Mike Pence goes to Munich to soothe America's allies. He is unlikely to succeed
A word-cloud from a background briefing to journalists by White House officials on the eve of Mike Pence’s trip to this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, his first foray abroad as Vice President, would have REASSURE in bold at its heart. COMMITMENT also popped up a lot.
“The first theme is reassurance,” the briefer, an unnamed “foreign policy adviser”, offered. “We’re there to reassure Europe’s role both as our indispensable partner and the commitment to our allies. He wants to reassure folks ... we’re going to be with them as well, so reassurance in that sense, if they need to hear it.”
Damage control better describes what everyone bar President Donald Trump has been engaging in in recent days. Jim Mattis was at it at Nato in Brussels this week. Nikki Haley, the new US envoy at the United Nations, has been doing her bit. The same task fell to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who spent part of the week at the G20 foreign ministers huddle in Bonn.
That the world, and the allies in particular, are in need of soothing hardly needs saying. They look at America and see a superpower flailing. A superpower being steered by successive 140-character outbursts by a President drawn more to Twitter than diplomacy.
The evidence is everywhere. Some is trivial like the failure of anyone to think of booking Mr Tillerson a room in Bonn. While his counterparts found convenient digs in the city, he was forced to commute 40 minutes from a faded country hotel attached to a hot springs favoured by wheelchair-bound octogenarians seeking a cure.
Mike Pence goes to Munich to soothe the nerves of America's allies. He is unlikely to succeed | The Independent
A word-cloud from a background briefing to journalists by White House officials on the eve of Mike Pence’s trip to this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, his first foray abroad as Vice President, would have REASSURE in bold at its heart. COMMITMENT also popped up a lot.
“The first theme is reassurance,” the briefer, an unnamed “foreign policy adviser”, offered. “We’re there to reassure Europe’s role both as our indispensable partner and the commitment to our allies. He wants to reassure folks ... we’re going to be with them as well, so reassurance in that sense, if they need to hear it.”
Damage control better describes what everyone bar President Donald Trump has been engaging in in recent days. Jim Mattis was at it at Nato in Brussels this week. Nikki Haley, the new US envoy at the United Nations, has been doing her bit. The same task fell to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who spent part of the week at the G20 foreign ministers huddle in Bonn.
That the world, and the allies in particular, are in need of soothing hardly needs saying. They look at America and see a superpower flailing. A superpower being steered by successive 140-character outbursts by a President drawn more to Twitter than diplomacy.
The evidence is everywhere. Some is trivial like the failure of anyone to think of booking Mr Tillerson a room in Bonn. While his counterparts found convenient digs in the city, he was forced to commute 40 minutes from a faded country hotel attached to a hot springs favoured by wheelchair-bound octogenarians seeking a cure.
Mike Pence goes to Munich to soothe the nerves of America's allies. He is unlikely to succeed | The Independent
