President and un-indicted co-conspirator Donald Trump in the White House on December 21, 2018Photo: Getty Images
While we’re almost two years into Trump’s presidency, for example, there’s still no ambassador to Australia—one of America’s closest allies, a member of the Five Eyes spying alliance, and an incredibly important strategic military partner in Asia. Arthur Culvahouse Jr., former White House counsel, was finally nominated to the post in November and is expected to be confirmed by the Senate. But officials in Australia wonder why the hell a position for such an important ally was vacant for so long.
Mattis was supposed to stay on through February to ensure a smooth transition, but Trump fired him after the president bothered to realize what Mattis was actually saying—namely that the president is a very real threat to the security of the United States.
All of this makes this reboot of old rivalries weirder than anything we experienced during the old Cold War. And it makes the idea of missile defense even hairier. Who is the United States building missiles to defend against, at least on paper? If you ask anyone at the Pentagon, they’ll tell you China or Russia. But it’s unlikely you’d hear the same thing at the White House these days. And that’s very strange, given the rise of authoritarianism around the world.
[Sputnik]
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