Why Squirrel-Hair needs to let the grownups with which he has surrounded himself conduct the foreign policy

Prepare yourself for a flying-pigs moment. LITD is about to link to  a Daily Kos article. Furthermore, the situation described involves the response by two figures not known to be righties - Ohio Wesleyan University professor Sean Kay, and former US ambassador to NATO (during the Obama administration) Ivo Daadler - to Trump's tweet after his meeting with Merkel, in which he said, " Germany owes . . . vast sums of money to NATO and the United States must be paid more for the very powerful and expensive defense it provides to Germany!"

It wouldn't be a Squirrel-Hair tweet without the signature exclamation mark at the end, would it?

Anyway, the above-mentioned figures school him on the fact that this isn't a damn financial transaction, this is a treaty obligation under an agreement between several members of an international organization.

The thing is, there is no denying the validity of its point. Trump had better get up to speed on the dynamics of the NATO alliance or shut up about it.

A Fox poll reveals that the American people generally understand this:

 . . .  his absolutely lowest approval rating, the one thing he absolutely needs to stop doing, is on Twitter. His use of Twitter only has a 16% approval rating. 32% generously “wish he’d be more cautious,” while 50% flatly disapprove of him there.

For one thing, it detracts from the very important work being done right now in East Asia by his Secretary of State. Tillerson spoke a little too plainly in South Korea for his wobbly hosts:

Tillerson very clearly put the South Koreans on notice that we are more concerned with North Korea’s nukes than we are with South Korea’s domestic politics which includes a very strong pacifist, in not outright Vichy, tendency in dealing with the DPRK. There was no state dinner last night. Some of it may have been pique but it was mostly due to the fact that the ROK is between presidents right now, they impeached one this week, and their government is in flux. Whatever the reason the ROK media had to justify no dinner and ran with a story that Tillerson had begged off dinner because of “fatigue.”

Then he impresses upon our allies in the neighborhood just how late the hour is:

Now to the rest of the [Independent Journal Review] interview.

EM: How dangerous is the place we’re in today? The State Department just announced that Joseph Yun is on the way here for six days. What’s his mission? What are the next steps? How urgent is it right now?

RT: Well, in terms of the urgency right now is to ensure that the regime of Pyongyang has heard the message. That’s why we’ve tried to be very clear and succinct with the message, which is, first, we do not intend to be a threat to you. We do not want to have a conflict with you. We want you to change your direction. And we want others in the region to help us help them make a different decision. That’s the first step. And then obviously that has to be backed up with action, so that they understand we’re serious. And that means soliciting others to help us with that message and backing that message up to North Korea: that you need to change directions.
…

RT: No one issue defines the relationship between the U.S. and China. We will be talking about a broad range of issues when I’m in Beijing. But the threat of North Korea is imminent. And it has reached a level that we are very concerned about the consequences of North Korea being allowed to continue on this progress it’s been making on the development of both weapons and delivery systems. And it’s reached a very alarming state to us. So it is getting a lot of discussion up front because it’s imminent. We have a broad range of issues that define the relationship. This is but one. There are others, and you listed them. All of them have their importance in the U.S.-China relationship, but this one — as I said — just happens to have bubbled to the top because of the recent actions that have been taken by North Korea. 

After decades of an Agreed Framework, several rounds of utterly fruitless Six-Way Talks, and general floundering, someone is being starkly candid about what the danger level is in northeast Asia.

And it's shaking up our allies there. In contrast to the way Trump is shaking up our European allies, the ones in the Korean situation need actual shaking up.

This is no time for mixed messages, or the possibility that the United States could be perceived as not knowing what the hell it is doing.

This, folks, is what we could have avoided if we'd fielded an actual conservative with a coherent worldview. The great appointments, the excellent reversal in energy policy, and the clear-eyed view of world-stage threats - but without the fifth-grade bluster of a narcissistic embarrassment.