No Time to Talk Trumps foreign policy is all military, no diplomacy. Slate
We’re starting to see the consequences.
Slate
By FRED KAPLAN
FEB 09, 2018
Here is the baffling absurdity of America’s position in the world right now: We are getting more deeply embroiled in two wars and flirting with starting another. Our top military officers say (and have long said) that none of these wars have a military solution but rather must be settled politically. Yet the Trump administration is pouring in more troops, and expanding their missions, while doing little or nothing to conceive, much less pursue, a political course of action.
The two current wars are in Afghanistan and Syria; the third may erupt in North Korea. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is one of the officers—in his case, a retired Marine four-star general—who has poured cold water on the notion that we can kill our way to victory. He has said repeatedly that he the reason he needs more military assets and a wider military presence is to give our diplomats the leverage to make peace. But as more troops head into battle, our diplomats are dormant: crucial appointments remain unfilled; veteran foreign service officers are fleeing in droves; and the one time that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson opened a back-door negotiation with the North Koreans, President Trump slammed it shut. So we just dig ourselves deeper in conflicts that those in charge don’t know how to fight or win—that may be unwinnable.
Maybe such deals are the stuff of fantasy. Maybe diplomatic solutions to all these conflicts are a pipedream. Diplomacy is hard, doubly so when it involves solving problems that have long seemed intractable. This is why a nation, especially one that unfurls its muscles around the world, needs a serious diplomatic corps and a coherent strategic vision. Currently we lack both. And that being the case, it makes no sense to wade deeper into military quagmires.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/trumps-foreign-policy-is-all-military-no-diplomacy.html
