Category Archives: US foreign policy

No thanks, we’re not for sale, aghast Greenland tells Trump

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Danish politicians dismiss US president’s apparent interest in island as ‘hopefully a joke’

Donald Trump may have expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland for the US, but Denmark thinks the idea is frankly insane and Greenlanders have pointed out their home is not actually for sale.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the US president has asked his aides and the White House counsel to look into the possibility of buying the world’s largest island, a largely autonomous country of the kingdom of Denmark.

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UK caught in middle of US power play with Iran

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Seizure of Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar was welcomed by US hawks but left Britain looking vulnerable

When Gibraltar’s authorities unexpectedly impounded the Iranian oil tanker Grace 1 in July, one member of Donald Trump’s administration was particularly pleased. John Bolton, the president’s hawkish national security adviser, tweeted: “Excellent news”.

The authorities in Gibraltar – with the backing of the British – said the vessel was heading for Syria. Selling oil to the regime of Bashar al-Assad was in breach of EU sanctions.

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Israel bars entry to US politicians Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib

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Donald Trump had said letting in high-profile pair would ‘show great weakness’

Israel has announced it will block the US congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country after public pressure from Donald Trump.

“It’s unacceptable to allow the entrance to the country of those who wish to harm the state of Israel,” Israel’s interior ministry said.

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Gibraltar says it will free oil tanker at centre of Iran row

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Territory says Tehran has promised oil is not for Syria but US is challenging decision

Gibraltar’s chief minister has said he will allow a detained Iranian oil tanker to be released after Tehran gave the territory’s government an assurance that it would not allow its cargo to be discharged in Syria.

But Fabian Picardo acknowledged that his decision could yet be overturned after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) launched a challenge in the territory’s courts.

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Hong Kong: flights resume at airport as China condemns ‘near-terrorist acts’

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Beijing steps up war of words and airport obtains injunction against protesters to prevent further disruption of flights

Flights have resumed in and out of Hong Kong airport after two days of protests by pro-democracy activists as Chinese officials condemned the disruption that paralysed the international hub as “near-terrorist acts”.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled on Tuesday after demonstrators blockaded two terminals in the latest escalation of a 10-week political crisis that has gripped the city.

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Why Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ foreign policy yields minimum results

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The president is heading into 2020 with no major successes and looming crises – so many expect him to attempt to reverse the trend with dramatic deals

Donald Trump is heading into the 2020 elections with no clear-cut foreign policy successes, some dramatic failures and a string of looming crises around the world that could undermine his bid for re-election.

For that reason, many expect the president to try to reverse the trend with dramatic interventions around the globe with uncertain outcomes – which will make the next 16 months even more volatile than his presidency so far.

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Syria safe zone plan may just be wishful thinking

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Lack of detail and strong opposition from Kurds means plan is unlikely to provide solution to region’s problems

The announcement by Turkey and the US that they will set up a safe zone in Kurdish-run north-eastern Syria allays fears of an imminent Turkish incursion into the country, but will strain Washington’s ties with a force that helped defeat Islamic State.

The announcement came as Ankara was finalising a troop buildup along its southern border, which it shares with Syrian Kurds. On Sunday, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had threatened to invade within the next fortnight, creating a conundrum for Washington, which views both the Turks and the Kurds as allies and has increasingly struggled to keep them from conflict.

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Trump hints he is ready to dig in for long US-China trade war

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Tweet in support of US farmers suggests dispute with Beijing could extend well into 2020

Donald Trump has dropped the broadest possible hint that he is ready to dig in for the long term in the Washington’s trade war with China, after the latest escalation in the long-running dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

The US president said he was ready to provide support for US farmers in 2020 should they face pressure from China, as economists at Goldman Sachs said the standoff could continue until after the US presidential election in November 2020.

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‘It will not work’: experts question Venezuela sanctions as Bolton touts them

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Bolton claimed Trump’s measures will help end Maduro’s reign, but some fear they will make Venezuela’s economic meltdown worse

US national security adviser, John Bolton, has insisted Venezuela’s “tired dictator” was at “the end of his rope”, as he opened another front in the White House’s economic blitz on Nicolás Maduro by freezing all Venezuelan government assets in the United States.

Addressing a summit on Venezuela’s crisis in Peru’s capital, Lima, Bolton pronounced Maduro’s “dying regime” doomed – even though a seven-month US-backed campaign has so far failed to topple Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian successor.

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Mike Pompeo urges Australia to stand up for itself over trade with China

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US secretary of state dismisses warning by top security analyst, arguing ‘you can sell your soul for a pile of soy beans or you can protect your people’

The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has declared “you can sell your soul for a pile of soy beans, or you can protect your people”, dismissing a warning from prominent Australian security analyst Hugh White that Australia should avoid following Donald Trump into a confrontation with Beijing that America probably can’t win.

Pompeo issued the provocative declaration during a question-and-answer session at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on Sunday.

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Australia giving ‘serious consideration’ to US request to help it confront Iran

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Mike Pompeo hails ‘unbreakable’ relationship between Washington and Canberra as he urges Australia to join coalition to protect shipping in the Gulf

Australia’s defence minister Linda Reynolds says the Morrison government is giving “very serious consideration” to a formal request from the Trump administration to join a US-led coalition to protect shipping in the Gulf from Iranian military forces.

Reynolds told journalists on Sunday after annual security talks between the Australian and American foreign affairs and defence ministers that the Morrison government was deeply concerned by the heightened tensions in the region, and strongly condemned the attacks on shipping in the Gulf.

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Iran to further reduce compliance with nuclear deal

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Foreign minister says Iran has been withdrawing in stages since US pulled out last year

Iran will take another step to reduce its compliance with a landmark 2015 nuclear deal, the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Saturday, according to parliamentary news agency Icana.

Iran has repeatedly said it will reduce its commitment to the nuclear accord in stages and may even withdraw from the pact altogether unless the remaining signatories find ways to shield its economy from US sanctions. Washington pulled out of the deal last year.

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Nato and Russia trade barbs after collapse of nuclear arms treaty

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US pulls out of cold war-era INF treaty after Moscow’s ‘secret deployment’ of cruise missiles

A key international nuclear disarmament treaty has formally collapsed amid mutual recriminations between the west and Russia, and with Nato pledging to boost Europe’s military defences.

The alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Nato countries were facing a threat from previously banned Russian land-based cruise missiles that could “reach EU cities, with only minutes of warning time”.

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North Korea missile tests could be effort to divide US, Japan and South

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Three launches in eight days point to ulterior motive amid strained relations between its neighbours and Washington

The series of short-range missile tests by North Korea over the last eight days could be an attempt by Pyongyang to exploit strained US-Japan-South Korea relations, analysts have said.

The latest launches, at about 3am on Friday from North Korea’s east coast, involved the firing of two unidentified projectiles into the Sea of Japan. They follow two tests in the past eight days.

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US border wall seesaws allow children on each side to play together – video

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The architect and anti-border wall campaigner Ronald Rael has installed three pink seesaws on the US-Mexico border to allow families on each side to ‘meaningfully connect’ with each other and highlight the bond between the two countries. Rael says the seesaws have turned the wall into a ‘literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations’

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Trump lines up loyalist as Coats leaves US intelligence chief post

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Dan Coats to go next month after turbulent two years of disagreements with president

Dan Coats, one of the most senior national security officials willing to contradict Donald Trump, will leave the post of US director of national intelligence next month, the president has said.

Trump said Coats would go on 15 August and that he will nominate John Ratcliffe, a Texas representative and staunch loyalist, to the post.

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UK must look after its own ships in the Gulf, says Pompeo

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US secretary of state’s comment reflects tensions with UK over Iran nuclear deal

The UK must be responsible for the safety of its own ships in the Gulf, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has said.

His remarks reflect unresolved tensions between Britain and the US over Donald Trump’s plans for a US-led military taskforce to protect international shipping operating off the Iranian coast. The UK is meanwhile seeking to assemble a European naval protection force.

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Trump says he could win Afghan war and wipe country ‘off the face of the Earth’ – video

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Donald Trump has said that he could win the Afghanistan war 'in a week' adding that the country 'could be wiped off the face of the Earth. I don’t want to go that route'. The president made the claim sitting alongside the Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, who is seeking to have more than $1bn in US aid restored, after Trump cut it off last year blaming Islamabad for not doing enough to fight extremism. Trump said he would not do it because 'I just don't want to kill 10 million people'

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Trump says he could win Afghan war ‘in a week … but I don’t want to kill 10m’

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  • President hosts Pakistani PM Imran Khan amid aid dispute
  • US pursues talks with Taliban with Islamabad’s cautious support

Donald Trump has said that he could win the Afghanistan war “in a week” but did not want to wipe the country “off the face of the Earth”.

At the same White House, the president also made a quixotic offer to mediate the longstanding Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, claiming the Indian government had invited to act as broker – a claim quickly denied in New Delhi.

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US military: Venezuelan plane ‘aggressively’ shadowed Navy aircraft

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  • US says incident occurred in international airspace
  • Caracas slams ‘incursion’ by ‘intelligence aircraft’

The US military on Sunday accused a Venezuelan fighter aircraft of “aggressively” shadowing a US Navy EP-3 Aries II plane over international airspace, a fresh sign of growing hostility between the two countries.

Related: Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelans despite crisis

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