We’ll see.  The red dragon has a tendency to say one thing publicly and manipulate another thing privately.  However, the baseline for China to take the role of Big Panda is the reception of Secretary Rex Tillerson’s “Four No” remarks on North Korea during his State Department briefing.

TILLERSON”S FOUR NO’S: The United States does not seek •regime change, •the collapse of the regime, •an accelerated reunification of the peninsula or •an excuse to send the U.S. military into North Korea.

So long as the ‘four-no’s’ remain visible and discussed in the international dialogue, the options for China are to comply or to be called out as a deceiving enabler.  The economic consequences for China to break the sanctions are looming and severely consequential.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will pay the biggest price from the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea because of its close economic relationship with the country, but will always enforce the resolutions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
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Against the backdrop of successful U.N. Security Council resolution backed by China Russia, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivers a press briefing, statement and questions, surrounding his visit to A.S.E.A.N conference (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). The video is sketchy in parts – but the full transcript is below.

[TRANSCRIPT] SECRETARY TILLERSON: Good morning. Good morning, all. How’s everybody’s jet lag? Well, I thought I’d take a few minutes out of the series of events and give you a little bit of an oversight of what has already occurred and kind of what’s coming.
Obviously, high on the agenda in the time that we’ve been here has been the situation with the DPRK and North Korea. And I think the strong UN Security Council resolution unanimously approved, working in coordination with China and Russia both to put out a statement from the Security Council that I think is quite clear in terms of there being no daylight among the international community as to the expectation that North Korea will take steps to achieve all of our objectives, which is a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.
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The useful pawns continue their efforts to take out President Trump’s National Security Adviser HR McMaster.  But what they don’t realize, and the professional liberal activists do, is that ultimately the only person they are going to remove is strategist Steve Bannon.
The same Battered Conservatives that stood for an ovation to House Speaker Paul Ryan (CPAC 2015) two months after passing Omnibus; the same Battered Conservatives who failed to see the inherent risk created by General Mike Flynn in November 2016; are now rushing to create a binary choice between Steve Bannon and HR McMaster in the White House.

Specifically because of their chosen approach the efforts against McMaster will lead to President Trump having to decide between two senior administration officials, Bannon or Mcmaster; and in deciding which to keep, Bannon will be the biggest loser.
Predictably the professional political left know how to game out this dynamic.  The professionally democrat are much better political strategists; and they are more than happy to play along, knowing exactly what to do. Meanwhile, in their efforts to take down McMaster the useful idiots and battered conservatives in right-wing media are walking obliviously into a familiar trap.
The person the professional-political-left really want to target is Steve Bannon.  Bannon represents everything the left-wing activists hate.  They’ve already tried a few different approaches to take him down and isolate him from the presidency, with no measurable success.
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U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the historic Security Council sanctions against North Korea unanimously approved 15-0 yesterday.

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At approximately 05:00 of the video Bartiromo asked Haley specifically how the U.S. was able to get Russia and China on board with the sanctions.  –FULL BACKSTORY HERE– Unfortunately, instead of giving a nod to the overall U.S. Trump administration policy and long-term strategy, Mrs. Rubio surfaces and takes personal credit for the outcome.  Politicians gotta politic.
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Nuance is important as tensions are very high.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) conference in Manila, Philippines. The primary topic on everyone’s mind is North Korea and the economic sanctions agreed upon yesterday as conveyed in the unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution.

Specifically, all conference participants are familiar with the (generally non-discussed) historic activity of China where they agree to sanctions then become willfully blind to violations of those sanctions; and essentially enable the DPRK to increase hostility.
During this visit U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is delivering a very severe message that U.S. President Donald Trump is well aware of all historic behavior, and President Trump is not going to allow willful blindness.  It is a new era in economic consequence.
The ASEAN audiences at the conference appear accepting of the first-hand message and welcoming a new understanding that President Trump is not going to allow status quo. Here’s the play-by-play as captured by AP during the early part of the conference.
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President Trump’s strategic approach using economic leverage to gain U.S. national security has established a very rare victory in the U.N. with unanimous support for Security Council sanctions against North Korea.  Yes, China and Russia supported.
Remember, from Day #1 of his administration President Trump was faced with a threat from N-Korea.  On his departure President Obama told the incoming new President Trump that North Korea would be his #1 Geopolitical national security challenge.
The MSM will likely never give President Trump credit for the remarkable long-term economic strategy he deployed to gain China and Russia’s support today.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Saturday that could slash by a third the Asian state’s $3 billion annual export revenue over Pyongyang’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests in July.

The U.S.-drafted resolution bans North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. It also prohibits countries from increasing the current numbers of North Korean laborers working abroad, bans new joint ventures with North Korea and any new investment in current joint ventures.

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UPDATE: After popular request, I finally received a copy of “the map” McGurk is using and added it to the transcript to make it easier. /SD
Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Brett McGurk follows up on the “around the globe” update speech delivered by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. With this update McGurk explains the current status of the D-ISIS campaign in Syria and Iraq. (additional emphasis regionally) WATCH:

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[Transcript] MS NAUERT: Good to see you back. I know, it’s Friday late in the day, summertime. So you all get good camper awards for coming in today. Thank you so much for being here on this Friday. We have our Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Brett McGurk, who’s here with us. I know you heard from Brett just a couple weeks ago at the end of the ISIS – D-ISIS coalition meeting here in Washington. And so Brett wanted to come in today to provide you all with an update as to where things stand in the campaign.
So without further ado, Brett’s here with that.
MR MCGURK: Thank you. Okay, thanks everybody for coming. I thought what I’d do today – you heard from the Secretary for a kind of trip around the world six months in here since he arrived about everything going on in the world and the activity here at the State Department. And what I thought I’d do is drill in a little bit more on what he discussed about the very important – one of our key priorities here at the department, about the campaign against ISIS.
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After spending 72 hours looking specifically at the motives of those pushing almost identical paragraphs including the catchphrases: “holdovers”, “purging loyalists“, “unfettered access” and “Caroline Glick“; it comes as no surprise to hear the administration perceives the anti-McMasters crowd as having “jumped the shark”… “reached too far”, and  “exposed their agenda” etc.
Ironically HR McMaster appears to be safer than ever in his position as National Security Adviser not specifically because of anything he has done, but as an actual outcome of the piranha approach taken by his detractors.  The severity of his opposition’s group-think actually exposed the common denominator.

“General McMaster and I are working very well together.  He is a good man and very pro–Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.”

~ President Donald Trump, August 4th, 2017

HR McMaster might not get the Afghanistan policy outcome he prefers, but his position as NSA appears safe; and we won’t have to go to war against Iran to appease his opposition.  This looks like a genuine win/win/win.  Bannon wins on Afghanistan policy; McMaster wins on Iran policy; America-First wins because we’re not going into another war in either Iran or North Korea.  Perfect.

WASHINGTON […]  John Kelly, Trump’s new chief of staff, has told McMaster he supports him remaining as national security adviser, Politico reported, citing two unnamed senior White House aides.

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Newly formed Circa News agent Sara Carter (Sinclair Media Group) appears on Sean Hannity to discuss her ongoing campaign against Trump’s National Security Adviser HR McMaster.
As we pointed out yesterday, the entire Sara Carter presentation of a letter from current NSA McMaster to former NSA Susan Rice appears to be a propaganda narrative. –DETAILS HERE–  Toward that end, Carter appears with Sean Hannity and misleads the audience about McMasters letter to Susan Rice.
Notice at 02:00 of the video Carter states Susan Rice has access to classified intelligence.  Technically this is correct, but only to historic intelligence work-product that Susan Rice previously saw or created.  Rice’s access is time-restricted. Carter infers Rice has access to current intelligence, which is entirely false; she does not.  Watch:

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Again, here’s the actual letter from McMaster to Rice. You can clearly see the time-restriction on the authorization memo.
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There is a considerable amount of visible internet and social media angst surrounding the National Security Council and staffing decisions made by National Security Advisor HR McMaster.   CTH has no insight into the inner workings of disagreements within the current NSC, however, with a modest amount of both skepticism and cynicism the current level of alarm appears over indulged.

Within any work group there’s going to be differences of opinion.  Within any national security working group there’s going to be ideological differences of opinion.  The issues are important and very complex.  The differences should never be dismissed or marginalized in their potential consequence.  That said, it’s not the differences of opinion that present problems – it’s when those differences become entrenched in opposition to the reason for the groups primary function.  That’s when differences become problems.
Consider the foreign policy proposals, and worldviews therein, of candidate Donald Trump and candidate Ted Cruz.  Now think about taking the foreign policy/NatSec principals from both candidate camps, and the outlooks carried therein, and put them into the same council chamber to hammer out papers of recommended action toward policy.
Can you see the structure for an underlying problem?  Now overlay the ideological interests of the institutional military with a healthy dose of both deep state and religious (centered principle outlook) career ideology, and you’ve got a recipe for disagreement.  Well, that’s essentially what I see when reviewing various media reports of internal group conflict points. (more…)