"Trump hasn’t forfeited America’s global leadership. On the world stage, his is a new flavor of the same dish. America is still playing the futile role of global cop, still reigns as the only superpower with a globe-straddling military presence and is still picking fights in distant regions remote to US national-security interests. The fact that it is Donald Trump at the helm of all this is fooling observers into thinking more has changed than actually has."
"Barack Obama left office as the first two-termer in American history to have been at war every single day of his presidency. In his last year alone, U.S. forces dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven different countries. Trump blew past that tally nine months into his tenure. Indeed, this putatively 'isolationist' president has deepened entanglements on every battlefield Obama left him, ramping up airstrikes, kill-or-capture missions, and civilian casualties."
"From the United States’ point of view, the National Security Strategy document highlighted how China and Russia are trying to shape a new geopolitical environment in the region, which contrasts sharply from Washington’s aims and interests. It pointed out that while Russia is trying to advance its position as the leading political and military power broker, China is pushing ahead with a 'win, win' economic policy."
"Recent reports suggest the US is considering a 'bloody nose' strike — highly visible but materially limited — on North Korea to make a statement, and that President Donald Trump's secretaries of state and defense are the key figures holding him back. Experts have panned the idea of a strike on North Korea with near unanimity, but the Trump administration has consistently touted the use of force as a potential tool."
"The strategy, the first such document to be issued by the Pentagon in roughly a decade, represented an historic shift from the ostensible justification for US global militarism for nearly two decades: the so-called war on terrorism. 'Great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of US national security,' Mattis said in his speech, which accompanied the release of an 11-page declassified document outlining the National Defense Strategy in broad terms. A lengthier classified version was submitted to the US Congress, which includes the Pentagon’s detailed proposals for a massive increase in military spending."
"U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis raised the matter in an exchange with reporters after unrelated meetings in the Indonesia capital with senior government officials. He made clear that while the U.S. sympathizes with Turkey's concerns about border security, Washington wants the Turks to minimize their military action inside Syria."
"American forces went to Syria with the declared objective of pushing the ISIS terror gang out of territory it had seized there. This has been accomplished. It is an ideal moment for the U.S. to declare victory and depart. That, however, would be hauling down our flag. By Roosevelt’s logic — and evidently Tillerson’s — American soldiers should not be withdrawn from any country where they have ever been deployed."
"Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan: This trifecta of semi-permanent US military engagements reflects the extraordinary power of the Pentagon to sway even a president who had made opposition to such policies a central element of his campaign."
"While killing people with socialist policies might or might not be the aim of rulers in socialist countries, killing people is the aim of the U.S. government with its sanctions. The idea is that as people die from the sanctions, those who are still alive will have the incentive to rise up and oust the socialist regime from power. But of course, revolutions inevitably mean more death and destruction. U.S. officials don’t care. All they care about is regime change."
"America’s war on terror has spread to 76 countries, as shown below. This metastasizing of 'counterterror' efforts is truly paradoxical: the more the U.S. military works to stop terror, the more terror spreads."