French-American Show-and-Tell Amicably

"Mr. President, they're all saying what a great relationship we have and they're actually correct. Finally, it's not fake news."
"We have a very special relationship, in fact I'll get that little piece of dandruff off [Emmanuel Macron's suit shoulder]. We have to make him perfect, he is perfect."
"We finished at least almost our work and we have done a job nobody has been able to. I would love to get out, [of Syria], bring our incredible warriors back home. They have obliterated ISIS."
"[The U.S. intends to] leave a long and lasting footprint [and not to] give Iran open season to the Mediterranean."
U.S. President Donald Trump

Win McNamee / Getty Images    President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcome Macron and his wife Brigitte to the White House for a state dinner on Tuesday night.

French President Macron's state visit to the United States has been hugely successful. The French President has been able to diplomatically state his case in disagreeing with some of the positions the White House has taken under the Trump administration, and to do so in a manner that failed to result in ire rising from the irascible Donald Trump at being defied on any issue. But then Emmanuel Macron has a great advantage working for him. He is one of those beautiful physical specimens that Trump is so inordinately fond of.

And so, they hit it off. Much as Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have. President Macron may not be quite the preening, selfie-loving 'progressive' indulging in feminism and championing LGBTQ2 rights, but he appears to have a congenial personality that prosecutes a global point of view in matters of international importance, which Trudeau feigns and feints with considerable skill that occasionally loses its screen to reveal an incompetent hiding itself where resolute cognition should occupy the forum.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Trump flicks something off Macron's jacket during their meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

President Macron took all the attention heaped upon his person by the man in the Oval Office in good stride, beaming at the paternalistic tone, seemingly satisfied with the seriousness with which his opinion on world affairs was being taken. Such studies in character contrasts and studied submission to the force of an executive-colleague's personality bespeaks a master at conciliatory diplomacy. Without submitting entirely to the worldview each of the other, they maintained a cheerful yet seriously considered contest of wills.

Differences in policy are important considerations in an effort to move each other's position toward mutual satisfaction in agreement, if only marginally. A skillful debater with deep cognitive ability is capable of gentle persuasion in moving an ideological adversary closer to his own perspective to bring them in working accord. Trump's determination to pull American troops out of Syria remains intact, though he may now give it more time. Taking credit for the U.S. killing the ISIL caliphate does give unseemly short shrift to its reliance on Kurdish militias, however.

Trump is now talking a modified version of withdrawal, referring to the American mission still not quite "accomplished". The French President knows he is not alone in persuading Trump to have U.S. troops remain in Syria; his persuasive effort is destined to soon be repeated when German Chancellor Angela Merkel returns to Washington on a state trip of her own. When President Trump will no doubt repeat his mantra: "We want to come home. We'll be coming home. We're going to be coming home relatively soon."

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters  Trump and Macron walk down the colonnade at the White House following the official arrival ceremony for Macron on Tuesday.

President Macron had his briefer, more modest say when he affirmed that together he and Trump managed to have "raised new solutions together, and the Syria situation should be part of this bigger picture" that is the Middle East. The "broader picture" is, of course, inclusive of Iran, a solution for which can be found when the "incredibly wealthy" regional nations for whom Iran's ascendancy represents a threat, to agree to pay for and place their own troops on the ground, replacing the U.S.

As for North Korea, Trump stated, "Kim Jong Un, he really has been very open and I think very honourable from everything we're seeing", and anticipates that any agreement that might be reached would clear North Korea of any nuclear capabilities. In fact, nature itself may have taken a hand on that file, with news out of Hong Kong with the South China Morning Post reporting that the Punggye-ri nuclear site has collapsed. Its collapse resulting in  an "unprecedented risk" of radioactive fallout.

Kim is set to hold a historic meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a border village on April 27 [File: Reuters]

This is a situation that may in fact, explain why it is that Kim Jong Un has declared the immediate halt of the North's nuclear and missile tests, since the test site, according to the report and a researcher, has been "wrecked" beyond repair.

Trudeau On The World Stage : How're We Doing?

"If they had Googled the name, this guy would have shown up in two seconds."
"They obviously decided they were going to do things differently and put their guy out there. But this has done irreparable damage to the relationship [between Canada and India]."
Garry Keller, former chief of staff, foreign affairs, Canada

"This was an opportunity to get Canada to lean away from rival China at a time of high Sino-Indo tensions."
"Yes, Trudeau looks pretty silly in his outfits. The Atwal invite was a mind-boggling dumb political blunder. But if this ends bad, I’m not sure India gains anything out of it, even if they think they are sending a stern message. It’s lose-lose when eyes should be focused on China."
Stephanie Carvin, national security analyst, professor, Carleton University

Trudeau calls India tour ‘excellent’ despite controversy over invite to Sikh extremist

The Prime Minister's Office and Justin Trudeau's legion of defenders have been attempting to insinuate that the security failure in inviting a known felon, a man who belonged to an outlawed terrorist group and who was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, whom a former Indo-Canadian premier of British Columbia and fervent critic of Sikh extremism accused of beating him almost to death to a state affair at the Canadian High Commission reflects a plot planned by India.

However, the truth is that this man, a stalwart supporter of the Liberals, an Indo-Canadian Sikh, Jaspal Atwal, although well known in the Sikh community, and whose activities have been closely followed by the RCMP appears to have a well-received presence within the Liberal party, his criminal past notwithstanding. Surrey Centre MP Randeep Sarai, knows him well, and was the one who extended the invitation for this convicted felon to appear alongside the Trudeaus on their India trip.

A more inconvenient juxtaposition could barely be imagined, immediately following Justin Trudeau's assurances of Canadian non-tolerance for terrorism, to both the first minister of the Punjab who had accused the current Canadian government of giving aid and comfort to Khalistani separatists in Canada, and to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had approached the Canadian Prime Minister on more than one occasion to express his unease at Canada's stance with respect to Khalistani provocations out of Canada.

Justin Trudeau's infantile preening while in New Delhi, playing  the colourful tourist impudently engaging in cultural sartorial misappropriation would have been vociferously denounced as racist imperialism had anyone but himself engaged in these disrespectful shenanigans. It was the thespian, the self-absorbed megalomaniac in Trudeau that had come to the fore. A man who had once taught
drama classes at a private school in Vancouver, now Prime Minister, delighting in meeting Bollywood actors in dress-up -- he and his family, that is; the Indian actors wore respectful Western-style suits.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, daughter, Ella-Grace, and son, Xavier, visit Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India, on Monday. (Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images)  Delhi journalist Shivam Vij: "You know, this whole thing about Justin Trudeau being so handsome has been taken over with 'Hello, what's with the clothes?'"

Back when Russian President Boris Yeltsin strode the world stage, usually half-cut, eliciting gasps of amused disbelief from watchers as he spontaneously acted out his peculiar impulses to relax formality by performing all manner of inappropriate-to-his-station skits of droll proportions, his clumsy but demeaning-to-his-office behaviour brought huge embarrassment to his country. Russians do enjoy their hard liquor -- they are usually more discreet in public; Putin by comparison, shuns it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on the other hand, lives in a perpetual state of arrested adolescence, he simply cannot rise above his self-veneration, his touching belief that he can do no wrong, that he is the world's premier admired gallant and defender of the weak and the vulnerable. He clamours righteously for the world to become more 'feminist' as he has done, he speaks volumes of his dedication to the working class, to equality rights for the alt-gendered. His pretense at being middle-class and socialist in spirit belies his love of opulence, wealth and ostentation.

His free-spirited public show of all of that in India doesn't appear to have impressed either the Indians, Canadians, or the outside world looking in with great bemusement on these revelations. There is another side to this man's agenda, however, that is more troubling; that he lends his position and prestige to meeting with unsavoury personages, from outlawed terror group leaders (Tamil Tigers, Khalistani separatists), to purported Afghan hostages who happen to be criminals, as example.

For no effort however puzzlingly unseemly, is too far a road to travel when the prospect of votes arise as a result. Little puzzlers like Trudeau's affection and support for the Castro brothers in Cuba, his fascination with the Communist Chinese Politburo, that can turn political matters 'on a dime', his stated willingness to restore diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran, an exporter of terrorism and exemplar of internal persecution of its public. Trudeau will turn up at mosques in Canada visibly celebrating extremism.


He has sent Liberal parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs Omar Alghabra, to attend a meeting of the world’s largest group of Islamic countries at the 44th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Cote d'Ivoire, last July. Canada, lest anyone be uncertain, is not, has never been, and possibly never will be a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a matter which appears to have slipped Trudeau's notice.

Canada's Department of Global Affairs was asked if Alghabra would be speaking at the conference as a guest, raising the topic of Islamophobia; the response was that he planned to address "ways to promote diversity and counter anti-Muslim discrimination". Scheduled, at the same opportunity, according to Global Affairs, to "articulate[ing] a position in line with our foreign policy which includes the protection and promotion of the rights of women and girls around the world", symbolic of Canada's nobility, one certain to impress the OIC.

Predicting the Global Political Future

"Really for the first time in human history, people as individuals really, really matter."
"They're [anti-establishment Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders] channelling something that we're observing in a lot of countries, not just the United States, which is this real dissatisfaction with the existing social bargains or compacts in society."
Suzanne Fry, director, National Intelligence Council Strategic Future Group

America is in social ferment, and the turmoil caused by the run-ups to the Democratic and Republican candidacies for the general election in the fall, when two-time President Barack Obama is constitutionally mandated to step down from the Oval Office, has roiled the nation. Two polarizing images of populist candidates expressing their views of U.S. political-social failures at home and abroad have shown the world that this is a nation in trouble with itself.

The confident stability and pride of America has been shattered in a paroxysm of self-doubt and anger. Americans feel they have been cynically manipulated, that their best interests are no longer considered, that the elite demographic of the wealthier-becoming-wealthier at the core's expense is an atrocious situation they will no longer tolerate. Anger seeps out of every corner of the country, out of the pores of furious liberals and conservatives alike who no longer see a common interest they share as a nation.

And this is the nation that leads the world, steady on as she goes, only it no longer does. It has been notably and noticeably faltering for decades. But a change in administration is in the offing. Or perhaps not. Only the outcome of the election will tell. In the meantime, a new forecast for the nation has been in the making, a prediction of trends and the global political environment for the foreseeable years to come.

The National Intelligence Council out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence bridges intelligence agencies and policy-makers awaiting its four-year-issue of global trends meant to be presented to an incoming president; alternately the incumbent, but this incumbent has had his two stints as national navigator and this report will be presented to his successor, whoever she -- or he will be. A draft summary has been released for the edification of the interested.

The director of the council's Strategic Future Group and ten of her colleagues set out to examine 30 countries, taking a year and a half to do the job right. They discussed the future with some 1,800 people at home and abroad, representing all interests and all spectrums of society. The prediction is that populism where average people assert themselves and their interests will continue to factor into society's unfolding new environment, from industrial nations to emerging ones.

China's economic slowdown reducing commodities demand from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East will have its impact, and perhaps spur those countries to find other ways they can aspire to grow their economic interests into the future. Wage stagnation has gone hand in glove with a reduction in global poverty. Yet a concentration of wealth in the hands of a globally minuscule group of people continues apace.

Trouble looms ahead as transnational terrorism played out by groups like Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, by al-Qaeda and by Boko Haram, and ongoing sectarian violence threatening stability in the Middle East, Asia and parts of Africa will continue until they are stifled and consume themselves for lack of the oxygen of support, suffocated by the will and determination of those they plague in their dominating quest for power.

Global Trends 2035

Critical to its insight and policy-relevance have been meetings worldwide with a wide range of interlocutors—including government officials, scholars, business people, civil society representatives, and others—in workshops, exchanges, and other events designed to stimulate thinking about possible global trajectories and discontinuities over the next two decades. 

Individuals from scores of countries and walks of life have helped the NIC examine trends—including economics, demography, ecology, energy, health, governance, security, identity, and geopolitics—and understand their implications for peace, security, and prosperity worldwide.  

The NIC crystallizes ideas gleaned from these meetings as well as extensive research in a Global Trends report published every four years, between the US Presidential Election Day and Inauguration Day

• The whole international system—as constructed following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India and China— have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.
• The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
• Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
• The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East."