Foreign Policy

Rhetoric designed to cover up the fading of the US empire.

Pat Buchanan wonders about US aggression.

"And America is beginning to buckle under the weight of its global obligations.
And as we have no claim to rocks or reefs in the South China Sea – Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines do – why is this our quarrel?"

The dollar is the vital interest.

"As for Iran, the U.S. intelligence community, in 2007 and 2011, declared with high confidence that it had no nuclear weapons program. "

But it sold oil not denominated in dollars. North Korea counterfeits dollars.

"In 2004, Taiwan’s central bank issued a warning that supernotes had been turning up on the island. This caused a panic, and the Taiwanese banks were overwhelmed by customers seeking to return $100 bills totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, most of them perfectly genuine. “It was effectively a run on the dollar,” says Asher. “No one knew if their money was real or fake.”"

Can't have that. Buchanan's great conclusion:

"This is not isolationism. It is putting our country first, and staying out of other people’s wars. It used to be called patriotism."

When did patriotism get warped into being synonymous with warmonger?

Great job putting Baltic provocation in perspective.

"With that out of the way….

Russian attack jets flew “dangerously close” to a U.S. Navy destroyer numerous times in the Baltic Sea this week….

“We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight maneuvers.”

Wouldn’t it make more sense to write “US Naval destroyer sails dangerously close to the major Russian city of St. Petersburg”?

From US European Command officials (US European Command?  Does that make any sense?):

“These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries, and could result in a miscalculation or accident that could cause serious injury or death.”

Does he mean the actions of US Naval destroyers sailing dangerously close to St. Petersburg?"

But the Russians are bad guys.