EMAIL DETAILS

The Daily GAB Friday, June 9, 2017
U.S. Global Leadership Coalition | www.usglc.org
http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=IXXNIMQhR-70rDR6gs82jw

USGLC in the News

THE WASHINGTON POST

That Knock on a Congressman's Door Could Be a Fulbright Scholar
With a Tin Cup |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=jXYVuXAJL6dnvUJO0NtnBw

Carol Morello

Now, the [Fulbright] program's funding is facing what its alumni
association calls an existential threat from a 47 percent cut proposed
by the Trump administration, one of many sharp reductions in the State
Department budget. The Fulbright alumni are part of a growing parade
of individuals and organizations heading to Capitol Hill in coming
weeks to persuade lawmakers to reject the administration's
proposed cuts. Next week, for example, more than 500 leaders in
business, retired military, nonprofits and faith groups will urge
lawmakers to provide more money for the State Department and the U.S.
Agency for International Development.

ALBUQUERQUE BUSINESS FIRST

New Mexico Business Leader Heads to Washington to Advocate for
International Trade |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=Ijhrl0BoPpsTtL4QRljLzQ

Ron Davis

An Albuquerque representative is coming to the nation's capitol. Jason
Espinoza, CEO and president of New Mexico Association of Commerce and
Industry, is headed to the White House for the U.S. Global Leadership
Coalition's 2017 State Leaders Summit June 13 and 14. He is
joining over 500 government, military and nonprofit leaders in
Washington. Espinoza is one of more than 225 business leaders to
collectively send Secretary of State Rex Tillerson a letter, urging
him and President Donald Trump's administration to reconsider its
plans for cutting the funding for the State Department and the U.S.
Agency for International Development by 32 percent.

THURSTON TALK

Mayor Selby heads to Washington, D.C. Summit on America's Global
Leadership

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=DjI6AoFV8t-rKz-uydDOrg

Olympia Mayor Cheryl Selby is joining state leaders from across the
country in Washington D.C. on June 13 and 14 to urge Washington State
lawmakers on Capitol Hill to fully fund the State Department and U.S.
Agency for International Development in the wake of the
Administration's proposal to slash funding by 32 percent. The
U.S. Global Leadership Coalition is convening its 2017 State Leaders
Summit with more than 500 business, military, government, non-profit,
and faith leaders from across the country at a time of growing global
challenges from ISIS and Ebola to the refugee and famine crises.

Who's in the News

THE NEW YORK TIMES
To Be Great, America Must Be Good

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=XvDjISjEDxQjgtMW0INWbw

Susan E. Rice, National Security Adviser (2013-2017), U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations (2009 to 2013)

The president's budget would slash funding for the United States
Agency for International Development and the State Department by
nearly 30 percent, rendering our embassies vulnerable to attack and
shuttering vital programs that advance our interests. The budget would
also starve the United Nations and its peacekeeping operations of
essential support. We live in a world where our security and
prosperity are maximized when others enjoy the same. Congress must
insist, on a bipartisan basis, that the United States continue to play
its traditional leadership role, by fully funding both defense and our
foreign assistance programs.

USA TODAY
Donald Trump Is Wrecking U.S. Alliance With Europe

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=Ve_BwTZo_xl0sB9SoY7iNw

Nicholas Burns, Former Under Secretary of State and Ambassador to NATO

The 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan this week should be a
celebration of the trans-Atlantic alliance - the most powerful
and successful in modern history. Instead of celebrating, however,
America and Europe are experiencing their most significant crisis in
decades. President Trump's recent visit to NATO and the EU was
the least successful of any U.S. president in seven decades, exposing
deep ideological divisions and a widening gulf of trust across the
Atlantic. The heart of the problem is Trump's view of Europe,
and Germany in particular, as an economic competitor rather than a
strategic partner. Without...a sharp recalibration over the coming
months, Trump's bumbling Europe strategy could turn out to be
one of the most significant U.S. foreign policy failures of the
post-World War II era.

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT
The United States of Self-Interest

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=xuMpgInePAHCUiVSvxStsA

Leon E. Panetta, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and CIA director

Since World War II, the United States has provided global leadership
to promote peace and prosperity. Doing so was the best way to
strengthen and protect both our values and our national security
interests...America has been a leader in the world community in
establishing the United Nations, in fighting the Cold War, in creating
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in negotiating nuclear
nonproliferation agreements, other trade and arms control treaties and
the international Paris accord on climate change. The world is a
better and safer place because of our leadership.

Development & Diplomacy

THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Why Trump Has it Wrong on Foreign Aid

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=liidQzVb0zt_i46Vhy17pQ

Jodi Nelson, Senior Vice President, International Rescue Committee

Almost everyone, it seems, disagrees with the Trump
administration's proposals to gut America's foreign aid
budget. Democrats have lambasted the proposals to shrink the foreign
aid budget by some 30% as counter-productive. While Republicans, such
as President George W Bush, have described foreign aid as a moral and
security imperative for the United States. From liberals to
conservatives, diplomats to military generals, a consensus has emerged
that foreign aid, which accounts for less than 1% of the federal
budget, represents an effective spend. Instead of making drastic cuts
to the aid budget, the administration would be wiser to focus on how
that budget is spent. Ensuring that it is, is a bipartisan concern,
and one in which President Trump's private sector experience
might prove useful.

THE WASHINGTON POST

The Marshall Plan Turns 70 This Week. Here Are Four Reasons it Was So
Important |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=L7rskbl6dbdMDU0eiFX0Rw

Kelly M. McFarland

Exactly 70 years ago, ironically, U.S.-European relations were at
their highest point, thanks in part to the Marshall Plan. On June 5,
1947, two years after World War II had ended, Secretary of State
George C. Marshall...gave a commencement address at Harvard University
and called for a U.S. aid program. It would forever carry his name.
Officially known as the European Recovery Program and passed by
Congress in March 1948, the Marshall Plan provided unequaled sums of
money to an impoverished Western Europe, stopping a humanitarian
disaster and helping spur long-term economic recovery. On this, the
70th anniversary of a momentous U.S. foreign policy milestone,
here's why the Marshall Plan had such an enduring legacy for
U.S.-European relations.

CNN
More Than 100,000 Ill in Deadly Cholera Outbreak in Yemen |
http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=-egNLqBfmvng6LUoTg3bJg

Jacqueline Howard

A ravaging cholera outbreak in Yemen has claimed almost 800 lives in
just over a month, according to the World Health Organization. Since
April 27, more than 101,800 suspected cholera cases and 789 cholera
deaths have been reported in 19 of the country's 22 governorates, the
WHO announced in a Twitter post in Arabic on Thursday. WHO and United
Nations Children's Fund officials are continuing to battle the
outbreak. Last month, a WHO-chartered aircraft delivered to Yemen
enough intravenous fluids and cholera kits to treat about 10,000
patients. However, Yemen's civil war has made efforts difficult, and
some health officials aren't sure what to expect in the coming months.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Kenyans Fear Chinese-Backed Railway Is Another 'Lunatic
Express' |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=QFpkuFz99apk9DAkyDGJ9A

Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura

President Uhuru Kenyatta's government spent $4 billion on a
300-mile railway connecting the capital to the Indian Ocean port of
Mombasa, the most expensive infrastructure project since Kenya's
independence 54 years ago and one-fifth of its national budget. Eager
to portray it as a major achievement ahead of national elections in
August, Mr. Kenyatta opened the so-called Standard Gauge Railway last
Wednesday. But the fanfare was overshadowed by a concern that has been
snowballing for months, filling many Kenyans with mild terror: How can
the country repay its monstrous debt to China?

POLITICO
The Bottleneck in Rex Tillerson's State Department |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=CXibPuQfIlnG6esNLRHxRw

Eliana Johnson and Michael Crowley

When former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...tried to reach him
[Rex Tillerson] last month, it was an aide to his chief of staff
Margaret Peterlin who called back, asking what Rice wanted to discuss.
The episode illustrates the difficulty even close allies are having
reaching Tillerson...While the former ExxonMobil chief has developed a
close relationship with President Donald Trump, he hasn't done
the same with his own staff or experienced outside advisers, choosing
instead to lean heavily on Peterlin and policy chief Brian Hook.

CNN
Trump Has Yet to Formally Nominate Ambassador Picks |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=qyyQWJ5tM-t9lDthZISl9A

Tal Kopan

President Donald Trump complained Monday that the Senate has not
confirmed his ambassadors -- but he has yet to formally nominate some
of them, including a wealthy donor he said in January he would send to
the United Kingdom. The White House still has not sent a nomination
for Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, over to the Senate,
the chamber's Committee on Foreign Relations confirmed to CNN. Johnson
is not alone -- the White House has yet to send over nominations to
the Senate for former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland,
named as ambassador to Singapore in May, and for Jon Huntsman Jr.,
named as ambassador to Russia in March.

Politics & Foreign Policy

THE WASHINGTON POST
If NAFTA Sees Major Changes, Farmers May Pay the Price |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=XEZL2s87LMVMtuF6UD6rBg

Kim Soffen and Kevin Uhrmacher

In mid-May, President Trump sent a letter to Congress saying he will
renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) starting
as early as August of this year. The letter was the first of many
steps required to alter the 23-year-old agreement, which promotes free
trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico. For the agricultural
industry, which relies on exports through NAFTA for nearly $40 billion
of revenue, serious changes could prove devastating. In a field where
products are essentially interchangeable - Argentinian corn
works just as well as American - being able to offer cheaper
products to consumers abroad via free trade agreements is vital to
opening and keeping markets. The production of many of those products
is highly concentrated in the Midwest, placing the burden squarely on
states that swung for Trump.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Qatar Crisis Turns Into Proxy Battle of Mideast Rivals |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=9QjX11IfY7UT6x88RVsDZA

Yaroslav Trofimov

Qatar may be tiny, but that's where all the major fault lines in
the Middle East are converging these days. The sudden cutoff of ties
with Qatar by several Saudi-led Arab states has already turned into a
proxy fight between supporters and opponents of political Islam and
between partners and enemies of Iran. After a series of tweets against
Qatar by President Donald Trump, the conflict has also been infused
with the simmering hostility between the American president and his
European critics such as Germany. Pitting one group of longstanding
American allies against another, the Qatar confrontation has put the
U.S.-which maintains more than 10,000 troops in the Persian Gulf
emirate-squarely in the middle.

THE WASHINGTON POST

State Department Distances Itself From Trump, Creating an Alternate
U.S. Foreign Policy |

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=g8oGmeBAwXcO5PWbT1VFbQ

Josh Rogin

Listening to Tuesday's first ever State Department briefing by
new spokeswoman Heather Nauert, one might get the impression that the
United States is conducting traditional, balanced and even somewhat
nuanced foreign policy on the world stage. The problem is, of course,
that President Trump's own statements on foreign policy destroy
that image and there's no effort by either side to address the
resulting contradictions...As the briefing wore on, the sheer
disconnect between what Nauert was explaining as State Department
policy and what the White House and Trump have said was striking.


The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition
1129 20th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036
Manage Subscriptions | Unsubscribe | USGLC.org

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=tBGf8b19xijwBcjrEoCWEQ
http://action.usglc.org/site/CO?i=CYaFxOcLRuTBrLVEWcTLKmtQRn1NN2vw&cid=0
http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=6y7G0pBIXQDRR1Wy3EjmPA

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=ojup60m2Q5VI7QsI6-oPrg