One more ICBM hurled over Japan by N.Korea,A declaration of non acceptance of gasoline or diesel powered autos and SUVs by China,declaration of need for temperance and acceptance of N.Korea’s junior membership in the nuclear club by Putin while engaging in a massive military exercise.Terrorism continuing in France,Italy,Spain and Greece.Beijing forbidding use of bitcoin exchanges…on and on roll the evidences of the loss of world leadership by the USA.To be fair it didn’t begin with Trump but it certainly seems to be accelerating with this administration which appears to be without a plan.
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The Octogenarians 
Yes, I agree it didn’t start with President Trump. The USA lost influence when Obama blamed us for all problems that takes place in the world.
The major function of diplomacy is to pursue the national interest without resorting to war.I suggest that you take a look at Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s”The Vietnamese War”.on public TV if your local station is still operating despite Trump”s opposition and non support.Burn’s “American Civil War” is also instructive.The ship of state is hard to steer and Obama could not reverse a headlong, dead wrong set of policies that held sway for well over one hundred years.
As many in “the rest of the world” raise themselves out of poverty (mostly as a consequence of their having embraced the productive dynamics of capitalism) it is to be expected that there would be less dependency on “others” such as the USA. The spread of terrorism is not caused by the USA, but is first the result of a major religion being interpreted by large numbers of its followers in a way that demands the subjugation or destruction of all others. Secondly, terrorism impacts western societies because of a foolish opening of borders to vast populations who would support or act on this religion’s beliefs.
Given these new realities the nature of America’s “leadership plan” assumes a new shape. We cease allowing it to be easy for those with obviously destructive beliefs to cross our borders and we recommend and support others to do the same. We make it easier to physically isolate, engage and destroy at their source those who protect and/or proselytize such threatening beliefs. This identifies a key reason for our conflict with Iran and its allies (which seems to include North Korea insofar as there is likely collusion in their development, AND POSSIBLE USE, of nuclear weaponry.) WMD “use” by Iran and/or N. Korea includes extortion by way of threat as well as potential ACTUAL hits on U.S. cities and our interests. Nikki Haley, our ambassador in the United Nations, is “leading” an effort to organize a sufficient economic “cost” to N. Korea such that we will not have to war in order to neutralize such threats. A “plan” may be that of clearly exhausting all peaceful means thereby clarifying for a wary public the necessity of a drastic next step of force which will cause perhaps multi-thousands of casualties on both sides of the conflict. The other choice (allowing Iran and N. Korea to proceed with their nuclear development) establishes a degree of threat likely to result in a future conflict that will create multi-millions of casualties. They say that we have been “kicking the can down the road and have now run out of road.” EVERY available direction is now a road heavily mined with explosive devises. Because earlier “plans” have been so ineffective (even cowardly and/or foolish) the only “plan” left for our current leadership is to select the road that is LEAST calamitous.
Reblogged this on daedal2207's Blog.