matter? (Economist)

Donald Trump dismisses it as the “Deep State Department”. Yet America needs it more than ever...

a wider malaise in American diplomacy. The country’s foreign service is damaged and demoralised. Last month Bob Menendez, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a report warning that the State Department was “at risk of catastrophic failure”. The report is a catalogue of the damage done to America’s oldest federal agency, founded in 1789. It describes a department haemorrhaging talent and influence. The litany of woes is summed up in a leaked recording of a briefing on Washington last November by Colombia’s ambassador there, Francisco Santos, to his incoming foreign minister: “The US State Department, which used to be important, is destroyed, it doesn’t exist”...

US sees embarrassing UN defeat over Iran arms embargo proposal (Guardian)

The US has suffered a humiliating defeat at the United Nations as its proposal to extend an arms embargo on Iran won support from only the Dominican Republic at the security council vote...

the scale of the defeat on Friday underlined US isolation on the world stage...

Russia and China are partnering to reduce their dependence on the dollar — a development some experts say could lead to a “financial alliance” between them.
Dimitri Simes | August 16 2020

In the first quarter of 2020, the dollar’s share of trade between Russia and China fell below 50 per cent for the first time on record, according to recent data from Russia’s Central Bank and Federal Customs Service.

The greenback was used for only 46 per cent of settlements between the two countries. At the same time, the euro made up an all-time high of 30 per cent, while their national currencies accounted for 24 per cent, also a new high.

Russia and China have drastically cut their use of the dollar in bilateral trade over the past several years. As recently as 2015, approximately 90 per cent of bilateral transactions were conducted in dollars. Following the outbreak of the US-China trade war and a concerted push by both Moscow and Beijing to move away from the dollar, however, the figure had dropped to 51 per cent by 2019.

Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Nikkei Asian Review that the Russia-China “de-dollarisation” was approaching a “breakthrough moment” that could elevate their relationship to a de facto alliance.

...Russia’s push to accumulate renminbi is not just about diversifying its foreign exchange reserves, Mr Maslov explained. Moscow also wants to encourage Beijing to become more assertive in challenging Washington’s global economic leadership.

...Dethroning the dollar, however, will not be easy.

Jeffery Frankel, an economist at Harvard University, told Nikkei that the dollar enjoyed three major advantages: the ability to maintain its value in the form of limited inflation and depreciation, the sheer size of the American domestic economy, and the United States having financial markets that are deep, liquid and open. So far, he argued, no rival currency has shown itself capable of outperforming the dollar on all three counts.

Yet Mr Frankel also warned that while the dollar’s position is secure for now, spiralling debts and an overly aggressive sanctions policy could erode its supremacy in the long run.

“Sanctions are a very powerful instrument for the United States, but like any tool, you run the risk that others will start looking for alternatives if you overdo them,” he said. “I think it would be foolish to assume that it’s written in stone that the dollar will forever be unchallenged as the number one international currency.”

https://www.ft.com/content/8421b6a2-1dc6-4747-b2e9-1bbfb7277747

UK deliberately delaying Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe release action 'for fear of offending Trump', says her lawyers (Independent)

The UK government has deliberately delayed action to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison in Iran to avoid offending Donald Trump, lawyers acting for the British-Iranian woman have said. Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's legal team says the UK is dragging its feet on repaying a £400 million debt owed by Britain to Iran...

Melissa Eddy @meddynyt · 2h:

Asked about the claim by former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell that Pres. Trump had "charmed" her,
Chancellor Angela Merkel drew her eyebrows together, tilted her head and asked, "He did what?"

She then gave her standard rejection to comment on private discussions.
__________________________________________

This is one of my new favourite Merkel moments. A journalist asks her about Richard Grenell's claim that Trump "charmed" Merkel. You don't need to speak German to enjoy her reaction:

0:16 ( https://twitter.com/marceldirsus/status/1299293222993383424 )
From Thomas Sparrow

- Marcel Dirsus @marceldirsus6:30 AM · Aug 28, 2020

US sanctions on ICC prosecutor unacceptable, says EU (Guardian)

The European Union’s top diplomat has called for Washington to reverse its sanctions on the international criminal court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another member of the ICC, calling the measures “unacceptable and unprecedented”.

The US blacklisted Bensouda on Wednesday over her investigation into whether American forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan, under sanctions authorised by Donald Trump in June that allow for asset freezes and travel bans...

‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S.
From Myanmar to Canada, people are asking: How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? And why won’t the president commit to a peaceful transition of power?
Hannah Beech | Sept. 25, 2020

...Amid the pandemic and in the run-up to the presidential election, much of the world is watching the United States with a mix of shock, chagrin and, most of all, bafflement.

...A Pew Research Center poll of 13 countries found that over the past year, nations including Canada, Japan, Australia and Germany have been viewing the United States in its most negative light in years. In every country surveyed, the vast majority of respondents thought the United States was doing a bad job with the pandemic.

Such global disapproval historically has applied to countries with less open political systems and strongmen in charge. But people from just the kind of developing countries that Mr. Trump has mocked say the signs coming from the United States are ominous: a disease unchecked, mass protests over racial and social inequality, and a president who seems unwilling to pledge support for the tenets of electoral democracy....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/world/asia/trump-united-states.html

Trump’s Sanctions on International Court May Do Little Beyond Alienating Allies (NYT)

Critics say the administration has targeted a human rights lawyer with economic penalties meant for warlords, dictators and authoritarian governments...

A Joe Biden White House will have little time and less love for ‘Britain’s Trump’ (Guardian)

If he becomes the next US president, who will be Mr Biden’s ‘special friend’ in Europe? Certainly not Boris Johnson...

It's not just Trump – to much of the world, the US is a bully whoever is in charge (Guardian)

As a long-suffering citizen of a world run by US presidents, may I remind them that he is not very different from the other presidents that I and the rest of the non-American world have suffered for the past half century. Americans say they are better people than Trump. In solidarity, one might be tempted to say that, yes, sure, we are also better people than Trump. But one is compelled to add that although those former presidents might have had better syntax than Trump, worn better-fitted suits, had finer dance moves, weren’t proud “pussy grabbers”, or cunning tax dodgers, being a world-class bully has always been a part of the job.

The US has always elected a bully, nurtured him and asked him to go out in the world and do the presidential thing: fight the evil that is the rest of us. At the same time they have expected their president to be nice at home, have mercy on their Thanksgiving turkey and keep talking about the American dream and affordable healthcare.

Abroad, US presidents have wrought havoc, invaded and destroyed places whose names they could never pronounce, hosted murderous dictators from around the world at Camp David and found even more bloodthirsty ones to replace them.

Trump has just brought all that bullying home...

Trump administration in 'staggering' isolation at UN on health issues (Guardian)

The outgoing Trump administration’s final days at the United Nations have resulted in a deepening of US isolation on social and health issues, with only a handful of allies including Russia, Belarus and Syria.

In one vote this week, the US was entirely alone in backing its own amendment to a seemingly uncontroversial resolution about efforts to treat medical complications from childbirth. It called for the removal of references to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Population Fund. No other nation agreed, with 153 voting against the amendment and 11 abstaining.

A UN diplomat said the spectacle of a western ally and a superpower so totally isolated was “staggering”. “It’s amazing that they decided they want to put their isolation on record, on full display, like that,” the diplomat said...

Brittlestar @brittlestar | 8:32 AM · Jan 9, 2021:

STUPID IS INTERNATIONAL
1:54 ( https://twitter.com/brittlestar/status/1347899061186293760 )

What the Capitol riot means for US foreign policy (BBC)

Many foreign leaders - and especially Washington's allies - will have watched the events this week on Capitol Hill with amazement and alarm... The US has haemorrhaged both influence and soft power... "The US is by far the most politically dysfunctional and divided of all the world's advanced industrial democracies"...

As Johnson finally condemns Trump, Britain should examine its own shift to the right (Guardian)

Not only was the UK complicit in the president’s rise, but it has its own mobs and culture wars to answer for...

Letter from Africa: The continent no longer needs lectures from the US (BBC)

President Donald Trump, through his America First policy, redefined the US' image abroad. But that image has also been altered through his actions and words - not least his reported dismissal of African countries in highly derogatory terms.

And though the office of the president can be separated from the individual, President Biden will, in the light of the last four years, have to address Kenya and the rest of the continent in a markedly different tone and with a markedly different message... The US was no longer the shining city on the hill... Mr Biden takes over in the White House with the knowledge that the world no longer respects the United States in the same way.

And this could have implications for governance across the continent. Presidents no longer hold the US in awe and will find it easier to dismiss concerns about democratic processes. In the run-up to the vote in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni told a Channel 4 reporter that his administration's crackdown on protesters was aimed at preventing scenes similar to what unfolded in Washington...

President Biden may now know what it feels like to live in a country where individual leaders can easily trample on norms and conventions. Nevertheless, he will now need to tread more carefully when it comes to relations with Africa and he'll need to carefully weigh up any words of advice.

Biden's decrees vault America back onto the global stage. A whiplashed world wonders for how long (CNN)

To the outside world, the powers of a US president to make sweeping changes with a stroke of his or her pen can seem bewildering. Every four or eight years, an incoming leader can upend the policies of his predecessor and leave international allies struggling to keep up...

Short lived or not, the changes enacted through executive orders can have a serious impact on US relations with other nations and on international organizations whose activities are affected by shifts in US policy and funding. And the upheaval every four or eight years when a new administration comes in can leave policymakers feeling like they have whiplash.

A prime example is the Paris Agreement...

Bracing for a 2024 rerun?

Sens. Tim Kaine and Marco Rubio have reintroduced a bipartisan bill
to explicitly prohibit any President of the United States from withdrawing from NATO without Senate approval.

-Kyle Griffin (MSNBC) @kylegriffin1| 10:00 PM · Apr 15, 2021

Ukraine’s Leader, Meeting Biden, Seeks Security Assurances After Afghan Pullout
Andrew E. Kramer | Aug. 31, 2021

President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to emphasize the important role Ukraine plays in containing Russia, aides to the Ukrainian leader said.

MOSCOW — Unnerved by America’s abrupt and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is expected to raise questions about U.S. security commitments when he meets President Biden on Wednesday, an adviser to the Ukrainian leader said.

The meeting was supposed to be an opportunity for the U.S. to demonstrate support for Ukraine, something Mr. Zelensky has been seeking since 2019, when his effort became entangled in former President Trump’s first impeachment trial.

Now that the meeting is finally at hand, it comes in the wake of an event that has caused numerous American allies to question the firmness of Washington’s support. And few nations are as reliant on U.S. backing as Ukraine, bogged down in a seven-year-old war with Russian-backed separatists and ever fearful of the Kremlin’s intentions and foul play...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/world/europe/ukraine-biden-zelensky.html