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deploying its own conventional military capabilities in foreign countries in aid of its strategic objectives.
Just like the US!
Trump failed to understand
if there was no final statement, maybe the meeting never took place, and how terrible that would be for mankind.
That's nonsense, surely the reason is that if there is no communiqué, what are the public going to think you've been doing for the last 3 days?
What exactly did the President have in mind? they wanted to know. Neither Pompeo nor I had the slightest idea, but we were also both certain neither did Trump.
Trump didn’t favor Helsinki. “Isn’t Finland kind of a satellite of Russia?” he asked. (Later that same morning, Trump asked Kelly if Finland was part of Russia.) I tried to explain the history but didn’t get very far
the North Atlantic Treaty’s iconic article 5, which stated that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” This provision is actually less binding than its reputation, since each alliance member will merely take “such action as it deems necessary.” It had been invoked only once, after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
It was like making and executing policy inside a pinball machine, not the West Wing of the White House.
Trump generally had only two intelligence briefings per week, and in most of those, he spoke at greater length than the briefers, often on matters completely unrelated to the subjects at hand.
Trump, as usual, was having trouble distinguishing responsible measures to protect legitimate American interests from what amounted to vast overreaching of the sort no other government, especially a democratic one, would even consider.
Trump approached trade and trade deficits as if reading a corporate balance sheet: trade deficits meant we were losing, and trade surpluses meant we were winning. Tariffs would reduce imports and increase government revenues, which was better than the opposite.
Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on Presidents should be repealed for him. I was aware of no such chatter.
Trump agreed, hours after disagreeing with precisely the same points, to keep the decisions in place. Hearing this, I asked Mulvaney if I had not been clear about this the day before. “You were very clear about it,” said Mulvaney, “but sometimes it takes two or three tries to get it through.”
North Korea had what it wanted from the United States and Trump had what he wanted personally. This showed the asymmetry of Trump’s view of foreign affairs. He couldn’t tell the difference between his personal interests and the country’s interests.
What I heard next was shocking, but I distinctly remember hearing him say “I don’t care if ISIS comes back into Iraq.”
