In the last couple of weeks, Putin allies have come to power-- with his help-- in Moldava, Bulgaria and the United States. (Yes, Obama completely failed to protect America from that menace...
It's always worth hearing what people across the world are are listening to about our country. And when it comes to mainstream Arab coverage, al-Arabiya's Hisham Melhem's analysis is especially worthwhile. Melhem has been trying to explain the Trump phenomenon to folks in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Palestine, Algeria and Kuwait. He explains Trump's rise in terms of angry masses of Republican voters.
In the Arab world Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot are major historical villains at the heart, most say, of all that troubles the Middle East today. Most Americans would be hard pressed to tell you who either of them is or why their names are historically significant-- and that probably includes Donald Trump, candidate for president of a party that once took foreign policy and national security seriously.
Trump keeps going on TV and claiming that foreign policy experts have given his maiden foreign policy speech high grades. As with most of what Trump says, that isn't true. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Trump is a guy who doesn't understand the difference between a business negotiation and a negotiation with sovereign powers (watch the video of him up top on ABC's This Week yesterday. "One of the things that worries me," said Gates, "is that he doesn't appear to listen to people.
