sundance:
Hours before the Trump administration briefed 100 senators today on the issues surrounding North Korea, a more consequential announcement was made.
The jaw dropping announcement (hidden by U.S. media) appears to show just how long President Trump has been putting the North Korea strategy together. However, before discussing that aspect, we review the Senate Briefing at the White House:
Today Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presided over a meeting meeting to brief Senators.
The details of that meeting have not been made public because of their classification and sensitivity. The meeting lasted about one hour and discussed various financial and military options available for pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear program. (link)
Here’s where it gets really interesting.
For months the media have, at random, ridiculed President Trump for not distancing himself from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. President Duterte has been cracking down on Filipino drug gangs in his country and his approach has been severe and extremely tough. Indeed Duterte’s zero tolerance approach has been brutal.
However, shortly after his election, December 3rd 2016, President Trump chose not to refute Duterte for his approach toward confronting the Filipino drug gangs and drug epidemic. The media were apoplectic. Duterte responded by calling President Trump “a deep thinker“. Duterte said he was greatly pleased with the “rapport” he has established with the newly elected U.S. president.
Instead of President Trump calling out President Duterte for the severity of his approach, President Trump moderated any criticism and said he understood that Duterte was confronting the problem the best way he knew how for his country.
That was in December of 2016.
Well, guess who is now the rotating (every year) Chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)?
Yup, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
And just yesterday, after a visit last week from Vice-President Pence, ASEAN announced:
Southeast Asian nations would adopt a softer than usual tone about South China Sea disputes at a leaders’ summit on Saturday in Manila, and exclude references to militarization or island-building, according to a draft of the chairman’s statement.
Although some Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders will express “serious concern” over the “escalation of activities” in the disputed sea, ASEAN will drop references, or even allusions, to China’s construction of artificial islands and the military hardware it has placed on them, according excerpts of the draft seen by Reuters. (link)
China has been expanding its seven man-made islands in the Spratlys (South China Sea) for several years, and the action has been a considerable point of angst for the region and for U.S. geo-political strategists in the former Obama administration.
However, despite the activity, and despite the protestations by the Obama White House and Obama State Department, the general consensus has been there’s nothing any nation can do about it because China exerts tremendous economic leverage in the entire region. Additionally, the man-made Islands are too far along for any substantive international efforts to thwart them.
The
horsegiant panda is now fully out of the barn.
Much more effective than calling in a folk singer. This, folks, is what a Presidency looks like.