Daniel Drezner who wrote a book on the infantile former guy, has some kind words for him: "Trump ... can move down a learning curve..."
His argument is that Trump spent most of the first term learning the basics of the government, so in a second term he could be more effective in implementing his policy goals, such as withdrawing from NATO and our alliances with South Korea and Japan.
Josh Marshall at TPM writes about foreign policy: "For years in DC there’s been a vocal China Hawk community".
Actually it was decades, almost a century. The China Lobby was old in the 1950's. As I recall, it started with influential figures who were associated with missionaries in China, such as Henry Luce. (My aunt and uncle worked for the Y in China in 1910's-20'.)
It was influential, meant we didn't recognize the People's Republic of China as real, and permit it to take its seat on the UN Security Council, until Nixon and Kissinger recognized it in the 1970's. People such as George Will fought consistently against Republican and Democratic presidents on the issue, eventually focusing on the effort to keep Taiwan well armed.
One of the lessons we should take away from our involvement in Afghanistan is that Americans don't react well to unexpected events. Looking back on 9/11 I think it was, as I remember thinking at the time, a lucky shot. But we reacted hysterically, especially after the anthrax attacks. That's not something I said on this blog then, because I wasn't blogging then. Might I have said something like that had I been blogging--perhaps, but unlikely. Too much of an outlying opinion. At some time I would have been comfortable saying that 9/11 was a lucky punch, a combination of circumstances and strategy which worked, but which wasn't likely to be repeatable.
But we overreacted after 9/11. I think we're overreacting now to the August exit from Afghanistan. It's not the end of the world, it's not major damage to the reputation or influence of the US.
The Post has an article on reverse emigration; the pandemic forcing migrants who lost their jobs to return home. What I found interesting was the diagrams showing the volume and direction of remittance flows. Mexico and India were big recipients and the US and UAE big sources.
I remember in the late 50's and 60's the left was very concerned about the volume of foreign aid Western governments needed to provide to the new governments of the Third World managing their new independence from the old colonialist powers. That was a big big issue in those days. Decolonialism is about as forgotten these days as the Cold War. For a long while it seemed that the effort was doomed to failure.
Without much notice, perhaps dating back to the immigration reform in the US in 1965 and OPEC oil embargo in the 1970's, emigration grew and so did the remittances back home. Remittance flows reached over $500 billion in 2018, according to the World Bank. In comparison foreign aid was $140 billion.
I may be getting somewhat conservative as I get older, but I take this as pointing to the power of individual decisions, market driven even, more power than progressive's belief in the ability of rational government to direct the course of human affairs. It's a reminder, not conclusive.
Reading Robert Gates: Exercise of Power, American Failures, Success, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World.
This Post review is pretty good. Gates applauds Nixon and Reagan as having foreign policy agendas on entering office, and working effectively to implement them. He likes George HW Bush's response to the end of the Cold War, but criticizes Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Trump. He offers overviews of our history in dealing with various foreign affairs issues over the last 50 years, during much of which he was either at CIA, NSC, or DOD. Then he offers suggestions for better management.
His three big things are:
