Pottinger echoes Vandenberg, American democracy, leadership on Tim Ferriss; Blinken 'Rockin' in the Free World'; A great & terrible ally, Georgia protestor & Nasdaq high
Matt Pottinger on the Tim Ferriss Show:
MP: We’d be well served to remember what Senator Vandenberg said. You remember who Vandenberg was? He was an isolationist Republican before World War II, who ended up becoming an internationalist bipartisan partner of a Democratic president, Harry Truman. And he ended up getting the Marshall Plan through the Senate. He’s the one who got NATO through the Senate. And so, Vandenberg had a famous line, he said, ‘Politics stops at the water’s edge.’ That is a great motto that we should return to.
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TF: [W]hat can the US do, in your mind, broadly speaking, to continue to act as a global superpower?
MP: One thing we should first do is recognize that we are a very special country. We have to recognize that the things that the United States has made possible well beyond our borders…. Look at how many countries around the world have emulated that model. And yet that model is not sustainable without the United States.
But what you are facing now is a very significant decision by these unnatural partners [Xi and Putin] to decide to work together because they believe they have a once-in-a-century opportunity right now to break the back of American credibility and American power….We are a country that deals with those problems openly and with the participation of our citizenry and with the protection of the rule of law. Those are very, very special things that we should not take for granted and we should actually be proud of them and own them.
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[W]e should also not be afraid to be candid about what distinguishes our system from ones that are actually pretty dark….We need to be rhetorically sharper in drawing the distinctions between who we and our allies are and other democracies.
Kyiv Independent: Blinken sings, plays guitar with local band in Kyiv
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined a local band in Kyiv on May 14 for a rendition of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World."
Blinken arrived in Kyiv on a surprise visit earlier on May 14 in a trip reportedly designed to "send a strong signal of reassurance to the Ukrainians who are obviously in a very difficult moment."
