It seems to me that Canada cuddling up to China is the very behavior most inclined to trigger a US invasion of Canada: not today or tomorrow, but in a foreseeable future.
PM Carney should ponder that what happened to Venezuela's Maduro could also happen to him, should he succeed in becoming as big a pain in our bum as Maduro had become.
Richard Fernandez writes a column for PJ Media and blogs as wrechardthecat. Today he has an insight about Trump’s approach to foreign policy that I find useful and worth sharing with you.
Instead of invading hostile states with large ground forces, it has used a discontinuous series of actions to continuously nudge states in a preferred direction, rather like a tugboat pushing a ship rather than boarding it and seizing the helm.To use a construction industry metaphor, the Trump approach to regime change more closely resembles renovating and remodeling an old building rather than demolishing it and replacing it with a new structure.
We see this in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. We’ve tried nation-building and, since the World War II after-action clean-up ended, we haven’t been good at it. Trying something else makes perfect sense.
Think of the new approach as “post-Pottery Barn,” we don’t quite break it, and don’t end up owning it. It more nearly resembles the action of a muscular HOA, coercing a misbehaving homeowner to stop being a neighborhood nuisance.
Writing for the Brussels Signal, Canadian essayist Conrad Black notes that Trump has been taking down the few allies Russia and China have attracted. He concludes:
No one should underestimate the psychological and strategic importance of the disappearance as Russo-Chinese allies in the first half of this year of Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, on the heels of Syria. This is a seismic shift that has gone largely unnoticed and is not over.
Unnoticed only in the West, I might add. Be certain it has not escaped the attention of both Moscow and Beijing. Trump is altering the worldwide balance of power.
A man in a hurry, Trump bids fair to become the most consequential president since Ronald Reagan, perhaps even since Lyndon Johnson. Like Trump, both of those were also widely hated.
Politico has a poll of Canadians who are angry with Trump’s America, not viewing us as a reliable ally or friend (out from behind paywall). In a sense, they are probably correct.
Trump publicly takes a very dim view of nations he believes are “taking advantage of the US” in trade or otherwise. For example, Canada’s current military is a pale shadow of its former self. They know we have to defend them against invasion so they don’t bother.
Prior presidents put up with Canada’s “spoiled child” behavior, Trump is disinclined to do so. Tough love is more his style.
He seems much more likely than his predecessors to try to change things he dislikes, See for example, Venezuela and Iran. I’d be very surprised if Trump hasn’t privately considered whether taking over Canada is practical.
Multiple sources are reporting US forces have captured Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro who, with his wife, has been flown out of the country and is being held somewhere. There will be a news conference at Mar-a-Lago in less than an hour.
I hope this isn’t someone’s idea of a masterful troll. It is on the White House website and several other places.
Our get-it-done President can check off another accomplishment. There are autocratic governments in Cuba and Nicaragua that should be examining their exit strategies about now.
I hope the good people of Venezuela can pull their country back together and, with the help of their huge oil reserves, once again become one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. We need to send the thousands of Venezuelan refugees back home to help with this process.
President Trump strongly hints he’s authorized CIA anti-cartel activity within Venezuela. He notes we now have the sea lanes off Venezuela pretty well locked down.
This may be a bluff, with the hope Maduro starts a purge within his ‘government’ of anyone suspected of less-than-total loyalty. This sort of “housecleaning” normally results in less effective government as everyone wastes time on butt-covering. Supporters of those purged become less loyal in fact, if performatively more loyal.
Donald Trump wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and by rights, should have won it. He has been instrumental in calming violence in several hot spots world wide, most recently in Gaza.
The woman who won it, Maria Corina Machado of Venezuela, is a worthy candidate and probably has more personally at risk than most. Standing up to Maduro and his thugs is no small thing.
Still, getting Israel and Hamas to agree to exchange hostages and talk about a settlement is a bigger thing and even Democrats agree Trump gets beaucoup credit for making that happen.
The committee that picks the winner each year is leftish and most likely disapproves of Trump. After all, they gave Barack Obama the prize for being elected while black.
Obama had only been in office 8 months when the award was given. He had nothing like the accomplishments that Trump has amassed in that same time frame.
Soft bigotry of low expectations (for POCs) seems to characterize the Nobel Peace Prize committee.
President Trump has tasked our military with taking out the drug cartels south of the border. He has designated cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations." This is no simple mission, it may not even be possible.
As cartels are well armed, this will be a violent intervention on foreign soil that includes Mexico, Venezuela, and possibly elsewhere south of the border. It will be interesting to see how these countries, some or all of which are corrupt, react to the announcement.
Our collaboration with the locals will likely be fruitless as their governments are riddled with government employees on the take who would leak any joint plans to the cartel.
Latin American countries normally are touchy about their "sovereignty." A long history of US troop interventions in Mexico, Panama, Grenada, Haiti, and elsewhere gives them pause.
It is possible Trump will seek permission to hunt cartels. If a country refuses, cut off US visas for citizens of that country and tariff their exports to us at 100%. But, infuriating the locals is a good way to get them to cozy up to the Chinese who already cooperate with the cartels, something not in our interest.
Any agreements permitting our troops will need to include the special wording which says any collateral damage will be settled by arbitration. Otherwise you can't ask our troops to commit what are criminal acts if done by non-LEOs in a foreign nation with which we are not at war.
CBS News reports President Trump has revoked President Biden’s preferential treatment for refugees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Some 532,000 came in under what was called the CHNV program.
The termination of their work permits and deportation protections under an immigration authority known as parole will take effect in late April, 30 days after March 25, according to a notice posted by the federal government.
The Department of Homeland Security said it will seek the arrest and deportation of those subject to the policy change if they fail to depart the U.S. in the next 30 days. Officials are urging migrants to use the newly repurposed CBP Home smartphone app to register for self-deportation.
Needless to say, this is another good thing Trump is doing.
So the judge on Trump's New York trial and conviction on 34 counts of inaccurate record keeping has passed sentence on DJT. Trump is sentenced to exactly nothing, no incarceration, no fine, only the unlovely title of "convicted felon." Trump is out his undoubtedly significant legal fees.
Another way to think about this is that in early November the American people served as a gigantic "appellate jury." Disagreeing with the New York jury, we found Trump not guilty and reelected him President by a 312 to 226 margin.
At the same time we also rendered a 'verdict' on the abuse of the legal system that has come to be known as "lawfare," a portmanteau of the words "law" and "warfare." The people abusing the system in this way are no better than what passes for politicians in a banana republic somewhere in the third world.
Paradoxically, bringing lawfare out in the open with no apologies makes the decent of our country into autocracy more likely. We have become more like Russia, Venezuela, or any number of African countries where leaders hang onto power by illegal means because the only way to die a free person is to die in office or in exile.
Putin finds himself in this position now, and his choices for exile aren't great. It will be surprising if Trump can resist the impulse to try Biden for corruption, influence peddling, representing a foreign government without registering, and lying about it. All of which Biden did.
Steve Hayward of Power Line follows the writing of a financial analyst Robert Stirling. Stirling writes what well might ensue if Kamala Harris' food price controls are enacted and enforced.
Hayward has posted what Stirling predicts, it's bad and it feels real. Its 13 steps are too long to post here, each is a paragraph. I've given you the edited topic sentence of each step.
1. The government announces that grocery retailers aren’t allowed to raise prices.
2. Grocery stores (snip) can’t survive if their suppliers raise prices. So the government announces that food producers (snip) also aren’t allowed to raise prices..
3. Because stores in lower-income areas aren’t able to cover overhead (snip), grocery chains start to shut them down.
4. Meanwhile, margins for food producers are also quickly eroding.
5. Grocery chains, which have finite shelf space, start to repurpose their stores (snip) to sell more non-price-controlled items. (I noted this yesterday)
6. Food producers stop making products with lower margins. Grocery chains start competing with each other to secure inventory.
7. Small grocery chains start to shut down entirely, or get sold to larger chains like Kroger.
8. Smaller food producers—which typically sell via distributors, rather than directly to grocery chains—start to go out of business.
9. As supply chains break down, lines start to form outside grocery stores every morning.
10. The federal government announces a program to issue block grants for states to purchase and operate shuttered grocery stores.
11. The government announces that prices for all key food costs—corn, wheat, cattle, energy, etc.—are also now fixed.
12. Shockingly, the government struggles to operate one of the most complex industries on the planet.
13. Communism, mass starvation, and the end of America quickly ensue.
It starts to feel Soviet at about step 9. Events like these are why a substantial fraction of Venezuela's population has moved here as illegal aliens. Where in blazes can we go if this occurs? Let's not find out, do you agree?
I did a quick Internet search for articles claiming Latin America was going left politically, and found a dozen or more in the past year. Which makes Chile's rejection Sunday of a proposed new constitution with a very left bias all the more interesting.
Perhaps there is some common sense in the region's politics after all. Some sense that Venezuela and Cuba aren't especially models to emulate in pursuit of a good life.
One robin, they say, doesn't necessarily mean spring has arrived. Let's keep watching for other signs of political practicality in our neighbors to the South.
Chile is one of the 4-5 countries to our south upon which I keep a weather eye. It has for 40+ years operated under a very business-friendly constitution which has enabled it to become perhaps the most successful economy in Central and South America. So reports the Washington Post, echoed by msn.com.
With success came inequality, and those left behind haven't been happy. In 2019 they voted to write a new constitution and to do so in a way that incorporated the views of the entire society.
Chileans are voting to accept or reject the proposed constitution as we write this. Polls suggest the ultra-leftist 388 article document may be defeated. One voter called the document “'indigenist' and 'in the style of Venezuela.'”
For Chile's sake, I hope they turn it down and write one which is more "Western," as one interviewee hoped. We should know in a few days.
Later ... It didn't take "a few days," more like a few hours. The polls were correct, the new constitution has been defeated. The Wall Street Journal has the outcome.
The national vote to write a new constitution is still Chilean law. So another assembly will be chosen and a second draft constitution prepared to be voted on. Opinion polling can help the second effort avoid the unpopular features included in the one just defeated.
BBC News reports leftist protest leader Gabriel Boric has won the Chilean presidential runoff election, defeating rightist José Antonio Kast. With just over half the votes counted, Boric was ahead 56% to 45% and Kast has conceded.
Economically strong Chile now begins on a path which leads to the same sort of economic meltdown formerly wealthy Venezuela has experienced under Chavez and Maduro. How far down the path they go remains to be seen.
Latin America has once again demonstrated its characteristic cultural weakness, snatching economic defeat from the jaws of victory. I hypothesize the fault arises in the shared Iberian colonial heritage.
We don’t write about it every week, maybe not every month, but one of the issues COTTonLINE keeps an eye on is the state of our hemisphere. Today comes a good-news Associated Press report from Chile, which nation has mostly been a source of bad-news stories in recent years.
Two onetime outsiders hailing from opposite extremes of the political spectrum received the most votes Sunday in Chile’s presidential election but failed to garner enough support for an outright win, setting up a polarizing runoff in the region’s most advanced economy.
José Antonio Kast, a lawmaker who has a history of defending Chile’s military dictatorship, finished first with 28% of the vote compared to 26% for former student protest leader Gabriel Boric.
Kast, in a victory speech, doubled down on his far right rhetoric, framing the Dec. 19 runoff as a choice between “communism and liberty.” He blasted Boric as a puppet of Chile’s Communist Party — a member of the broad coalition supporting his candidacy — who would pardon “terrorists,” be soft on crime and promote instability in a country that has recently been wracked by protests laying bare deep social divisions.
AP didn’t consider this electoral outcome good news, that evaluation is mine. Interestingly, Chile faces some of the same problems we in the U.S. face.
Kast, 55, from the newly formed Republican Party, emerged from the far right fringe after having won less than 8% of the vote in 2017 as an independent. But he’s been steadily rising in the polls this time with a divisive discourse emphasizing conservative family values as well as attacking migrants — many from Haiti and Venezuela — he blames for crime.
Notice the AP’s bias, “far right fringe” and “divisive discourse” are loaded terms. Chile has intermittently demonstrated the ability to favor free markets and reject the far left, which Boric represents. When Chile has done so, its economy has boomed.
As a result of which it has, as even AP admits, “the region’s most advanced economy.” We can hope this is one of those times. Also note many of the Haitians at our southern border are repeat-offender economic refugees coming here from Chile.
Articles at Quillette tend to be long, and this by Benjamin Kerstein is no exception. An American who lives in Israel, he writes about the polar forces trying to pull apart the country of his birth, as seen from a distance.
His article is, for these days, amazingly even-handed. It’s a plea for an activist center that seems mostly unenergized and inactive in our supposedly ‘United’ States.
Kerstein sees the left jonesing to wander off into a faux-utopian mess like Venezuela or Cuba, while the right imagines an authoritarian strong man overcoming the self-perpetuating uniparty blob. He imagines some kind of Balkanization of city-vs-rural separation ending up in Somalia-like militias and warlordism.
Kerstein gives Joe Biden credit for a centrism of which I don’t see much evidence, and for lowering the presidential profile, which he certainly has done. It is a substantially insightful analysis. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.
Afterthought … Another Benjamin - Franklin - is supposed to have answered a question about the nature of the embryonic new government the founders had just designed, describing it as “A republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin’s caveat seems particularly prescient in these fraught days.
RealClearWorld links to three articles today to which I’d draw your attention, each described briefly below.
First, Leonid Bershidsky writes for Bloomberg about why both the Soviets and the U.S. failed in Afghanistan. Here’s a key thought:
No matter what your values, no matter how much time you spend or how many soldiers you lose, no matter whether you’re on the winning or the losing side in geopolitical battles, what you’ll leave behind in Afghanistan is scenes of looting, a weak regime too dependent on your support and unlikely to hold out much longer, tough local fighters who feel vindicated for years of hardship, and gloating Pakistani generals across the border. Another constant: Afghanistan’s flourishing opiate industry, which neither the Soviets nor the Americans could undermine.
Second, Andres Oppenheimer writes for the Miami Herald about Peru’s new leftist President-elect Pedro Castillo. Some are saying Castillo wants to be another leftist autocrat like Venezuela's Chavez.
Castillo vows to call a referendum to convene a constitutional assembly — something that most constitutional lawyers say would be unconstitutional. People who have talked with Castillo’s close aides in recent days tell me that the referendum is one of the issues he considers non-negotiable, and that he is determined to carry it out.
Writing at American Greatness, Christopher Roach surveys modern America and finds much about which to be sad. His base in Florida gives him a neighborly look at many third world countries. He sees many signs our great land is losing first world status and becoming a third world country.
So, what are the characteristics of a first world country, in the author's view?
And what are the characteristics of a third world country, again in Roach's view?
- First world status comes from various political, social, and economic achievements. One of the more salient is low corruption.
- Low levels of corruption foster another distinct feature of America’s first world status: the dominance of the private sector and high degrees of entrepreneurialism.
- Another feature of American life has been low levels of crime and disorder.
- Political normality, compromise, and restraint are other features of first world societies.
- The American people were not just an assembly of economic units with nothing in common. They were a people.
- The endemic corruption of the Third World both reflects and reinforces an extreme tribalism, which elevates the extended family above the public as a whole.
- Elections and parties reflect these ethnic divisions, and a winner-take-all spirit prevails.
- To the extent there is a private sector in the Third World, it is intertwined with and dependent on the political one.
- A related feature of the Third World is failing infrastructure.
- Yet another notable feature of the Third World is poverty, lawlessness, and disorder.
- A final feature of the Third World, now familiar at home, is high stakes politics.
Roach describes all of the foregoing, with examples of how we're becoming more like a third world country. And he concludes with this view of modern America.
This is not Norman Rockwell’s America. Indeed, it’s not even the America one might remember growing up in the 1980s and ’90s. It’s changed for the worse.
More important, the rules required to survive and thrive are quite different from those of the recent past. As in Venezuela or Iraq, politics and life are becoming “winner take all.” It’s important to know when compromise is not possible. And, under these circumstances, it pays to be a winner.
There are certainly substantial swathes of our nation where his description is increasingly accurate. His article is not fun, but it does point to our increasing national dysfunction, our inability to get done what needs doing.
Out of 5000 delegates to the Democrat's convention, roughly 1/4 (over 1000) voted "No" on their platform, which passed anyway. You might ask if they did so because it was too radical, too far left?
No, they voted against it because it wasn't radical enough. It didn't include enough of Bernie Sanders' "free stuff," wasn't sufficiently anti-capitalist, pro-socialist.
These are bad people, who should be encouraged to emigrate to Cuba or Venezuela.