Vilka profiler vill ni se i Trumps administration runt honom?

MrSkargard skrev

Vad gäller Mike Pompeo så är det viktigt att komma ihåg att Donald Trump inte kan välja vilken CIA-chef han vill utan han måste välja en CIA-chef som Senatens majoritet kan tänkas godkänna. Stabskapten och andra FB-medlemmar får gärna nämna bättre personer än Pompeo som kan tänkas godkännas av Senaten.

Mr B skrev

Jag delar oron på honom , vad jag förstått var han en stark kritiker av Clinton under Benghazi skandalen, något som Trump nämnt otaliga ggr. Men han verkar vara väldigt insnöad på Iran, vilket Trump till viss del också är, tycker bara att det är Saudi arabien som är boven i att fostra islamistiska terrorister inte Iran. Nåväl, Trump brukar ta galna beslut som visar sig vara korrekta.

(T)he authors are not really arguing that America should be in a shooting war with all of the countries that don't like America, and with radical Islam. Instead, they call for a kind of two-track approach. On the battlefield, they call for more tactical alliances with regional countries against the Islamic State and al Qaeda. But another component is a political war. Specifically, they say the next president should wage an ideological campaign to discredit both radical Islam, but also the dictatorships that oppose the west.

Flynn argues there’s a category of despot that should be excluded from his principle, the “friendly tyrants” like President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi in Egypt and former president Zine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Saddam Hussein should not have been toppled, Flynn argues, and even Russia could become an “ideal partner for fighting Radical Islam” if only it would come to its senses about the threat of “Radical Islam.” Taken alone, these arguments would make Flynn realist, not a neocon.

The book thus offers two very different views of how to exercise American power abroad: spread democracies or stand with friendly strongmen. Neither is a sure path to security. Spreading democracy through the wrong means can bring to power regimes that are even more hostile and authoritarian; standing with strongmen risks the same. Absent some principle higher than just democracy or security for their own sakes, the reader is unable to decide between Flynn’s contradictory perspectives and judge when their benefits are worth the risks.

It’s strange to find a book about strategy so at odds with itself. Perhaps the dissonance is due to the co-authors’ divergent views (Ledeen is a neocon and Flynn is comfortable dining with Putin.)

But all of this raises questions about the central theme of "Field of Fight," that countries like Russia are in an alliance at all with radical Islam. If the Russians have fought ineffectively against jihadis, are we also to believe they are in an alliance with them? When I spoke with Flynn over the weekend, he said why he chose to call it an alliance: "It was a simpler way to explain the relationships."

So what binds these countries and movements together, then? The authors say the countries and revolutionary movements in this alliance share a fondness for totalitarianism, and perceive America as their chief threat. In this sense it's similar to how Stalin and Hitler had a brief pact in World War II.

"The countries and movements that are trying to destroy us have worldviews that may seem to be in violent conflict with one another," they write. "But they are united by their hatred of the democratic West and their conviction that dictatorship is superior."