The Mess

[Fish_Happens]

Another Mattis gem:

"Powerpoint makes us stupid."

[clubgop]

Apparently there is a law that says SecDef must be separated for at least 7 years of military duty. Civilian control of the military and all that. Congress would have to grant a waiver. I don't think that will be much of a problem. Democrats dont want that fight.

[Okeefenokee]

Another Mattis gem:

"Powerpoint makes us stupid."

I like this guy more every day.

[Smitty-48]

I'm certainly willing to grant the POTUS Elect MAGA points for this, MAGA being as much about Animal Spirits as anything; look good, feel good, shoot good.

[ssu]

Selecting Mattis is a good choice and actually very interesting in many ways: It tells that Trump isn't so softskinned as thought. After all, Mattis did earlier critisize Trump, defended NATO and said that some Trump's ideas were "kooky". Naturally the Marine general took Trump's election speech comments as 100% policy, hence no wonder that he found them "kooky". Yet it seems that President Trump will be differenct ...except the obsessive tweeting.

Above all, it seems that Trump is genuinely trying to get a good defense & security team together. Not putting around him yes men and/or givin it to a small cabal of freaks like the neocons. Seems that Robert M. Gates, one of the US defence secretaries I think is one of the best of them, has been in contact with Trump's crew. Now Gates, one-time harsh Trump critic, is saying that he "hopes he was wrong about Trump".

Robert Gates on Trump considering Mattis (which was now later indeed was his pick):

"“I think some of the people that he’s talking to for senior jobs, I find very encouraging. They’re very solid people,” Gates said. “And I would ordinarily have some concerns about civilian military relationships and civilian control and so on but not with Jim Mattis. Jim has a deep sense of history, he’s got a great strategic mind and folks in uniform love him. I think he would be a great choice.”

Anyway, it doesn't seem that the neocon loonies will have an influence. Which is a great thing. Which then comes to the interesting part. How this friendly-to-Russia but yet not-so-naive administration will behave with the Russians.

[Smitty-48]

Thing is, what it not "kooky" about Trump's NATO assertion is that it would pretty much take the United States being on the verge of withdrawal to force NATO members to pay up. I seriously doubt that Trump would actually take it there, but he's right that it would take extreme leverage to squeeze more money out of NATO governments.

[ssu]

Trump rattling the cage was a good thing, really. When Obama said similar things, nobody cared. When Trump said (basically the same line as Obama) with his famous politically incorrect way, it was noticed. Even that the idea of the US withdrawing from NATO, woke up people.

Yet the newly-found-"old" NATO, what you referred to the "OG", would actually go with Trump and especially with his supporters: have NATO as a genuine defence pact, not an organization going around the World getting bogged down in the FUBAR-swamps that many crisis are. Militaries should be used as deterrence, a warhammer, not your ordinary hammer that you have in hand and are willing to use when looking at something, anything to repair (as basically you don't have any other tools).

[Smitty-48]

Well, NATO pretty much learned their lesson in Afghanistan, they're not really in that many FUBAR swamps, for a moment there, they got all gung-ho for it after 911, but now they've come stumbling back to the North Atlantic licking their wounds, there's far more EUFOR deployed to FUBAR swamps than there is NATO, and far more UN than EUFOR.

The biggest FUBAR swamp right now, in terms of deployed personnel, is the African Sahel, from Mali to South Sudan, and that's UN and France/EU, with no NATO at all.

[kybkh]

Still having that much brass in the WH...seems ripe for a coup.

[Montegriffo]

Boris has come out in support of Trump today on the subject of funding NATO. He has pointed out that 70% of the money is coming from the US while all the other nations provide the other 30% between them. Hard to argue with that. I believe the UK is just under it's 2% of GDP requirement while Germany and many others fall well short of this.