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"Even in the days of George W. Bush, there was no feeling that Bush was against Muslims," said Marwan Muasher, a former foreign minister of Jordan and now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Or there are the German leaders who are dismayed by Trump's blunt defense of Vladimir Putin to Bill O'Reilly: "There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country's so innocent?"
The comment alarmed many because it underscored an approach by Mr. Trump, like the rejection of migrants from certain predominantly Muslim countries, that has stripped much of the moral component from American foreign relations and left him being lectured by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and others about his duties under international law.Other voices pushing this "moral authority" claim in the article are not allies, but American establishment figures. They include Joseph Nye, a former senior State Department official now at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government - "The Berlin Wall didn't come down because people were responding to American howitzers" — and Michèle Flournoy, the liberal-interventionist who was seen as Hillary Clinton's choice to be secretary of defense. "The most burning question overseas is, 'Can we rely on the United States to keep its commitments, can we rely on you to lead in the way we expect,'" she reports.
Her foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, has gone one step further, reminding America of its moral duty as the most powerful Western country and one founded by Christian refugees...
Comment: For more analysis on the Netherlands and Turkey spat, read the SOTT Focus: The Bigger Picture: What's Behind the Souring Relationship Between Turkey and The Netherlands