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Robert E Kelly Profile picture
@Robert_E_Kelly
Sep 7 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
This whole tangle👇 is such perfect example of Trumpian greed, nativism, and incompetence:

1. Trump wants ‘deals,’ not treaties or law, w/ trade partners

No one knows quite what a deal is, but that’s the whole point. It keeps the terms loose & vague so that Trump can renege.

1
2. Trump doesn’t actually care about the details of SK investment; he just wants to market it as a ‘win’ on Fox

So the S Koreans are stuck with whatever thrown-together ‘framework’ emerges from the disorganized, competing interests within the Trump administration

3. The US

2
visa system has been a mess for decades, and xenophobic MAGA wants it that way

So the SKs don’t know how to get in the needed work-force to operationalize Trump’s deal. They end up getting arrested, bc Trump’s gov't is a disunified, disorganized mess which can't prioritize or

3
transmit clear guidance.

4. ICE is filled with ‘patriots’ who don't care about any of this lawyerly stuff

5. MAGA loathes the higher education needed for Americans to do the jobs the SKs had to come over to do. So this situation will repeat itself

Perfect storm of Trumpism

4

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More from @Robert_E_Kelly

Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Apr 14
The Trump administration is not acting on the policy suggestions these books make, so I guess they can’t be that important after all.

Both Huntington & Allison recommend America ally with like-minded states against jihadism and China respectively.

Mearsheimer too recommends

1
allies, given how hyper-competitive he sees world politics - especially territorially proximate allies given the stopping power of water.

Yet Trump is wrecking US partnerships for a belligerent unilateralism even neocons wouldn’t advocate.

Next, all three 3 understand that

2
national power is based on economic foundations. None advocates Smoot-Hawley-style tariffs, especially against allies.

Yet that is what Trump is doing.

All argue that world politics is a jungle, but lots of realists argue that. That’s noting new.

If you really want to see

3
Read 4 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Apr 2
I would qualify this👇: MAGA is an ideology of US decline

- It is explicitly backward-looking for its model (America was great in the past but is not now).

- That past greatness was rooted in a fading economic sector - blue-collar factory work - which no amount of tarriffs

1
will revivify.

- MAGA aches for older social relations - most obviously in its intense dislike of economically independent women - even if it costs the economy.

- It similarly dislikes immigration, despite the obvious economic benefits, particularly entrepeneurialism.

2
- It rejects imports despite the obvious benefits of better quality & lower price from competition.

- It exults small-town and rural America, even though the engine of American GDP growth is cities and regional clusters

- It resents higher education even though that leads to

3
Read 8 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Mar 2
Trump is NOT a realist. Realism uses national power to serve nat’l interests, without ideological blinders, right?

But Trump:

- pointlessly antagonizes the 2 countries with which we have a land border

- aggressively pursues the factional, ideological interests of Christian

1
fundamentalists in the M East rather than US general interest

- undermines NATO which has kept the peace for 80 years in a core area of US FoPo interest

- believes autocracies like Russia or N Korea are credible counterparties

- rejects alliances which supplement US power

2
& enable US global power projection

- thinks trade wars with allies enhance US power

- is guided in foreign policy by his own ego quirks - loathing for Zelensky & female leaders, admiration for dictators - rather than US national interests

If Trump were a realist, he would

3
Read 8 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Feb 21
🧵
Most of this is wrong. Let’s go thru it:

1. There is no evidence to substantiate the claim that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine were Trump president

MAGA keeps saying this as if it is self-evident, but given the size & scale of the Russian invasion,plus Putin's long-

1
running, deep-seated hatred for UKR independence, it is hard to believe this whole thing actually turned on a far-away event 16 months earlier: the 2020 US election. Indeed, the belief that the whole world turns on US decisions is a particular American hubris, probably derived

2
from our long-running superpowerdom. But it is not true. Other countries have agency independent of us, especially great powers like RU.

2. Vance and MAGA did not know that UKR had no pathway to victory for the last 3 years

This is lazy retrodiction – using contemporary info

3
Read 13 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Dec 4, 2024
🧵on the S Korean semi-coup

1. This sure looks like a soft or semi-coup, like a SK version of January 6 in the US.

Declaring martial law in response to the gridlock of divided government is just a ridiculous rationale.

And declaring late at night, when half the country is

1
asleep is hugely suspicious.

2. It was remarkably inept. In fact, it looks impulsive, as if Yoon decided this the same day

The declaration targeted the media, opposition, & public political expression. That would require a sweeping move across the country to enforce.Instead

2
the military and police at the legislature gave away to opposition MPs almost immediately.

Yoon seemed to have no plan to deal with the predictable explosion of public protest. SK has a vibrant street protest culture, including militant labor unions. Did he really think the

3
Read 11 tweets
Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Nov 8, 2024
🧵Foreign Policy Implications of Trump’s Victory

1. Do not read a huge foreign policy public opinion shift into T’s victory.
Voters do not choose based on FoPo. This is really well-established in pol sci, & polling. I am seeing a lot of FoPo analysts

1
saying the election means the US public has turned against the liberal int'l order, Ukraine, Israel or whatever. No, it does not. All the data so far suggest that T won bc of the economy (inflation) &, less so, culture (wokeism)

2. Despite the public's

2
disinterest, T will have a big impact on US FoPo.
T does not share long-standing US liberal & democratic values. He will be a friend to autocrats and complain ceaselessly about US allies. This is a big shift; the US has never had an aspiring authoritarian in the presidency bf.

3
Read 14 tweets

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