How The First Globalization Experiment Failed

Quit saying it is too late to do anything about it . That is defeatist nonsense fostered by the same crew that sold diversity is a strength.

Welcome to London: We can say we’re not afraid, light candles and make hearts of our hands but the truth is that we can’t go on like this, says KATIE HOPKINS

dailymail

They stood in the centre of Brussels. Row on row.

Hands held high, making hearts to the heavens. Showing the slaughtered they were not forgotten. Reminding themselves they were here with love. Looking to show humanity wins. That love conquers all.

They lay in the centre of London, face down where they fell. Stabbed by a knife, rammed with a car, flung, broken, into the Thames, life bleeding out on the curb.

And the news came thick and fast.

An injured woman is assisted after a man drove a 4x4 into pedestrians along Westminster Bridge on Wednesday afternoon

A car rammed deliberately into pedestrians on the bridge. Ten innocents down.

A police officer stabbed at the House of Commons. Confirmed dead.

Another woman now, dead at the scene.

Shots fired. An Asian man rushed to hospital.

People make hearts with their hands during a ceremony in Belgium to commemorate the first anniversary of the bomb attacks in Brussels

A woman, plucked from the water.

And I grew colder. And more tiny.

No anger for me this time. No rage like I’ve felt before. No desperate urge to get out there and scream at the idiots who refused to see this coming.

Not even a nod for the glib idiots who say this will not defeat us, that we will never be broken, that cowardice and terror will not get the better of Britain.

Because, as loyal as I am, as patriotic as I am, as much as my whole younger life was about joining the British military and fighting for my country — I fear we are broken.

Not because of this ghoulish spectacle outside our own Parliament. Not because of the lives rammed apart on the pavement, even as they thought about what was for tea. Or what train home they might make.

Bystanders stop to give people mouth to mouth after the driver mowed them down. Katie Hopkins says we are now a broken London

But because this is us now.

This is our country now.

This is what we have become.

To this, we have been reduced.

Because all the while those forgiving fools in Brussels stood with their stupid hands raised in hearts to the sky, another mischief was in the making. More death was in the pipeline.

As the last life-blood of a police officer ran out across the cobbles, the attacker was being stretchered away in an attempt to save his life.

London is a city so desperate to be seen as tolerant, no news of the injured was released. No clue about who was safe or not.

Liberals convince themselves multiculturalism works because we all die together, too.

An entire city of monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Blind. Deaf. And dumb.

Members of the civil protection outside the damaged front of Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, a year ago today. The attacks left dozens dead and hundreds injured

Immersed in a seething pit of hatred, hidden in pockets of communities plagued by old animosities and ancient strife.

These people may have left their lands. But they have brought every tension, every conflict, every bit of fight here with them.

The Afghans hate the Somalias who loathe the Eritreans. As it was before, it is now. London is a city of ghettos behind a thin veneer of civility kept polished by a Muslim mayor whose greatest validation is his father's old job.

Son-of-a-bus-driver Sadiq.

I see him now, penning a missive about how London is a beautiful and tolerant city, how we are united by shared values and understanding, and how we will not be cowed by terror.

Sure enough, there he was, saying exactly that, just now. Fool.

'I want to reassure Londoners': Mayor Sadiq Khan's message

A police officer is led away from the scene after she tries to revive her colleague who was stabbed in the attack on Wednesday afternoon

Even as mothers text to check their children are safe. Including my own, worrying about me as I sit overlooking the scene, feeling fearful of this place where monsters lurk and steal lives away in an instant. For nothing.

I would ask Sadiq to stop talking. Empty words. Meanwhile, banning pictures of women in bikinis on the Underground. How does that help?

Please, no hashtag, no vigil, no tea lights. I am begging you not to light up Parliament in the colours of the Union.

Because we are not united. We are wrenched asunder.

The patriots of the rest of England versus the liberals in this city. The endless tolerance to those who harm us, (while the Home Office tries to shift the focus of public fear to white terror) — versus the millions like me who face the truth, with worried families and hopeless hearts, who feel the country sinking.

We are taken under the cold water by this heavy right foot in the south, a city of lead, so desperately wedded to the multicultural illusion that it can only fight those who love the country the most, blame those who are most proud to be British, and shout racist at the 52%.

Prime Minister Theresa May speaks outside 10 Downing St after the attacks. Katie Hopkins says it is time to admit that multiculturalism has not worked

This place is just like Sweden. Terrified of admitting the truth about the threat we face, about the horrors committed by the migrants we failed to deter — because to admit that we are sinking, and fast, would be to admit that everything the liberals believe is wrong.

That multiculturalism has not worked. That it is one big fat failure and one big fat lie.

President Erdogan of Turkey said there is a war being waged between the crescent and the cross. But he is wrong. Because the cross is not strong. We are down on bended knee, a doormat to be trodden on, a joke only funny to those that wish us harm.

The war is between London and the rest of the country. Between the liberals and the right-minded. Between those who think it is more important to tip-toe around the cultures of those who choose to join us, rather than defend our own culture.

Katie Hopkins says these incidents are no longer unusual, but commonplace

How many more times?

And how many more attacks must pass before we acknowledge these are no longer the acts of ‘extremists’? That there is no safe badge with which to hold these people at arm’s length, in the way the liberals casually use the term 'far-right' for anyone who has National pride.

These events are no longer extreme. They are commonplace. Every day occurrences.

These people are no longer extremists. They are simply more devout. More true to their beliefs. Beliefs which will be supported endlessly across our state broadcaster for the next few months until we buy into the narrative that one religion is not to blame.

That in fact we should blame Brexit supporters. For believing in a Britain. As it was before.

Anything but the truth.

This is why there is no anger from me this time, no rage. No nod for those who pretend we will not be cowed, even as they rush home to text their mum they are safe. No surprise that the city of which I was so proud is now punctured by fear, and demarcated even more formally by places we cannot tread; there were always parts in which a white woman could not safely walk.

Sadiq Khan should 'stop talking' according to Katie Hopkins, who says his words are empty as we are 'wrenched asunder' 

Now I feel only sadness, overwhelming sadness.

I will walk over the river tonight and look to the Thames, to the Union flag lowered at half mast, and the Parliament below, and I will wonder, just how much longer we can go on like this.  

Flynn's identity in a 702 program was leaked to the press after his conversation last year with the Russian ambassador was intercepted - It appears Flynn was not alone

Intelligence Community Collected and Shared Information About Trump Transition People

Adam DickMarch 22, 2017

Early information arising from a US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee investigation into possible United States government spying on Donald Trump and people associated with him appears to show that information about individuals associated with Trump and his presidential transition was collected through surveillance by, and was widely distributed in, the US intelligence community.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters Wednesday that “on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition” and that “details about US persons associated with the incoming administration – details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value – were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

Nunez also stated in a press release Wednesday that he has “asked the Directors of the FBI, NSA, and CIA to expeditiously comply with my March 15 letter, and to provide a full account of” related surveillance activities.

Nunes’ discussion of the information being “incidentally collected” and then being widely distributed despite having little or no apparent foreign intelligence value highlights a reason to reject the common claim that people who have done nothing wrong have no reason to worry about mass surveillance. When you allow surveillance to run wild, then information that has nothing to do with the supposed purposes of the surveillance, such as protecting Americans from terrorist attacks, can be easily and frequently swept up and shared.

It is naïve to believe that none of the people who obtain the surveillance-derived information will then use it to their advantage, even if that results in harm to the people “incidentally” surveilled. It is also naïve to assume that surveillance efforts will not be adjusted here and there to make sure that more of the desired, but definable as “incidentally collected,” information is obtained and shared. 

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Massie is a member of the Ron Paul Institute.

Robert Gilbeau is in a heap of legal trouble. In June, he became the first active-duty Navy admiral in modern history to be convicted of a felony. Next month, he faces sentencing and could land in federal prison for up to five years.

2013:

Fat Leonard and the Decline of Military Values

The officer corps was once assumed to be above larger cultural rot. No more.

By Andrew J. Bacevich • March 20, 2017

Samuel P. Huntington concluded The Soldier and the State (1957), his influential study of U.S. civil-military relations, with this comparison of the U.S. Military Academy and Highland Falls, New York, the village situated just outside the gates of West Point:

West Point embodies the military ideal at its best; Highland Falls the American spirit at its most commonplace. West Point is a gray island in a many colored sea, a bit of Sparta in the midst of Babylon. Yet is it possible to deny that the military values—loyalty, duty, restraint, dedication—are the ones America most needs today?  ….  Upon the soldiers, the defenders of order, rests a heavy responsibility.  The greatest service they can render is to remain true to themselves…. If they abjure the military spirit, they destroy themselves first and their nation ultimately. If the civilians permit the soldiers to adhere to the military standard, the nations themselves may eventually find redemption and security in making that standard their own.

Once upon a time, as a young serving soldier of conservative temperament, I found Huntington’s idealized depiction of the professional military ethic to be immensely appealing. It accorded precisely with my image of myself and of my calling. Yet Huntington was describing aspiration, not reality. As actually experienced, military service differed considerably from Huntington’s ideal.

Huntington depicted an inherently conservative military profession that defended, even as it stood in tension with, an inherently liberal social order.  The values of that profession demanded that its members abjure liberalism and stand apart from that order. So Huntington believed.

Yet his juxtaposition of the bland and boring Highland Falls with the serenely ordered West Point was off the mark. Temptation lay not immediately outside the gates but further downriver in the garish glitter of Manhattan.

Liberalism per se poses a negligible threat to military professionalism. Far more dangerous are inclinations and attitudes that have seized American culture in an age when neither liberal principles nor conservative ones retain real standing, and when the gratification of appetites, whether material or sexual, has become one of the defining markers of our age. Bright lights, big city: that’s where the temptations to abandon loyalty, duty, restraint, and dedication reside.

What prompts these observations are two ongoing military scandals. The one scandal affects the Marine Corps, and involves misconduct by an anonymous group of (probably enlisted) Marines. Centering on gender, it has drawn attention from journalists and members of Congress, who assiduously patrol the gender beat. The other scandal affects the U.S. Navy and involves senior officers up to the rank of admiral. Years in the making, it attracts only intermittent attention.

In my own judgment, the Marine scandal, if by no means trivial, qualifies as the lesser of the two. An organization calling itself Marines United, perhaps involving as many as 30,000 participants, created a restricted web page on which it posted photographs of nude women, apparently without consent of the subjects. Some of those women were themselves Marines.  

This stunt qualifies as a grotesque and repugnant violation of privacy. Yet in an age where claims to privacy are everywhere besieged and when our infatuation with social media has created an online world where just about anything goes, it falls something short of shocking. The incident offers one more example of the detritus that the wondrous information age is leaving in its wake. As the journalist Christina Cauterucci acknowledged, pausing to catch her breath while subjecting Marines United to an extended rant, “This is the same tactic used by boys in middle school and high school, who create secret ‘slut pages’ on social media, where they distribute any private nude photos they get from girls in their grade.”

Just so. Such behavior is degrading, stupid, unacceptable—and everywhere. 

Far more important, in my view, is the ongoing Navy scandal, known under the rubric of “Fat Leonard.” Weighing in at an impressive 350 lbs., Leonard Glenn Francis was, until his conviction on charges of fraud and bribery, CEO of an outfit called Glenn Defense Marine Asia. GDMA specialized in providing support services to ships of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet operating in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Fat Leonard himself specialized in plying officers of the Seventh Fleet with cigars, liquor, pricey wristwatches, concert tickets, vacations, and other gifts—not to mention five-star dinners and suites in luxury hotels, often with prostitutes as an added bonus. In return, these officers threw business to GDMA, which then overbilled the U.S. government to the tune of several tens of millions of dollars.

Scores of serving naval officers became Fat Leonard’s de facto agents in this sleazy enterprise. According to an investigative report in the Washington Post, “Francis doled out sex and money to a shocking number of people in uniform who fed him classified material about U.S. warship and submarine movements.  ….  He exploited the intelligence for illicit profit, brazenly ordering his moles to redirect aircraft carriers to ports he controlled in Southeast Asia so he could more easily bilk the Navy for fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water and sewage removal.”

As of last year, 30 U.S. Navy admirals on active duty were under investigation for their suspected involvement in this conspiracy. That investigation, which dates from 2010, continues.  Earlier this week, authorities arrested Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, a recently retired Navy intelligence officer, along with four retired Navy captains and a retired Marine colonel. Previously three other admirals had been censured and forced to retire. Another has pled guilty to related charges, as have several officers of lesser rank. Almost certainly, there will be further indictments forthcoming.

Christina Cauterucci accuses Marines United of “putting U.S. national security at risk.” That’s hyperbole. When it comes to the officers who sold their souls to Fat Leonard, however, the charge fits. Yet while bringing to justice those who committed crimes at Fat Leonard’s behest is imperative, examining the underlying factors that have produced such egregious corruption qualifies as more important still.

We confront evidence of an officer corps that has lost its moral bearings, abandoning the “military standard” for something quite different. To assume that the rot is confined exclusively to one particular service would be a grave mistake.

Andrew J. Bacevich is The American Conservative’s writer-at-large and a non-resident senior fellow at West Point’s Modern War Institute.

It is about time

At least 1,000 women 'flee Saudi Arabia every year because of sexism'

Tuesday 21 March 2017 17:44 GMT

Many Saudi women must gain permission simply to leave their house AFP/Getty Images

At least 1,000 Saudi Arabian women flee the country each year because of the country’s ingrained misogyny, a sociologist based in the country's capital Riyadh has claimed.  

Higher numbers are also believed to leave for the more liberal city of Jeddah. 

They are part of an apparently increasing number of women who have tired of the country’s highly sexist social system and decided to leave for a better life, according to Mansour al-Askar of the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University. 

He told The Economist that he estimated more than 1,000 women leave every year. 

Saudi Arabia adheres to a harsh version of Wahhabi Sunni Islam and is notorious for strict Sharia law it employs. It remains the only country on earth where women are banned from driving. 

Women and are also subject to walis, or male guardians, throughout their lives – usually their father, husband or other male relative. 

They must have their permission before engaging in almost any sort of activity, from getting an education or job, to simply leaving the house.

Saudi Arabian women release video mocking driving laws

In Saudi Arabia, a woman’s freedom “is largely dependent on the good will of her male guardian,” according to a 2016 report Human Rights Watch. 

The organisation has called the guardian system: "The most significant impediment to realising women's rights in the country".

While it is difficult to quantify the precise number of women leaving their homeland, some academics have claimed that it is affecting the oil rich country's economy and society

“Saudi Arabia is losing the battle to keep its talent,” Saudi academic, Najah al-Osaimi, told The Economist. 

• More about:
• Saudi Arabia
• Women's Rights

TRUMP INVESTIGATED BY FBI FOR RUSSIA COLLUSION SINCE JULY 2016: Question?

If the FBI has been investigating Trump since July over Russia ties, why would the FBI not have tapped Trump's conversations?

WikiLeaks released more than 8,000 webpages that document numerous hacking tools developed and used by the Central Intelligence Agency

Why is it that the House Committee on ‘Russian Hacking’ includes only DNC-hired tech experts?

Posted on March 13, 2017 by State of the Nation

by LEE STRANAHAN
Breitbart.com

A list of witnesses scheduled to appear at a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Open Hearing on “Russian Active Measures” contains a glaring problem: the only technical experts scheduled to testify are from CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is a firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and has become the primary source of the narrative about “Russian hacking” of the 2016 election and has acted as a mouthpiece for the Democrats since last June.

The initial witness list released by House Intelligence includes a number of intelligence officials, all appointed during the Obama administration, such as former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, but the sole technical people on the invitation list are two representatives of CrowdStrike, President Shawn Henry, and the co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch.

Breitbart News has interviewed tech experts who do not agree with the CrowdStrike assessment or Obama administration’s claims that the DNC/DCCC hacks clearly committed by Russian state actors, with much criticism aimed at the FBI/DHS Joint Analysis Report (JAR) “Grizzly Steppe” that was released at the end of December. As ZDNet reported after the JAR report was released by the Obama administration on the same day that they announced sanctions against Russia:

The JAR included “specific indicators of compromise, including IP addresses and a PHP malware sample.” But what does this really prove? Wordfence, a WordPress security company specializing in analyzing PHP malware, examined these indicators and didn’t find any hard evidence of Russian involvement. Instead, Wordfence found the attack software was P.AS. 3.1.0, an out-of-date, web-shell hacking tool. The newest version, 4.1.1b, is more sophisticated. Its website claims it was written in the Ukraine.

Mark Maunder, Wordfence’s CEO, concluded that since the attacks were made “several versions behind the most current version of P.A.S sic which is 4.1.1b. One might reasonably expect Russian intelligence operatives to develop their own tools or at least use current malicious tools from outside sources.”

True, as Errata Security CEO Rob Graham pointed out in a blog post, P.A.S is popular among Russia/Ukraine hackers. But it’s “used by hundreds if not thousands of hackers, mostly associated with Russia, but also throughout the rest of the world.” In short, just because the attackers used P.A.S., that’s not enough evidence to blame it on the Russian government.

Independent cybersecurity experts, such as Jeffrey Carr, have cited numerous errors that the media and CrowdStrike have made in discussing the hacking in what Carr refers to as a “runaway train” of misinformation.

For example, CrowdStrike has named a threat group that they have given the name “Fancy Bear” for the hacks and then said this threat group is Russian intelligence. In December 2016, Carr wrote in a post on Medium:

A common misconception of “threat group” is that [it] refers to a group of people. It doesn’t. Here’s how ESET describes SEDNIT, one of the names for the threat group known as APT28, Fancy Bear, etc. This definition is found on p.12 of part two “En Route with Sednit: Observing the Comings and Goings”:

As security researchers, what we call “the Sednit group” is merely a set of software and the related network infrastructure, which we can hardly correlate with any specific organization.

Unlike CrowdStrike, ESET doesn’t assign APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit to a Russian Intelligence Service or anyone else for a very simple reason. Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone.

Despite these and other criticisms from technical experts with no political axe to grind, the House Intelligence committee has called no independent cybersecurity professionals to challenge the Democrats’ claims of “Russian hacking” that have been repeated ad naseum by the media.

Instead of presenting counter-arguments to allow the general public to make up their own minds, the House committee has invited Shawn Henry and Dmitri Alperovitch from CrowdStrike,

The danger is especially high since the subject involves technical details that the public—and, frankly, most politicians—don’t understand and can be easily fooled about. A presentation with no rebuttal at all from other technical experts will lead to even more disinformation being given to the American people.

There are a number of reasons to be skeptical of the objectivity of CrowdStrike’s assessments.

As Esquire reported in a long profile piece, the DNC specifically used Alperovitch and Henry as part of an anti-Trump publicity plan related to the hacking in early June 2016:

The DNC wanted to go public. At the committee’s request, Alperovitch and Henry briefed a reporter from The Washington Post about the attack.

…

Alperovitch told me he was thrilled that the DNC decided to publicize Russia’s involvement. “Having a client give us the ability to tell the full story” was a “milestone in the industry,” he says. “Not just highlighting a rogue nation-state’s actions but explaining what was taken and how and when. These stories are almost never told.”

The Esquire piece also indicates that as the election wore on, the Obama administration was also using Alperovitch and CrowdStrike’s claims to push the Democrat narrative that the Russians were behind the attack:

On October 7, two days before the second presidential debate, Alperovitch got a phone call from a senior government official alerting him that a statement identifying Russia as the sponsor of the DNC attack would soon be released. (The statement, from the office of the director of national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security, appeared later that day.)

It is worth noting that CrowdStrike and Alperovitch’s story has evolved over time to match a Democrat narrative. In an article in Inc. on June 14, 2016, titled “Why the DNC Hired This Cybersecurity Firm to Fight Russian Spies,” Alperovitch claimed that the purpose of the DNC hack was to expose Donald Trump:

On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Russian government is implicated in a security breach of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, through which opposition research on the bombastic presidential candidate was lifted.

“Every world leader is trying to figure out who Mr. Trump is, especially if he’s elected president, and they want to know what his foreign policies would be. Russia is no exception,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and CTO of CrowdStrike. His firm was hired to manage the breach. “The actors are also interested in any other information the DNC might have in their opposition research to use it against Trump if he becomes president,” says Alperovitch, who leads the Intelligence, Technology and CrowdStrike Labs teams.

There is no justification for a technical expert like Alperovitch ascribing motives to the hackers or making statements about what “world leaders” think. It is simply outside his area of expertise, but the point of the Democrats using Alperovitch and Henry to promote their “Russian hacking” narrative is to provide a technical veneer to their story to score political points.

Shawn Henry, the other House witness from CrowdStrike scheduled to testify on March 20 before House Intelligence, said on his LinkedIn page that he also works for NBC News, where he says his role is to “advise NBC News on all aspects of national, homeland, and cyber security, to include on-air appearances on all NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC News programs.” He added that he is to “regularly appear on Nightly News, The Today Show, and MSNBC news programming.”

CrowdStrike also has a financial connection to one of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats’ most high-profile supporters in Silicon Valley: Google.

In 2015, CrowdStrike raised $100 million in a new round of financing, according to the New York Times, which reported that “the investment was led by Google Capital, one of the technology giant’s venture capital arms, in its first cybersecurity deal.”

As Breitbart News reported, the WikiLeaks releases showed that Eric Schmidt, executive of Google Capital parent company and financier Alphabet, appeared to be working directly with the Clinton campaign.

All of this makes the reliance of the House Committee and the media on CrowdStrike disturbing, but even worse, earlier this year, BuzzFeed reported that the FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee but, instead, based their assessment on CrowdStrike’s evaluation:

Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

…

The FBI has instead relied on computer forensics from a third-party tech security company, CrowdStrike, which first determined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infiltrated by Russia-linked hackers, the U.S. intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

…

“CrowdStrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,” the intelligence official said, adding they were confident Russia was behind the widespread hacks.

Despite that claim by an unnamed intelligence official, there is reason to believe that what CrowdStrike has concluded is not accurate. At this point, however, the House Committee and the American people will not see it.

Breitbart News has requested an interview with Dmitri Alperovitch, but at press time there was no response.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence says that initial witness invitation lists “may be expanded or modified as warranted.”

___
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/09/house-committee-russian-hacking-includes-only-dnc-hired-tech-experts/

What strategic benefit would accrue from having Montenegro as an ally that would justify the risk of our having to go to war should some neighbor breach Montenegro’s borders?

ASK JOHN McCAIN

Is McCain hijacking Trump's foreign policy?

Pat Buchanan: The vote that needs explaining on NATO issue is not Rand Paul's

Published: 5 hours ago WND
NEW WORLD DISORDER



“The senator from Kentucky,” said John McCain, speaking of his colleague Rand Paul, “is working for Vladimir Putin … and I do not say that lightly.”

What did Sen. Paul do to deserve being called a hireling of Vladimir Putin?

He declined to support McCain’s call for a unanimous Senate vote to bring Montenegro into NATO as the 29th member of a Cold War alliance President Trump has called “obsolete.”

Bordered by Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania, tiny Montenegro has a population roughly that of D.C., and sits on the western coast of the most volatile peninsula in Europe.

What strategic benefit would accrue from having Montenegro as an ally that would justify the risk of our having to go to war should some neighbor breach Montenegro’s borders?

Historically, the Balkans have been an incubator of war. In the 19th century, Otto van Bismarck predicted that when the Great War came, it would come out of “some damn fool thing in the Balkans.” And so it did when the Austrian archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo June 28, 1914, by Serbian ethnonationalist Gavrilo Princip.

Aflame with ethnic, civil and sectarian war in the 1990s, the western Balkans are again in political turmoil. Milo Djukanovic, the longtime Montenegrin prime minister who resigned on election day in October, claims that he was targeted for assassination by Russia to prevent Montenegro’s accession to NATO.

Russia denies it. But on the Senate floor, McCain raged at Rand Paul: “You are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin … trying to dismember this small country which has already been the subject of an attempted coup.”

But if Montenegro, awash in corruption and crime, is on the verge of an uprising or coup, why would the U.S. issue a war guarantee that could vault us into a confrontation with Russia – without a full Senate debate?

The vote that needs explaining here is not Rand Paul’s.

What do YOU think? What are your thoughts about Sen. John McCain? Sound off in the WND poll!

It is the votes of those senators who are handing out U.S.-NATO war guarantees to countries most Americans could not find on a map.

Is no one besides Sen. Paul asking the relevant questions here?

What vital U.S. interest is imperiled in who comes to power in Podgorica, Montenegro? Why cannot Europe handle this problem in its own backyard?

Has President Trump given McCain, who wanted President Bush to intervene in a Russia-Georgia war – over South Ossetia! – carte blanche to hand out war guarantees to unstable Balkan states?

Did Trump approve the expansion of NATO into all the successor states born of the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia?

Or is McCain hijacking U.S. foreign policy on NATO and Russia?

President Trump should tell the Senate: No more admissions to NATO, no more U.S. war guarantees, unless I have recommended or approved them. Foreign policy is made in the White House, not on the Senate floor.

Indeed, what happened to the foreign policy America voted for – rapprochement with Russia, an end to U.S. wars in the Middle East and having rich allies share more of the cost of their own defense?

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.

It is U.S., not NATO defense spending that is rising to more than $50 billion this year. And today we learn the Pentagon has drawn up plans for the insertion of 1,000 more U.S. troops into Syria. While the ISIS caliphate seems doomed, this six-year Syrian war is far from over.

An al-Qaida subsidiary, the Nusra Front, has become the most formidable rebel fighting group. Syria’s army, with the backing of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Shiite militias from across the Middle East, has carved out most of the territory it needs.

The Turkish army is now in Syria, beside its rebel allies. Their main enemy: Syria’s Kurds, who are America’s allies.

From our longest war, Afghanistan, comes word from U.S. Gen. John Nicholson that we and our Afghan allies are in a “stalemate” with the Taliban, and he will need a “few thousand” more U.S. troops – to augment the 8,500 President Obama left behind when he left office.

Some 5,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, helping to liberate Mosul from ISIS. In Kabul, Baghdad and Damascus, terrorist bombings are a weekly, if not a daily, occurrence.

Then there is the U.S. troop buildup in Poland and the Baltic, the U.S. deployment of a missile defense to South Korea after multiple missile tests in the North, and Russia and China talking of upgrading their nuclear arsenals to counter U.S. missile defenses in Poland, Romania and South Korea.

In and around the waters of the Persian Gulf, United States warships are harassed by Iranian patrol boats, as Tehran test-fires anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles to send the Americans a message: Attack us and it will not be a cakewalk war.

With the death of Communism, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Bushite New World Order, America needs a new grand strategy, built upon the solid foundation of America First.