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Robert E Kelly Profile picture
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Feb 25 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This gets to an argument I tried to make for a long time, but never seemed to get any traction:

TRUMP WAS A DOVE. In fact, he was a craven appeaser whom GOP hawks obsessed with 'strength' should reject.

He routinely toadied to dictators, offering concessions to get deals for

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for the most insipid reasons - validation from dictators that he too was a tough guy; bc Obama got a Nobel, Trump had to have one too, bc O mocked him at press dinner 10 years ago; validation from world leaders and the media that he was qualified to be POTUS and not the

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incompetent, no-nothing, arriviste serious commentary long since tagged him as.

While toadying to dictators, he proved his 'hawkishness' by punching down at small US allies.

This isn't what US hawks, in any recognizable usage of that word, do. Trump talked like a macho bully

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but in practice, in operation, has was exactly the right-wing caricature of weak Chamberlain hawks love to hate.

I tried to point this out in Trump's negotiation w/ Kim Jong Un, where he was falling all over himself to give stuff away to get that Nobel

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This constant 'Munich framing' of int'l crises as strong Churchill/Reagan hawks vs wimpy Carter/Chamberlain doves is actually bad (attached thread)

BUT, this is how Trump's coalition routinely frames crises,and BY FOX'S OWN STANDARDS, T is Chamberlain

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More from @Robert_E_Kelly

Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Feb 24
If we’re going to sanction Russia as harshly as we keep hearing, we’ll need Chinese cooperation.

Chinese foot-dragging is one of the biggest problems in N Korea sanctions enforcement.

The incentives - strategic, ideological, economic for CN to do same on Russia will be huge

1
We also won’t get multilateral (UN) sanctions. Russia itself will veto that.

But for democratic countries’ Russia sanctions to bite, a Chinese back door will be a real problem.

CN probably won’t do much, so we need to be honest about how far sanctions, however harsh, can go

2
We also need to grasp the limits of #sanctions. They won't push #Russia out of Ukraine, just as they aren't forcing N Korea stop building nukes.

Instead, their goal is to prevent the problem from becoming even worse by imposing costs. That is, NK won't stop building nukes,

3
Read 12 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Feb 24
So this is the kind of neocon logic that fills anglophone op-ed pages - esp @washingtonpost & @FT - in every crisis, and which we desperately need to replace with other models of aggression & response. Western opponents are rarely unlimited revisionists like Hitler, Napoleon,

1
or Alexander.

Reading them that way encourages overreaction and provocative escalation as in Vietnam, Central America in the 80s,or the war on terror.

Putin is indeed a gangster and a predator. And his command of a great power army and predilection for anchluss-es is

2
reminiscent of the 30s. Which is why Biden is taking this so seriously.

But the odds against Russia are much worse than against Nazi Germany. The West is pretty united, and Russia is badly isolated. Even the Chinese don’t want an unabashed Russian invasion, and an open war

3
Read 7 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Feb 23
Everything here is wrong for reasons typical of lazy, knee-jerk MAGA analysis:

1. Deterrence is deeply structured by local & historical factors. Defeats in one place don’t necessarily drive expansionism elsewhere. The Soviets also withdrew from Afghanistan, in the 80s. That

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didn’t encourage the US to attack Mexico or West Germany to attack E Germany. When the US withdrew from Vietnam, the only dominoes to fall were Laos and Cambodia. All the credibility fears of the 60s were overblown. The US right’s fetishization of US presidential ‘weakness’ as

2
a driver of foreign dictators’ bad behavior is really just a tell of their American parochialism - everything must be about us! - and their ignorance of other countries & the particulars of their conflicts. In this case, Putin’s been banging on against Ukrainian independence

3
Read 10 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Feb 22
Fox’ coverage of Ukraine has been revealing:

They desperately want to lead with the Canadian truckers, but Ukraine is too important so they can’t.

But then they can’t actually do much U reporting, bc they’ve almost no actual news gathering reporters. They usually just crib

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from the WSJ and other news networks. So they haven’t the capacity to actually go to Ukraine as CNN has done. So their straight U reporting is just terrible.

And then when the opinionating starts, the hosts don’t whether to call Biden weak or cheer on Putin. The hosts know

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the old-style GOP talking point that Dem presidents are craven sissies.

But Fox’ actual viewership is filled with Trump-worshiping MAGA seditionists who want Putin to help Trump again in 2024.

So the hosts just flail until they can switch to the convoy and comfortably once

3
Read 5 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Jan 24
🧵

The Ukraine media coverage is mirroring last summer’s Afghan withdrawal commentary - the same tropes, hyperventilating, belligerence, and blob writers.

Bleh. The sheer cut-and-paste laziness coupled to endless belligerence is as embarrassing as it is exhausting.

No need

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to learn about these places or re-consider given that US interventionism since the Gulf War has been at best a mixed bag, at worst a disaster.

You can always make the same claims about American ‘weakness’ contrasted with autocratic ‘strength’;

make the same analogies to the

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1930s, Chamberlain, or Carter;

demand the same absurdly aggressively redlines to trigger US intervention;

breezily recommend relentless escalation which you can later disclaim as ‘badly implemented’ when it turns into a disaster;

make the same arguments about any crisis

3
Read 17 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Jan 17
My latest for @19_forty_five

I've always thought China overvalues N Korea as a 'buffer.'

TLDR:

"China’s support for NK alienates much of the world. It undercuts any claim to Chinese principled or benevolent leadership. It tars Beijing with partial

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19fortyfive.com/2022/01/could-…
responsibility for every outlandish act Pyongyang engages in. It provides ongoing justification for a large US presence in northeast Asia. It empowers a nuclear-armed regime which does not listen to Beijing and routinely violates the most basic norms of global governance. It

2
spreads corruption and rot in the Chinese banking system, and among party and military elites with connections to NK. It proliferates. It dealt meth in China. And the conventional deterrent value purchased for all this headache is decreasing as US/allied technology outstrips

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Read 4 tweets

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