Paris Climate Accord:
In a 2017
report, the UN said:
“Political, industrial and civil leaders are strengthening and implementing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Yet current state pledges cover no more than a third of the emission reductions needed, creating a dangerous gap, which even growing momentum from non-state actors cannot close.”
Few of the signatories even made plans to reduce emissions in accordance with their Paris commitments.
Only seven countries are on track to meet their emission targets. Meanwhile, the United States has
cut more total carbon dioxide emissions than any other nation. From 2008 to 2018, it fell by 9% when the rest of the world increased their emissions by 17%. China’s emissions growth alone wiped out America’s reductions in 2017 by more than threefold. Emissions
fell slightly in the U.S. in 2019 as well.
First off, quoting British Petroleum in a discussion about climate change is a galaxy-brain move.
Second, the US reduction in
total carbon emissions is frequently misleading as we are so large a country (and put out so much carbon dioxide), a 1% drop in our emissions could in total terms be vastly larger than a small country with a more aggressive carbon plan.
Third, each US individual puts out over twice the CO2 than the average European or Chinese person, and the Chinese stats are skewed because products made in China for shipment to the US are counted in China's annual CO2 pollution
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/10/06/us-emissions-four-years-president-trump/
Fourth, while US emissions have been going down, the majority of that decline was due to policies implemented by Obama or state-level initiatives.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/10/06/us-emissions-four-years-president-trump/
In Obama’s eight years as president, CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and cement production fell by 11%. The amount of coal
used for primary energy production decreased by 38% while renewable generation went up by 44%.
In Trump’s three years in power to 2019, this trend continued but slowed down. CO2 emissions fell by just 0.5%.
...
The US reductions were the largest in the world in absolute terms rather than as a percentage change. Other nations
reduced emissions faster in 2019.
While US emissions declined by 3%
so did those of ‘advanced economies’ in general. Japan’s fell by 4%, the EU’s by 5% and Germany’s by 8%.
Kevin Kennedy, of the World Resources Institute, said any emissions reductions were not a result of US government policy but because coal is becoming “increasingly uneconomic” compared to gas and renewables. He also credited the ‘We’re Still In’ coalition of US states and cities with taking climate action in spite of Trump.
The Chinese government is a shining beacon of lax environmental and labor standards. I’ll believe they’ll lead the way to a green future when I see it. Until then, they’ll continue to contribute 30% of the world’s pollution (the most of any nation, second place is U.S. at 15%
https://www.activesustainability.com/environment/top-5-most-polluting-countries/)
That China has a lot of pollution now in no way disproves the statements and policies from the Chinese government indicating their quite aggressive carbon reduction goals.
Not exactly a dumpster fire backing out of this agreement almost none of the world is even abiding by. Not a very effective agreement to care strongly about.
And how much of that backsliding is because the United States isn't making climate change a major diplomatic issue?
And should we not do something critical to the survival of us on this pale blue dot simply because other countries are being lazy? Whatever happened to the good sort of American exceptionalism? "We do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
JPCOA
Not paying Iran to have to secretly develop nuclear weapons is not a shimmering example of positive foreign policy.
Where did this idea that sanction relief is paying Iran come from? Many sanctions were put on Iran to deter them from a military nuclear program. When Iran agreed to the JCPOA which effectively ended their miliary nuclear program, it makes sense those sanctions would be lifted. Plus, Iran has to be given some incentive sign on to the JCPOA.
You express distress about Saudi but not Iran?
Given how terrible Saudi Arabia is, and the other gulf slave-states, I have a slight preference toward working Iran in the region. Iran, after all, is a sort-of democracy with changes in power coming from (sort-of) democratic elections.
I’m not sure how anyone who looks into Suleimani’s record wouldn’t recognize him as a Warhawk terrorist godfather type. Labeling him a “non-belligerent” is either wrong or flat out dated.
Did we end up in war with Iran when I wasn't looking?
Regardless, the killing of Soleimani raises serious concerns over its legality under both international law/UN Charter obligations and, for you probably most importantly, under US domestic law.
https://www.justsecurity.org/67949/...-soleimani-its-lawfulness-and-why-it-matters/
https://www.lawfareblog.com/was-soleimani-killing-assassination
https://www.lawfareblog.com/irrelevance-imminence
The U.N. Security Council has affirmed the continuing vitality of the ban against state-on-state assassination in the face of strong countervailing arguments. In April 1988, when nine Israeli commandos murdered Abu Jihad in his Tunis home, the council
condemned “vigorously the aggression, perpetrated ... against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Tunisia in flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations, international law and norms of conduct.” At the time of his death, Jihad was a senior Palestine Liberation Organization military strategist who had earlier been implicated in a number of terrorist attacks against Israel.
International law’s denunciation of such assassinations reflects nations’ hard-headed calculations of their national interest. Public officials are well aware of the iron law of reciprocity and are not eager to paint targets on their own backs. It may, in part, have been that realization that led President Gerald Ford, in 1976, to
promulgate a ban on assassination (which supposedly is
still in effect). Correctly or not, suspicion existed in Washington at the time that President Kennedy’s assassination had been carried out in retaliation for his authorization of the assassination of Fidel Castro. Jihad’s assassination might have preempted another attack. But powerful nations such as the United States cannot seek security in short-term satisfaction.
As Henry Kissinger put it in 2002, “It is not in the American national interest to establish pre-emption as a universal principle available to every nation.” Even accepting the probability of preemption, the limits of necessity apply: It’s one thing to respond to the threat of attack by destroying or degrading irreplaceable human or material assets likely to be deployed in that attack, but quite another to kill a state official who plans or authorizes that attack.
That an attack may be imminent, therefore, does not license the assassination of foreign officials who may be plotting it. If this were so, thousands of government leaders who masterminded hundreds of unlawful uses of force over the 75 years since the U.N. charter was ratified all could have been valid targets. Planners and decision makers in the military chain of command can be legitimate targets after a war begins, but not in peacetime before it starts.
Targeted killings of uniformed military officers opens up a number of serious problems, none of which look good for the United States.
Look at it this way, the fall of 1990, when the United States was imposing an armed blockade on Iraq and openly calling for a military invasion, would it have been appropriate for Iraq to engage in a targeted killing of a US general on the grounds the general was planning hostile acts against Iraq and Iraqi servicemembers? Should Ukraine be allowed to assassinate Russian military officers on the ground Russian military officers have a relation with the rebels in eastern Ukraine who are fighting Ukrainian government forces?
WHO
Trump stopped sending them money after it came out they ignored Taiwan’s warnings about the virus and increasing perception (worldwide) as deferent to China despite China trying to conceal the outbreak and silencing whistle blowers. Talk about downplaying and exacerbating. It’s a bad thing the country isn’t pouring money into this thing anymore?
The New York TimesTrump Slammed the W.H.O. Over Coronavirus. He's Not Alone.
Yeah, the WHO screwed up its initial response to Covid. Guess what, so did the entire rest of the world.
As far as withdrawing from the WHO...
American withdrawal from the WHO will have another impact: China’s influence will grow. And America will lose yet another battle in an ideological war that most of us don’t even know we are fighting. For more than a decade, while we’ve been distracted by other things, the Chinese government has made the gradual rewriting of international rules—all kinds of rules, in many realms, including commerce and politics—one of the central pillars of its foreign policy. At a Communist Party congress in 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping
openly declared this to be a “new era” of “great-power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.” And in this new era—a time of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”—China is seeking to “take an active part in leading the reform of the global governance system.” Stated plainly, this is an attempt to rewrite the operating language of the international system so that it benefits autocracies instead of democracies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/trump-who-withdrawal-china/616475/
NATO
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gave credit to Trump for getting Canada and Euro nations to pay up and meet the 2% GDP contributions agreed upon in 2014.
NATO’s continued existence will be determined by whether the other members pay up (so far only Greece, Estonia, the UK and Poland meet that 2% goal - latest numbers I could find).
Trump is encouraging NATO members to contribute to its success (seems anti-Russian to me btw), and he’s making sure the nation is being paid fairly for its role as muscle to all these other wealthy countries (Germany, Lexumberg, South Korea, Japan to name a few) who have been freed to spend their money and resources on other things because they have the US to defend them.
Taking a transactional lens to these agreements is shrewd, not a “dumpster fire”.
Not since the 60s has NATO been about military defense. The 2% GDP contribution is pointless and everyone in NATO knows that. Should a shooting war in Europe break out, the presence of another Dutch armored unit, or Belgian squadron, won't make a lick of difference. There is some concern about European military readiness as part of peacekeeping or limited military intervention under an EU/UN umbrella, but that is pretty minor as any European military deployment will be backed up by France. Every European country could cut their military budgets to $0 and NATO would still be a good deal for the United States. If Europe relies on the United States for military defense, it means they have vastly more limited options for pursuing and independent foreign policy. (Because France trying to resurrect francafrique gets annoying fast.)
Plus, the best strategy for containing China is to double down hard on the transatlantic alliance and break Europe off from China; getting into stupid political fights over GDP contribution is damaging to that. From a 'transactional' perspective, NATO and the transatlantic alliance is far stronger when France and Germany are emphatically defending the alliance, than openly wondering if it is dead while paying for a couple more tanks.
Oh, and Japanese rearmament is a bad idea that will screw over the fragile anti-China alliance we have been trying to cultivate in SEA.
Removing troops from Syria and Afghanistan (pending compliance from the peace agreement with the Taliban - an achievement in itself)
The Syria withdrawal as carried out was bad because it was a) done without any public discussion of our role in the Middle East and b) damaged America's ability to work with local forces in any conflict in the future. The Kurds fought and died alongside US forces against ISIS, and we subsequently left them hanging because Trump got suckered by Erdogan. Now, should US forces be in Syria? That is an entirely different question and should be discussed both in public and by congress; but the way we treated the Kurds was terrible.
Oh, and US troops are still in Syria.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/us/politics/us-troops-syria-russia.html
As far as Afghanistan goes, perhaps it is as the old Vulcan proverb says, "Only Nixon can go to China", but until we hear more I'm not taking a stance on it. To my knowledge, nothing has come out regarding what Afghanistan will look like and whether international forces will pull out.
and meeting with Kim Jon-Un to communicate about denuclearization aren’t exactly “dumpster fire” bad either.
Nothing has happened from North Korea. We started with the "fire and fury" war scare, then Trump held hands with Kim and wrote love letters to each other. North Korea got a massive diplomatic coup by having the President of the United States meet personally with Kim. The United States got in return, nothing. North Kora toned down its rhetoric, but is still pursuing its nuclear weapons program; and recent information suggests they are making substantial progress on warhead miniaturization and reentry technologies.
EDIT: Forgot link
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2020-09/news/un-experts-see-north-korean-nuclear-gains
