As Inauguration Nears, Trump Keeps World Leaders on Edge

He called NATO obsolete. He said Germany’s acceptance of refugees is “utterly catastrophic.” The decades-old One China policy embraced by the United States? That’s up for discussion. Just days before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, world leaders on three continents are on edge after comments the president-elect made in an interview on Friday with The Wall Street Journal and in a weekend interview with two European newspapers, Bild and The Times of London.

 World leaders on three continents are on edge after comments the president-elect made in an interview on Friday with The Wall Street Journal and in a weekend interview with two European newspapers, Bild and The Times of London. 

 NATO is ‘obsolete’ 

 “It’s obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” Mr. Trump said, according to the German newspaper Bild. The 28-member alliance, born in 1949, three years after Mr. Trump, is viewed by many — including his nominee for defense secretary, Gen. James N. Mattis — as essential to American security. “Secondly, countries aren’t paying what they should” and NATO “didn’t deal with terrorism.”

 Responding on Monday to Mr. Trump’s comments, Dalia Grybauskaite, the president of Lithuania, which gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and joined NATO in 2004, urged Mr. Trump to continue meeting the United States’ financial obligations toward the alliance. “Since World War II, the presence of U.S. troops has been a prerequisite for rebuilding the Continent, safeguarding peace and ensuring security. We expect continuity from the new U.S. administration. Trump must maintain this leadership role, to ensure security, stability and peace.” — Ms. Grybauskaite ‘The force of Europeans is in their unity’. 

Mr. Trump also criticized the European Union, describing it as “basically a vehicle for Germany.” He praised Britain for its vote to leave the bloc, known as Brexit, adding: “I believe others will leave. I do think keeping it together is not going to be as easy as a lot of people think.” “I think that we Europeans have our destiny in our own hands, and I would very strongly argue that we all stand together.” — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, about the 27 European Union members that will remain after Britain’s departure French leaders also bristled at Mr. Trump’s swipe against the bloc. Their response comes as they deal with growing domestic support for the anti-European Union and anti-immigrant party National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, who was spotted on Thursday at Trump Tower in New York. The best response,” said the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, “is European unity.” “As with the case of Brexit, the best way to defend Europe is to remain united. This is a bit of an invitation that we are making to Mr. Trump. To remain a bloc. Not to forget that the force of Europeans is in their unity.” — Mr. Ayrault China will ‘take off the gloves’. 


 And from Russia, a nod Not surprisingly, Russian diplomats were unperturbed by Mr. Trump’s comments on NATO. They welcomed the “obsolete” label and were enthusiastic at his suggestion that he would consider reducing sanctions against Russia if the country agreed to reduce its nuclear arsenal. Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said on Monday that “NATO is indeed a vestige,” according to Radio Free Europe. Considering that NATO “is focused on confrontation and its entire structure is devoted to the ideals of confrontation, then, of course, this can hardly be called a modern structure meeting the ideas of stability, sustainable development and security.” — Mr. Peskov “Let’s wait until he assumes office before we give assessment to any initiatives,” he said.



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Trump suggests he may drop Russia sanctions if Moscow 'is helpful'h

Donald Trump has suggested he might drop sanctions against Russia and that the communist party rulers in Beijing needed to show good faith on currency and trade practices before he committed to a “One China” policy on Taiwan.

In fresh signs that the US president-elect is prepared to reshape longstanding Washington foreign policy, he told the Wall Street Journal that he would keep sanctions against Russia in place “at least for a period of time”.

But he added: “If you get along and if Russiais really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?”

Trump’s policy towards Russia is the subject of intense interest in Washington amid a Senate inquiry into allegations that the Kremlin ordered a hacking operation against the Democratic party to help the billionaire politician win the November election.

Trump – who has praised Vladimir Putin for being “very smart” – said he was willing to meet the Russian president in the months after he moves into the White House following his January 20 inauguration.

“I understand that they would like to meet, and that’s absolutely fine with me,” he said.

Controversy also surrounds the Trump administrations’s attitude towards China, with soon-to-be secretary of state Rex Tillerson warning Beijing this week that China would “not be allowed access” to its artificial islands in the South China Sea.

Asked if he supported the “One China” policy on Taiwan that has underpinned US relations with Beijing for decades, Trump said: “Everything is under negotiation including ‘One China’,” the Journal reported. 

Trump caused offence in Beijing when he took a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwan’s president in the wake of his election victory – a breach of the “One China” protocol under which Washington agreed to withdraw diplomatic recognition of the island nation as part of a deal to open up relations with the mainland.

On Taiwan, he told the Journal: “We sold them $2bn of military equipment last year. We can sell them $2bn of the latest and greatest military equipment but we’re not allowed to accept a phone call. First of all it would have been very rude not to accept the phone call.”

During the election campaign Trump said he would label China a currency manipulator on the first day of taking office. The yuan has fallen steadily against the dollar in recent years, bringing accusations from the US that Beijing has deliberately forced its currency lower to gain a market advantage for its exports.

Trump told the Journal he would stop short of officially branding China a manipulator but was critical of Beijing’s financial policies and said: “Certainly they are manipulators”.

“Instead of saying: ‘We’re devaluating our currency,’ they say, ‘oh, our currency is dropping’. It’s not dropping. They’re doing it on purpose.

“Our companies can’t compete with them now because our currency is strong and it’s killing us,” Trump said.

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Word Of The Day
From merriam webster

neologism \nee-AH-luh-jiz-um\ noun

1 : a new word, usage, or expression

2 : (psychology) a new wordthat is coined especially by a person affected with schizophrenia and is meaningless except to the coiner. 

Examples:

The novelist's latest book is peppered with numerousslang words and neologismsthat might not be familiar to some readers.

"Borrowing a friend's neologism, [the British writer Simon] Parkin uses the term'chronoslip' to describe the way video games affect one'ssense of time, numbing one to its passing." — Christopher Byrd, The Washington Post, 31 July 2016

Did you know?

The English language is constantly picking up neologisms. In recentdecades, for example, computer technology has added a number of new terms to the language. Webinar, malware, netroots, and blogosphere are just a few examples of modern-dayneologisms that have beenintegrated into AmericanEnglish. The word neologism was itself a brand-new coinage in the latter half of the 18th century, whenEnglish speakers borrowed the French term néologisme. The word's roots are quite old, ultimately tracing back to ancient Greek neos, meaning "new," and logos, meaning "word."

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