For American allies, the resignation of conspiracy theory peddler and general crackpot Michael Flynn from Donald Trump's national security team is not necessarily being viewed as a positive step forward. Other nations have been struggling to make sense of a new administration whose policies seem to exist only in the tweeted word-farts of Donald Trump, and even then only until he contradicts them a day or two later. Now they're reduced to Kremlinology as they attempt to figure out what this latest scandal and resignation might mean.
Flynn’s resignation Monday night immediately sent European officials into a frenzy of attempting to determine what the change of the president’s top national security adviser would mean as the Atlantic alliance has already been struggling with understanding how the new president will approach a litany of complex European situations from the expansion of NATO to the war against ISIS to concerns about an expansionist Russia.
“I was hoping you could tell me what the fuck is going on over there,” said one European Union intelligence official who, like the other officials contacted, declined to speak about such a diplomatically sensitive situation on the record.
The view of the Trump team in the Middle East is no better.
One Middle East official agreed with the description of the turmoil in Washington as “fitna,” which means sedition in Arabic, a loaded term that refers to the violent struggle that marked the Shia-Sunni split in Islam. [...]
“Its unpredictability is the real problem,” Rubaie told BuzzFeed News in a telephone interview from Baghdad. “It’s the lack of experience in the presidency and the lack of knowledge of the president. You cannot predict what he’s going to do or say next.”
If anything, it seems Flynn's departure is being met with mixed feelings because Flynn's confrontational views (on Iran, for example) were, for a few Middle Eastern allies and politicians, in their own interests. Now nobody is quite sure what it will be replaced with, but it doesn't sound like anyone is expecting Flynn to be replaced with someone more competent.
Trump was only going to hire the best people, he said. All our foreign policy problems boiled down to past American governments being "stupid,” he said. He'd fix it. Anytime now.