“Partly, you could call it a diplomatic clean-up mission,”
…that you gave to Mike Pence. Yeah, good luck with that.
Sorry, but the Indiana ‘casket salesmen’ ain’t up to this job. The inexorable slide of Australia and New Zealand away from the U.S. and toward China is gaining momentum. Trump and the GOP have succeeded in turning the U.S. into a ‘chump state’ by denying climate change, eschewing science and rational decision making in general, and by overall failure of governance.
I’m afraid Australia (as a major coal exporter ) is not very keen on climate change…OTOH they may suffer if the USA restricts Chinese steel, since some of the Ozzie coal is used in the steel industry…
No contact since the call where Trump became belligerent - almost three months ago. Maybe having a carved out State Department might be a factor for this clueless and increasingly dangerous WH.
Trump’s election has also prompted some soul-searching for Australians over where their loyalty should lie between the U.S. — Australia’s most important security partner — and China, its most important trading partner. Though Turnbull has repeatedly rejected calls for Australia to choose between the superpowers, some critics of Trump have urged Australia to align itself more closely with Beijing.
Earlier this month, Gareth Evans, Australia’s foreign minister from 1988 to 1996, said Australia should back away from its alliance with America and instead recognize China as a global leader, calling Trump “the most ill-informed, underprepared, ethically challenged and psychologically ill-equipped president in the United States’ history.”
Seems like a pretty big deal - and yet, the WH let the belligerence stand, unaddressed for nearly 3 months, and are sending puppet Pence to try to mitigate the situation.
Sadly I have to wonder if anyone in the white house is even aware of the internal Australian conversation about realignment and considering what such an occurrence would mean geopolitically for the US.
Personally, I am just Jane Doe citizen - I don’t have a clue as to the geopolitical ramifications - but I am not running the president, and do know enough to know when more information should be sought, and not to rely on an in-law to do the work of professional policy analysts to get and craft plans on such scenarios.
Aside, the former foreign minister does seem to have Trump’s number.
“Partly, you could call it a diplomatic clean-up mission,”
Or you could just think of this as the job of the person at the back of the circus parade.
Yup. Maybe we could send Pence a supply of dog poop pick up bags.
Maybe he should just give them the patented “Pence Stern Glare.” Seems to have worked with North Korea.