Donald Trump's phone call with Taiwan president risks China's wrath

[Dill]

(12-03-2016, 03:16 AM)JustWinBaby Wrote: We've been over this.
Foreign policy is mostly the purview of career staffers.  The only levers the POTUS pulls is on the margin - go faster or slower, angle left or right....but mainly to tell the public whether or not there is an iceberg ahead, and who/what/why to blame if we happen to hit it (if that's even the official story).  And if our foreign policy didn't have this consistency, where would we get if people could just wait out the administration over 4-8 years?
You just don't come in to deny and ignore someone on the Israel/Palestine issue, for example, who has studied and debated it for 30 years.
Barring egomaniacal sociopaths, I just think that 95% of foreign policy is the same regardless of who gets elected.  And the 5% difference is rarely significant (more "recognize Cuba" than "don't invade Iraq").

Your unspecified "career staffers" did not generate the Truman Doctrine, Johnson's decision to escalate rather than withdraw from Vietnam, Nixon's surprise opening to China, the Camp David Accord, The Reagan Doctrine, The Gulf War, the Oslo accords, George W's disastrous invasion of Iraq, or Obama's treaty with Iran--all dramatic shifts in foreign policy, often with significant domestic consequences.  Bush actually steered the ship of state INTO an iceberg others would certainly have avoided, all the while ignoring the advice of Iraq experts who had "studied and debated for years."

And people do "wait out" administrations--as did the Vietnamese in 1968 and the Iranians in 1980. And maybe for the first time in history, rather than wait it out, a foreign power has effectively engineered a shift in foreign policy by determining the winner of the 2016 presidential election.

After refusing boring intel briefings for two weeks, Trump denied and ignored 40 years of protocol/policy and intervened in US-China relations BEFORE taking office and WITHOUT INFORMING THE SITTING PRESIDENT.  He thinks his son-in-law would make a great peace envoy to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He's already using his future presidency to leverage business opportunities in countries with whom he will be negotiating trade agreements. He is not going to make his tax returns public, so we have no clear idea of where his foreign business interests may conflict with US interests and he has no plans to liquidate his holdings.  A man who finds Alex Jones Infowars conspiracies credible will soon be in charge of all US intel operations. He seems unaware that public statements dissing alliances and considering the use of atomic weapons are already foreign policy actions affecting allies and alliance.

What would constitute "real evidence" he's different from the past few guys who went before him?