Radio America Online News Bureau

North

‘The Obama Era in American Foreign Policy Is Over’

by

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is praising President Trump for ordering a missile strike against a key Syrian airfield in response to Syria’s latest use of chemical weapons against it’s own people, and Bolton says it tells the rest of the world that this administration sees the world much differently than the last one.

“The Obama era in American foreign policy is over and there’s a president in the White House with a very different worldview,” said Bolton, pointing to Obama’s repeated threats of military action in response to using chemical weapons.

He says the Syrians, Russians, and Iranians clearly didn’t expect Trump to act so decisively.

“I think they’re so stunned that Trump acted, given the performance of Obama over the years, saying that that he would view even the movement of chemical weapons as a red line and not enforcing it,” said Bolton.

On Thursday, Trump green-lighted the launch of 59 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles from American ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.  The missiles targeted Shayrat Air Base, the installation from which the latest chemical weapons attacks were launched.

Reaction has not fallen along traditional lines.  Mainstream Republicans and many liberals are hailing the decision, while some of Trump’s most ardent supporters during the campaign were very critical.

Bolton believes it was the right call.

“Anytime you have an authoritarian regime like this that joins a treaty like the Chemical Weapons Convention, says it will give up these weapons of mass destruction and lies about it and uses the weapons, that is a direct threat to the national security of the United States,” said Bolton.

He is also hopeful that other bad actors around the world will act differently when they see the consequences of Syria’s behavior.

“It’s important around the world that people know that we’re simply not going to tolerate countries entering these treaties and then violating them by using weapons against innocent civilians.  I think it’ll have an impact well beyond Syria.  I think North Korea and Iran, in particular, should draw a lesson from this.  I think China and Russia should as well,” said Bolton.

But is this an isolated strike or the start to a more entangled involvement in the region once again?  Bolton says Trump’s actions are unlikely to trigger a slippery slope of U.S. engagement.  He also says the region is about to look a bit differently and the U.S. must be positioned well.

“We’re going to defeat ISIS, hopefully in a short period of time, maybe by the end of the year.  We need to think ahead to what the Middle East is going to look like post-ISIS and I certainly hope it does not include a Russian airbase at Latakia in Syria, which the Obama administration allowed them to have,” said Bolton.

 

Bolton says this episode should make it clear that assertions of Trump being a Vladimir Putin stooge were grossly unfounded.

“I think this is very interesting commentary for all those in Washington that basically argued that Trump was a Manchurian candidate with his strings pulled by Moscow.  That’s not quite the way this has worked out,” said Bolton.

The timing of the strike played out in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, but Bolton says launching the mission while the Chinese president is in the U.S. sends a direct message about North Korea as well.

“It was more than an amazing coincidence that President Xi Xinping of China was in Mar-A-Lago with President Trump when he decided on the airstrike against Syria, certainly people have looked at that possibility with respect to North Korea,” said Bolton.

He says there is great urgency for Trump and Xi to act on North Korea as the communist nation’s nuclear program and missile system continue to advance.

“They’re so far advanced toward putting a nuclear device on an intercontinental ballistic missile and hitting targets on the west coast of the United States in the very near future.  Some people have estimated that to mean next year,” said Bolton.

Bolton believes the common ground for Trump and Xi would be for the two Koreas to be united again and erase the nuclear menace.

Standard Podcast [ 9:34 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share

Kim’s Latest Provocation, Tillerson’s Terse Reaction, Pepsi’s SJW Train Wreck

by

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss yet another North Korean missile test, which appears to have been a major flop. They also try to read between the lines of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson 23-word statement in response to the North Korean missile. And they shred Pepsi’s horrible new web ad, apparently designed to appeal to social justice warriors, that ends up as a “Dagwood sandwich of bad” and actually infuriates the Black Lives Matter crowd.

Standard Podcast [ 22:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share

‘We Need to Anger the Chinese’ to Stop North Korea & Iran

by

North Korea will pose a nuclear risk to the United States within a few years and stopping the threat means realizing North Korea and Iran are two components of the same threat and getting tough on China is the key to stopping both of them.

Gordon Chang is widely seen as one the world’s leading experts on China and North Korea.  He is the author of “The Coming Collapse of China” and “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World.”  He says this past weekend’s North Korean test of an intermediate range missile needs to be a call to awareness and to action.

“The North Koreans and the Iranians have been thick as thieves.  This is one program conducted in two separate locations.  When we add in China’s participation in this, we’ve got to look at this as a whole, not just the separate pieces,” said Chang.

Chang says no further evidence is needed than to note the Iranian missile test which made worldwide headlines last month was actually conducted with a North Korean missile.

Officially, China is condemning the latest North Korean provocation, but Chang says Beijing is is doing that largely to sooth the rest of the world.  He says China is notoriously duplicitous when it comes to North Korea.

“The Chinese have consistently been helping the North Koreans develop both nukes and long-range missiles.  We see Chinese banks involved in money laundering for North Korea and involved in North Korea’s illicit commerce.  Chinese entities have been selling things like uranium hexafluoride and components for the North’s uranium weapons program,” said Chang.

“If Beijing wanted this to stop, it would.  It hasn’t been,” added Chang, who says the Chinese are equally deceptive on the diplomatic stage.

“We see China rhetorically supporting sanctions and then turning around and busting them when the world isn’t watching.  So I don’t think the Chinese are genuine in what they say in New York (at the United Nations),” said Chang.

North Korean provocations in the past 20 years are often followed by a familiar pattern of condemnation and sanctions.  Yet, since the failure to stop North Korea’s nuclear ambitions in the 1990s, little has been effective at getting the regime to change course.

Chang says it’s time to get serious with China.

“One thing we could do is unplug Chinese financial institutions from the global system because of their participation in North Korea’s illicit commerce.  That would shock markets but we’ve got to show Beijing that we are serious,” said Chang.

While carrying economic and diplomatic challenges, Chang says the move would gut the nuclear threats emanating from both North Korea and Iran.

“It certainly would but we have not had the political will to do that.  But if some American city ends up to be a radioactive slab, it will not do for the president to say, ‘Well, I could have stopped this but I didn’t want to anger the Chinese.  We need to anger the Chinese because we need, first of all, to protect our homeland,” said Chang.

Chang says are obvious things China could do to show it was serious about stopping the North Korean nuclear program, but like other efforts, Beijing must be closely monitored.

“If we saw commerce between North Korea and China drop to zero, that would be an indication that Beijing is serious about this.  After the next to last sanctions on North Korea, which were in March of last year, there was a brief fall-off in commerce in April and May.  After that, everything went back to pre-sanction levels.  So that is a pattern,” said Chang.

Chang also advocates the financial strategy against China because it’s clear that softer diplomacy is a massive failure.

“Yes, we’ve had diplomacy intended to disarm the North Koreans but we have not seriously pursued it with the vigor that it requires.  That’s why the North Koreans now have nuclear weapons and are on the verge of being able to mate them to their longest-range launchers.  Clearly, our diplomacy over the course of decades has failed,” said Chang.

That’s right.  Chang says the North Korean missile program is making great strides in recent years, regardless of the failed tests that tend to make headlines.

“When they have a test which fails, they learn a lot, so it’s not necessarily a setback.  We know that within 3-5 years, they will be able to have an intercontinental ballistic missile which will be able to reach most of the lower 48 states, and they’ll be able to mate a nuclear weapon to that,” said Chang.

“Right now, they have the launchers.  They have the distance.  They just don’t have the ability to mate a weapon to a long-range launcher,” said Chang.

Standard Podcast [ 7:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share

Three Martini Lunch 2/13/17

by

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America groan as trust issues arise around National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.  They also discuss the latest North Korean missile launch and whether there is a good strategy for confronting Kim Jong-Un.  And they shake their heads as liberal comedian Sarah Silverman mistakes utility line markings as swastikas, just the latest episode in SJW hysteria.

Standard Podcast [ 16:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Share